A Clue to Solving That Disinformation Problem: Punishment

Michael Hedges March 14, 2022 - Follow on Twitter

Just about everybody understands disinformation: they know it when they see it. This is not an especially rigorous analysis. But, after too many years of its assault on all of us, disinformation - conscious and deliberate acts of deception - should be more easily repulsed. It is not. Too many really like it.

This past week the European Parliament (EuroParl) overwhelming accepted a report that concluded a “common strategy” should be created “to face the challenge of disinformation.” A great list of recommendations was compiled by the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation. The acronym is INGE. The debate and subsequent vote underscored the fallout from the Russian Federation military invasion of Ukraine. “This assault painfully highlights why we need to pay more attention to foreign interference and in particular to foreign disinformation and information manipulation,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, quoted by Euractiv (March 9).

The disinformation issue with European institutions and national governments has been fixated on digital service providers, from mobile phone makers and cloud computing companies to social media and search engines. Facebook, now owned by Meta, continues to be a favorite target for fines, sanctions and even divestiture. Google, owned by Alphabet, was last year’s favored target. Microsoft was hammered five years ago. Punishing popular tools and services is far more politically expedient than tracking down the purveyors and users, often good citizens or better campaign contributors. Spyware, like Israel’s Pegasus, is also a related target.

A week earlier the 27 member European Council prohibited distribution within the EU of Russian state propaganda vehicles RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik “by any means.” The sanctions took effect immediately with individual national media regulators empowered to determine and enforce penalties for non-compliance. By the letter, the sanctions are “temporary” but lifting them requires an end to Russian aggression in Ukraine and an end to “propaganda against the EU and its member states.” While the five RT legal entities and Sputnik are specifically named, the EU did not rule out including further sanctions on individuals who “knowingly engage in the dissemination of prohibited content.” Said EC vice-president Vera Jourová, quoted by Euractiv (March 4): “Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. We all stand for freedom of speech, but it cannot be abused to spread war propaganda. The Kremlin has weaponised information.” 

At the very same time, the production house for RT America abruptly shutdown, reported CNN (March 3). Satellite carrier DirecTV and internet streaming specialist Roku dumped RT America a day earlier. "Unfortunately, we anticipate this layoff will be permanent, meaning that this will result in the permanent separation from employment of most employees at all locations," said T&R Productions general manager Misha Solodovnikov in a memo to RT America staff. The roughly 100 employees, several interviewed by the New York Times (March 3), took the news with the usual cheerfulness, blaming the “US government war machine.” Several of their most visible show hosts quickly transitioned to the dark web.

Media trade unions, concerned with employment above all else, came to the side of now severed RT and Sputnik staff. French journalists union SNJ vigorously complained that Twitter, the social media platform, tagged RT France workers as employed by “media affiliated with Russia.” The SNJ said that was quite unfair, in a statement quoted by AFP (March 11). "While RT France journalists are already the target of death threats and insults, this label pasted by Twitter designates them even more distinctly and puts them more at risk.” Twitter, for its part, did not back down. "We have applied the label to several journalist accounts that fall under our policy on state-affiliated media.”

Free expression absolutists, journalist support groups rallied behind the tired meme of upending disinformation and fake news by fact checking alone. “It is always better to counteract the disinformation of propagandist or allegedly propagandist media by exposing their factual errors or bad journalism, by demonstrating their lack of financial or operational independence, by highlighting their loyalty to government interests and their disregard for the public interest,” said European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) general secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez in a statement (March 2). His views were applauded by China’s state TV channel CGTN .

See also...

• Hot Topics - Disinformation

• Hot Topics - European Commission