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By Isaac Ato MENSAH
Accra – 3 May, 2019
On 15 March, 2019, the School of Information and Communication Studies (SICS), University of Ghana organised a seminar on digital media at Legon, Accra. The title was: US JOURNALISM’S DISRUPTION AND DEMOCRACY IN THE DIGITAL AGE.
This was when fake news of mass killings by Maduro loyalists in Venezuela was gaining currency.
The speaker was Prof Dorothy Bland from University of North Texas, USA. When she asked, “How many of you think Ghanaians have a favourable opinion of president Trump?”, none of 50 or so attendees raised a hand.
Prof Dorothy Bland, presented data to show that digital media platforms presenting false information to influence a certain line of thinking is not uncommon in America; and President Trump and his White House could be both victims and sources of fake news.
Just about a day prior to the lecture, another communication professor had shared a link to a story written by a US journalist which led evidence to show that the US government and mainstream media were deliberately putting out fake news about Maduro’s loyalist soldiers and were unwilling to withdraw it in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.
Clearly, fake news is the same old disinformation and misinformation that we all know; it has simply been rebranded.
According to chapter 19 of Handbook of Global Online Journalism (edited by Eugenia Siapera and Andreas Veglis; 2012), online news portals use “interactivity, multimediality and hypertextuality” to ensure that those portals gain “trustworthiness”; and even mainstream media houses tend to utilize these as source of news.
But what if, all that you saw was not true – disinformation or misinformation?
Sourcing articles from websites/social media handles of newsmakers and using them for news is common; we all do it. For example, in Ghana, POTROG has his social media pages where he puts out his own news.
But what if his source of information is genuinely false or hatched to deliberately misinform or – disinform?
What about Sam George, an opposition MP who admitted before the Ayawaso West Wuogon Bye-Election Commission of Inquiry that he had not been shot at, and despite the benefit of time, had not seen the need to clarify and correct what could have been a genuine mistake, but which had the potential to galvanize hungry machete wielding party footsoldiers onto the streets?
Across the Atlantic, the current Venezuelan crisis has been fuelled by fake news – disinformation – led by some US newsmaker politicians which CNN and co used and have still not withdrawn. It turns out that Anti-Maduro groups rather than pro Maduro elements burned trucks bringing aid to Venezuela.
The deliberate and continued fake news was then used by the US government to not only cause disaffection, but as grounds to cause instability and direct calls on President Maduro to resign.
But as Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky have pointed out in MANUFACTURING CONSENT; THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MASS MEDIA, the Ideology (of anticommunism or patriotism) is used to silence and create flak for media houses who point out the LIES/PROPAGANDA.
Do we have similar examples in Ghana?
The ruling party has on occasion used fake news (disinformation), aided by well resourced social media hacks to sway public opinion. The main opposition party has also taken false information from social media and used same in official communication.
In many of such cases, withdrawal and apology has been difficult.
The result is a banter which goes on for weeks wasting precious air time which could be used to solve sanitation problems, at a time when “sanitation and sanitation alone should be our number one and only priority”.
In Ghana there is often no conclusion to any national discourse; it is almost impossible to know what the facts are as opposed to the “alternative facts”. A case in point is the recent brouhaha of a so-called Public Universities Bill which does not exist, but lecturers from public universities are discussing its content on radio, TV and on social media.
Over the course of the Trump Administration, we in the media in Ghana have watched with admiration how the media have “body checked” each other. We have also seen how the FACT CHECK phenomenon has become a veritable response to statements made by politicians, especially President Donald J. Trump.
Is there a Ghana equivalent? None that we know of; no media house does that so far.
The Ghanaian situation is pure institutional failure – a failure of the National Media Commission which pivots on the lack of chutzpah of its members; they lack the cojones to do the right thing.
We all need to develop the tenacity to “speak the truth for your own safety,” as my mentor charges. But in Ghana, “everyone will slink away from the problem and when it explodes, they act surprised”, says my mentor.
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