Information wars: Legacy vs new media

In July 2018, a UK parliamentary committee warned “that spread of fake news online threatens the future of democracy” (“Fake news threatens the future of UK: report”, Aljazeera, July, 29, 2018). In recent times there have been similar calls from several democratic nations including India. The object of the parliamentary committee enquiry was Facebook, and the “possible interference by foreign governments—including Russia in UK political campaigns via the platform”. The committee was specifically interested in determining whether Moscow had funded political advertisements during the 2016 Brexit referendum which resulted in the UK leaving the European Union. Much water has flown down the Thames, the Potomac—and the Yamuna since then! In January 2025, Mark Zuckerberg conceded that Facebook’s “Factcheckers have just been too politically biased.” (“Why did Mark Zuckerberg end Facebook and Instagram’s factchecking program?”, The Guardian, Jan 7, 2025) The Guardian could not resist a dig at Zuckerberg. It said his shifting to the right followed “the prevailing political winds blowing through the United States”. In the same month, Zuckerberg apologized to the Indian Information Technology minister for insinuating that the Indian government had lost power in the post-Covid era. (MetaIndia apologises for Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks on 2024 Indian elections, CNBC TV18, January 15, 2025).

In 2019 The Washington Post published an article entitled “Fake news is bad for democracy” (April 5). The visual that accompanied the article leaves no one in doubt as to the source of fake news. It shows a mobile home-screen with several chatting applications and WhatsApp specifically mentioned in its blurb. Arguing that “Unreliable information shapes voter choices—and election outcomes” the paper called for government regulation of the social media. 

In 2023 The Washington Post took on the microblogging platform, Twitter. It reported on February 16, 2023, “Elon Musk reinvents Twitter for the benefit of a power user: Himself”. Musk hit back: “Elon Musk Blasts The Washington Post: Your Article Is Fase” (The Street, February 17, 2023). On October 27, 2023, the Post published another article entitled “A year later, Musk’s X is tilting right. And sinking”. In the article (which was kept out of the paywall), the Post’s analysts saw a rise in the follower count of “conservative and right-wing influencers” while the “popular liberal and left-wing accounts” did not show the same pattern. On the same day, The New York Times commented, “Now rebranded as X, the site has experienced a surge in racist, antisemitic and other hateful speech.” A The ordinary reader is confused. Why are national mainstream newspapers (or legacy media) paranoid about new media platforms? The congruence of thought of the rivals makes it clear that it is as much an ideological war as a turf war.  

Facebook which debuted in 2004 and Twitter (X) in 2006 really opened up the floodgates for those who wanted to express themselves in long or short form respectively, on any topic under the sun. YouTube (2005) and WhatsApp (2009) were really disruptive technologies but it would be some time before they really skewed the information sharing game! It was the smartphone beginning with the launch of iPhone in 2007 that gave wings to social media platforms. 

The recent infusion of artificial intelligence applications (and their ability to create deepfakes) into the melee was like unleashing a Frankenstein monster that changed the social media landscape forever. We have seen how a cropped video posted on Twitter led to mob violence; driving a young woman politician to living life incognito; at least two murders, and mob calls for avenging alleged ‘blasphemy’. Earlier, replies to social media posts led to murder and mayhem in UP and Karnataka. The Indian general election results in 2024 were believed to have been skewed by AI generated deepfake videos circulated in populous state like UP and Maharashtra. The high decibel, jingoistic Republican political campaign in the 2024 American presidential election made expatriate Indians target of hate groups on social media.   

Does it mean that the legacy media is lilywhite in its conduct? A ‘national’ newspaper donning the mantle of a ‘whistleblower’ submitted cropped pdfs as evidence in the Supreme Court when the government’s Rafale aircraft deal was challenged in 2018. There were occasions when slanted headlines and deflecting visuals were used. For example, while reporting news of a cleric molesting a girl, the headline states “Tantric molests minor” and the visual is that of a Hindu priest irrespective of the creed of the alleged criminal. 

However, every misinformation (or disinformation) need not be because of ‘malice aforethought’. In their rush to meet deadlines and beat the competition, newspapers willy-nilly publish unverified reports. In his 2021 book “The Gray Lady Winked”, Ashley Rindsberg narrates how a frontpage report in the “The New York Times” could have given Hitler post-facto justification for his invasion of Poland, which was the spark that ignited the second world war. Rindsberg says his attention was drawn to a NYT report by a footnote in William Shirer’s classic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reigh (1962, p.595). The report was about an attack on the Gleiwitz radio station on the Germany-Poland border. It was a simulated attack to convince the world that Poland attacked Germany. Hitler’s own SS forces personnel donned Polish army uniforms to stage the attack and to make it look realistic, drugged inmates of concentration camps were left dying there to appear as ‘casualties’. Rindsberg observed “Rather than fitting the pattern to the facts, the Times too often gave in to the temptation to fit the facts to a preconceived pattern.” To be factual, the footnote Rindsberg referred to said “The New York Times and other newspapers reported it, as well as similar incidents, in their issues of September 1, 1939.” The objective of Hitler’s disinformation campaign was served when American newspapers bought into his narrative and gave it legitimacy!

‘Information-misinformation-disinformation wars’ is an unfolding story! The last word on the subject will be long in coming!   

An earlier version of the article was published in TheTimes of India Blogs 

‘Big brother’ wants to watch!

“The government’s stand on the issue of ‘freedom of expression’ may be termed as ambivalent and dependent on political considerations from time to time. Thus while functionaries of the government joined the votaries of ‘free speech’ in defending M. F. Hussain’s ‘freedom of expression’ to paint Hindu gods and goddesses in the nude, the ruling party at the centre had no hesitation in forestalling the publication of “The Red Sari”, Spanish writer, Javier Moro's biography of Sonia Gandhi. Isn’t Sonia more sacred than Bharat Mata, Sarawati or Sita?”

“Internet as an open democratic medium has earned the wrath of both the politicians and media persons for obvious reasons. If the politicians hated it because it does not respect their ‘more equal’ status, it has become bête noir for the media persons as it did away with their monopoly over dissemination of news. Now they not only have competition but the easily accessed, 24/7 medium subjected their conduct to relentless scrutiny.”

'Big Brother' wants to watch!’, was first  published in The Hans India of December 12, 2011.

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Kapil Sibal has certainly set the cat among the pigeons when he demanded executives of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to screen content posted on social networking sites. The Information Technology (Electronic Service Delivery) Rules, 2011, the government notified earlier this year in April, are considered to be the most stringent compared to those in any democratic country. The rules require ‘the intermediaries’ (like Facebook, Google, Orkut etc) that provide a platform to users to post comments and create their own content to remove ‘offensive’ content based on an e-mailed complaint from an aggrieved person.

The immediate provocation for Kapil Sibal’s demand appears to be a cartoon posted on Facebook lampooning Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. Sibal termed it ‘unacceptable.’ In a party that lays great store by loyalty to ‘the’ family, Kapil Sibal, as Information Technology Minister cannot be seen to be deficient. In addition to loyalty Sibal has another reason to be chagrined with the internet, especially the role played by Facebook and Twitter in bringing the government to heel in the recent Indians Against Corruption (IAC) movement.

The government’s stand on the issue of ‘freedom of expression’ may be termed as ambivalent and dependent on political considerations from time to time. Thus while functionaries of the government joined the votaries of ‘free speech’ in defending M. F. Hussain’s ‘freedom of expression’ to paint Hindu gods and goddesses in the nude, the ruling party at the centre had no hesitation in forestalling the publication of “The Red Sari”, Spanish writer Javier Moro's biography of Sonia Gandhi. Isn’t Sonia more sacred than Bharat Mata, Sarawati or Sita?

Indian politicians, who strongly believe in the dictum ‘some animals are more equal than others’, have rarely taken kindly to criticism. They certainly could do with eulogy, thank you. Like Kapil Sibal in 2011, in 1987, M. G. Ramachandran’s government wanted to teach a lesson to irreverent journalists. S. M. Balasubramanian the editor of ‘Ananda Vikatan’ was summoned by the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly on April 4, 1987 to tender an apology for a cartoon the magazine published in its issue dated March 29, 1987. The Editor refused to do so because he was not given an opportunity to explain his stand in the matter. The assembly passed a motion by voice vote to award three months rigorous imprisonment to Balasubramanian. The sentence elicited strong reactions from the press and other quarters. Known for hunting with the hound and running with the hare, the Congress party played a curious role in the affair. After supporting the motion in the state assembly, its Home Minister at the centre, P. Chidambaram wished to defuse the crisis by offering an apology to the assembly - on behalf of Balasubramanian! The issue was resolved after M. G. Ramachandran appealed to the assembly to rescind the sentence. Balasubramanian was released after spending two nights in prison.

A similar drama was enacted in Andhra Pradesh during the reign of N. T. Rama Rao as Chief Minister. In 1985 the state legislative Council summoned Ramoji Rao, Editor of ‘Eenaadu’ over the caption of an editorial the paper published criticizing a ruckus in the Council. Ramoji Rao approached the Supreme Court for redress and the issue would have blown into a legislature-judiciary spat. N. T. Rama Rao, already unhappy with the Council’s intransigence over legislative business, resolved the crisis by abolishing the Council.

Internet as an open democratic medium has earned the wrath of both the politicians and media persons for obvious reasons. If the politicians hated it because it does not respect their ‘more equal’ status, it has become bete noir for the media persons as it did away with their monopoly over dissemination of news. Now they not only have competition but the easily accessed, 24/7 medium subjected their conduct to relentless scrutiny.

Much as Kapil Sibal and his government would wish to govern the internet to ensure ordinary folk show due respect to the politicians at all times, it is easier said than done. There are an estimated 100 million netizens in India. We are the third most populous netizen country in the world after China and the US. But how does the Indian government police content posted outside India? If every article, cartoon, video and comment posted on the internet had to be screened and cleared before publishing, the process would simply crash the system. 

Secondly, regulating information flow had never worked. The erstwhile Soviet Union did It for 70 years deluding itself that the ‘worker’s paradise’ was really popular with the masses. Nearer home, though Indira Gandhi bowed to international pressure and ended the infamous emergency in 1977, she called for elections with the smug satisfaction that her regime was popular, which was the impression fed to her by her own propaganda machinery. For it was she who disbanded four private news agencies and created her hand-maiden Samachar!

TAIL PIECE: There are many ‘iron curtain’ jokes but this one on the popularity of Russia’s mouth piece PRAVDA, though seemingly apocryphal, has a tell-tale lesson for the Kapil Sibal’s of this world: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a citizen of Moscow went to his favourite coffee shop and asked a waiter to bring him a cup of the brew and the day’s PRAVDA. The waiter politely informed him, ‘Sir, I will bring you your coffee, but I am afraid I can’t bring PRAVDA because it was closed down.’ 

As the waiter deposited his coffee cup, the man asked him again to bring the day’s PRAVDA. The waiter politely replied again that the PRAVDA was closed down. However the man continued to ask for PRAVDA every five minutes. Finally, the exasperated waiter lost his cool and shouted, ‘How many times do I have to tell you Sir that PRAVDA was closed down?’ The man replied with obvious relish, ‘I want to hear it again and again and again!’