…roiling the west
During the US elections campaign that ended with Donald Trump winning the presidency, the issue of ‘fake news’ rose to the surface, hasn’t receded, and in fact is now dominating the discourse in Europe and other western capitals. In the US, statistics now aggregated show concocted news by partisans of either Clinton and Trump and posted on Facebook, got more attention than “regular” news from the old establishment media outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Times.
In fact, some claim Trump only won the election because of “fake news” created by some young hackers from behind the old iron Curtain. One post had Pope Francis endorsing Trump, another from Winning Democrats claimed Ireland was accepting anti-Trump “refugees” from the US. It received over 810,000 Facebook engagements! But the performance of the “established” media wasn’t any better when it came to fake news.
The Washington Post, now owned by the pro-Clinton Bezos who also owns Amazon for instance ran a sketchy, opinionated story “Trump’s history of corruption is mind boggling, so why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?” It received 849,000 hits on Facebook, while the New York Post’s “Melania’s girl-on-girl photos from racy shoot revealed” garnered 531,000 hits. With the German elections looming, claims on social media that Merkel is the daughter of Hitler (!!) took off like wildfire – and so it went in other western capitals.
But all of this has to make conscious folks in the Third World exclaim, “There is a God!” For untold decades, the western media have portrayed the Third World so negatively that their people began believing the news themselves. The New York Times was the bastion of Liberal democratic thinking, surely it wouldn’t “make up news”, would it? It most certainly would and did! Even to poor, tiny and inconsequential Guyana. Even when it reported on the CIA machinations during the sixties, there was so much they didn’t publish – making Jagan appear to be a conspiratorialist loony.
Didn’t the major British papers go along with the cover-up of the mass incarceration of the Kenyan freedom Fighters they dubbed, “Mau Mau”? All of this was exposed during the case brought by some Kenyan survivors – which they won last year. But where was the outrage against the “fake news” then? We’re objects about whom the Western media can publish whatever they want. But now that social media have changed the rules of the game, witness the squeals of outrage!!
The answer, of course, is news ought to be “impartial”. But as usual it all comes down to who owns the platform for the news, nuh?
In the Third World, we’re still objects.
…on Amaila Falls Hydro power
But we in Guyana know that it’s not just the big, bad western imperialists who are purveyors of fake news, don’t we? We’ve learnt more than just rigging elections from them!! Remember D’aguiar’s Chronicle? And the Muckraker took over that baton rather efficiently during the last PPP Administration, don’t you think?
But what the Chronicle did yesterday on its coverage of the Norway-funded report on the Amaila Falls Hydropower project, takes local fake news to a new low (nadir?).
Now the PNC-led coalition Government – starting when, as the opposition, they scuttled it – was always opposed to AFHEP because it was Jagdeo’s idea. Norway was always for it because it made sense. So they forced the Government to have an impartial study done. The report came out – all in favour of AFHEP but making some technical suggestions.
That the Government seized the suggestions to reject AFHEP once again wasn’t surprising. Hate is powerful!
But the Chronicle only carrying the Government’s release without looking at the actual report!??!
How fake can you get?
…by omission
Fake news operates most powerfully by the act of omission. What this does is to silence and wipe out from history those whose news are never covered.
Like the Chronic’s blanking of the tragedy unfolding at Wales.
