Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on January 22, 2018 - January 28, 2018

Last month, an influential world leader took it upon himself to declare openly at an international conference that “he was the victim of fake news”. He then went on to condemn fake news with arguably the most unsavoury of descriptions: “There is a lot of rubbish published in the media and the internet now … the rubbish that we eat would end up in the public toilets but there is a lot of rubbish for thoughts, the works and rumours spread by the cyber troopers are rubbish for thoughts…”

Many would have immediately attributed the vitriolic attack to US President Donald Trump. After all, didn’t he coin the term “fake news” in his presidential campaign, accusing media houses of targeting “biased” news at him, and continuing to popularise the phrase after his accession to the White House?

But the fact is, those remarks were actually made by Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma in a speech at the fourth World Internet Conference held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, China, in December last year. At the time, he vehemently denied rumours that Alibaba controlled a large number of media outlets and claimed to be a victim of fake news himself.

Ma even claimed that “now 90% of the online comments are brainless, and there is no longer any sick man of East Asia, only sick men online”.

So, Trump, the most powerful man on earth, and Ma, one of the most influential business moguls in the world, have claimed to be victims of fake news. No wonder “fake news” has been named the Word of the Year by the UK-based dictionary publisher Collins.

It said the term saw an unprecedented rise in usage, up 365% since 2016. In defining fake news as “false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting”, Collins said the term came out tops in its annual assessment of the most used words in the English language. It will now have its own entry in next year’s dictionary.

The term has become synonymous with Trump, who has used it repeatedly to criticise the media, particularly in his now infamous Twitter rants. Many people can, therefore, be forgiven for assuming that the phenomenon of fake news originated in the US presidential election in 2016, which saw Trump emerge as the 45th president of the US.

Actually, we in Malaysia had the privilege of experiencing for ourselves the havoc wreaked by fake news in the 13th general election in 2013.

Who can forget the fake news of 40,000 Bangladeshi nationals being brought in to vote? Even as the Election Commission, Inspector-General of Police, Immigration Department, AirAsia and the Bangladeshi embassy denied allegations that foreigners were flown into Malaysia to vote for the ruling party, many still chose to believe in the fake news circulating in cyberspace.

Worse still, it was vigilantism gone wrong as some Malaysians found themselves manhandled because overzealous members of the public wrongly assumed that they were phantom voters and asked them to prove that they were citizens at the polling stations.

Nowadays, literally with a click, one can “spread” texts, voices and images, truths or half-truths and even hoaxes instantly to another person’s smartphone almost everywhere and anywhere in this world — much like a virus outbreak.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and many other social media platforms have turned the rumour mill into a supercharged turbine, something that can be electronically manipulated and fabricated. Like the most potent viruses, fake news will instantly spread across society through social media, wreaking immeasurable havoc and destruction on the entire society besides the specifically targeted individuals.

It is common knowledge now that most Malaysians get their news off social media. But what is worrying is that many cannot tell the difference between real and fake news.

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) held media literacy classes for about 900,000 people this year at 700 1Malaysia Internet Centres, showing them examples of fake stories involving the MH370, celebrity news and the US presidential election.

This is especially worrying because the 2016 Reuters Institute Digital News Report revealed that 69% of Malaysians get their news from social media. We are the second biggest social media news consumers in Asia-Pacific, behind Hong Kong.

Our country has one of the highest internet and social media penetration rates in the region, but getting information from only one source could open Malaysians to a higher risk of misinformation, says the MCMC.

The irrefutably sad conclusion that has been reached here is that fake news is created by political rivals with the objective of destroying their opponents. The fake news will eventually lead the reader to the “echo chamber”, where one reads only what one agrees with. Worse still, whatever few dissenting voices will be drowned out or cowed into submission in the echo chamber.

Fake news is obviously the grave of “freedom of expression”. Before, everyone could have a different perspective and freely explore issues based on different facts.

With both camps gearing up, expect Malaysia’s political climate that has been relatively tepid in recent weeks due to the year-end festivities to turn white-hot as election fever grips the nation like never before.

And be ready to face the onslaught of fake news and more fake news in the weeks to come. May the force be with all Malaysians in weathering the impending political storm, dubbed “the mother of all elections”.


Khaw Veon Szu, a former executive director of a local think tank, is a practising lawyer. Opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

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