MEDIA SCOPE
Tips to spot fake news.” Facebook’s full-page ads across English, Gujarati and other languages recently suggest it is finally waking up to its responsibility to stop the spread of fake news. It is the echo chamber within which two billion people read, write and exchange their thoughts, news, pictures or videos every month. It has a huge role to play in how people vote, what they eat, buy and so on. People trust it and Facebook makes money from that trust. Along with Google, Facebook is the largest recipient of digital advertising in the world. Therefore, the responsibility.
However, not just in India, fake news is a huge concern in most developed markets.
This was evident at IBC2017, one of the world’s largest media, entertainment and technology events that hosted more than 57,000 attendees over six days in Amsterdam recently. While vendors and geeks were talking media tech in the 15 exhibition halls, the conference rooms were abuzz with fake news. There were three big sessions devoted to it on day one. Each of them was packed with insights that could help guide Indian media in its battle against fake news.
The first is that the news industry need not react to fake news by going all hyper — screaming either regulation or freedom of expression. That is what I got out of Sally Buzbee’s session. The executive editor of Associated Press was balanced, refusing to rant against the right or the left. Instead, she kept emphasising the facts and challenges around fake news. While you could blame mainstream media and its elitism for fake news, the true danger, Buzbee says, is “if media doesn’t call out the inaccuracies. But preventing fake is not about preventing freedom of expression”.
The second insight was on the degrees of fake. In another discussion, UK’s Channel 4 News editor, Ben de Pear, mentioned being pulled up by the regulator, Ofcom. The channel had named the wrong man as the perpetrator of the Westminster attacks in London earlier this year. The channel apologised and has taken all the necessary steps to correct its mistake. But like anchor Kate Bulkley said, “There is a difference between an error and fake news.” If a politician is making tall statements and a newspaper reports it without checking them, that is bad reporting, not fake news. If a columnist writes a piece that tilts a certain way despite facts to the contrary, it could be bad writing or prejudice. Fake news is completely false pieces and headlines, designed to mislead. Like showing the picture of a 9-12 year girl with liver disease as a pregnant victim in a Rohingya camp, as someone did recently, before being called out by a fact-checking site.
The third most critical insight for me was the amount of money involved. Channel 4 News and CNN among other broadcasters shared well-researched stories on the fake news industry out of Veles, Macedonia, the former Yugoslav republic. There are over a hundred of fake news sites registered in Veles and run by teenage boys. They create or aggregate fake news, usually from rightwing sites in the US, with headlines such as “Bill Clinton loses it in an interview, admits he is a murderer”. The more outrageous the headline, the higher the traffic, the more is the ad money. “I don’t know what the truth is and I don’t care,” said Mikhail, a 22-year-old who ran one such site, to CNN. His site got 1.5 million Facebook followers till Google and Facebook started cracking down on fake news sites. In the last US election, he earned close to $2,000-2,500 a day in a town where the average monthly income is $426. This, then, is a means of employment, much like gangsterism is. The Veles kids are now gearing up for the 2020 US election. They reckon they stand to earn a lot.
Facebook’s recent ads act as a quasi media literacy campaign that could help. But having a united news industry that educates users about fake news and selfregulatory bodies that penalise the fakers would go a long way in dealing with it.