Democracy dies in darkness

Edition 65

Happy Sunday,

Democracy dies in darkness is probably one of the best tag lines for our world today, brought to us courtesy The Washington Post. In the past few weeks I’ve had a chance to talk to so many leaders about what it takes to wrest democracy from dictators at a time of war. And if we already have it - how do we hold on to our values like the precious gifts they are.

A conversation in the past fortnight about finding the light in our current darkness that really stuck with me, is one I had with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Leader of the Belarusian Democratic Movement and Kersti Kaljulaid, Former President of Estonia and now the Global Advocate of the UN Secretary-General for Every Woman Every Child, United Nations.

A fantastic presentation of ‘CEEher - Democracies woken up’ begins this video, but if you want to skip right to my conversation with Kersti and Sviatlana, please head straight to 13:35 on the video’s timeline.

Europe hones in on disinformation

Věra Jourová just made it harder for tech companies to wash their hands off disinformation in Europe. The vice president for values and transparency at the European Commission has strengthened its Code of Practice on Disinformation. The new, updated code has a bunch of new commitments by both technology platforms and the broader industry to better fight disinformation online. It also follows guidance published in 2021 that the code should be updated (from the code established in 2018) to take into account events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war with Ukraine.

The new EU code has been initially signed by 34 signatories which include social media platforms like Meta, Twitter, and TikTok, along with tech giants Adobe, Google, and Microsoft. Surprisingly, Amazon didn’t sign up.

The code will be enforced through the Digital Services Act, a piece of EU legislation approved in April 2022 to better protect European users from online disinformation and illegal content, goods, and services.

Just Pay Her

Google’s finally shelling out to the women it paid less than men for years. The tech giant is settling a five-year-long lawsuit that will see approximately 15,500 women it employed in California receive the money which the company had failed to pay them.

How much you ask? $118 million. And that’s just one case, in one state, in one country. Let’s see where this leads.

Police Abuse

Women in police forces everywhere seem to suffer as much as the victims they try to protect. This week The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (better known as the Mounties) are in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. A pretty damning report by three retired judges has shown the Mounties have a mountain to climb to clean up their act.

What's the report about and what were its findings? The report was created as part of a class-action lawsuit by former civilian employees, volunteers and students who worked with the Mounties between 1974-2019. In a sentence - the report shows workplace pornography, sexual assault, racial slurs and grooming were just some of the abuses suffered by these women. And although the Canadian federal government set aside $100 million to compensate the estimated 3,500 potential claimants, only about $20 million was awarded to 417 of the 562 women who came forward. 

Why did so few women come forward? Fear of retribution! Commissioner of the Mounties, Brenda Lucki has now acknowledged the "significant harm" suffered by the claimants and  has finally called their experiences "unacceptable."

Wrestling with a dilemma 

Stephanie McMahon, will be the interim CEO and interim Chairwoman of World Wrestling Entertainment. She steps into her father, Vince McMahon’s job until misconduct investigations against him are concluded. Stephanie is taking the top job after announcing a leave of absence as the company’s Chief Brand Officer on May 19th.

Vince stepped down from his responsibilities as WWE CEO and Chairman of the Board after it was revealed he was being investigated over allegations that he paid $3 million to a former employee with whom he had previously had an affair. The investigation also uncovered other claims of misconduct made by other former female WWE employees that involve both Vince McMahon and WWE’s Head of Talent Relations, John Laurinaitis.

1%’er Problems

Boy George was pretty mad at British Airways this week. Why? It seems he, along with fellow first class passengers were made to wait while the airline rolled out the red carpet for Victoria Beckham. The Culture Club singer was pretty miffed that the former Spice Girl was allowed to leave the plane first as other passengers were prevented from disembarking.

The self-described “Drama Queen” posted on Twitter: “Nice touch for @britishairways to leave everyone in first class waiting for steps while Victoria Beckham’s car picks her up at the aircraft. Proper going to avoid flying BA for a while!”

Turns out Posh had paid for the privilege! £6,000 to be exact. You learn something new everyday!

What about Boy George and BA? Seems all’s fine on the flying front now: