随着COVID-19将事件在线推动，按“审查”

[马尼拉]无论好坏，Covid-19的大流行都迫使实际的现场活动在线移动。

从理论上讲，这应该使它们更容易被media, and news coverage easier and cheaper, especially since it removes the considerable expenses on travel.

Unfortunately, the shift to online conferences, press briefings, and webinars has also made it easier for organisers to effectively control everything, making it an avenue for censorship. Questions are often filtered and those that are deemed critical or not to their liking are completely ignored.

In many instances, organisers will ask for advance questions from the media but will only select ones that suit their tastes. In fact, some of the selected questions are not exactly questions but statements of support or praise for the agency or expert’s hard work.

一个菲律宾governmentofficial who I talked to about this issue suggested that I had probably asked negative questions. But I assured him I had not. I merely ask tough questions that dig deeper into the topic.

For instance, in an event talking about support for start-up businesses, organisers ignored a question on how they can ensure that the programme will provide equal opportunities and diversity and not just benefit the usual privileged few. Such questions are not the usual what I call “grocery store” type questions of how many, how much, when will it be available, and the like.

现在，许多事件已成为单向独白，具有僵化的结构和很少的互动。一位拒绝透露姓名的编辑分享了她记者的抱怨，即在线新闻发布会在演讲上花费了太多时间，几乎没有时间或根本没有时间来回答会议。这样，他们不仅过滤了问题，而且还过滤了那些可以使用缺乏时间来招待一个或两个问题的人。

While this also happened in actual live events before, at least you had the chance to approach panellists, speakers and important guests and quiz them in person. Not anymore. More often they will just ask you to simply refer to their press releases and very rarely will anyone give you answers after the online event. Worse, they even completely leave you out of the invites for future online events if you raise issues or they deem you uncooperative.

在其他方面，转向在线的转变通常是不错的，使得变得更加容易scidev.net像Neena Bhandari这样的记者参加全球活动。但是没有替代现实生活中的人的替代品。

“Looking forward to when life returns to normal and we would be able to meet and brainstorm in person,” Bhandari says.

“我希望很快能看到现场活动。”一位菲律宾的记者同意。“此外，我想念自由流动的咖啡。”

这件作品由Scidev.net的亚太桌子制作。