UK Government
Fake News Unit Revises Strategy
UK government plans to
combat fake news have required re-evaluation in
the face of challenges from all sectors of
society.
Following concerns about
the impact of fake news, Theresa May’s
government formed, in late 2017, the
Dedicated National Security Communications Unit
or DNSCU. The organisation has a remit to: combat
disinformation by state actors and others.
‘We initially believed
that addressing fake news would be a
straightforward task,’ the DNSCU chair,
Verity Faithful, told reporters. ‘The
obvious way to approach the problem seemed to be
to encourage a greater degree of public
discernment about information that was purporting
to be factual – regardless of the source
from which it came. We assumed that intelligent,
critical analysis would allow people to protect
themselves from misinformation and render
ineffective any malicious fake news which they
encountered.
‘We even reached the
point of considering a national advertising
campaign,’ Ms Faithful explained. ‘It
was to be called the Believe Nothing Unless
… campaign. The campaign was intending
to adopt, as its primary principle, the assertion
that:
Nothing should be considered as true unless
there is clear, verifiable evidence in support of
it from several reliable and independent sources.’
Ms Faithful went on to
explain that this primary principle, whilst
superficially appearing to be highly rational,
drew immediate and passionate objections from
many sectors of society.
‘The difficulty with
the original primary principle from a Church
perspective,’ explained a leading archbishop,
‘is that the Church obviously understands
the truth about God and knows exactly how the
Almighty wants everybody to think and behave.
Unfortunately there’s no objective evidence
for our knowledge that would have satisfied the
initial DNSCU criteria. The advertising campaign,
as it stood, would have, in effect, challenged
the very existence of the Church.’
Leaders of all other faiths
and spiritual ideologies also raised similar
objections.
Such concerns lead the
DNSCU to propose an extension to its primary
principle. The modified principle now stated:
Nothing should be considered as true unless
there is clear verifiable evidence in support of
it from several reliable and independent sources
or it has been asserted by a spiritual or
religious leader.
Almost immediately, however,
there were further objections from Westminster.
Politicians pointed out that, whilst all the
statements they made were totally honest, and the
veracity of party manifestos and pledges should
never be doubted, it was also often impossible to
find any independent evidence at all to verify
that what they said was true. They feared that
DNSCU primary principle might, therefore,
undermine public faith in politicians, and, as
one unnamed Westminster source phrased it, ‘make
the great unwashed far more difficult to manage.’
Similar complaints followed
from the advertising industry and the established
media.
‘To take into account
the views of all stake holders,’ Verity
Faithful explained, ‘we further expanded our
primary principle to read:
Nothing should be considered as true unless
there is clear verifiable evidence in support of
it from several reliable and independent sources
or it has been asserted by a spiritual or
religious leader, a politician, the advertising
industry or the established media.'
‘This initially
appeared to satisfy everyone,’ added Ms
Faithful. ‘It permitted leading
Conservatives to continue with their assertion
that Brexit had been a good idea, Momentum to
carry on with its promotion of Jeremy Corbyn as
the second coming of Christ, and the Daily Mail
to remain in circulation.
‘Unfortunately, the Believe
Nothing Unless … strategy had
ultimately to be abandoned after it experienced
major challenges from multiple sectors of the
general public. Concern was expressed that
critical analysis of many everyday assertions
could have disastrous social consequences.’
‘I've told my partner
that I'm not having an affair,’ said a
typical objector. ‘The government has no
right to encourage my partner to double check
whether I'm lying.’
Parents groups also accused
the DNSCU of trying to destroy Christmas for
millions of innocent children by, in effect,
inciting young people to evaluate the objective
evidence for the existence of Santa Claus.
‘The DNSCU came to
realise,’ concluded its chair, ‘that
there are different kinds of truth. At one end of
the spectrum lies the rigour of the scientific
method in which propositions are repeatedly
tested. Even if such propositions are not
disproved, no attempt is made to assert them to
be true facts – those propositions are
simply treated as the best current hypotheses. At
the other end of the spectrum resides full blown
Trumpism in which truth is whatever you feel you
would like it to be on the day, with no reference
at all to any other criteria.’
For the above reasons, the
DNSCU has currently shelved plans to encourage
intelligent, well informed and thoughtful
discernment of facts by the general public.
Instead, they have formed a subgroup, nicknamed
the Pontius Pilate Working Party, to
explore the question famously raises by the first
century, Roman governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilate,
when he asked: ‘What is truth?’
The working party is
expected to report by mid-2018, and its findings
may lead to the formation of a new Ministry of
Truth. It is hoped that the Ministry can allow
those with wealth and power to assist the ill-informed
masses through the demanding and complex maze of
logical reasoning by defining for them the
official, approved version of reality.
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