In July 2018, a UK parliamentary committee warned “that spread
of fake news online threatens the future of democracy” (“Fake news threatens the future of UK: report”, Aljazeera, July, 29,
2018). In recent times there have been similar calls from several
democratic nations including India. The object of the parliamentary committee
enquiry was Facebook, and the “possible interference by foreign
governments—including Russia in UK political campaigns via the platform”.
The committee was specifically interested in determining
whether Moscow had funded political advertisements during the 2016 Brexit
referendum which resulted in the UK leaving the European Union. Much water has
flown down the Thames, the Potomac—and the Yamuna since then! In January 2025,
Mark Zuckerberg conceded that Facebook’s “Factcheckers have just
been too politically biased.” (“Why
did Mark Zuckerberg end Facebook and Instagram’s factchecking
program?”, The Guardian, Jan 7, 2025) The Guardian could
not resist a dig at Zuckerberg. It said his shifting to the right followed “the
prevailing political winds blowing through the United States”. In the same
month, Zuckerberg apologized to the Indian Information Technology minister for
insinuating that the Indian government had lost power in the post-Covid era. (MetaIndia apologises for Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks on 2024 Indian elections, CNBC
TV18, January 15, 2025).
In 2019 The Washington Post published an
article entitled “Fake
news is bad for democracy” (April 5). The visual that accompanied
the article leaves no one in doubt as to the source of fake news. It shows a
mobile home-screen with several chatting applications and WhatsApp specifically
mentioned in its blurb. Arguing that “Unreliable information shapes voter
choices—and election outcomes” the paper called for government regulation of
the social media.
In 2023 The Washington Post took on the
microblogging platform, Twitter. It reported on February 16,
2023, “Elon
Musk reinvents Twitter for the benefit of a power user: Himself”. Musk
hit back: “Elon
Musk Blasts The Washington Post: Your Article Is Fase” (The
Street, February 17, 2023). On October 27, 2023, the Post published
another article entitled “A
year later, Musk’s X is tilting right. And sinking”. In the
article (which was kept out of the paywall), the Post’s analysts
saw a rise in the follower count of “conservative and right-wing influencers”
while the “popular liberal and left-wing accounts” did not show the same
pattern. On the same day, The New York Times commented, “Now
rebranded as X, the site has experienced a surge in racist, antisemitic and
other hateful speech.” A The ordinary reader is confused. Why are national
mainstream newspapers (or legacy media) paranoid about new media platforms? The
congruence of thought of the rivals makes it clear that it is as much an
ideological war as a turf war.
Facebook which debuted in 2004 and Twitter (X)
in 2006 really opened up the floodgates for those who wanted to express
themselves in long or short form respectively, on any topic under the
sun. YouTube (2005) and WhatsApp (2009) were
really disruptive technologies but it would be some time before they really
skewed the information sharing game! It was the smartphone beginning with the
launch of iPhone in 2007 that gave wings to social media
platforms.
The recent infusion of artificial intelligence applications
(and their ability to create deepfakes) into the melee was like unleashing
a Frankenstein monster that changed the social media landscape
forever. We have seen how a cropped video posted on Twitter led to mob
violence; driving a young woman politician to living life incognito; at least
two murders, and mob calls for avenging alleged ‘blasphemy’. Earlier, replies
to social media posts led to murder and mayhem in UP and Karnataka. The Indian
general election results in 2024 were believed to have been skewed by AI
generated deepfake videos circulated in populous state like UP and Maharashtra.
The high decibel, jingoistic Republican political campaign in the 2024 American
presidential election made expatriate Indians target of hate groups on social
media.
Does it mean that the legacy media is lilywhite in its
conduct? A ‘national’ newspaper donning the mantle of a ‘whistleblower’
submitted cropped pdfs as evidence in the Supreme Court when the government’s
Rafale aircraft deal was challenged in 2018. There were occasions when slanted
headlines and deflecting visuals were used. For example, while reporting news
of a cleric molesting a girl, the headline states “Tantric molests minor” and
the visual is that of a Hindu priest irrespective of the creed of the alleged
criminal.
However, every misinformation (or disinformation) need not
be because of ‘malice aforethought’. In their rush to meet deadlines and beat
the competition, newspapers willy-nilly publish unverified reports. In his 2021
book “The Gray Lady Winked”, Ashley Rindsberg narrates how a frontpage
report in the “The New York Times” could have given Hitler
post-facto justification for his invasion of Poland, which was the spark that
ignited the second world war. Rindsberg says his attention was drawn to a NYT
report by a footnote in William Shirer’s classic The Rise and Fall of
the Third Reigh (1962, p.595). The report was about an attack on
the Gleiwitz radio station on the Germany-Poland border. It was
a simulated attack to convince the world that Poland attacked Germany. Hitler’s
own SS forces personnel donned Polish army uniforms to stage the attack and to
make it look realistic, drugged inmates of concentration camps were left dying
there to appear as ‘casualties’. Rindsberg observed “Rather than fitting
the pattern to the facts, the Times too often gave in to the
temptation to fit the facts to a preconceived pattern.” To be factual, the
footnote Rindsberg referred to said “The New York Times and
other newspapers reported it, as well as similar incidents, in their issues of
September 1, 1939.” The objective of Hitler’s disinformation campaign was
served when American newspapers bought into his narrative and gave it
legitimacy!‘Information-misinformation-disinformation wars’ is an
unfolding story! The last word on the subject will be long in
coming!
An earlier version of the article was published in TheTimes of India Blogs