Needed: NMC Media Standards Committee
Three prominent Ghanaian personalities have added their voices to the call for the government, mass and social media practitioners to initiate measures to curb the high incidence of fake news, misinformation and disinformation in the country.
Advertisement
Mr George Sarpong, Executive Secretary of the National Media Commission (NMC), has made a case for stricter regulations for social media to check misinformation and disinformation.
He said it was necessary to protect the right to freedom of expression and to maintain peace and security in the country.
Mr Sarpong made the statement in Accra last March at a public forum on the theme “Misinformation, Peace and Democratic Consolidation”.
He said the current spate of disinformation had devalued the entire communications experience and undermined the truth and the integrity of public discourse.
It was the opinion of Mr Sarpong that freedom of expression must be protected at all costs.
“The right to free expression is inalienable. It is something that we fought for and we need to protect it. It is the foundation of all freedoms, so we need to protect it at all costs,” he added.
He explained that freedom of expression should be protected at all costs because the things that undermined the right to freedom needed to be checked.
Other Trending Stories
According to Mr Sarpong, the things that undermined freedom of expression included harmful and unproductive content.
“We need to look for methods that are effective and constitutional. And that is the balance we are calling for,” he added.
Professor Nana SKB Asante, board member of the National Peace Council and Omanhene of Asante Asokore, said in his contribution that there was a cause to worry about certain unwholesome developments in the media space for the past 30 years.
He said misinformation was one of the developments and there was a cause to worry about it because it was a ‘’glaring example”.
“The fragile social cohesion in our young national entity is complicated by extreme polarisation arising from partisan politics.
“In such an environment, misinformation, particularly in the social media, poses a threat not only to peace but to the viability of the nation.”
The third person that spoke at the forum was the Deputy National Security Coordinator, Mr Timothy Coleman.
Over the past few years, according to him, violent extreme groups have used misinformation and disinformation to recruit people into their activities.
He said that was a cause for worry.
Mr Coleman added that the government was taking the necessary steps to curtail threats posed by misinformation and disinformation – by empowering state agencies such as the Information Services Department.
What is fake news?
Wikipedia defined fake news as “false or misleading information presented as news.
“Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity by making money through advertising revenue.”
Fake or false news, according to the source, “does not have a fixed definition and has been applied broadly to any type of false information”.
Advertisement
There are seven types of fake news as presented by Claire Wardle in “First Draft News” as follows:
- Satire or parody – is “news that has no intention to cause harm but has potential to fool”
- False connection, occurs “when headlines, visuals or captions don’t support the content”
- Misleading content, is “the use of information to frame an issue or an individual”
- False context, occurs “when genuine content is shared with false contextual information”
- Imposter content, happens “when genuine sources are impersonated with false make-up sources"
- Manipulated content, happens, “when genuine information or imagery is manipulated to deceive”; for example a “doctored photograph” and
- Fabricated content happens “when news content is 100 per cent false, designed to deceive and do harm”.
There is another type of fake news described by Wikipedia as “scientific denialism”.
Scientific denialism is defined as the “act of producing false or misleading facts to unconsciously support strong pre-existing believes”.
What is misinformation?
Oxford Language defined misinformation as “false or inaccurate information; especially that which is deliberately intended to deceive.”
Advertisement
The American Psychological Association (APA) defined misinformation as “false or inaccurate information – getting the facts wrong”.
What is disinformation?
The same source defined disinformation as “false information which is deliberately intended to mislead – intentionally making the misstating facts.”
“The spread of misinformation and disinformation has affected our ability to improve health, address climate change and maintain a stable democracy and more”.
The APA said psychological science could help by informing us on “how we protect ourselves against its ill effects”.
Advertisement
It added that that could be achieved by “providing valuable insight into how and why we are likely to believe misinformation and disinformation.”
What are rumours?
Rumours are defined by Wikipedia as “information not attributed to any particular source and so, are unreliable and often unverifiable, but can turn out to be either true or false”.
The APA was concerned about false or fake news, misinformation and disinformation because of their dangerous side effects on the national mind or psyche.
Partisan politics and political polarisation have been the main sources of false/fake news, misinformation and disinformation.
The mass and social media are the main tools for generating and spreading fake/false news, misinformation and disinformation.
The phenomenon has been with man for a long time.
What has encouraged and promoted their growth and negative side effects is the advent of the information revolution and the information super highway it has produced.
It is now easy to create and spread facts and figures rapidly to a large number of people across the world with a mobile phone or a computer.
The various means for checking information by sub-editing and editing, as applied to the print media (newspaper and magazines) and the electronic media (radio and television), are not available, in most cases, to the mobile phone or computer information creator and disseminator.
So, with social media-generated fake/false news, misinformation and disinformation, I believe that only the law can help to check it.
For print and electronic media, one of the solutions is quality control.
Controlling the quality of news reporting by proper sub-editing and editing can help to reduce or eliminate sub-standard journalism practices.
Poorly gathered, processed, packaged and disseminated news reports are fertile grounds for the growth of fake/false news, misinformation and disinformation.
News is an accurate, unbiased, balanced, reliable, first-hand report of an event, occurrence or idea that is of interest to the consumers and benefits the mass and social media operators.
A news report that is not accurate, balanced, fair and reliable is not news. It can pass as a rumour, false/fake news, misinformation or disinformation.
The 1992 Ghana Constitution has charged the NMC with the sole duty of raising the standards of journalism practice in Ghana.
Article 167 (b) of the Constitution stipulates that the NMC must “take appropriate measures to ensure the establishment and maintenance of the highest journalistic standards in the mass media...’’
From its inception, the NMC has been strong on investigating, mediating and settling complaints made against or by the press or other mass media.
However, the institution appears to be weak in quality control and ensuring the maintenance of the highest journalistic standards in the country.
For the past 30 years, professional standards have fallen and the quality of media content has gone down beyond acceptable levels.
I suggest that the NMC should establish an NMC Media Standards Committee.
The committee should be responsible for monitoring and reporting, annually, on the performance of the print, electronic and social media to ensure the maintenance of the highest journalistic practice in Ghana.
Email: therson.cofie@yahoo.com