Yes, misinformation can have deadly consequences - something news organizations should remember and for which they should pray forgiveness
Those who support Carney’s mission to legislate speech should keep in mind that shabby reporting may be the greatest Online Harm of all
The quest to suppress what the government believes is “misinformation” spread on the internet is about to be revived.
Never mind that there is little information these days that isn’t spread on the internet, one can expect Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals to take a third kick at the Online Harms Act some time in the near future (both previous attempts to regulate speech died due to elections.) The PM certainly made his thoughts clear during the election campaign when he vowed “Large American online platforms have become seas of racism, misogyny, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and hate — in all its forms. And they’re being used by criminals to harm our children. My government will act.
“I can take the conspiracy theories and all that,” said Carney on April 10. “But the more serious thing is when it affects how people behave in our society …”
It’s unlikely that Carney has misinformation spread by established news organizations in mind, but he should. For when it comes to dissemination of false news that affects how people behave, there are some stark recent examples.
The Rewrite already examined the ongoing consequences of bungled, biased reporting on residential schools and, as Terry Glavin put it in his recent post, there were clear consequence in terms of “how people behave.”
“There were riots,” he wrote. “Statues of Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth, John A. Macdonald, Egerton Ryerson, Joseph Hugonard, James Cook and other historical figures were toppled by mobs or formally removed in Charlottetown, Winnipeg, Toronto, Kingston, Hamilton, Lebret and Victoria.”
Let’s not forget Regina and the burning churches everywhere. But rather than dwell on those matters, let’s take a look at another wave of misinformation: one that has persisted since Oct. 7, 2023, when Gaza-based Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, massacred men, women and children and took hostages. Israel repelled that incursion and has responded ever since with every intention of laying waste to Hamas’s ability to do that or anything else ever again.
Tens of thousands of Gazans have died. How many are military personnel and how many are women, children and the elderly is unknown. But no decent human being would fail to be troubled by the deaths of innocents.
As Golda Meir, Israel’s fourth prime minister, famously put it: “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.”
Since the dawn of the conflict, news organizations have struggled with their coverage, primarily because they frequently take statements from Hamas - the Iranian-backed terrorist organization that doubles as Gaza’s government - at face value. This string of contentious allegations began Oct. 17, 2023 when the world’s press lustily reported “Palestinians say hundreds killed in Israeli airstrike on hospital; Israel blames Islamic Jihad.” The Hamas allegations have been debunked and the Israeli version of events generally accepted. But the headlines and initial impressions remain.
Many journalists, some of whom appear to have doubled as Hamas members, have been killed. Truth is always difficult to discern in war. But no matter how many times some statements from Hamas have been shown to be, at best, gross exaggerations and, at worst, pure fantasy, news organizations continue to grant it credibility. More recently, the United Nations jacked up the stakes when, in the third week of May, it claimed that if Israel didn’t immediately permit more aid in to Gaza, “14,000 babies could die in Gaza in next 48 hours.” The UN corrected that claim, as did the CBC, clarifying that the time for the risk was a year, not 48 hours. But, again, the damage was done. Almost as if it was intentional.
Since then, another controversy - one that according to BBC Verify involved suspect videos - has erupted over allegations of Israeli troops killing civilians. The source for those allegations? According to the BBC, “a spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency.”
Corrections are nice, if you can find them, but they never undo the damage left by original reports. And it will come as no surprise to learn that some of these spoon-fed yarns can have an impact on, as Carney warns, “how people behave.”
Just as the breathless headlines concerning the imminent deaths of 14,000 babies were making the rounds, two young Israelis were murdered in Washington. A week later, 15 out of 20 people marching in Boulder, Colo., to remember the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas were set ablaze by a man throwing Molotov Cocktails. The accused, according to USA Today, wanted to “kill all Zionist people.”
Correlation, of course, is not necessarily causation, but while Carney’s government was condemning Israel for blocking aid to Gaza - a move which won praise from Hamas - the United States’s ambassador in Jerusalem was pointing to the link between inaccurate journalism (aka misinformation) and attacks on Jews.
“Reckless and irresponsible reporting by major U.S. news outlets are contributing to the antisemitic climate that has resulted in the murder of two young people at an Israeli Embassy event in Washington last month and the attempted murder and terror attack on a group of pro-Israel demonstrators in Colorado on Sunday,” Mike Huckabee said in a statement.
“Without verification of any source other than Hamas and its collaborators, the New York Times, CNN, and Associated Press reported that a number of people seeking to receive humanitarian food boxes from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund were shot or killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. These reports were FALSE (emphasis his). Drone video and first-hand accounts clearly showed that there were no injuries, no fatalities, no shooting, no chaos.”
CNN insisted Israeli forces opened fire in some fashion while the IDF released video showing Hamas shooting Gaza civilians.
Misinformation can certainly “affect how people behave in our society” as Carney says, but if his goal with a new Online Harms Act is to shut down some clown with a Rumble account, he might consider that there are bigger, subsidized fish et poissons to fry.
And those poissons might be wise to consider that every time Hamas baits a hook, it’s designed to globalize the intifada, fuel antisemitism and, ultimately, kill Jews.
My thanks to our growing list of readers for their support and to Anna Farrow and Peter Stockland for their recent interviews with Jonathan Kay and Terry Glavin respectively. Thanks to them, The Rewrite now has enough subscribers and followers to encourage its continued existence. But I haven’t figured out how to pay my collaborators yet, so if you are in the mood, feel free to hit the button below.
Always informative, clear and reliable reporting. A must read. Thank you for your hard work.
Val
Nova Scotia
Excellent article. The MSM is out of control.