The President of the National Electoral Institute (INE), Lorenzo Córdova Vianello, called for the creation of a strategic alliance between electoral institutions, journalists and citizens to defend democracy.

When closing the International Forum on Journalism and Electoral Integrity, he recognized that “journalism is the natural antidote against misinformation and an indispensable ally for electoral bodies, and for the maintenance and strengthening of democracy.”

Córdova Vianello explained that part of the conclusions of the Summit were that democracy is living in unprecedented times, in which serious challenges are being faced that have led to questioning the survival of democracy, among the disruptive phenomena they detected are disinformation, the proliferation of false information, the rise of hate speech and the polarization in our societies.

He asserted that both journalism and democracy face new challenges, so that one cannot “aspire to better democracies by violating principles and values ​​such as freedom, plurality, peaceful coexistence between majorities and minorities, free voting, the exercise full of political rights, transparency and accountability”.

When giving the keynote address Ethics and Journalism, the Spanish philosopher Adela Cortina argued that there is no solid democracy without ethical journalism.

Virtually from Spain, the academic from the University of Valencia defended that democracy is the best form of political organization.

“I believe that it is a moral and political duty to maintain it, reinforce it, consolidate it, and that is especially important today because democracy is in danger, in decline, and it is necessary to consolidate it for the good of all human beings,” he emphasized.

The director of the Étnor Foundation stressed the need to promote democracy, for which journalism is essential. “The future of humanity will depend a lot on what the world of the press does.”

For his part, Councilor Ciro Murayama described the deployment of authoritarian practices against the media from power as worrisome, as he said that this distances civic friendship and replaces it with public enmity, that is, power disperses the hate so that there can be no reasoned criticism.

Data verification

When moderating the panel titled Information Verification, Counselor Norma De la Cruz highlighted the importance of talking about fact verification in these times of post-truth and fake news.

He stressed that the effect of social networks and new technologies is already here and “is having an effect on public and political life” and misinformation is a business.

“These platforms through which this false or inaccurate information is being distributed responds to market logic, so it is having an effect on how we live and these companies their only objective is profit,” he noted.

This last panel was made up of the computer scientist from the Universidad Veracruzana, Carlos Piña; Code for Africa Senior Research Manager Allan Cheboi; the journalist from Colombiacheck, Ana María Saavedra and Ixchel Cisneros from Verificado 19S.

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