The fledgling UN tried to rein in mass-scale misinformation. The world turned its back and is now paying the price.
The ruinous result of the US approach to freedom of information and media has made anti-democratic contagion impossible to ignore
For a generation of liberal democratic leaders shaped by the verities of the 1990s, the prospect that new media and communications technologies would deliver their citizens to fascism and war has seemed, until recently, unthinkable.
Today, waves of racist violence facilitated by mass-scale misinformation have finally invited the beginnings of some response. The fate of the US, and the poisonous entente of corporate media monopoly and far-right leadership, has made the prospect of anti-democratic contagion now impossible to ignore. Measures to protect the young have taken shape with relative speed, with Australia extolling its pioneering (and unproven) initiatives on age-verification and social network restriction due to take effect on 10 December.
Related Knowledge Center: Democracy and politics
News organizations are scrambling to find a coverage approach that adequately informs the American public about the country’s slide from democracy to authoritarian rule.
Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
Fact-checking and its detractors