FAKE NEWS PLAN UNREAL
Ottawa not the right choice to monitor serious issue
Lawmakers from nine countries gathered in London, England this week to grill Facebook execs, among other things, about concerns over fake news.
The committee is probing fake news on Facebook in the wake of scandals that saw personal data from millions of Facebook profiles used for political purposes and Russia’s suspected involvement in using Facebook’s platform to spread fake news during the 2016 Brexit vote.
A number of the committee members, including Canadian New Democrat MP Charlie Angus, suggested Facebook has become a threat to democracy.
“We’ve never seen anything quite like Facebook, where, while we were playing on our phones and apps, our democratic institutions … seem to have been upended by frat-boy billionaires from California,” the CBC reports Angus saying.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg drew scathing criticism from Angus and other committee members for his decision to “blow off ” their invitation for him to answer their concerns.
There are growing calls internationally for regulations, both on tech giants and in response to the growing threat of fake news.
Meanwhile, in Canada, we may be taking a different and potentially troubling approach to deal with fake news. The federal Department of Canadian Heritage is reviewing a funding proposal to monitor media coverage as we get close to the election next October.
The Digital Democracy Project is a new venture from the Public Policy Forum, a wonkish think tank in
Ottawa.
It involves “...a multi-year project to analyze and respond to the increasing amounts of disinformation and hate in the digital public sphere.”
The project would be spearheaded by Edward Greenspon, a former journalist with top stints at the Globe, Star and Bloomberg. His partner in the venture is Taylor Owen, an academic with a distinguished resume.
Despite their credentials, I don’t feel any better about this.
It would mean as we head towards the vote, a government funded body would decide what is and is not fake news.
But apart from that worrisome prospect, the government funding a campaign to seek out disinformation might want to start in house.
Case in point, the Trudeau Liberals continually make statements that the number of people crossing the border illegally is going down. Numbers direct from the immigration department show that is not the case.
From January through October last year, 16,992 people crossed into Canada illegally and claimed asylum.
For the same period this year, 17,120 crossed into Canada illegally and claimed asylum.
The government even disputes the use of the word illegal to describe people that cross the border illegally.
This despite government websites warning prospective migrants it is illegal to cross the border at an unofficial point and a giant sign warning it is illegal to cross at Roxham Road.
So if I reported illegal border crossers were up would I be deemed fake news because the government doesn’t like how I present facts from their own websites?
What about the government’s often repeated claim 50% of guns used in crime come from Canadian sources now? They’ve been using that stat as part of their push to justify a handgun ban. The claim is legal Canadian guns are stolen a lot more now and used in crime.
Therefore we need stricter regulations, maybe a ban, to deal with this.
Well none of the politicians or police officials that made the claim have offered any data to back it up. Asked directly, neither Public
Safety, the RCMP, Statistics Canada or the Canadian Firearms Information System could find any evidence to back it up.
That would be fake news, or disinformation, from the government.
Yet despite several reports by myself and other folks in the media at CBC, Global and elsewhere, the Trudeau Liberals keep making the claim.
And they will fund and help decide what fake news is?
In an election year? Disinformation or fake news is not new to politics. It has always been part of the system.
The way you ferret out fake news is through a free, rigorous and independent media — not one that relies on government to verify truth.
More voices not less and more challenging of this and all governments is what we need, not a wonkish study.