“Fake News” is a relatively new concept. For most people the term, by association, has turned into a political slogan of the American right-wing. And they can not be blamed for it either. Donald Trump popularized the term in the current political climate by leveling it at any reporters or news media that he termed “unfavorable”. Dubbing any bit of news that he did not like as #FakeNews.
The term is currently a mainstay in conservative discourse and can be seen on multiple placards and banners at most Trump rallies. The term has been used and is being used even at this time when news about the pandemic is becoming politicized as well. This leads to a very dangerous situation during a climate of a global pandemic where the healthcare facilities of multiple countries have been overwhelmed by a communicable disease.
But where did the term “Fake news” come from? And why is it so important for us to better understand how this term is being used in the current political and social climate? And how does it come into play in a country like Pakistan?
Even though the term “Fake News” has only been popularized in recent times, the phenomenon itself is much older than that. Spreading half-truths or outright lies to sway public opinion to achieve personal ends is by no means new. Propaganda has been used for as long as civilization has existed for the achievement of various goals. People have been spreading lies or emphasizing certain half-truths about other people to achieve political ends for a very long time now.
From the stories of witchhunts with people being accused of using magic to spread disease and kill crops, to the infamous term “blood libel” where rumors of cannibalism were spread about Jews as an excuse for their persecution in ancient times.
Mark Antony famously committed suicide when faced by the widespread rumors that he was a mere pawn of Cleopatra. The Mughal Emperor Akbar is maligned by fake news about him to this day where the propaganda and lies spread by religious Ulema during his time are taught as facts in our history books in Pakistan. History is littered with examples of propaganda and fake news being used as a tool for accumulating social coin and soft power.
When it comes to mainstream media and the news, over the years the news has become more and more partisan and liable to being used by those with money or power to shape the public discourse. In the last few decades, it was unheard of for the trusty news anchor to be anything but honest providers of information about the day today. Families would come together to listen to the 8 o clock news delivered by the trusty anchorman.
With the advent of private news companies and, more recently, social media, fake news has become a hydra that is almost impossible to control.
In our own country, with the advent of the Coronavirus rumors started to spread on social media, Facebook and Whatsapp groups in particular that the virus was a conspiracy of sorts to control the masses. To this day there are multiple rumors of people believing that the virus itself is not even a real thing and that it is an excuse to supply a so-called vaccine. This can be incredibly damaging because people that believe in such rumors are less likely to follow government policies and lockdown practices, endangering their own lives and those around them.
Cases of yellow journalism and the addition of opinion pieces in TV news segments turned the news into a medium of telling people what to think and what to do instead of giving them the facts of what happened and allowing them to come to an independent conclusion.
Fake news is not only the spread of a rumor or hoax or an outright lie but also refers to convoluting the narrative for the achievement of a political or social end. And this, I feel, is even worse than the former definition of the term. Though it can be incredibly damaging to say that herd immunity is the best form of fighting a pandemic and that 5G is spreading the Coronavirus, it is even worse to spread or suppress facts when they suit your political leaning. This is because it actively changes public perceptions and leads to individuals getting to places of power that they should never have had access to in the first place.
Even states themselves indulge in using fake news to either enhance feelings of patriotism or to further a narrative conducive to the power of political parties that are currently in power. Zia ul Haq during his reign actively changed the federal academic syllabi to aid his religious narrative of our country’s history. PTV, the state-run news agency was (and some say still is) a puppet of the state and establishment furthering state propaganda.
A good example of fake news in current times would be how certain media companies would be showing the news in a certain light to discredit a certain political candidate or political party followed by analyses by journalists and apparent experts about the news story. This is where things get a little dangerous because it leads to a certain muddying of the narrative that allows for those that do ill in society to add a positive spin to any bad thing that they got caught taking part in.
This can be seen in the present-day during the current presidential campaign in the united states. During the previous presidential elections, Donald J. Trump was on the receiving end of multiple sexual assault allegations. Mainstream media and Social media were filled with accounts of the alleged victims and multiple hit pieces were written about Trump. Unfortunately, this did not account for the fact that the Republican voters saw this as a direct attack on Trump by the fake news media and supported him regardless.
This time around, however, the Democrat candidate, Joe Biden, has also found himself the accused in multiple sexual harassment claims. The Tara Reade case especially served (or should have served) as a big blow to the Joe Biden presidential campaign.
Unfortunately, he has not received the same vicious media response as that gotten by Donald J Trump during the last presidential election campaign. In fact, the story was suppressed so much so that this incident is now seen as a major blow to the #MeToo movement and the struggle for the female rights movement.
This goes to show that the news agencies themselves have political biases and ranging from basic tribalism to the rationalizing of choosing the “lesser evil” the political left has made multiple excuses for going easier on Biden than Donald Trump.
In this modern age of multiple news agencies with different political biases and social media websites with algorithms that promote the creation of positive feedback loops and echo chambers, it is very difficult for people to trust any news source that they come across. The only way that our education systems can help prevent the general public from falling prey to nefarious elements that spread fake news is to instill a culture of not only having our students rote learn facts and figures (which, owing to the current state of our current education system are themselves fake news) but also teaching them the means to develop a framework for dissecting the information they receive and analyzing critically to determine fact from fake.
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