After the volcanic eruption in St Vincent, the Government held a news conference on 11 April 2021, and declared that fake news was killing us. The Government explained that the Commissioner of Police will be asked follow-up on fake news, since it can lead to a loss of life.
I expected the press to ask some questions about this new path on which Barbados is being directed. But the Government charmed the media present by giving them an honorary non-fake news title. It seems that the media did not want to risk having this new title taken away.
At the news conference, the public was advised to repeatedly sweep the ash from their roofs. I strongly advised against this, noting foreseen death from falling off a slippery ladder. Last week, someone died from falling off a ladder while trying to follow the advice. To whom should the Commissioner of Police be sent?
FAKE NEWS CAREERS.
Politicians normally make a career out of falsely accusing their political opponents – the ultimate fake news. When they form a government, they normally create fake news to avoid disclosing inconvenient information.
Fake news is information that is provably false. All news media, without exception, spread fake news. Some do it unintentionally, and then issue corrections once they become aware of their errors. Others intentionally spread what they know to be false, in service to their political party.
An independent press will allow all evidence-based ideas to contend, so that the truth may be revealed by discussing an exchange of ideas.
BARBADOS NEWS MEDIA.
Barbados’ news media have a mix of responses to fake news. A few of them allow evidence-based discussions. This allows the public to see which arguments are supported by the evidence, and which ones are based on speculation. The remainder only allow the views of their political party on politically sensitive topics.
When media outlets spread obvious fake news, and block evidence-based discussions that can expose fake news as false, then it prompts citizens to ask, why. Once people try to answer that ‘why’ question, they risk having their suggestions labelled conspiracy theories.
DISSERVICE TO OUR YOUTH.
The fear of discussing issues is doing the next generation of Barbadians a grave disservice. They need to witness an honest discussion of ideas, not a persecution of those brave enough to offer different explanations of the evidence.
Why are our media preventing the next generation of Barbadians from benefiting from evidence-based discussions? In countries like North Korea, their media persons must fearfully promote fake news as truth, to avoid being executed. That may be a valid excuse for promoting fake news. So, what is Barbados’ news media’s excuse?
Grenville Phillips II is a Chartered Structural Engineer. He can be reached at NextParty246@gmail.com
Recently a list of more than 200 ‘alternative news sites’ were referenced by the Washington Post, as secondary source, as being the bearers of questionable information. These 200 websites covered a fairly wide range of opinion, from Russia’s RT to Alex Jones’ Prison Planet Radio.
We will argue that anything we see, hear or read, in any environment, could hardly be considered beyond question. Whether we are talking about politics, economy, technology, physical environment, social or legal we see nothing but official lies passing as truths. For it is the area between our ears which represents the most valuable real estate on earth, or mars, for the community of interests.
In between, many critical, alternative news sites, were tarred and feathered by forces which seem to have cleverly cloaked an intention to eliminate or stain fierce competition to the perennial lies of the mainstream. Our instincts suggest, that the targeting of some of the sites was to engender a certain level of confusion. In the intelligence business, such a project is best known as a ‘limited hang-out’.
And it has been previously disclosed that all the major, official, fake news networks, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, Deutsche Welle, BBC, France 21, PBS, Public Radio, etc, are provided constant guidance by the intelligence agencies of the USA. They have their networks of people stationed within. How else would they be able to cover the same (selected) issues in generally the same ways, at the same time, by the same kinds of people, while always reaching the same kinds conclusions.
We were in Czechoslovakia about 30 years ago, to witness an amazing and ongoing propaganda coup. It was a country where the people watched the fake news to hear what was NOT being reported. To make judgements about what the regime did NOT say. In the West, we have come to need that kind of intelligence, especially when dealing with private media working as government propagandists.
Or the story about the Russians who came to the USA during the time of the USSR and wondered how all the media would cover all the stories in the same way. They were to marvel at such a feat and hoped to be able to implement same behind the ‘iron curtain’. What freedom! What fake news!
Or even ‘Democracy Now’, a programmed stolen from WBAI as developed by the late Samori Marksman, which continues to distribute fake news about some formation called LGBTQ. With an Amy Goodman telling the same kinds of officials lies about America’s illegal wars as does the mainstream, to appease her funders. Funders linked to the military-industrial-intelligence-complex. These are the so-called ‘progressives’ in media. They are no less infiltrated.
Our world is highly-propagandized state. The globalization of propaganda. Every major institution is infiltrated by intelligence agencies of one kind or the next. More and more electronically. And fake news is a strategic weapon for internal control.
Or the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) whose notion of evening fake news could be missed by viewers for 15 years without being any less mis-informed. This state-sponsored propaganda medium never seems to be able to find a way to be even critically supportive of the regime of the day.
We were surprised at the emergence of fake news, about fake news, at the height of fake news, in the time of Trump and his ‘fakery’. Just maybe, the emergence of fake news may have something to do with the rise of Trumpism. And while there may be some logic to that way of thinking, there is also an age-old problem of fake news which must be engaged.
We can’t but argue that fake news has become the normal way of the human. Even ‘good news’ is no less fake. Do we not know, with certainty, that the Bible is replete, from genesis to revelations, with fake news? Have we not been raised on Reddiffusion and the BBC with fake news, the news the British wanted us to hear? Is it not a truism that from the very beginnings of time fake information has been used to deceive most of us? Is it not fake information which has our world upside down?
In all this, there is a misguided presumption that the Washington Post, the Barbados Nation, The Advocate News, the New York Times, operate above the spectre of fake news. Are these not the leading lights of journalism, which gave us the illegal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Supported terrorists as proxy armies for empire. Promoted the ‘White Helmets’ as recipients for Nobel Prizes, Right Livelihood Awards – the alternative Nobel. And do not local papers carry international news from a very small circle of media.
While Obama is exiting and Trump, taking over, the nexus between the intelligence agencies and the role of propaganda or fake news is centered around Russia and its alleged interference in the US elections. How much more fake can ‘news’ be? None of the media who we are to tell the ‘real’ fake news can possibly address the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
That real news is the centuries’ old interference in other countries’ elections by American government agencies, particularly the CIA and NGOs in its pay. If we were from Mars we would be left to assume that this type of thing has never happened before, not on earth. Not when the media of the most powerful country is willing to spread the fake news of its president, in cahoots with untrustworthy secret agencies, based wholly on unproven statements.
If we were from Mars, we might even assume that earthlings were unintelligent beings. If the most powerful man, in the most powerful country, was the most stupid person on the planet, we would conclude that the humanoid was not very smart at all. We could not have known that the humanoid was so ill-informed, and purposely made to be, by fake news. Trumpism for you!
But the Martians will quickly come to realize how earthlings are made to operate within a tapestry of lies. And that for them to gain power on earth they must take control of the vast architecture of fake news which dominates the lives of earthlings.
At the center of the social sciences is the need to measure perceptions, determine gaps and finds ways to satisfy needs. In the hands of politicians, intelligence apparati and ‘fake news’ media networks, instead of managing perceptions, human perceptions are created by this vast propaganda ‘machines’.
We have lost control over notions of free will. Are firmly located within the post-1984 world of George Orwell. And way beyond the ‘manufacturing of consent’!
Recently a list of more than 200 ‘alternative news sites’ were referenced by the Washington Post, as secondary source, as being the bearers of questionable information. These 200 websites covered a fairly wide range of opinion, from Russia’s RT to Alex Jones’ Prison Planet Radio.