Gordon Weiss to lead international expansion and Pressland’s global application as a counter-radicalization tool in the developing world
VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA (June 4, 2019) – Pressland (pressland.com), a wholly owned subsidiary of Codebase Ventures Inc. ("Codebase" or the "Company") (CSE: CODE - FSE: C5B – OTCQB: BKLLF), today announced the appointment of Gordon Weiss as Head of Global Affairs and Emerging Markets. In this newly created role, Weiss will lead Pressland’s international development to ensure the platform meets the needs of global audiences and clients, particularly in developing markets and fragile zones where trusted news is an increasingly important function of political, social and economic stability. For more than two decades, Weiss served as a communications chief, spokesperson and advisor at the United Nations.
“Pressland’s mission is to recapture the public’s trust in media through greater transparency on a global scale,” said Jeff Koyen, Codebase’s Chief Strategy Officer. “We’re acutely aware that while trust is a universal value, the challenges to building trust through transparency are very different in different regions. Gordon Weiss brings integrity, credibility and a wealth of boots-on-the-ground expertise to our mission.”
After an earlier career in business and journalism, Weiss worked for the United Nations for nearly 20 years, deploying strategic communications to resolve hostage, political and public diplomatic crises in “hot zones” and peacekeeping. He was the head of U.N. communications during the final three years of Sri Lanka’s civil war and, from 2015 to 2018, headed global communications for UN-Habitat, based in Kenya.
Between U.N. engagements, Weiss was a visiting scholar at Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and an adjunct professor at Griffith University’s Asia Institute. He is a co-founder of the International Crimes Evidence Project, a committee of academic, prosecutorial, military and forensic experts who conduct impartial investigations into war crimes. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers.
“I’ve seen first-hand how crisis breeds media manipulation, intimidation and abuse, degrading the quality of information available for media publication, for watchdogs, and for the general public through social media distribution,” said Weiss. “Pressland’s data management platform for media trust will bring incalculable value to the business of information, whether non-profit, non-governmental or commercial, as well as to society at large and the practice of journalism.”
Weiss divides his time between Prague, Czech Republic and Sydney, Australia.
“Our plan for Pressland has always included aggressive scaling into international markets,” said George Tsafalas, Codebase’s CEO. “The addition of Gordon Weiss is a tremendous validation of our core mission to fight fake news and misinformation, which is a source of instability across the globe.”
Pressland is led by Codebase’s Koyen, an award-winning journalist and veteran media executive. He has worked for Dow Jones, The New York Times, The Guardian, Wired, Crain’s New York, Adweek and other major publications.
Pressland, based in Brooklyn, has a globally distributed team of employees, advisors and contractors in Tel Aviv, Hong Kong and Belgrade. Pressland also publishes News-to-Table, a digital magazine dedicated to the current crisis of media trust.
