As an information free marketeer, I am instinctively not as
panicked about what is currently being described as “fake news/information” in
the public sphere as many of my colleagues in the free expression and press freedom
communities, because I think there are paths to addressing some of its worst
effects.
It is understandably concerning to bona fide professional
journalists that one of the core functions of the fake news phenomenon is the
deliberate undermining of otherwise legitimate sources of news and information
in order to command political or corporate market space.
For instance, one of the paths to the sources of this
category of public information would be an easily recognisable and explicit
campaign to diminish the value of old or legacy media, and their operatives, in
the eyes of the consumers of news and information. This includes personal smear
campaigns against journalists, among other strategies.
Keep your eyes on the people clearly engaged in achieving
this objective, and not far away you would more likely than not find a “new” or
emerging outlet offering the “real” news, presumably unfiltered by political or
corporate interests. If you barely scratch the surface of these “alternative” sources
of opinion, news and analysis you recognise the raw backbone of campaigns
conceived to prop up the agendas of sectional interests.
These activities also ride on the backs of legitimate
programmes to widen access to public information, protect informal and unauthorised
sources of such information and provide platforms for the expression of people
and interests otherwise marginalised by traditionally skewed, oligarchic mass
media environments.
Exponents employ the techniques of traditional news coverage
to offer deliberately misleading information by integrating opinion with fact
and verifiable data with false statistics.
Investments in such operations span a variety of business
models though, more often than not, they tend to be lacking in easily
recognisable operational viability and must be sustained by non-core sources of
revenue. Ask then the question. Who is paying for this?
For the consumer, there are some other simple, basic
questions to ask. Who are the proprietors of the enterprises offering not only
“alternative” perspectives but “alternative” facts and information?
In most instances, nowadays, we are speaking of shady online
operations. Traditional “mainstream” media don’t usually have such a challenge.
Some are publicly-listed and have boards of directors whose members are
well-known to everyone. In other instances, there are private companies whose
owners are known and whose business records are, by statute, capable of being
assessed.
Legacy media operations also have editorial hierarchies,
small and large, and liabilities for professional and other misconduct are
clearly established. There are teams of journalists who are known to everyone
and routinely operate under guidelines that have implications for their
continued employment.
Newer, credible online-only operations offer a similarly
transparent corporate profile and we usually have a clear idea of ownership and
professional responsibility.
The “fake news” strategists are also usually easily found
behind the dissemination of salacious content to bolster other assertions. In
Jamaica, where I am currently, some of the content being circulated via
WhatsApp, Facebook and other platforms about the systematic harvesting of human
organs for international trade is known to be the same material being distributed
among T&T audiences.
The ensuing heightening of public concern about this new
form of criminal behaviour fits easily into the frame of politically-motivated
actions to establish the failure of politicians in power to conquer the
undeniable plague of criminal violence.
Human trafficking as an area of legitimate and serious
regional concern is also gaining prominence as a similar source of material for
the strategists involved in the “fake news” business.
In Jamaica, where some of the features of cyber-crime
legislation being considered in T&T are already in place, the difficulty
with policing such provisions has come to the fore well ahead of justifiable
concerns about their constitutionality. It is my view, by the way, that imposing
laws that criminalise an expanded variety of public expression, in this case
online content, is a blatant contravention of the guarantee of free expression.
Additionally, only last weekend, Jamaican police
spokesperson, Supt Stephanie Lindsay, bemoaned the fact that having a law
against online information leading to “annoyance, distress or anxiety” was “overwhelming
the police services” by causing a diversion of resources that can be otherwise
employed.
The “fake news” phenomenon, fuelled by voyeuristic online
audiences and functional media illiteracy is of understandable concern to
legislators but their official interventions should not be solely a response to
the political damage such material is capable of inflicting.
This situation should instead provide the impetus behind
more stringent application of existing civil and criminal law, the validating
and strengthening of legitimate new and old media operations and a concerted
programme to promote higher levels of media literacy.
At a workshop I attended on the subject in Jakarta last year
there was insertion of concern that media literacy could not be reasonably
advocated in an environment in which “old-fashioned” illiteracy prevailed. But
media literacy is a huge part of the solution to the bigger issues.
For the moment, discerning consumers of public news and
information can begin by asking the questions I have proposed in order to
determine the bona fides of their sources on information.
Enemies of the free press are not all proponents of the new
“alternative” forms but are wont to favour the demise of legacy media, in the
process affirming their complicity in undermining one of the more important
pillars of the democratic process.
All of this places an additional onus on trusted sources of
news to try to always get it right and to set higher standards for professional
performance. This is not always easy to achieve but its pursuit is vitally
important, especially under current circumstances.
