Opinion Matrix: What comes after fake news election?
AMID all the noise, a single word is emerging to define this General Election: disinformation. Britain’s serious commentators have been fretting for years about fake news and “info wars”, fuelled by internet outrage.
This threat used to be largely seen as something that happened abroad. Or at least came from overseas. In the last few weeks politics-watchers are getting more nervous about the UK. So what happens after the vote?
The Scotsman
It is not just news that is fake. Laura Waddell put the spotlight on tactical voting sites designed to mislead.
“By now it’s no surprise that even MPS fall for this stuff, promoting junk sites and apps to their wider audience,” she wrote, “like Mike Gapes unhelpfully punting a site that recommended voting for Mike Gapes, no matter one’s constituency. “
Ms Waddell was unimpressed by faked accounts casting doubt on accurate reports that a child had to sleep on the floor of a Yorkshire hospital. She slated the BBC for failing to challenge fake news.
And for letting Boris Johnson off the hook for evading interviewer Andrew Neil. She summed up: “What was to stop the BBC recording all candidates before any were broadcast, in possession of the foreknowledge Johnson has evaded debate in the past? More than ever, robust editorial standards are needed to combat misinformation, derision of experts, and far-right figures who know how to crystallise their hardline bases via a mainstream media who weakly insist they can be debated away. We switch on the TV to a hall of mirrors.
“This has been the election of darkness, anonymous sources, and dissolution of meaning.
“The problems the UK faces as an institution fundamentally warped by insidious power and money are deeply ingrained.”
The Times
All that outrage is making us sick. That, at least, is the warning from Jenni Russell.
The columnist wrote: “You’re feeling anxious about politics, the election and the future of the United Kingdom then I’m afraid I have bad news for you. It’s not only making you miserable, it may also shorten your life.”
Ms Russell was taking about the endless rancour of the internetera politics we now live with.
“This perpetual state of jittery alertness has direct consequences on every cell in our body,” she explained. “Chronic stress shortens our telomeres, the protective casing on our DNA.
“Intuitively we all understand this and how poisoned and depressed politics is making us feel. It’s why Brexit is causing such anguish on both sides, either its imminence or its frustration. It’s why Johnson’s dubious promise that he can end this and get Brexit done has such huge appeal. We are desperate to escape this cloud.
“There is no resolution possible that satisfies us all. The divisions are real. Perhaps all we can do to protect ourselves from the agonising, ageing consequences of these angry times is to ratchet down our own miserable emotional attachment to the fight.”
The Guardian
Glenn R Simpson and Peter Fritsch are the journalists who have written a book about “Trump-russia”.
They think Americans are avoiding a hard look at how
Russia’s Vladimir Putin is trying to game US politics to help the right.
And after the election, they think Britons are too. “The British political system has become thoroughly compromised by Russian influence,” they wrote. “It’s high time its institutions – including the media – woke up to that fact. In 2016, both the UK and the US were the targets of Russian efforts to swing their votes. The aim was to weaken the alliances that had constrained Mr Putin’s ambitions, such as the European Union and Nato.
“The efforts in both countries had much in common. They were aided by a transatlantic cast of characters loosely organised around the Trump and Brexit campaigns.”
America at least had an investigation, they observed. “In Britain, the official response has consisted largely of denial.
“Consumed by bitter divisions over Brexit and public spending, it took years longer than it should have for Parliament to conduct an investigation of Russian penetration of British politics.
“Even now, the government has suppressed its findings until after the election – an unconscionable decision given the importance to the democratic system itself.”
They also criticised the media saying journalists had been “slow off the mark” on the story and “stymied by dwindling resources”