Abstract
Government or corporation control of misinformation is a threat to free speech, argues
Meticulously researched and scathing in its criticism, the report from the end of July highlighted the way in which social media, and the vast swathes of data owned and sold by internet giants, can be used to manipulate public opinion.
The report argued that rather than calling this “fake news”, we should talk about “misinformation” and “disinformation”.
At Index, we have been arguing this for some time. The select committee report acknowledged: “The term ‘fake news’ is bandied around with no clear idea of what it means, or agreed definition. The term has taken on a variety of meanings, including a description of any statement that is not liked or agreed with by the reader.”
This is welcome. “Fake news” has been used to describe everything from journalism that is factually correct but with which someone disagrees to made-up news reports created by propagandists paid for by foreign powers to destabilise their enemies.
But moving away from the blanket use of the term “fake news” is only the start of the battle. Of far greater concern are the mechanisms we use to tackle such disinformation.
France is one of a number of countries to have recently proposed laws to tackle the growth of internet propaganda. Designed to stop what the government calls “manipulation of information” in the run-up to elections, the law would allow political parties to complain about assertions deemed false or “implausible”, and a judge could immediately move to stop their publication. The law has rightly come under criticism. Newspaper Le Monde warned about the possibility it could one day be used by an authoritarian government for censorship. As governments from Turkey to Hungary and the UK look to tighten their definitions of what constitutes acting against the national interest, this is not such a ludicrous or distant prospect.
Freedom of expression is one of the bedrocks of democracy. But ensuring individuals have equal access to information is also fundamental. During elections we have rules to ensure no one party is able to dominate the airwaves – or the letterbox – so it is reasonable to consider how we should update these rules for a digital age. At the same time, we should not, in the race to be seen to be “doing something”, introduce measures that end up undermining democracy by allowing governments to decide what constitutes acceptable speech or devolving power to decide what is allowed on internet platforms to unaccountable corporations with opaque decision-making processes.
CREDIT: Otto Dettmer/Ikon
Kitemarking “quality” and trustworthy content has been put forward as one way to address disinformation. This sounds good in theory, but in practice there are many reasons to be wary of a trust badge for news, notably the question of who gets to be the arbiter.
Knowing what outlets to trust has to rely on much more than a badge of honour or a reliance on corporate entities to make that choice effectively for us. It requires a more active understanding of who is providing us with information, how they got it and how to weigh various data sets. In an environment in which even politicians urge us to mistrust “experts”, that is increasingly challenging.
So, if new laws and kitemarks are not the answer, what is? Speaking as a recovering journalist, I would argue that journalists have a key role to play, and there are three things we can do now.
A drive to create artificial balance has been a major force behind a growing inability to weigh facts against opinion. If climate change (on which the vast majority of scientists agree) is pitched as a matter of opinion and climate-change deniers (a tiny percentage of the expert scientific opinion) are held as equally credible, why shouldn’t we choose to believe the deniers over others? Journalist Nick Davies teaches journalism students that if they are asked to write a report on what the weather is like and they interview one person who says it’s sunny and another who says it’s raining, then it’s their job as a journalist not to write up what they have been told but to look out the window.
Unlike some people who are concerned with the rise of fact-checking organisations, I am heartened by their development. It’s encouraging to see newspapers and broadcasters adopting real or near-time fact-checking operations and openly calling out politicians and others in authority for telling lies.
This comes up repeatedly in recommendations on how to deal with disinformation in the digital era. It is easily said, but in practice it is often difficult to deliver. As a parent of young children, I was dismayed to hear that what they took from a session on internet research was “don’t trust Wikipedia”. The basic tenet of being a good journalist is to question the trustworthiness and accuracy of your sources. That ought to be a basic tenet for everyone. Learning who to trust – rather than mistrusting all – is a cardinal skill for this information age.
