by Mark Austin
This is just one example of the difficulties posed by citizen journalism. How is it possible to discern the truth amid so much propaganda, misinformation, opinion and general noise? In the new digital ecosystem, how is it possible to know what is real news and what − yes, let’s say it − is fake news?
Bending the truth is nothing new. The equivalent of today’s deliberately erroneous tweets and posts can be found throughout history. Way back in the sixth century AD, the Byzantine historian Procopius revered the Emperor Justinian in official scripts but then secretly released all sorts of dodgy information in his history known as the Anecdota, to smear him. In Roman times, Octavian famously deployed disinformation as a weapon to gain victory over Marc Antony. And with modern developments in mass communication, propaganda and fake news grew hugely in scale, particularly during the two World Wars. In the Great War, the British government used propaganda very effectively to rally and motivate the public against the threat of Germany. And, later, the Nazi party used the mass media expertly to build its image and then consolidate its grip on power in Germany during the 1930s. This was largely state-sponsored propaganda.
But in the twenty-first century, the term ‘fake news’ entered common speech to describe a very real cultural phenomenon: manufactured disinformation spread on the Internet to fool susceptible users. It usually involves small groups of people using social media to gain traction with untrue stories for various reasons. Some creators of fake news have financial motives. They look to use dramatic but totally spurious stories to win an audience for advertisers. But more often it is tied up with politics. The charges against Russian individuals and organizations for meddling in the 2016 US election point at all sorts of fakery going on. They posed as Americans and set up fake political groups, to disseminate often inaccurate information that disparaged the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and promoted the Republican, Donald Trump. They created fake Facebook accounts to pump out sometimes false information about contentious issues such as immigration and gay rights. Facebook has confirmed that Russians purchased $100,000 worth of advertising on its site – adverts that reached 126 million users.
Donald Trump used his Twitter feed to spread his own fake news during the US presidential campaign in 2016. He put out his – sometimes ludicrous – conspiracy theories suggesting, among other things, that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of JFK, that President Obama was not born in the USA and that climate change was a hoax.
His aides were at it, too. His adviser, Kellyanne Conway, went so far as to invent a massacre in Kentucky in order to justify and defend a ban on travellers from a number of Muslim countries. It was simply fake news. It was not true. She also came up with the phrase ‘alternative facts’ when trying to explain why the White House Press Secretary had claimed bigger crowds were at the Trump inauguration than at the Obama event.
And it all inspired a wildfire of fake news, fuelled and spread by his supporters online. How the Pope was backing Trump, how Hillary was selling weapons to ISIS… on and on it went until fake news was everywhere and false stories became the story.
And then, most insidious of all, Trump turned ‘fake news’ on its head and used it almost as a tool of power. He managed somehow to redefine the term so it became used to dismiss and delegitimize honest reporting by the mainstream media. At his first press conference as president-elect, he refused even to listen to a question from the CNN reporter Jim Acosta. ‘You’re fake news,’ he yelled at him. In the following weeks and months, Trump accused several major media outlets of broadcasting or publishing fake news. It was repugnant. But it stuck, and it gained traction with his supporters. It was also done with some chutzpah, given that the Trump administration itself was pushing out all sorts of ‘news’ that was demonstrably fake.
The term ‘fake news’ is nothing but a euphemism for ‘lies’. And lying is not good for journalism, which is fundamentally all about the truth. The moment journalism ceases to be about revealing the truth is the moment journalism stops mattering, and that is not worth thinking about. And it seems to me that fake news is the culmination of twenty years of dwindling trust in the establishment, in politics, in the political class and, yes, the media. That is not just bad for politics and journalism; it is bad for democracy.
How did it happen? It began, I think, with the build up to the Iraq War. A routine interview between John Humphrys and the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan contained a passing reference to a ‘sexed up’ dossier. The very suggestion incurred the wrath of Tony Blair’s communications director, Alastair Campbell, who launched an all-out assault on the BBC. This led to open warfare between the Beeb and Number 10, out of which all sorts of consequences tumbled, not least the tragic death of Dr David Kelly, a government scientist accused of leaking information to the BBC. It also led to the chairman and director general of the BBC losing their jobs, Tony Blair losing his reputation, and a lack of trust in the government on a matter as fundamentally important as taking the country to war.
The feeling, of course, that so much life and money was wasted on a conflict based on a false premise is hard to shed. But, more broadly, I think it led to a suspicion of government and politicians that has had lasting implications.
Of course, the Iraq War was just one element of the crisis of confidence in the establishment. In the years that followed, we had the scandal over MPs’ expenses at a time when the country was facing growing cuts and austerity. We had the financial crash and the banking scandals and the seeming lack of anyone being held to account. And we had the phone hacking revelations, the closure of a major newspaper and the Leveson inquiry, which shone a spotlight into the dark corners of press malpractice and dishonesty.
It has been a corrosive, insidious process, which perhaps almost inevitably led to serious public disillusionment.
So what are we now facing? What we have is a perfect storm battering traditional journalism. We have the rise of sometimes unreliable citizen journalism, we have the emergence of the fake news phenomenon, and to top it all off we have a President of the United States doing his best to undermine mainstream journalism by constantly attacking it. Taken together, they are a real threat.
Now, on the face of it, the proliferation of fake news – the real phenomenon, not the Trump version – is bad for journalism because it undermines people’s faith in what they see or read. In the end, consumers just won’t know what or who to believe.
But far from making traditional journalism less relevant, fake news actually makes it more important than ever. It has never been more crucial to have trained journalists sifting through and checking and double-checking what is right and what is not.
Social media, at its best, is a convenient, informative and entertaining tool. You can get reliable newsfeeds, see what opinion-formers have to say and be directed to useful blogs and columns. But at its worst, it is a horrible mix of rumour, innuendo, speculation, misleading drivel and downright lies.
So surely it is the job of trained journalists, reporters and foreign correspondents to wade through that mush, that noise, that impenetrable fog of so-called news, to work out what is right, what is fact and what is fit to broadcast.
The role of journalists has always been to bear witness, to be there and to see with our own eyes. Our job is to tell it how it is, as best we can. Eyewitness reporting and analysis is what we are about, not half-baked truths.
The foreign correspondent, who crosses dangerous borders, enters inhospitable countries and reports in good faith what is happening in often perilous circumstances, is as important now as he or she has always been. The reporter who is trusted by the audience and who delivers an unbiased and impartial account of events is still an absolute must in journalism. It has remained a noble concept.
Just think of mainstream journalism as exactly that… a stream. That stream is now developing lots of little tributaries. Some of them feed useful, clean, pure water into the stream. Others, however, deliver toxic, polluted ghastliness th
at seeks to contaminate and poison. It is the job of traditional journalists to keep the mainstream as pure as possible.
It might all sound rather pompous but it is hugely important. It is startling how some established media have allowed themselves to become polluted. And I don’t mean tabloid newspapers whose staple diet is entertainment rather than news. One of the most respected news and current affairs programmes, Newsnight, essentially repeated an Internet rumour about Lord McAlpine being a paedophile that was completely untrue. They paid a heavy price. It was a horrible mistake that cost the BBC’s director general his job, and cost his organization £185,000 in damages and a lot more besides in terms of its reputation. For a moment, the much-admired Newsnight effectively became little more than an extension of Twitter.
When Internet rumour becomes good enough for established broadcasters, we know we are in trouble. Facts are our stock-in-trade, they are all we have to go on and we peddle half-truths and rumour at our peril. If the rigorous checking of information is not carried out, it gives succour to people like President Trump who try to claim that all is not what it seems.
So if there is an opportunity to reassert the importance of traditional journalism, there is also, it seems to me, a business opportunity. Just think about it. In an environment where news is increasingly unreliable and increasingly fake, where all sorts of garbage dressed up as news is washing around, how much more likely is it that people who care, consumers who want news they can rely on, will be prepared to pay for the real thing? I firmly believe that fake news may be the best thing to happen to the purveyors of real news. People may finally cough up for news they can rely on.
There are those who believe the mainstream media’s sudden concern about fake news represents a desperate attempt to close down free speech, sanitize the web or in some way police what is published on sites such as Facebook.
Mick Hume, editor-at-large at the online magazine Spiked, says the ‘top-level panic’ about fake news in what he calls the ‘post-truth’ age is effectively about restricting freedom of speech ‘in the name of “defending democracy”. It doesn’t get much more fake than that.’
And he goes on: ‘The big threat facing Western democracy today does not come from a few fake news reports posted by foreign agents or teenagers in their parents’ back bedroom. Far more dangerous to democracy are those at the heart of the Western establishment who want to re-educate voters about what they should know and believe, and establish fact-checking “gatekeepers” to limit democratic debate.’
It’s an interesting take, but I don’t believe the media elite is trying to shut down free speech; I think there is simply a genuine fear of the consequences of people being bombarded with – and, perhaps, believing – stuff that just isn’t true.
Of course, there are many countries across the world where leaders despise and fear the very notion of a free, properly functioning media. They try to intimidate, or better still control, the news outlets. In those countries, journalists literally risk their lives trying to cover news and uncover the bad things going on. It seems to me that journalists operating in countries that have a relatively free press owe it to those who don’t – to get into those countries, to shine a spotlight into murky corners, and expose and reveal what is really going on.
It is one of the dirty little secrets of the news game that many of the articles, photographs and videos we read or watch are produced by freelance journalists. News organizations are increasingly relying on freelancers – one of the consequences of budget cuts.
The advantages are obvious. The employer often doesn’t have to pay salaries, insurance, travel and accommodation costs. Nor is it responsible for providing safety equipment like armoured cars, flak jackets and helmets. So, in other words, news organizations get the reporter on the cheap and bear none of the risks. But it is wrong.
In America, I interviewed Diane Foley, the mother of James Foley, one of the journalists kidnapped in Syria whose beheading was filmed by Islamic State terrorists and released to the world. James was a freelancer who went to dangerous places without the protection, security and insurance a staff photojournalist would expect and receive from their employer. Diane now works tirelessly for improved safety and treatment for freelance conflict journalists.
A few years ago, while working for ITN, I travelled with a cameraman to Mogadishu in Somalia – possibly one of the most dangerous capital cities in the world. We knew that as Westerners we ran a considerable risk of kidnap or worse. We also knew that as Western journalists we were particularly juicy targets for the Islamist militants or the gangs linked to them. We were determined to see for ourselves what was going on there and to report on the dreadful suffering, made so much worse by the conflict that still rages on the edge of the capital. But the innate cowardice that has been my protection in many a war zone through the years meant I would only make the trip if some sort of satisfactory security could be provided.
So we put ourselves in the custody of a local warlord called Bashir, who for a heavy price – $2,000 a day – provided thirty-six tough, battle-hardened and, crucially, heavily armed young men to watch our backs every step of the way. That they did so was, of course, a huge reassurance. That it was necessary is an indication of just how dangerous covering the news has become for journalists. And that we had to resort to such measures is, for me, a cause of considerable sadness, and in a sense guilt.
Sadness, because of what it says about what has happened to our trade. Where once the neutrality and independence of the media was widely recognized and respected, now it’s clear journalists are being specifically targeted or sought out by those who fear the truth emerging. It’s no longer enough to blame the messenger, it seems. Silencing the messenger is all too often the name of the game.
And guilt because of the glaring inequality that now exists in journalism. I could insist on that security in Somalia, I was insured and had the backup of a large organization with considerable resources which made safety a priority. But freelancers and local reporters working in dangerous countries have no such protection.
Local reporters such as Nur Mohamed Abkey, a veteran journalist in Mogadishu, whose body was found in an alleyway with gunshot wounds and evidence of torture. He was killed, say colleagues, because of his affiliation to a government-run station. He didn’t have protection.
And Nasteh Dahir Farah, a freelancer and vice-president of the National Union of Somali Journalists. Recently married, he was shot dead as he was walking home from an Internet café. He didn’t have protection, either. A colleague said simply: ‘Someone didn’t like his reporting.’
Someone didn’t like his reporting. Just think about that. Someone didn’t like what a journalist had written. So what did they do? They didn’t try to put across their side of the story. They didn’t attempt to persuade him of the validity of their arguments or their political creed. No, they just shot him dead.
There are many journalists like Nur Mohamed Abkey and Nasteh Dahir Farah in countries all over the world. In places like Mexico, Colombia, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, journalists are regularly murdered because of what they’ve written or said. Or because of a story they were investigating.
These are reporters who are not dropping in for a few days to cover a story and leave, but rather working and living with the constant threat of intimidation, violence and murder. And these are journalists who are paying the price for getting too close to the truth for some despot’s liking. Despite the dangers, they’ve made a simple and very brave decision. They have decided it is their job to try to tell the truth about what is happening in their country.
These journalists know full well the risks of challenging the government or the militias. But they believe they must challenge, they must hold them to account, because they believe it is the right thing to do. They also know that if they don’t, the chances are no one else will.
Meanwhile, the story of twenty-nine-year-old Ali Mustafa, a Canadian photogr
apher, is illustrative of a freelancer’s life – and death. I read his story on the website Medium; it was written by Jaron Gilinsky:
In early February… with a sparkling new Nikon, [he was] on his way to Syria. Ali crossed the border from Turkey and had the good (journalistic) fortune of being the only Western journalist in Hadariya, a rebel-controlled neighborhood of Aleppo. Thanks to his exclusive access, he sold photos by the dozen to [the photo agencies] EPA and SIPA, which were splashed on the front pages of the Guardian and The Times of London. On March 9th a government helicopter dropped a barrel bomb on a residential building. According to witnesses Ali went into the destroyed building with some young activists to try and rescue survivors. Suddenly, the chopper swooped back around and dropped another bomb. Ali’s luck had run out. At the age of 29, on his second professional reporting trip, he was killed alongside seven Syrians.
So young… It was a story that filled me with sadness when I read it. But more than anything, it filled me with anger. As Gillinsky writes:
Nobody called Ali’s family to notify them of his death. His sister found out through a photo uploaded by an activist on Facebook. His face was charred, but unmistakably his. Ali had no liability or life insurance policy when he was killed. The Turkish and Qatari Red Crescents recovered the corpse and transported it back to Turkey. His mother, who runs a small cleaning service, paid the Canadian government 6500 Canadian dollars to coordinate the repatriation, plus another 8000 for a flight and 7000 for the funeral. When all was said and done, Ali’s family was more than 20,000 dollars in debt.