There is a game that children all over the world play, so much so that it has at least two different names in the English language. The British call it ‘Chinese Whispers’ while in America, it’s known as ‘Telephone’.
In this game, children form a line, and the person at the end of the line must come up with a phrase which he or she will whisper to the person next to them. As the message is passed from one person to another, it usually gets so convoluted that by the time it arrives to the person at the other end of the line, it is completely transformed from what it started as.
I can’t think of a more apt metaphor for the way that information is conveyed in this country by our party-owned media, only now it would seem they are getting an extra hand from the spoof websites that mushroomed across the web last week, targeting established sources of only one declared, or perceived political persuasion.
We have all heard of the term “fake news” – a term which became synonymous with the Trump administration, used to rebut any proven fact that wasn’t to the former president’s liking, but little did we know that in time, even credible sources would be manipulated.
People are smiling for the camera while eating rotting fish. Welcome to democracy in 2021
When fake websites started popping up last week, it was not only shocking, but the implications of it were far-reaching. We build relationships of trust with the sources of information that we willingly choose to intake, and once a shadow is cast on that trust, how can one not be left feeling uneasy?
Questions start to arise: If a whole website can be cloned and dispel real fake news, (oxymoronic, I know), then can the information on the legitimate pages themselves also be changed? What happens to credibility and accountability?
I am reminded of Orwell’s 1984 yet again when he writes: “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” And what greater power is there in the world than being able to convince millions of people to believe without question that what you are saying is true?
Forget the bullets and the blood – fear will only give you a finite number of years in power fraught with anger and opposition, but leading unquestioning, adoring minds by the leash you’ve manufactured piece of false information by piece of false information: that’s the stuff of fairy tales. And even more importantly, no international community can question the legitimacy of your state because your people are smiling for the camera while eating rotting fish. Welcome to democracy in 2021.
To quote part of what one of the country’s best writers, Immanuel Mifsud, said last Sunday when addressing the, so far, unknown people behind the spoof websites: “You are cruel because you are not only hurting those that choose to speak up, but also those who have the right to listen… you are engaging in a cruel game to confuse the message we are listening to.”
We cannot allow one of our most basic rights to information to be made a mockery of. What’s more, we cannot continue to put ourselves in positions where these things are allowed to happen with little to no hope that justice will be served or that it will take years for it to happen.
It is cruel indeed that, in a time where there has never been more information available to us at the click of a button, we need to fight for one of the most basic rights since man started to speak: the truth.