On (and beyond!) disinformation, misinformation and the challenges of distribution channels. The role of media professionals.
Deliberate misusage of information as well as unintentional misinformation are relatively new problems. They are generally present in all types of media. The paradox is that the usage of advanced digital technologies in content creation and applying innovative approaches in communication with audiences and users equally serves media professionals and bad actors. They both inhabit common media environment and share same communication channels where social media are on the rise to become the most effective tool to influence every audience.
Regional audiovisual public service media are not an exception from this common trend. CIRCOM Regional began tackling the issue of fake news, disinformation and misinformation at its Annual Conferences in timely manner.
Almost up until the 20-s the discussion at the CIRCOM’s most influential forum focused on the new perspectives that digital technologies give to media - be it legacy media or digital ones. It was all about new paradigm in coming up with meaningful content and delivering it to the right public, the right communities. In 2015 at the Annual Conference in Dundalk, Ireland, the session Social Media: Making Us or Breaking Us explored the impact of social networks on (regional) journalism, the tone being on the pro’s of “making” rather than the cons of the “breaking” side. In 2016 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Richel Bernsen, then of ROOS, presented Four Scenarios For the Journalism By 2025. One of them, the “Wisdom of the crowd” scenario envisaged a new role for journalists – by 2025 they will become “fact correctors, curators and community managers”.
Watch The Future of Journalism: 4 Scenarios, 10 Years on.
Then in 2017, at the Annual Conference in Portugal’s Ponta Delgada there was an entire session about “the new breed” in journalism – the factcheckers. During the Factchecking. A Trend, a Must Julien Pain of FTV, France, and Christine Schwarz of Belgium’s RTBF spoke about their experience. (Christine Schwarz would return to this topic 6 years later at the Conference in Donostia-San Sebastian). The moderator Jean-Marc Dubois, former President of CIRCOM Regional, referred to elections campaigns, when media are constantly checking statements from politicians. Does this mean the end of fake news, does factchecking give the absolute truth, went on to question Jean-Marc, widening the discussion field. For context: the forum in Ponta Delgada took place only months after Donald Trump became President of the USA.
Watch Factchecking. A Trend, a Must.
While the conversation in Ponta Delgada was mostly about general aspects of factchecking, the discussion continued in more detail the following year during the Annual Conference in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands.
In her presentation Pro-Kremlin Trolls and Fake News as Security Threat the Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro, spoke about her experience with a crowd-sourced series of stories about pro-Russia trolls, who were spreading out social media propaganda to influence the Finnish people.
Back then the CIRCOM Regional website shared her story: “Instantly after publishing the first piece she was targeted by an international discrediting campaign. She received responses such as a phone call with the sound of a gun firing at the other end, as well as a cell phone text message claiming to be from her father (who died 20 years earlier). Jessikka told her story about dealing with fake news, Russian trolls and how coordinated social media propaganda-writers are twisting and manipulating the public debate outside of Russia” .
In her presentation Fake News on Social Media the former journalist from the Netherlands Margot Verleg, spoke about the risks of publishing unverified news, which may turn out to be in fact fake news! Her own experience with fake news helped her make her mind to develop an app which could be used for recognizing fake news. Margot acknowledged the perils of disinformation, but to her even more dangerous was spreading unwillingly misinformation. Apart from possible serious political, social and economic consequences it could inflict damage on the audience’s trust. So, Margot showed some tips how to avoid such mistakes.
Watch Fake News on Social Media
In 2019 the Annual Conference in Novi Sad, Vojvodina, Serbia, approached the issue of fake news from the point of view of regional media. Carlo de Blasio, then Vice Director of TGR – RAI Regional, Italy, argued in his keynote Advantages And Downsides Of Regional Journalism In The News Verification that regional public service media were better protected from fake news since verification of facts and information in smaller communities was easier because the media stayed closer to their audiences. On the other hand, Carlo de Blasio suggested that regional media should stand out and be distinguishable and recognizable. The means to achieve this were credible and reliable content. Information would be “specific and relevant news, produced by recognizable professionals”, while communication was viewed as broader process – “citizens, using web and social media even in anonymous forms”. “Confusion between communication and information leads to fake news, lack of credibility, in another words – chaos… Journalists must make information clearly different from communication showing that credible and serious information is vital in society”, argued Carlo de Blasio.
Watch Advantages And Downsides Of Regional Journalism In The News Verification
The flip side of the coin during the Novi Sad Annual Conference was the presentation of deep fake technologies, made by a team of BBC Blue Room laboratory (the media’s consumer technology research unit). It brought another perspective – usually people trust what they “see “on the telly”, but! how if this “see” is faked with modern technologies? Jacob Markham, Melissa Wood and Shayan Sardarizadeh presented the topical demonstration Media Manipulation For Good Or Bad? It offered new perspective to the problem – technologies are just a tool. Whether they will be “good” or “bad” – blame it on the people that use them.
The COVID-19 crisis was a time when fake news were widely spread for various reasons. At the first gathering after the pandemia – the Annual Conference hosted by TG4 in Galway, Ireland, the issue of information verification was part of the opening session on Sustainability of Journalism, raising the existential question - can our democracy survive disinformation. Razan Ibraheem, senior editorial analyst with Kinzen, delved in to the technology of factchecking with regard to important events in societies – from elections to covering the (then newly erupted) war in Ukraine. “Disinformation is not limited to weak democratic governments or authoritarian regimes. Information coming from democracies itself sometimes can be questioned”, stated Razan, herself being of Syrian origin and having first hand knowledge how different types of state governance works. “We try to separate “noise” and news and monitoring evolving campaigns and narratives, decoding misinformation, disinformation language”, Razan Ibrahim explained. To her, the 2020 elex campaign in USA that led to the events of 6 January 2021, the COVID pandemia and the war in Ukraine are strong examples how manipulation and disinformation can be used and what a deep impact these two can have on societies.
Watch Sustainability of Journalism
With this trend in the background in 2023 at the Annual Conference hosted by EITB in Donostia-San Sebastian, Basque country, Spain, Christine Schwarz of RTBF shared the experience of the Belgian public service broadcaster in factchecking and countering disinformation. Christine’s presentation RTBF Fake Team: Vrai ou Faux? had two dimensions. One, she presented Faky – a RTBF platform for truth verification, as Christine put it “for … everyday use”. The platform adhered to four principles to ensure veracity. These were respecting the truth, respecting the rights and the privacy of the people, being independent in providing information and being loyal to audiences. On the other hand, having Faky, allowed RTBF to become part of a larger structure that monitors disinformation in the francophone Belgium and Luxembourg. “Disinfocheck” as its name was, applied a networking approach and united experts from various fields – media professionals, experts on media literacy, the academia and the civil society.
The second part of this session was in a way a bridge to emerging phenomenon which was spreading fast – deep fakes! Manipulation of audiovisual material. Rebecca Skippage, the first Disinformation Editor with BBC News spoke about What happens to trust in news if we can’t believe anything we see. To a certain extent Rebecca built upon on the BBC Blue Room presentation of video deep fakes, shown in Novi Sad 4 years before. “We live now in a world of generative AI, where credible fakes are able to fool us all, and we’ve got bad actors who are finding new and smarter ways to infiltrate our information ecosystems. So, what can we as good information providers do to assure audiences that they can still trust us – and guard ourselves against becoming victim to bad information?”, asked Rebecca. She presented “BBC verify”, a new tool aimed to serve trust and transparency. But more than that – Rebecca Skippage set up the ground for a discussion, which continued in future CIRCOM Regional Conferences.
Watch Disinformation and Fake News
It was Andrea Gerli, news editor and head of Digital Information Unit at RAI, Italy, who took the batton from Rebecca Skippage. At the 40th jubilee Annual Conference, hosted by TVP3 Poznan in Poland, Andrea Gerli put it straight forward. Will the media survive the AI era, he asked before beginning to present latest abilities of Deepfakes. AI can undermine the trust in media and in democracies, especially in 2024 when half of the world’s population is going to vote, warned Andrea. He tested the audience whether they can recognize fake from true videos before moving on to show how deepfakes can be countered.
Watch Deepfakes
POST SCRIPTUM: So, as Andrea Gerli put it – are media, and regional audiovisual media in particular, going to survive the “Third mass extinction”? The first one was going digital, the second – social media, and now – the third one, the Artificial Intelligence? The greatest challenge for is how to be trustworthy in a media environment where fake news and disinformation are thriving.