In “Why I write”, George Orwell contended that whenever his writing lacked political purpose, it became lifeless and was “betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally”. My column’s purpose is to elaborate on the core elements of journalism. This column too would be betrayed into purple passages and decorative adjectives if it strayed from this objective. My study of social media, the problems of algorithm editing, and the role of technology companies was never about technology, but about how information reaches the public domain.
It is common knowledge that a Readers’ Editor (RE) comes into the picture only at the post-publication stage. Some have argued that the new initiatives taken by technology companies to flag fake news stories show that their role is similar to the role of the RE. This argument is flawed. Newspapers have a fairly robust verification process before publication. Each copy is scrutinised by at least four pairs of eyes before it reaches readers. It is not impulsive rhetoric that is pushed into the public sphere, which is the case with posts on social media.
In fact, there is evidence that Facebook’s flagging system, introduced last December to address hoaxes and fake news, is having the opposite effect. The platform’s press release had said: “We’ve started a program to work with third-party fact checking organisations that are signatories of Poynter’s International Fact Checking Code of Principles… If the fact checking organisations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed. It will still be possible to share these stories, but you will see a warning that the story has been disputed as you share… It’s important to us that the stories you see on Facebook are authentic and meaningful.”
The Irish slavery case
A recent example shows how this objective has failed. Facebook’s fact-checking organisations, the Associated Press, and Snopes.com flagged a story on Irish slaves that appeared on a local Rhode Island website. And then something strange happened. There was unbelievable traffic to the story, and it went viral in the U.S. A section that is opposed to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement began deploying the Irish slavery story in a perverse manner. The core issue is not about the difficulties faced by Irish immigrants to the U.S.; it is about the meaning of the word ‘slavery’. Irish historians have for years been explaining the difference between the plight of Irish immigrants and that of African-Americans; the difference between indentured servitude and chattel slavery. Their explanation that King James II did not issue a Royal proclamation in 1625 that led to Irish slavery because he was born in 1633 was lost in the amplification of lies.
What does this terminological distinction mean to a citizen? Talking to The New York Times , Leslie Harris, a professor of African-American history at Northwestern University, said: “An indenture implies two people have entered into a contract with each other but slavery is not a contract. It is often about being a prisoner of war or being bought or sold bodily as part of a trade. That is a critical distinction.”
But the flagging did not help to bring out this nuance; it only reaffirmed existing silos and echo chambers. A bunch of conspiracy theorists pressed the alarm button saying that this was a move to silence this story.
The NYT story titled “Debunking a myth: The Irish were Not slaves, too” documents how far-right groups lie by taking up specific atrocities committed against black slaves and substituting the Irish for the actual victims. One of the most quoted instances by these groups is the 1781 Zong massacre, which was the killing of 130 African slaves. But InfoWars , a pro-Trump website, claimed that the victims were in fact Irish and inflated the death toll by adding a zero.
The Irish slavery story is a clear wake-up call to platform companies, which have now become publishers, to have systems in place that process information before it reaches the public sphere, and not indulge in cosmetic post-publication flagging.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
