Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1524298
7 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 21 JULY 2024 OPINION Fake news, hard facts and muddled opinions MALTA is not immune to fake news and disinformation campaigns, as exposed in the case of former health minister Chris Fearne. "Around €6,500,000 was spent to fabri- cate a story with a single malign purpose: to politically eliminate me... First, they tried to find dirt … When they failed be- cause there wasn't any, they just fabricated it," he wrote on Facebook, as he asked the police to investigate and the House of Rep- resentatives for protection. Records obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and shared with the Times of Malta and the Boston Globe exposed a new vulnerability for the institutions of our microstate just as fake news has snow- balled worldwide. We seem ill-prepared for these new vulnerabilities that even caught major global powers off guard. I belong to Fearne's generation. We saw Malta transform from an insular and iso- lated island to a population of digital mi- grants and frequent fliers. Technologies and neoliberal ideology encouraged us to learn, dream, work, and form relationships across borders. Society is more complex due to the fragmentation and decentrali- sation of crucial aspects of our existence. "Wherever I lay my hat, that's my home," became a reality as we spread our wings and adapted to an emerging new human condition. While fake news is not a modern inven- tion, the current tsunami of fake informa- tion is unprecedented. It is almost impos- sible for citizens to decide what to believe. Political scientist Richard Perloff aptly described how disinformation is "contam- inating the climate of factual discourse." Fake content extends beyond news to in- clude rumours, conspiracy theories, and manipulated data. Such information has "a patina of news that does not constitute journalism but can algorithmically and psychologically animate like-minded us- ers," wrote Perloff. Misleading or biased information manipulates narratives or facts and aims to deliberately confuse or deceive audiences. Since media freedom is a cornerstone of democracy, the implications are signif- icant. Information empowers citizens to deliberate and partake in meaningful po- litical engagement. Thus, the engineers of fake news do not merely destroy the repu- tations of political enemies, whether indi- viduals or inconvenient nations, but they also disrupt the entire democratic system. In these processes, businesses can be as in- sidious as states and political players. There is a veritable shadow war, and as individuals, no matter how discerning, we have limited capacity to understand what is happening in this seemingly parallel uni- verse. Our analysis is constrained to what surfaces in the public realm, often years later, when the damage is impossible to contain and hard to reverse. Meanwhile, the information flow is poisoned by suspi- cion and speculation, creating a hyperre- ality where facts are perceived as illusions while conspiracy theories and fake infor- mation are sometimes accepted as gospel truth. In Fearne's case, fingers are pointed to- ward two firms, CT Group and Audere In- ternational. Both denied unethical actions but were previously associated with nega- tive campaigning that included character assassination. CT Group is renowned for facilitating successful political victories for former Australian prime minister John Howard and former British Conservative prime ministers David Cameron, Theresa May, and Boris Johnson. The company's methods had raised some ethical concerns despite claims of legality and distancing from fake information. These days disinformation is deeper, more insidious, and systematically spread at an international level. In Europe, the hard-right now leads in this hall of mir- rors, thriving on its ability to stir public emotions on issues that other parties, now highly fragmented, seem unable or unwilling to address. Anger and anxiety coalesce in a decentralised environment overcrowded with fora for direct commu- nication and action. Voters of all political persuasions are enticed, usually by the hard right, to scratch a national itch, turn- ing it into an inflamed wound that risks festering. In this era, public figures are frequently collectively disparaged as corrupt, betray- ing public trust for personal gain. The traditional political elite, including the Brussels-based echelons of power, rarely inspire and may appear disconnected from people's varied and possibly contradictory concerns. When parties seem preoccupied with protecting their turf and detached from their mission and vision, they often render themselves irrelevant. In this context, the king of disinforma- tion for right-wing parties is actually Steve Bannon, who became famous because of his role in Donald Trump's 2016 US pres- idential campaign. Later, he fell out with Trump and embarked on a tour of Europe advising the hard right on how to harness the power of negative campaigning and disinformation. In this main narrative, legacy media are systematically branded as "fraudulent" and "fake news media" by those inspired by Trumpist rhetoric. Although the hard right did not make any gains in Malta, the impact of disinfor- mation is equally tangible. The fake news targeting Fearne highlights how disinfor- mation can be weaponised to discredit and destabilise elected officials and such pow- erful effort can be engineered overseas. Such tactics not only threaten individual reputations but also undermine the integ- rity of democratic processes by manipu- lating public opinion. They may also un- dermine national interest and a country's sovereignty. Addressing the proliferation of disinfor- mation requires multifaceted approaches, including enhancing media literacy to em- power citizens to critically evaluate infor- mation, encouraging transparency in digi- tal platforms to curb false information, and holding accountable those who knowingly propagate disinformation and fake news for political economic gains. Safeguarding democracy also necessitates international cooperation to address cross-border disin- formation and to mitigate its impact. According to documents obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Steward Healthcare hired a private intelligence firm to accuse Chris Fearne of accepting a bribe Carmen Sammut Carmen Sammut is professor of Media and Communications at the University of Malta