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Fake News, Prejudice and Authority Feature

16/09/2020

Radio Romania International, the voice of the public service broadcaster in Bucharest on satellite and shortwave radio, dealt at length on Friday night with “fake news” and the current way in which authoritarian populists – who range from the Russian kleptocracy to radical anti-transgender feminists – use digital platforms to spread their agendae. The station spoke with a Romanian Professor of Media Studies, who explained that the proliferation of different platforms had utterly rewritten the news landscape and forced out responsible journalism. The divide is, she suggested, not so much between “fake” and “true” news, but between more traditional forms of media and the way in which digital platforms act as an echo chamber, feeding back to the social media user, information and reportage that confirms their biases and prejudices. Social media profiling of people by tech giants (ironically many of whom are in their public policies, liberal and progressive) allows algorithims to bombard them with prejudice reinforcing news coverage. Even the traditional British press, for all its biases and faults, would allow dissenting voices some coverage in order to challenge people's preconceptions. An example, would be much respected left of centre trans journalist Paris Lees, whose work included a stint at the Telegraph newspaper. Lees was allowed to challenge the readership's more conservative viewpoints. Another characteristic of modern digitally targetted news is that the creators of contemporary misinformation couch their news in terms that will engender fear, disgust, hatred and animosity in the targetted audience. In this respect, they have learned from the worst despots of the last century, who relied on visceral reactions against homosexuals, gender non conformist people, people of a different race or religion, to prompt a reaction amongst the target group, namely support for extreme suppression and authoritarians with simple slogans. The feature on the problems of modern digital news, clickbait and fakery was aired as part of the “The Future Starts Now” series on Radio Romania. The station is available in English on satellite Eutelsat 16A  on 11.512 MHz, vertical polarisation, azimuth 16 degrees East. Symbol rate: 29,950 MSym/s, Standard: DVB-S2, Modulation: 8PSK, Audio PID 510. The station is on 5945 kHz shortwave between 11pm and midnight British time and other broadcasts are made on various shortwave bands in a variety of languages.

 

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