How the internet is creating fake news, by Gove
MICHAEL Gove launched an attack against social media yesterday for ‘corrupting and distorting’ politics by spreading fake news.
The Environment Secretary hit out at online firms after two million web users read misleading claims that MPs had voted against treating animals as sentient beings.
Celebrities helped to share the story that MPs had voted that animals cannot feel pain or emotions.
Former Great British Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins tweeted that MPs were ‘shameful b******s’, while broadcaster Ben Fogle retweeted the story. Both have now retracted their claims.
And late on Thursday night, the online Independent newspaper grudgingly retracted its original story.
On Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, Mr Gove blamed social media for presenting a false impression after the Com-
‘Absolutely wrong’
mons rejected an amendment to Brexit legislation which would have brought EU animal protection provisions into UK law.
The Environment Secretary said: ‘ On social media there was a suggestion that somehow MPs had voted against the principle that animals are sentient beings.
‘That did not happen. That was absolutely wrong. There’s an unhappy tendency now for people to believe that the raw and authentic voice of what’s shared on social media is more reliable than what is said in Hansard or on the BBC.
‘We’ve got to stand up against the way in which social media corrupts and distorts both reporting and decision making.’
Mr Gove insisted there would be no gap in Britain’s animal welfare provisions after Brexit ‘because I think what we are going to do is ensure we have stronger protection written into law in order to ensure that there is no gap. It is better to have an absolutely well-designed piece of UK legislation, rather than a poorly designed piece of EU legislation’.
The row came after an amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill – which would have transferred an EU protocol on animal sentience into domestic law – was voted down last week.
Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas, who tabled the amendment, had raised concerns that current rules risked dropping out of UK law by accident once Britain leaves.
The Independent was accused of spreading fake news after it published a story headlined: ‘ The Tories have rejected all scientists and voted that animals don’t feel pain.’ In a clarification, the paper said its report ‘was not right’. ‘Put simply, what happened is this – MPs did not vote that animals are not sentient creatures,’ it said.
Yesterday Mr Gove said Brexit could lead to stronger animal welfare measures in areas such as live exports and puppy farming.
‘There is a particular concern … that outside the European Union our democratic institutions can’t do better than we did in the EU … Parliament is an effective and vigorous institution which can ensure protection for human rights and for animal rights.’ He added that ‘some of those who have shared some of these messages on social media have been generous to acknowledge that in their zeal to be sure we maintain the very highest standards they may have unwittingly passed these messages on’.
Tory MP Zac Goldsmith described the reporting by some organisations as ‘absurd, fabricated and a nonstory’. ‘Most people believed this stuff … But it was fake news,’ he told LBC radio.
‘Clearly there is not a single MP in Parliament, not one from any party, who doesn’t believe animals have feelings.’ He added: ‘I don’t think we should kid ourselves that EU environment law is some kind of panacea … you can produce foie gras, you can do veal farming, donkey torturing in Spain and fur farming all over Europe.’
Fellow Tory Jacob ReesMogg said: ‘Some rather gullible people have forgotten that the EU allows bull fighting and that its fine words are less important than the practical steps the British take to protect animals.’
The Green Party’s home affairs spokesman Shahrar Ali said the story ‘would be a good candidate for what has been described as fake news’.
FOR democracy to function effectively, it is self-evident that voters must have access to trustworthy information and a plurality of viewpoints on which to make up their minds. So these are deeply worrying times for our system of government.
Take this week’s fake news, retweeted by posturing celebrities and believed by millions before a muffled correction was issued: ‘ The Tories have rejected all scientists and voted that animals don’t feel pain as part of the Brexit bill.’
This damaging claim was not just untrue. It was the polar opposite of the truth.
In fact, the Tories voted to reject the EU’s animal welfare regime because Environment Secretary Michael Gove believes Brussels is too soft on cruelty, and Westminster should toughen the law.
Indeed, fake news on the unregulated internet adds huge force to the saying: ‘A lie can travel half way around the world before the truth can get its boots on.’
Just as insidious is the way the BBC distorts debate. We do not accuse it of deliberately falsifying news. But as a taxpayer-funded corporation, steeped in a public-sector mentality, it acts instinctively as a champion of high state spending.
Consider its relentlessly downbeat reports on Philip Hammond’s workmanlike Budget. Bemoaning lower growth forecasts and pressure on public services, the BBC turned the words of the old song on their head, going out of its way to ‘Accentuate the negative, eliminate the positive’.
Who could believe, on the evidence of its coverage, that Britain has record numbers in work, income inequality is at its lowest in a generation – and the economy has massively outperformed most of Europe?
What is so disturbing is that the BBC’s overwhelming dominance leaves only a handful of independent, tightly regulated papers to paint a fuller picture and express alternative views, held by huge numbers in this small-c conservative nation.
Yet the free Press is under attack by a tiny and vicious minority of hard-Left internet trolls who seek to gag all opinions that differ from their own – whether over Brexit, mass immigration, transgender agitprop or Jeremy Corbyn’s neo-Marxism.
Anyone doubting the true nature of the Stop Funding Hate campaign – some 500 of whose followers bullied an ailing stationers’ chain into a pathetically grovelling apology for associating with the Mail (which has 4million readers) – should read Guy Adams’s chilling exposé on these pages.
In it, he details vile obscenities and threats of violence directed by the group’s hangers-on against Tories and Brexiteers. And all in the name of combating hate!
What with fake news, a systemically biased BBC – and now this sinister campaign to crush free expression – the public’s right to know has never been under greater threat. Everyone who believes in democracy should rally to defend it.