You can’t fake truth!

Donal Conaty explores the rise of ‘fake news’ and examines the impact it has had on communications and journalism.

Fake news is essentially the deliberate spreading of misinformation in order to undermine an opponent or to profit financially or otherwise.

The phenomenon has gone hand in hand with a trend that has seen expertise derided, and public debate framed, to appeal to people’s emotions rather than their intellect, as happened with both Donald Trump’s election and Brexit.

The general practice of traditional journalism of verifying sources and fact checking is in keeping with the libel laws that govern what traditional media can publish, but many such outlets have found themselves in a bind in recent times as their advertising revenues dry up.

Some have resorted to ‘clickbait’ headlines, a form of fake news where the headline is designed to generate revenue through boosting readership rather than to accurately reflect the content of the article it serves.

However, traditional media do still have checks and balances that work to mitigate this to some extent. This is not the case with many of the new media organisations that are thriving in the current climate.

Fake news has been in vogue since the Trump/Brexit circus came to town, but the truth is it has a long dishonourable tradition that predates the advent of social media platforms that spread misinformation like a virus.

The term ‘fake news’ itself dates back to the 19th century, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary’s Words We’re Watching section. But it has undeniably been having a peak moment due to recent events in America and the United Kingdom and the way it can be disseminated instantly and globally on social media platforms.

Indeed, the failure of social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to properly manage news verification on their platforms has led to accusations that they effectively swayed the Brexit vote in the UK and Donald Trump’s election to the presidency in the United States.

In the UK, a parliamentary enquiry into fake news has issued an ultimatum to Facebook and Twitter to provide it with information on Russian misinformation campaigns during the lead up to the Brexit referendum, or they will face sanctions, according to a report in the Guardian.

Among other things, the enquiry is charged with defining fake news, its impact on public understanding and on the public response to traditional journalism, and looking into whether changes in advertising practices have encouraged the growth of fake news.

As it happens, on the same day that I was commissioned to write this article I saw a post while scrolling through Facebook about the appalling treatment of Irish slaves in the West Indies in the 17 th century. It detailed their terrible suffering and made for harrowing reading. But it was fake news.

There were no Irish slaves and the suggestion that there was has been thoroughly debunked time and again by historians and researchers. In March last year, for example, the New York Times debunked it and wrote that a group of 82 Irish scholars and writers had “signed an open letter denouncing the Irish slave myth”, and said it was often politically motivated and used by far right groups for racist purposes.

Nonetheless, that Facebook post I saw is still there and still being shared. It was posted on February 7th 2014 but was shared on my timeline on January 10th 2018 and has been shared by just under 300,000 people. And it is only one post on the subject.

The UK is not the only country taking issue with the fake news phenomenon. Fears over the way the manipulation of news has appeared to undermine democracy have led France and Brazil to announce plans to effectively censor the internet and punish those found guilty of spreading fake news. As worrying as the spread of fake news is, however, the thought of governments censoring news is anathema to anyone who believes in the importance of a free press as a cornerstone of democracy.

The law has been slow to move on this issue, but it is at least trying to address it now. Whether it succeeds and whether it does so to the benefit or detriment of society remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, we have to take everything we read or see with a pinch of salt, check the credentials of the source organisation and the author, consider our own partiality or prejudice and whether it has led to a social media platform’s algorithm serving up a particular story to us, and hope for the best.