Latest / UK Column Radio / Fact Checking the Fact Censors — with Dr Judith Brown

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Fact Checking the Fact Censors — with Dr Judith Brown · UK Column Radio

0:07
Speaker 1: Hello, everyone. This is Diane Reslus and Machetnie with UK
0:10
Speaker 1: column News. I'm really happy today to be talking with
0:13
Speaker 1: judih Brown, who runs a really really interesting substect called
0:16
Speaker 1: the Control of Information, which of course was a particular
0:19
Speaker 1: interest to me as an information scientist and librarian for
0:23
Speaker 1: many many years. If I know that you've been interviewed
0:26
Speaker 1: previously by UK Column, but just for viewers who might
0:29
Speaker 1: not have seen that interview.
0:30
Speaker 2: Would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself please?
0:33
Speaker 3: Yes, Thank you very much Diane for inviting me to speak.
0:38
Speaker 3: My name is Judith Brown. I was a nurse in
0:43
Speaker 3: the Middle East and in Africa, and when I was there,
0:47
Speaker 3: I sort of felt that the things that i'd seen
0:50
Speaker 3: didn't relate to the things that I'd expected to see,
0:54
Speaker 3: so especially in the Middle East. So when I came
0:58
Speaker 3: back to UK and retired, I undertook a PhD which
1:04
Speaker 3: was looking into the way that the people influenced the
1:10
Speaker 3: media in order to create the images that they wanted
1:14
Speaker 3: to portray. In other words, I looked at the media
1:19
Speaker 3: as a sort of as a competing space, and following
1:24
Speaker 3: that I did more research because when the Yemen War started,
1:29
Speaker 3: I noticed that it was getting very little media coverage,
1:32
Speaker 3: even though perhaps it should have done, because you know,
1:37
Speaker 3: UK has had a lot of links with Yemen.
1:39
Speaker 4: It was under British occupation for many, many years.
1:44
Speaker 3: And so I did some more investigations into story selection
1:51
Speaker 3: in that war, and then later on I joined a
1:55
Speaker 3: group of academics and I looked into to a censorship,
2:02
Speaker 3: both how governments controlled information themselves and how that interacted
2:10
Speaker 3: with the very extensive fact check platform group, which I
2:15
Speaker 3: think that when I was on UK column before, we
2:18
Speaker 3: discussed that in great detail.
2:21
Speaker 1: Right, So can you tell me a little bit more
2:23
Speaker 1: about your pH d work and what you found in
2:26
Speaker 1: the results.
2:27
Speaker 3: Well, when I did my PhD, which was at Exeter,
2:30
Speaker 3: it was called the Influences on Arab Imagery in the
2:34
Speaker 3: British Media, and I looked at different groups that had
2:39
Speaker 3: different perspectives like British Muslims, the British government, the Palestine Lobby,
2:47
Speaker 3: the pro Israeli lobby and just different groups. And they
2:53
Speaker 3: also looked at at the commercial interests of Arab countries
2:58
Speaker 3: and there the way that they portrayed themselves, like for example,
3:03
Speaker 3: the the Emirates Airline sponsors a lot of sporting events
3:09
Speaker 3: and sporting venues, and I looked at how those interacted
3:14
Speaker 3: with the media and what.
3:18
Speaker 4: How successful they were.
3:19
Speaker 3: In fact, what I found, which I sort of didn't
3:22
Speaker 3: really expect to find, was that this was at the
3:26
Speaker 3: time of the build up to the Iraq War, was
3:30
Speaker 3: that in fact it very much gave Like for example,
3:35
Speaker 3: when you looked at the media coverage of the Iraq War,
3:37
Speaker 3: it wasn't really talking about Iraq, it was talking about
3:40
Speaker 3: whether America should invade. And when I interviewed peace groups
3:45
Speaker 3: in Israel, for example, and I said what makes you
3:47
Speaker 3: go to the media, they said, well, we listened to
3:49
Speaker 3: what America says and if they say something that's that's
3:54
Speaker 3: that's likely to be a story, then we go to
3:57
Speaker 3: the media because we're more likely.
3:59
Speaker 4: To get hurt.
4:00
Speaker 3: So overall you could see that I had a deemonic
4:03
Speaker 3: influence on media coverage in UK. But the very interesting
4:08
Speaker 3: one was the It was the section where I looked
4:11
Speaker 3: at at people who had Arabs, who weren't trying to
4:18
Speaker 3: influence the media, but were trying to sort of like
4:20
Speaker 3: portray themselves like artists, like authors, like business interests, and
4:27
Speaker 3: in fact, when they were trying to portray themselves as
4:30
Speaker 3: opposed to trying to counterbalance American influence, they were much
4:35
Speaker 3: more effective. And I thought that was that was quite
4:38
Speaker 3: an interesting conclusion. It showed that Arabs need to sort
4:43
Speaker 3: of like relay their own narratives and their own stories
4:48
Speaker 3: rather than trying to counter a different narrative. And that
4:53
Speaker 3: was that was very interesting to me. And then I
4:57
Speaker 3: did some work for a nonprofit as a volunteer called
5:03
Speaker 3: Arab Media Watch, where we took stories to the and
5:08
Speaker 3: that were we looked at stories in the British media
5:10
Speaker 3: that portrayed Arab imagery, and we where we felt that
5:15
Speaker 3: there was bias or inaccuracies, we we appealed against that
5:19
Speaker 3: to the newspapers and also to the bodies that that
5:23
Speaker 3: that that that oversaw, the the BBC and the television companies,
5:29
Speaker 3: advertising companies.
5:30
Speaker 4: And so forth.
5:31
Speaker 3: We were reasonably successful at that, and then Arab Media
5:35
Speaker 3: Watch closed. It was it had funding from from various
5:40
Speaker 3: Arab governments who a lot of them, like Saudi Arabian
5:46
Speaker 3: for example, then started their own media influencing groups. So
5:51
Speaker 3: they so they stopped funding us, and that that that
5:55
Speaker 3: closed down. And then and then the year the war
5:59
Speaker 3: began in in Yemen and that was when I looked
6:03
Speaker 3: at story selection in particular what made the media select
6:07
Speaker 3: one story as opposed to another story.
6:12
Speaker 4: Then I then.
6:13
Speaker 3: Sort of had a gap because I thought that was
6:15
Speaker 3: the end of my research days. But at the start
6:18
Speaker 3: of COVID, I think that for two reasons. One because
6:23
Speaker 3: I had worked for the WHO, and I knew all
6:27
Speaker 3: of the guidelines relating to infectious diseases because that was
6:31
Speaker 3: the bread and butter of my work. Every day I
6:34
Speaker 3: managed media at the control of infections. That was what
6:41
Speaker 3: I did, and I could see that it wasn't.
6:44
Speaker 4: As it should be.
6:46
Speaker 3: I actually could see that from my previous work on
6:50
Speaker 3: the media that they were using techniques that were propaganda techniques,
6:54
Speaker 3: like using short phrases reporting over all different sorts of media,
6:59
Speaker 3: the same phrases were being used, so it looked like
7:02
Speaker 3: a propaganda exercise. And that was when I joined Panda
7:07
Speaker 3: and started to do research there, which I'm not so
7:11
Speaker 3: much linked to Panda now I'm more independent, but trying
7:15
Speaker 3: to write up all of the research that I that
7:18
Speaker 3: I undertook when I was in Panda. So it's it's
7:22
Speaker 3: been very exciting.
7:25
Speaker 2: That is that's very.
7:26
Speaker 1: Exciting and very interesting and it's It kind of reminded
7:30
Speaker 1: me a bit of my own PhD, which was actually
7:33
Speaker 1: called news Photography Image Retrieval Practices, and one of the
7:38
Speaker 1: things that I was looking at as someone doing a
7:41
Speaker 1: PhD in Library and information science and informatics, the questions
7:45
Speaker 1: that I wanted to ask these news photographers was about
7:48
Speaker 1: how they worked with their photo archives and how they
7:51
Speaker 1: worked at the time. It was kind of when we
7:53
Speaker 1: were transitioning from from printed digital images, and so some
7:58
Speaker 1: of the historical images based had print in a photo
8:01
Speaker 1: library in the newspapers is some major newspapers and some
8:05
Speaker 1: of them were freelance photographers that I spoke with, But
8:08
Speaker 1: the issue of switching to print to digital and what
8:13
Speaker 1: were they doing with indexing and archiving their images that
8:17
Speaker 1: they needed for immediate use as well as for historical purposes.
8:21
Speaker 1: But one of the things that they wanted to talk
8:23
Speaker 1: to me the most about was manipulation and how privately
8:28
Speaker 1: they were concerned that their work was being used to
8:31
Speaker 1: manipulate the public and spread propaganda to the point to
8:35
Speaker 1: where the photo editors that were choosing the images were
8:39
Speaker 1: manipulating the images to make public believe something else. And
8:43
Speaker 1: it was interesting that She mentioned the Iraq War because
8:45
Speaker 1: one example that stuck out to me was a photographer
8:49
Speaker 1: who covered the invasion of Iraq in two thousand and three,
8:52
Speaker 1: Big Dad, and one of his famous images from covering
8:57
Speaker 1: that war would.
8:58
Speaker 2: Look like a sandstorm.
9:00
Speaker 1: There's, you know, sort of all the sand blowing around
9:02
Speaker 1: and it looks very the stopy and apocalyptic. But what
9:06
Speaker 1: he actually told me was that they had manipulated that
9:09
Speaker 1: photo to make the sand look red when actually it
9:12
Speaker 1: was more like a brown color. And that wasn't his choice,
9:15
Speaker 1: that was the book editor, and it was just a
9:17
Speaker 1: very it ended up being a very interesting exploration into
9:21
Speaker 1: understanding what they do with the visual images and how
9:25
Speaker 1: they want to use this for, you know, the propaganda purposes.
9:29
Speaker 2: And then of course there's you know, like you said,
9:31
Speaker 2: the words in COVID, like.
9:33
Speaker 1: The hands face space and the stay two meters apart
9:36
Speaker 1: and all of these things that we were told over
9:38
Speaker 1: and over again.
9:39
Speaker 2: But the imagery was just as bad in COVID.
9:42
Speaker 1: All of the red everywhere, all of the fear right,
9:45
Speaker 1: this is scary red color.
9:46
Speaker 2: Everything's red color. Here's the arrows, the one way arrows
9:49
Speaker 2: and them supermarkets were red. In some cases you know.
9:52
Speaker 1: All of these things that they used to make us
9:54
Speaker 1: try to be as afraid as possible, and so that
9:58
Speaker 1: that's a really interesting thing. Curious now, with what's going
10:02
Speaker 1: on between Israel brand and everything happening in the Middle East,
10:06
Speaker 1: have you been watching any of the recent developments and
10:10
Speaker 1: have you had any thoughts on that.
10:12
Speaker 3: I haven't been exploring that from an academic point of view,
10:16
Speaker 3: or or I haven't done research on it in any
10:19
Speaker 3: to any great extent.
10:21
Speaker 4: I did do.
10:22
Speaker 3: Some research earlier on on AFPs fact checks of the
10:28
Speaker 3: of the the initial assault on Gaza, I think in
10:33
Speaker 3: the first three months, and what was quite interesting was
10:38
Speaker 3: how they instead of exploring the main issues, they were
10:42
Speaker 3: fact checking trivia like, for example, some people alleged that
10:48
Speaker 3: Palestinians were acting parts and a lot of the ones
10:53
Speaker 3: that they actually investigated were false. They weren't sort of accurate,
10:59
Speaker 3: but there's no there was no indication as so who
11:04
Speaker 3: posted those false pictures saying that they were incidents in
11:10
Speaker 3: Gaza and they were actually from a completely different war
11:13
Speaker 3: or from uh from a long time ago. Of course,
11:17
Speaker 3: that might have been, for example, people who weren't sympathetic
11:22
Speaker 3: to Palestinians.
11:23
Speaker 4: Because at that time, there were a.
11:25
Speaker 3: Lot of images that were available coming out of Gaza itself,
11:30
Speaker 3: and those weren't the ones that they were fact checking.
11:32
Speaker 4: They were for fact checking the ones that were that
11:35
Speaker 4: were that were uh false.
11:40
Speaker 3: So so I found that quite interesting that they were
11:44
Speaker 3: always looking at trivial issues. I mean, for example, at
11:47
Speaker 3: that time, there were there was already talk of genocide
11:52
Speaker 3: and of South Africa taking this to the ic J,
11:56
Speaker 3: and they didn't fact check whether it was likely that
12:00
Speaker 3: that what was happening in Gaza met the criteria of genocide.
12:06
Speaker 3: It was the it was the trivia that they were
12:09
Speaker 3: fact checking. And I think that's the only academic research
12:12
Speaker 3: that have done. But but certainly recently you do see
12:17
Speaker 3: a lot of stories on Facebook and from doctors who
12:21
Speaker 3: European and American who are going to Gaza in order
12:25
Speaker 3: to help out with the dire medical situation. They describe
12:30
Speaker 3: what's happening, and that isn't what you see in the
12:33
Speaker 3: mainstream media or the or the main or.
12:37
Speaker 4: The broadcast media.
12:39
Speaker 3: Although I do think that recently there have been one
12:43
Speaker 3: or two articles by quite surprising people like Freedman in
12:49
Speaker 3: the New York Times as actually questioned whether what Israeli
12:55
Speaker 3: is doing now is positive in terms of America. So
13:01
Speaker 3: so I think that there are some moves in the
13:06
Speaker 3: media recently. I think just because everything is it is
13:10
Speaker 3: so absolutely terrible, you know, like people queuing for food
13:14
Speaker 3: and them being shot at according to first and accounts
13:19
Speaker 3: that are that I've heard from there. But but but
13:24
Speaker 3: but so I think that there is a bit more
13:28
Speaker 3: concern amongst the media. Certainly there was letters sent by
13:34
Speaker 3: I think about two hundred bbs the employees to say
13:38
Speaker 3: that I think this was in the last few days,
13:41
Speaker 3: to say that that they were forced to comply with
13:45
Speaker 3: an Israeli narrative instead of you know, making up their
13:49
Speaker 3: own minds as too as to what was the most
13:52
Speaker 3: relevant things to report about what's going on in Gaza.
13:56
Speaker 3: And so I think it's it is a very challenging
14:02
Speaker 3: situation to try to get stories out of Garden. But
14:07
Speaker 3: I think maybe the tide is turning a little because
14:10
Speaker 3: things are getting so atrocious.
14:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. We're very lucky to have Nasa Billy
14:15
Speaker 2: here at UK column.
14:17
Speaker 3: In terms of the UK column, what I have noticed
14:20
Speaker 3: is that a lot of people have tried to refer
14:24
Speaker 3: them to UK column because I think that your coverage
14:27
Speaker 3: of the Middle East conflict on UK column is one
14:31
Speaker 3: of the best, not saying that because you're there, but
14:35
Speaker 3: I do actually think.
14:36
Speaker 4: It's one of the best.
14:37
Speaker 3: So I have said that some Palestine solidarity groups you
14:41
Speaker 3: should listen to UK Column, especially on a Wednesday, although
14:46
Speaker 3: other people have covered things relating the UK Column as well.
14:51
Speaker 3: Relating to the Palestine is really issue as well. But
14:56
Speaker 3: people have actually said to me, oh, they only do
14:59
Speaker 3: that because they're anti Semitic, and then they sort of
15:03
Speaker 3: send me a hope not hate or some other organization
15:08
Speaker 3: that's that said that the UK Column is an anti
15:13
Speaker 3: Semitic organization to prove what they're saying, and then it's
15:17
Speaker 3: very difficult because I can say to them, well.
15:20
Speaker 4: That isn't my view.
15:22
Speaker 3: Personally, I've listened to UK Column for many years. I
15:27
Speaker 3: obviously don't agree with everything that UK Column says, but
15:31
Speaker 3: but in terms of the the coverage of the Middle East,
15:35
Speaker 3: I haven't. I don't think it's anti Semitic, and I
15:37
Speaker 3: think it's accurate. But but people just they aren't prepared
15:42
Speaker 3: to listen. They've got this fixed view from from some website.
15:47
Speaker 3: So I think that makes it difficult for people to
15:52
Speaker 3: to look at independent media. I mean not only UK
15:56
Speaker 3: column but there's other independent media sources that are very
16:01
Speaker 3: I did Classified for example.
16:03
Speaker 4: There's a lot of good stories, but.
16:06
Speaker 3: It's just very difficult to persuade people to look at
16:09
Speaker 3: them because of the smearing of the independent media.
16:13
Speaker 1: Now it's something that we face constantly, obviously, just it's
16:17
Speaker 1: a constant battle. And Vanessa Billy and Mike Robinson had
16:21
Speaker 1: been doing a Syria podcast, you know, after what happened
16:25
Speaker 1: in Syria, and Vanessa of course had to leave Syria
16:27
Speaker 1: and is now in Lebanon, and they started doing a
16:30
Speaker 1: podcast for a.
16:31
Speaker 2: Few weeks to.
16:33
Speaker 1: Kind of get into the issues because they're so complex
16:36
Speaker 1: and there's so much that's happened and continues to happen,
16:39
Speaker 1: and it's difficult for us in the West maybe to
16:42
Speaker 1: understand because it's so different from our reality.
16:45
Speaker 2: But that podcast series got taken down off our.
16:48
Speaker 1: YouTube channel, and so now Vanessa is writing a weekly
16:53
Speaker 1: blot for us, which of course I'm learning a lot
16:56
Speaker 1: from as the commissioning editor and the copy editors.
16:58
Speaker 2: I have to read and edit all of it. And
17:02
Speaker 2: it's interesting.
17:04
Speaker 1: We've had so far at the as of today, this
17:07
Speaker 1: will be the third week that we'll have a blog,
17:09
Speaker 1: but has to stay on our own website to make
17:12
Speaker 1: sure that someone else doesn't run away with it. So
17:15
Speaker 1: we can't put any more of these YouTube videos on
17:18
Speaker 1: because she's really uncovering and getting really into what's going on.
17:22
Speaker 1: I think the visuals are difficult because she's been including
17:27
Speaker 1: maps to help us understand which parts of Syria are
17:30
Speaker 1: being controlled by what factions and Mew's doing what, and
17:34
Speaker 1: that does help quite a bit because it all it's
17:36
Speaker 1: all just.
17:37
Speaker 2: So different from kind of a Western.
17:39
Speaker 1: Reality, and of course the language is different and the
17:43
Speaker 1: motivations are different, so it's.
17:44
Speaker 2: All it's all quite complex.
17:46
Speaker 1: So you can't narrow all that complexity down to a
17:49
Speaker 1: two minute BBC news clip where they're told that to say,
17:53
Speaker 1: you won't possibly be able to understand it. And I
17:55
Speaker 1: think that's probably part of the reason why we have
17:59
Speaker 1: these issues with people not wanting to listen to independent medias,
18:02
Speaker 1: because the BBC and the other mainstream sources have just
18:05
Speaker 1: trained us to just believe the twenty second clips of
18:09
Speaker 1: whatever they tell us, and then we're just supposed to
18:10
Speaker 1: go about our day and believe it and not question anymore,
18:14
Speaker 1: and then people get uncomfortable when you ask them.
18:16
Speaker 2: To go further into it.
18:18
Speaker 1: So I think we we're up against a lot. But
18:21
Speaker 1: I also think that people are starting to wake up
18:23
Speaker 1: and they're starting to pay more attention to what independent
18:26
Speaker 1: media are doing because they're starting to see through maybe
18:29
Speaker 1: there's more going on here than what we're actually being
18:32
Speaker 1: told on the surface by the big channels. So I
18:36
Speaker 1: guess that brings me into what we wanted to talk
18:39
Speaker 1: about today, kind of the main part of our.
18:42
Speaker 2: Interview, which is censorship.
18:45
Speaker 1: So I know we've talked before, but you got in
18:48
Speaker 1: touch with me recently about some work that you had
18:51
Speaker 1: done and published on your substack. So maybe if you
18:54
Speaker 1: want to summarize that work a little bit for the viewers,
18:57
Speaker 1: then we can talk about it.
18:58
Speaker 4: Well, what's something doing on the sub stack.
19:01
Speaker 3: I've been looking at at the legislation in different countries,
19:05
Speaker 3: of which UK is one of the most intrusive and
19:10
Speaker 3: censoring systems in the world.
19:13
Speaker 4: I things and looking at a legislation in other countries.
19:19
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's very difficult to find background legislation because of
19:23
Speaker 3: language difficulties, Like, for example, when I'm looking at legislation
19:27
Speaker 3: in India, I can't read any local legislation, so I
19:32
Speaker 3: have to sort of like pick up little bits from
19:35
Speaker 3: English speaking websites that are evaluating that. But in other
19:42
Speaker 3: situations in Europe, I can get a good hang of
19:46
Speaker 3: the legislation as it exists, for example.
19:51
Speaker 4: And America and in UK.
19:56
Speaker 3: And I'm just currently writing up about South Africa, which
20:00
Speaker 3: South America, which is something I haven't actually looked at before,
20:04
Speaker 3: and it's really interesting how the media is being controlled there.
20:11
Speaker 3: But then I'm also looking at the fact check industry.
20:16
Speaker 4: Which is absolutely vast.
20:19
Speaker 3: It's in every single country in the world there's fact
20:22
Speaker 3: checking platforms. And where we haven't got English speaking fact
20:27
Speaker 3: check platforms because they're not allowed in like for example,
20:31
Speaker 3: in Russia, and as a Bijan.
20:35
Speaker 4: You you they.
20:37
Speaker 3: Actually have fact check platforms around about that country. Like
20:42
Speaker 3: for example in Russia, there's there's fact check platforms in
20:47
Speaker 3: in in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Poland there's countries that
20:53
Speaker 3: that's surround Russia that fact check on behalf of of
20:58
Speaker 3: intelligence and and and Facebook and social media so so,
21:06
Speaker 3: but there's no country and no language in the world.
21:09
Speaker 3: They advertise in minority languages for example, for fact checkers
21:15
Speaker 3: and what they do fact check. It's absolutely true that
21:20
Speaker 3: they fact check, but what they fact check is not
21:23
Speaker 3: against truth or not against a range of opinions. They
21:28
Speaker 3: fact check against one particular narrative, and that is the
21:32
Speaker 3: approved narrative. So so say for example, our climate for example,
21:40
Speaker 3: they will only look at at the narrative of the
21:44
Speaker 3: IPCC and they and then sometimes the documents of the
21:48
Speaker 3: IPCC are are quite good.
21:51
Speaker 4: They're they're quite open and and and.
21:54
Speaker 3: Give it a sort of like quite a diverse picture.
21:57
Speaker 3: But then the summer is of the IPCC reports are
22:01
Speaker 3: all saying that, you know, human activity is causing global
22:06
Speaker 3: change and it's going to be irreversible soon. They always
22:11
Speaker 3: go to those sorts of narratives. They go to experts
22:14
Speaker 3: that the degree with their positions. They quote the fact
22:20
Speaker 3: that most climate scientists agree with this narrative. Now, which
22:24
Speaker 3: of course is true because the ones that that didn't
22:29
Speaker 3: agree with with with the mainstream narrative, people like for example,
22:34
Speaker 3: Willie Soon, who was at Harvard.
22:38
Speaker 4: He he didn't approve, he didn't agree.
22:41
Speaker 3: With the fact that humans are the total cause of
22:46
Speaker 3: global warming. He thought that the son had a very
22:48
Speaker 3: big impact so of course he had to leave Harvard,
22:52
Speaker 3: and he was very heavily smeared as people were saying
22:56
Speaker 3: he took money from huge bastions of money from fossil
23:02
Speaker 3: fuel industry, and that's what persuaded him to do as
23:07
Speaker 3: he did. And and it's a bit rich from the
23:11
Speaker 3: from from the fact check industry to say that, because
23:15
Speaker 3: it's actually I was very reluctant until recently to say
23:20
Speaker 3: that it's a billion dollar industry. But then information was
23:25
Speaker 3: released to say that Biden was funding that Biden's administration
23:31
Speaker 3: was funding the fact checked industry by by billions of
23:36
Speaker 3: pounds one point four billion a year or something. And
23:40
Speaker 3: so therefore I can now say that if I've got that,
23:44
Speaker 3: if I know that that just one small portion of
23:48
Speaker 3: the fact check industry is over a billion pound, I
23:51
Speaker 3: can actually now openly say it's a billion pound industry.
23:55
Speaker 3: And the fact check platforms that if there wasn't any censorship,
24:00
Speaker 3: they wouldn't have a job. They hear that you can
24:04
Speaker 3: you can pass legislation like for example, that they were
24:08
Speaker 3: on the legislation like the d s A, the O
24:12
Speaker 3: s A in u K. You can have moves that
24:15
Speaker 3: like for example, the BBC initiative, the Trusted News Initiative.
24:19
Speaker 3: But but you have to check that there's compliance with
24:23
Speaker 3: with those legislations and and with those.
24:28
Speaker 4: Trust initiatives as they call them.
24:31
Speaker 3: And so you can only do that if you have
24:34
Speaker 3: a number of sort of thousands of people situated all
24:38
Speaker 3: over the world that can use algorithms and that usually
24:42
Speaker 3: it's a human machine interface to to to check that
24:48
Speaker 3: nobody is overstepping the mark, and then they apply penalties
24:54
Speaker 3: because if people keep to the approved line, then they
24:59
Speaker 3: can get things like advertising revenue, whereas if they don't
25:03
Speaker 3: then then they're denied advertising revenue. So therefore it encourages
25:09
Speaker 3: people to keep to the line. I mean, there was
25:12
Speaker 3: an investigation don the fact check platforms in Indonesia and
25:18
Speaker 3: some of the editors in they said things like, well,
25:22
Speaker 3: we're actually colonized by Google. We have we we have
25:27
Speaker 3: to do what Google says, you know. So so so
25:31
Speaker 3: they actually use the word colonization in in the in
25:34
Speaker 3: the research that was done into into the media industry
25:40
Speaker 3: in in in Indonesia, and I'm sure that that occurs
25:44
Speaker 3: all over the world as well. So it's it's it's
25:48
Speaker 3: essential and in order to get the global governments. And
25:54
Speaker 3: you can see the effect of that because what the
25:57
Speaker 3: issues I know that you've been investigating Diane on gender,
26:02
Speaker 3: they're actually being introduced everywhere. They are being interested to
26:06
Speaker 3: see how this comprehensive sex education is being implemented in
26:12
Speaker 3: South America recently, and of course it's occurring everywhere else
26:18
Speaker 3: climate COVID there in exactly the same time scale across
26:25
Speaker 3: countries that some are rich, some are poor, some are democrats, crisis,
26:31
Speaker 3: some are autocrasies. But the same policies are being implemented
26:37
Speaker 3: across very different countries all over the world in exactly
26:43
Speaker 3: the same timeframe. Well, that can only be done if
26:46
Speaker 3: you've got global governments, and you can only have global
26:49
Speaker 3: governments if you've got this system of people who can
26:53
Speaker 3: fact check everywhere. So but but what I sort of
26:59
Speaker 3: like was specifically looking at I recently did a comparison
27:04
Speaker 3: between the censorship in the United States and the censorship
27:10
Speaker 3: in Europe. I think I sent you a copy of that,
27:13
Speaker 3: and that that was very different, because it looked on
27:17
Speaker 3: the face of it as if there was a real
27:20
Speaker 3: dichotomy because with the the d s A and the
27:26
Speaker 3: Online Safety Act in UK, the OSA is exactly the same.
27:31
Speaker 3: The the the actual act of censorship is given to
27:36
Speaker 3: the very large online online search engines and the very
27:42
Speaker 3: large online platforms like Google, Facebook and so on, so
27:49
Speaker 3: they have the the they're tasked with actually doing the censorship,
27:56
Speaker 3: and the both the U s A and the d
27:59
Speaker 3: s A very vague. I mean, what I would say
28:03
Speaker 3: is that they're engineered to be vague so that it's
28:06
Speaker 3: very difficult for for someone like Facebook to be aware
28:11
Speaker 3: exactly where.
28:12
Speaker 4: The line is.
28:14
Speaker 3: So I can say this, but I can't say that
28:17
Speaker 3: because everything is is so vague in the legislation. And
28:21
Speaker 3: then to make it worse, uh, the the in your
28:26
Speaker 3: in the EU and the UK government then they employ
28:31
Speaker 3: their own police and courts, and you know, everything is
28:37
Speaker 3: employed by by the persons who've made the legislation.
28:41
Speaker 4: I mean in UK, for.
28:42
Speaker 3: Example, it's offcom in in in Europe it's it's more diverse.
28:48
Speaker 3: But all of the people who check the the whether
28:52
Speaker 3: the DSA is being uh uh applied properly are appointed
29:01
Speaker 3: by the EU itself. There is no means to go
29:06
Speaker 3: to actually have lawyers fighting your case and saying actually
29:10
Speaker 3: this should be allowed or shouldn't be allowed. It's totally
29:13
Speaker 3: policed and judged and sentences passed by people appointed by
29:19
Speaker 3: the EU. And so therefore what the EEU says is
29:23
Speaker 3: censorship has to be censored. And so what that then
29:29
Speaker 3: means is that companies like for example, Facebook and Twitter
29:34
Speaker 3: and Google and all of the others, they have to
29:39
Speaker 3: be very very careful on how they monitor the media,
29:46
Speaker 3: because social media and the media, because if they make
29:50
Speaker 3: any errors, then they themselves will have to pay six
29:55
Speaker 3: percent of their global turnover, not their global profits, but
30:00
Speaker 3: send their global turnover, which obviously is a huge penalty,
30:06
Speaker 3: and it makes people very be over protective of their
30:12
Speaker 3: of their own company and and sense them more than
30:16
Speaker 3: perhaps they need to in order to make sure that
30:18
Speaker 3: they don't incur these penalties.
30:21
Speaker 2: That's interesting because I follow a lot of different Facebook
30:25
Speaker 2: accounts of mainstream media organizations, and a lot of them are.
30:32
Speaker 1: I guess that you call them local news, but they're
30:34
Speaker 1: not local news, right because they're all kind of owned
30:36
Speaker 1: by the.
30:38
Speaker 2: Same big companies or maybe even one.
30:40
Speaker 1: So things like your Plymouth Live and your Glasgow Live
30:43
Speaker 1: and your Yorkshire Live and you know this, they're all
30:46
Speaker 1: owned by the same company. And because I follow them
30:50
Speaker 1: on my Facebook and I share them a lot on
30:53
Speaker 1: my Facebook because a lot of UK column viewers will
30:56
Speaker 1: see these and kind of laugh along with me because
30:59
Speaker 1: a lot of them they repeat something, but it's they
31:03
Speaker 1: make it sound so absolutely ridiculous.
31:04
Speaker 2: I've done new segments on this before where it's like.
31:08
Speaker 1: You know, we've been told now by the government, don't
31:11
Speaker 1: hang your washing outside because that's dangerous. And then you
31:15
Speaker 1: see this so ridiculous, right, like why can we not
31:18
Speaker 1: hang our washing outside? And then you read it and
31:21
Speaker 1: then it says, well you might get you know, pollen
31:23
Speaker 1: and your clothing that will cause you to have hate fever.
31:25
Speaker 1: It's just they make it sound so ridiculous, or you know,
31:28
Speaker 1: keep your keep your curtains closed all day, or you
31:31
Speaker 1: know the one I saw a couple of days ago
31:33
Speaker 1: was was pour boiling.
31:34
Speaker 2: Water into your rubbish bins?
31:36
Speaker 1: Like so, you know, why do these not count as
31:44
Speaker 1: as untruths? Right?
31:46
Speaker 2: Because these are not necessarily things that we want to
31:48
Speaker 2: do or should be doing, but they get repeated all
31:51
Speaker 2: over the country, and it's they make it just scary
31:53
Speaker 2: enough for people to believe that maybe they should comply
31:56
Speaker 2: with whatever it is.
31:58
Speaker 1: However ridiculous it is that people will do it, but
32:02
Speaker 1: those are all over Facebook, so is my I don't know.
32:06
Speaker 1: My feeling is that probably they can get away with
32:09
Speaker 1: it because they are owned by these big companies that
32:11
Speaker 1: are then controlled by the you know whoever the powers
32:15
Speaker 1: are above them that say well, this is what we're going.
32:17
Speaker 2: To tell everyone. There's global boiling.
32:19
Speaker 1: So stay in your house and close the curtains, don't
32:21
Speaker 1: go outside because you know, God forbid you enjoy the
32:23
Speaker 1: three days of summer that we have in the UK. Right,
32:27
Speaker 1: So it's it's interesting to see how that happens and
32:31
Speaker 1: what do you think are the forces behind that? Is
32:34
Speaker 1: that these sort of the globalist governments, is that the
32:37
Speaker 1: UN and the wf WT hotelling everyone to do this.
32:43
Speaker 3: Well, the difficulty with fact check platforms or who are
32:48
Speaker 3: doing all of this content moderational censorship or whatever you
32:51
Speaker 3: want to call it, is that they only exist the sensor.
32:55
Speaker 3: They don't produce a product. All that they do is
32:59
Speaker 3: modivate content. They might actually produce goods that help with
33:05
Speaker 3: content moderation that they can sell, like for example, they
33:08
Speaker 3: might manufacture content moderation tools, but everything that they do
33:13
Speaker 3: is related to censorship. And so therefore, and some of
33:18
Speaker 3: these jobs, you know, were quite high paid. For fat
33:21
Speaker 3: for example, pays more to its it's it's executives and
33:27
Speaker 3: the people who do fact checking. Then journalists get to
33:30
Speaker 3: work in the mainstream media. So therefore they've got they've
33:36
Speaker 3: got good, well paid jobs, they've got mortgages. And of course,
33:39
Speaker 3: then when you go to countries like for example, Africa
33:42
Speaker 3: where there's graduates actually find it very difficult to find employment.
33:48
Speaker 3: And then they get a job with them with a
33:51
Speaker 3: fact check platform, and and it's.
33:56
Speaker 4: A job of prestige.
33:57
Speaker 3: It's a job with with a good age, where they
34:01
Speaker 3: sit in you know, maybe a nice office or sometimes
34:04
Speaker 3: they can do the work from home.
34:06
Speaker 4: And so this is a.
34:09
Speaker 3: Very attractive job for them, and so therefore they're always
34:15
Speaker 3: likely to toe the line. I have sometimes thought, do
34:20
Speaker 3: they actually really believe everything that they're fact checking or
34:24
Speaker 3: do they believe, well, I've got to do this in
34:26
Speaker 3: order to pay the bills, because some of the things
34:29
Speaker 3: that they fact check are quite extraordinary. But what I
34:35
Speaker 3: have noticed is when you have a major sort of
34:38
Speaker 3: a story like for example, COVID, then everybody checks the
34:43
Speaker 3: COVID and when you look at the fact check platforms,
34:46
Speaker 3: it's COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. Now then you get past
34:50
Speaker 3: sort of like these hot button issues and you get
34:56
Speaker 3: through a period of a relative calm, you could say
35:01
Speaker 3: at the moment, because although there are major issues like
35:04
Speaker 3: Ukraine and Gaza, they're they're not appearing on fact check sites.
35:09
Speaker 3: Then they fact check quite trivial things like, for example,
35:13
Speaker 3: are you are you if you cover your door with
35:18
Speaker 3: a wet sheet? Does it act like air conditioning for example?
35:23
Speaker 3: And other sort of like trivial things that they fact check,
35:26
Speaker 3: Like on one fact check platform it said something like
35:31
Speaker 3: if if you will you become ill if you eat
35:34
Speaker 3: milk and fish together, and then other things that I
35:38
Speaker 3: think are quite trivial, like does did this footballer.
35:44
Speaker 4: Lose sponsorship?
35:46
Speaker 3: They're all things that aren't of don't aren't of great
35:50
Speaker 3: significance in which people could themselves look up and that
35:55
Speaker 3: they don't need the fact check platforms to do it.
35:58
Speaker 3: But when you look through the content and to fact
36:00
Speaker 3: check platforms, a lot of them are these are these trivia.
36:04
Speaker 3: Some of them are local issues which I can't make
36:07
Speaker 3: any comment on because the name of somebody in Africa
36:12
Speaker 3: or India or South America doesn't mean anything to me.
36:16
Speaker 3: So I can't fact check on the on the local issues,
36:20
Speaker 3: but there are issues that I can fact check on,
36:23
Speaker 3: and I find that that these trivia and it's as
36:27
Speaker 3: if the fact check platforms have to keep on fact
36:30
Speaker 3: checking during you know, the lean times when there isn't
36:33
Speaker 3: a hot button issue to fact check, so they go
36:36
Speaker 3: into these trivia mode. And of course you've seen I
36:40
Speaker 3: can see this is happening in the USA. The USA
36:44
Speaker 3: is Donald Trump did an executive order to say that
36:51
Speaker 3: the terms misinformation, disinformation, malinformation shouldn't be used and that
36:58
Speaker 3: people wouldn't be funded if they if if they fact
37:02
Speaker 3: fact check so or censor. So I actually had a
37:07
Speaker 3: look at some fact check platforms in America and I
37:12
Speaker 3: found now they've stopped using terms like malinformation and disinformation,
37:16
Speaker 3: and they they're using different terms to evaluate their their
37:22
Speaker 3: their their uh fact checks uh so so that and
37:27
Speaker 3: some of them quite imaginative. But the different terms and
37:31
Speaker 3: the term disinformation, mal information and and missing dismissing malin
37:38
Speaker 3: information are very rarely used now he's never used in
37:41
Speaker 3: terms of the valuation and a lot of the fact
37:44
Speaker 3: checks that they're doing are very trivial in my account,
37:49
Speaker 3: I actually wrote that they don't didn't do any fact
37:52
Speaker 3: checks on, for example, the situation in Gaza. But what
37:56
Speaker 3: they did fact check was whether one particular brand of
37:59
Speaker 3: ice Screams had a pro Palestinian message on the carton,
38:04
Speaker 3: and they said it didn't. But in effect, whether they'd
38:08
Speaker 3: said it did or whether they said it didn't is irrelevant.
38:11
Speaker 3: It's it's a trivial issue to fact check. It's it's
38:15
Speaker 3: something that that wasn't that wasn't important to fact check.
38:20
Speaker 3: You know, people would either get that on their on
38:22
Speaker 3: their ice cream carton or they wouldn't. And and if
38:26
Speaker 3: they saw it on a curtain and they didn't want
38:28
Speaker 3: to buy it, then they needn't buy it. But it's
38:31
Speaker 3: but it's so irrelevant and so trivial. And also I
38:35
Speaker 3: noticed that although I would say that the fact checks
38:39
Speaker 3: were marginally not in favor of Trump, but in general
38:46
Speaker 3: the fact checks there might have been some of them
38:51
Speaker 3: were actually supporting Trump, some of them were critical critical
38:56
Speaker 3: of Trump, and on balance I would say that there
38:58
Speaker 3: was slightly critical of Trump.
39:00
Speaker 4: But this censorship of right wing.
39:07
Speaker 3: If there is such a thing as right wing of
39:10
Speaker 3: populist policies in the United States, which I have read
39:17
Speaker 3: sort of like a book and wanted to research episodes
39:20
Speaker 3: that seem to indicate that the populist policies Trump and
39:24
Speaker 3: his followers were being censored far more than Biden and
39:28
Speaker 3: his and his policies before that. I don't think you
39:33
Speaker 3: can say that's happening. But the significant thing is the
39:37
Speaker 3: fact check platforms are still there. They're not going away.
39:41
Speaker 3: So that means that they when when they when Trump
39:45
Speaker 3: leaves office, they can then move into their original mode.
39:50
Speaker 3: They can they can move back and they can continue
39:53
Speaker 3: fact checking as they were and so so of course
39:59
Speaker 3: the win would be if the fact check platforms worldwide
40:03
Speaker 3: were dismantled.
40:04
Speaker 4: And had.
40:07
Speaker 3: Zuckerberg been able to dismantle his censorship program, which he
40:12
Speaker 3: actually called the censorship program, he said that checking had
40:18
Speaker 3: overstep the mark and was censorship, I think in January
40:22
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. Since then he hasn't made a statement,
40:25
Speaker 3: but he said that he was going to dismantle the
40:27
Speaker 3: third party fact checking program. Now I think that the Meta,
40:32
Speaker 3: via it's third party fact checking program, was actually funding
40:36
Speaker 3: at least fifty percent of the money that was going
40:40
Speaker 3: into these global fact checking platforms.
40:43
Speaker 4: So had that collapsed.
40:45
Speaker 3: I think that a lot of the fact check industry
40:48
Speaker 3: would have also had to collapse.
40:50
Speaker 4: But they're still there.
40:52
Speaker 3: And of course there has been research into this, and
40:56
Speaker 3: what they're saying is that really platforms like Twitter and Facebook,
41:02
Speaker 3: in the end they will have to comply with with
41:06
Speaker 3: rules in countries like UK and and and Europe. And
41:12
Speaker 3: of course there was a situation in Brazil where X
41:20
Speaker 3: was told it had to take platforms down that that
41:24
Speaker 3: supported the ex president Bolsonaro. He tried to say that
41:29
Speaker 3: he wouldn't do that, and in consequence X was banned
41:33
Speaker 3: from Brazil and ultimately it must go back and do
41:40
Speaker 3: exactly as he was told by the authorities in Brazil,
41:45
Speaker 3: legal authorities as it happened, and also he paid a
41:48
Speaker 3: five point two million fine. I think it's a large
41:51
Speaker 3: fly in anyway, it would be large for me. I
41:53
Speaker 3: don't suppose it's large for him, but he had to
41:56
Speaker 3: pay a fine and in order to to get back
42:01
Speaker 3: into Brazil and continue hosting his ex platform. So I
42:09
Speaker 3: think exactly the same will happen in with Muskin in
42:14
Speaker 3: Europe is currently challenging some of the things on the.
42:21
Speaker 4: The DSAY.
42:21
Speaker 3: He's been investigated by the dsay, I suspect he'll get
42:25
Speaker 3: a fine and he'll have to start doing exactly the
42:28
Speaker 3: same as Facebook is doing and complying with the DSA requirements.
42:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've covered some different fact checking organizations on you
42:39
Speaker 1: Can Column quite extensively, especially Full fact and of course
42:43
Speaker 1: Marianna Spring has one of our favorites to cover from
42:46
Speaker 1: the Beat. And if you go back into Marianna Spring's
42:50
Speaker 1: history and CV, she didn't you could do some fact
42:54
Speaker 1: checking on her CV. I'll just say that to make
42:57
Speaker 1: sure that what she says on her.
42:58
Speaker 2: CV is actually what happened interpast.
43:02
Speaker 1: But it is interesting to think that, you know, these
43:05
Speaker 1: fact checking organizations around the world, I believe are and
43:08
Speaker 1: somewhat in lockstep because they all have, as you've said,
43:11
Speaker 1: similar agendas. A few weeks ago and I covered this briefly.
43:15
Speaker 2: On the news.
43:16
Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, I went to an event at
43:18
Speaker 1: the Undustry of York which was from their Festival of
43:20
Speaker 1: Ideas conference, and there was a panel about misinformation or
43:25
Speaker 1: disinformation or whatever you want to call it.
43:28
Speaker 2: I think they were mostly using word disinformation.
43:30
Speaker 1: And the panel was a Guardian journalist, some academics from
43:35
Speaker 1: politics from the UK and Jessica Cecil herself, who is
43:39
Speaker 1: the head of the Trusted News Initiative, was on the panel,
43:42
Speaker 1: and at the end of it, I asked them the
43:45
Speaker 1: question and they all really staggered and stammered and didn't
43:49
Speaker 1: really know what's saying because I said, you have used
43:52
Speaker 1: the word far right I don't know how many times
43:55
Speaker 1: in this whole discussion and criticized Trump and populism and
44:00
Speaker 1: what about the far left?
44:01
Speaker 2: Is is there a far left? Why have you not
44:03
Speaker 2: talked about them?
44:04
Speaker 1: And you know, if the point of the panel, which
44:08
Speaker 1: it was advertised to be something where we would talk
44:11
Speaker 1: about how to end kind of the bifurcation of people
44:16
Speaker 1: of having, you know, one side of the other side,
44:18
Speaker 1: and how can we have civil discourse if we're all
44:21
Speaker 1: just going to be on one side of the other side.
44:23
Speaker 1: And they got really defensive and their replies to me
44:25
Speaker 1: because they all just said, oh, well, you know, yeah,
44:28
Speaker 1: we talked about far right, but well, of first, there's
44:31
Speaker 1: a left. But none of them really owned the fact
44:34
Speaker 1: that they were all just kind of attacking, as you said,
44:37
Speaker 1: that the populace and the Trump side and just ignoring
44:40
Speaker 1: the other side. And I'm not saying that I prescribed
44:42
Speaker 1: to one side or the other, because I actually don't.
44:44
Speaker 1: I'm completely independent when it comes to any sort of
44:47
Speaker 1: political parties, as I think that is generally the case
44:51
Speaker 1: for most of us at UK column, because we think
44:53
Speaker 1: that they're all just a uniparty here in the UK,
44:56
Speaker 1: as Brian Garrish calls at the uniparty, where they're all
44:58
Speaker 1: just doing all of the same, right, So there's really
45:01
Speaker 1: no point in choosing because they're all going to mess up,
45:03
Speaker 1: mess up our lives regardless.
45:06
Speaker 2: But that's what I've seen with.
45:09
Speaker 1: The looking at the different fact checking organizations is that
45:14
Speaker 1: they have their fact that they like, that they're happy with,
45:17
Speaker 1: which push the narratives that they want to push, and
45:20
Speaker 1: then that's what that's what we get is as a response, well,
45:23
Speaker 1: this is this is right and this is wrong, and
45:25
Speaker 1: that's not always.
45:27
Speaker 2: The case when you actually look at the content of
45:30
Speaker 2: their results.
45:32
Speaker 1: So when you were looking at these different perspectives in
45:36
Speaker 1: the Europe and the US and other places that you've
45:39
Speaker 1: been looking at, did you find this most recent work
45:42
Speaker 1: that you've published, did you can you talk a little
45:44
Speaker 1: bit about the differences that you noticed or the similarities
45:47
Speaker 1: amongst the different countries.
45:49
Speaker 3: I think that's there was a big difference in as
45:51
Speaker 3: much as the DSAY said that if you didn't censor,
45:55
Speaker 3: you were going to be fine, and then this new
45:58
Speaker 3: executive orde is signed by Trump said that if you
46:01
Speaker 3: do censor, you're going to be fined. And of course
46:03
Speaker 3: that puts a particular burden onto groups that were that
46:10
Speaker 3: that had to do the censorship activities in Europe because
46:14
Speaker 3: they were going to be running to sort of like
46:16
Speaker 3: completely different systems. And obviously people like Americans could post
46:24
Speaker 3: something in America.
46:26
Speaker 4: Which could which which would.
46:29
Speaker 3: Be illegal in in Europe even though they they posted
46:36
Speaker 3: that post on American soil. It's quite interesting because there's
46:40
Speaker 3: a researcher called Mike Benz who he is an advocate
46:47
Speaker 3: of free speech and is against censorship, has done quite
46:50
Speaker 3: a lot of research. He's got a patchet platform called
46:55
Speaker 3: Foundation for Freedom Online, and has done quite a lot
46:59
Speaker 3: of research, and he said that that in effect, the
47:06
Speaker 3: US government, because of the First Amendment, because it couldn't
47:09
Speaker 3: actively say that it was censoring Americans, it actually put
47:14
Speaker 3: pressure on other countries like for example, the DSA and
47:20
Speaker 3: in Europe and the USA, in UK, and also other
47:23
Speaker 3: countries in the world to pass legislation that would operate
47:28
Speaker 3: in such a way that Americans would be censored. And
47:32
Speaker 3: also on the Twitter Files, which was this investigation into
47:42
Speaker 3: the communications between the Biden government and social media platforms.
47:48
Speaker 3: But there was some correspondence there between between America and
47:55
Speaker 3: Europe released in the Twitter Files that actually demonstrated the
47:59
Speaker 3: pressure had been put on Europe and in terms of
48:06
Speaker 3: laying out the Digital Services Act in such a way
48:10
Speaker 3: that it would interfere with American rights, because, as you know,
48:15
Speaker 3: the First Amendment in America stops the US government from
48:20
Speaker 3: interfering with free speech, but it doesn't, for example, stop
48:24
Speaker 3: American companies interfering with free speech, and it doesn't stop
48:28
Speaker 3: foreign governments from interfering with Americans free speech. So it's
48:33
Speaker 3: the owners is only on the American government. So therefore
48:39
Speaker 3: there was pressure put on and onto the governments, for example,
48:45
Speaker 3: to write the legislation in a way that it was
48:48
Speaker 3: likely to curtail the free expression of Americans. I don't
48:53
Speaker 3: know whether you know, but I couldn't. I looked a
48:57
Speaker 3: long time. I couldn't find anything in Europe, but of
49:00
Speaker 3: course it might have been written in different languages. But
49:04
Speaker 3: but I did find that two American platforms have withdrawn
49:10
Speaker 3: from UK because of the OSSA because they just think
49:13
Speaker 3: that the legislation is too onerous to to to be
49:18
Speaker 3: certain that they're not overstepping the mark bit shoot and
49:22
Speaker 3: and gab I think they were. And also there's one
49:25
Speaker 3: American who's been told that he's going to be prosecuted
49:30
Speaker 3: under the OSA in UK for for what he's posted
49:35
Speaker 3: on on the internet. So so so therefore, this legislation
49:39
Speaker 3: is working to sort of like censor American free speech.
49:45
Speaker 3: So far, nothing has been done about it, although the
49:50
Speaker 3: American administration has said that it will follow up on this,
49:55
Speaker 3: but nothing has been done so far. But so therefore
50:00
Speaker 3: it seems as if the Digital Service Act is, if
50:05
Speaker 3: you like, a backdoor to censoring American opinions when they're online.
50:10
Speaker 1: No, that's that's really interesting because you know, I went
50:14
Speaker 1: to a conference years ago of this was two thousand
50:18
Speaker 1: and eight around governance of the Internet, and that was
50:22
Speaker 1: one of the questions that we were.
50:24
Speaker 2: Kind of trying to explore was who owns the Internet? Really?
50:28
Speaker 1: Nobody, right, So the idea is that, for example, if
50:31
Speaker 1: one of the things that we sort of defaulted two
50:34
Speaker 1: over the years is that for example, if servers for
50:37
Speaker 1: the website that you're using, so say it's Facebook and
50:40
Speaker 1: it's Zuckerberg, and the servers are based in California, then
50:44
Speaker 1: if something happens, whether it's censored or whether it's you know,
50:48
Speaker 1: somebody is inciting violence or whatever is they want to
50:51
Speaker 1: try to get people in trouble for, then that is
50:54
Speaker 1: based on that jurisdiction of that country in America, regardless
50:58
Speaker 1: of whether or not the person was in the UK
51:00
Speaker 1: or America or somewhere else.
51:02
Speaker 2: But it seems like the legislation.
51:04
Speaker 1: As you're saying here, has been changing to make things
51:08
Speaker 1: a little more complicated. I know we've talked well, especially
51:12
Speaker 1: Mike Robinson has talked extensively and covered the Online Safety
51:15
Speaker 1: Act in the UK in recent times. And what can
51:19
Speaker 1: you tell us about that?
51:20
Speaker 2: Do you know anything about that from your perspective and
51:22
Speaker 2: your research?
51:24
Speaker 3: Well, the Online Safety Act, they were talking about passing
51:28
Speaker 3: this act for some time, but in the end they
51:31
Speaker 3: didn't get around to passing it until just after the
51:34
Speaker 3: DSAY was passed in Europe. And some people think that
51:37
Speaker 3: that was purposeful, that what they were trying to do
51:41
Speaker 3: was to make sure that the conditions imposed by the
51:47
Speaker 3: Online Safety Act and the Digital Services Act were broadly similar,
51:51
Speaker 3: and they are broadly similar. They're almost like carbon copies.
51:55
Speaker 3: So the people who were saying that may well have
51:59
Speaker 3: been right, although I've not got evidence of that, but
52:02
Speaker 3: it looks as if that's that's a strong possibility, And
52:07
Speaker 3: I think that most people are completely unaware of the
52:13
Speaker 3: of the extent that the Online Safety Act can actually
52:18
Speaker 3: affect ordinary people.
52:21
Speaker 4: And of course they are arresting a number.
52:24
Speaker 3: Of people, I think it's thirty a day according to
52:27
Speaker 3: the Free Speech Union, or detaining, if not arresting, for
52:34
Speaker 3: their online content in UK. I mean, it's it's phenomenal.
52:39
Speaker 3: And there's somebody that's that did a tweet which she
52:43
Speaker 3: sent out a tweet she realized it was a horrible tweet,
52:47
Speaker 3: so within fifteen minutes she deleted it. But now she's
52:52
Speaker 3: she's a young mother with young children, and she's in
52:56
Speaker 3: prison for thirty one months for this tweet, which she agrees.
53:01
Speaker 4: She doesn't disagree.
53:04
Speaker 3: That it was an offensive tweet. She absolutely says that
53:09
Speaker 3: it was offensive. But as this she herself realized this
53:15
Speaker 3: and erased this tweet so quickly. It just seems incredible
53:22
Speaker 3: that she's got a thirty one month sentence, which of
53:24
Speaker 3: course is not only a sentence for her, but it's
53:27
Speaker 3: also a sentence for her children who are deprived of
53:31
Speaker 3: their mother for that time, which of course is a
53:34
Speaker 3: very difficult thing for children. So I think that people
53:39
Speaker 3: in UK aren't aware of the extent of it. Also,
53:43
Speaker 3: the other thing is that it makes a lot of.
53:49
Speaker 4: Buzz.
53:49
Speaker 3: I think the DSA and on the Online Safety Act,
53:53
Speaker 3: they make a lot of issue about this media literacy, which,
53:58
Speaker 3: on the face of it, media literacy is sounds a
54:00
Speaker 3: good thing because people need to stay safe online, especially children,
54:09
Speaker 3: but even adults are subject to fraud and things like
54:12
Speaker 3: this online. So on the face of it, it seems
54:15
Speaker 3: like a sensible thing, and this oftcome is in charge
54:19
Speaker 3: of that. And just to give you an extent of
54:22
Speaker 3: the size of it, I could only find about half
54:25
Speaker 3: a dozen fact check platforms in UK, but I found
54:30
Speaker 3: something like one hundred and seventy media literacy groups in UK.
54:35
Speaker 3: It's much much bigger than fact checking and what it's
54:39
Speaker 3: just the form of brainwashing. I mean, I've done quite
54:43
Speaker 3: a lot of media literacy courses myself, just to try
54:48
Speaker 3: them out and see what happens. I've done media literacy
54:52
Speaker 3: courses for children, for adults, for seniors and so forth,
54:56
Speaker 3: some for journalists as well, and on line, and so
55:02
Speaker 3: I should be completely brainwashed now, But the children's ones,
55:07
Speaker 3: they're very sort of like captivating in cartoons. And for example,
55:11
Speaker 3: the person in who does the game thinks that he's
55:19
Speaker 3: a sort of like an evil person who wants to
55:23
Speaker 3: spread disinformation. He's always an evil person, so he does
55:26
Speaker 3: these various things for money and for fame and glory
55:30
Speaker 3: and whatever in order to try to sort of like
55:34
Speaker 3: win people over to his way of thinking. And then
55:38
Speaker 3: of course children who have done these media literacy courses
55:45
Speaker 3: then start thinking that anybody who says anything online that's
55:50
Speaker 3: different to what the government says or what the teacher
55:52
Speaker 3: says or whatever are doing it because they're going to
55:56
Speaker 3: get famous, or because they're going to people are going
55:59
Speaker 3: to like them, or because they're going to get lots
56:02
Speaker 3: of money, so they don't. So so then for example,
56:05
Speaker 3: you get many doctors, for example, supported the COVID narrative,
56:12
Speaker 3: but also many doctors didn't support the COVID narrative. But
56:15
Speaker 3: if anybody hears the doctor that didn't support the COVID narrative,
56:19
Speaker 3: then they think that maybe is a quack or not
56:22
Speaker 3: a real doctor, or is or he's trying to get famous.
56:28
Speaker 3: They don't think of him as as a person who's
56:30
Speaker 3: trying to get across a message. But when you look
56:33
Speaker 3: at the fact check platforms for adults, they always refer
56:38
Speaker 3: you to sources such as the w h O, the
56:42
Speaker 3: government's and mainstream media, and and then they sort of
56:48
Speaker 3: like they tell you to do this these searches. So
56:53
Speaker 3: if you find a name of somebody, like, for example, yourself,
56:58
Speaker 3: I might you might say some thing, and I think, oh,
57:00
Speaker 3: that sounds pretty sensible. But if I was and looked
57:05
Speaker 3: up your name, I haven't done it, but so I'm
57:08
Speaker 3: just assuming. So if I looked up your name, what
57:11
Speaker 3: it would what would happen is that various stories would
57:14
Speaker 3: come up first telling me that you're a conspiracy theorist,
57:18
Speaker 3: and that you've been that you were forced to leave
57:22
Speaker 3: your jobs in the university, and you know.
57:25
Speaker 4: Things that actually smear you. So that then I.
57:28
Speaker 3: Would look at the article that you've read or the
57:32
Speaker 3: video that you've made, or the speech that I've heard
57:36
Speaker 3: in the context of the fact that you weren't a
57:39
Speaker 3: very good person, and that would make me want to
57:41
Speaker 3: think maybe I won't believe this thing that Diane says
57:45
Speaker 3: after all. So it's so it's it's the way that
57:51
Speaker 3: they teach you to do searches is in itself likely
57:58
Speaker 3: to influence your position. So say, for example, they're talking
58:04
Speaker 3: they're they're talking about alternative news platforms at one point
58:08
Speaker 3: on several courses that have done and then they say, oh,
58:12
Speaker 3: they look like as if they're real platforms.
58:15
Speaker 4: They look as if.
58:15
Speaker 3: They're you know, the real thing, and that and that
58:19
Speaker 3: that they're really going to offer you a good source
58:23
Speaker 3: of news. But but but this is a way of
58:27
Speaker 3: of sort of fooling you into into sort of like
58:30
Speaker 3: listening to what they've got to say, so they sort
58:33
Speaker 3: of so so they discredit sort of alternative media sites.
58:37
Speaker 4: So it really is a very problematic.
58:43
Speaker 3: Sort of issue, Diane getting these gutting your story out.
58:49
Speaker 3: And of course, I mean the ironic thing of all
58:52
Speaker 3: is that Facebook have told me that that anything that's
58:56
Speaker 3: our posted won't be disseminated. So because I'm writing about censorship,
59:01
Speaker 3: Facebook have completely censored me.
59:03
Speaker 4: So there you go.
59:04
Speaker 3: So I don't post any of the UK column things anymore,
59:10
Speaker 3: except sometimes I'm say if it's something that you've done
59:14
Speaker 3: about the Gaza issue. I might post it onto a
59:18
Speaker 3: site like, for example, a Palestine solidarity group, a local
59:22
Speaker 3: Palestine solidarity group, but apart from that, I just don't.
59:29
Speaker 3: There's no point in me sharing anything because you know it.
59:34
Speaker 3: Facebook have told me that my posts go nowhere now,
59:37
Speaker 3: so it's made me very disinterested in social media.
59:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's happened to me on my Facebook and platforms
59:46
Speaker 2: is the more UK Column viewers that have followed me
59:50
Speaker 2: or sent me friend requests is it actually has helped
59:54
Speaker 2: me a bit because even if they wanted to censor
59:58
Speaker 2: the content, I am getting probably not as many.
1:00:02
Speaker 1: Likes and comments as I would if I were posting
1:00:05
Speaker 1: mainstream government content. But because people know my name now
1:00:09
Speaker 1: and they know that they know that I'm on the
1:00:10
Speaker 1: platform here at UK Column. So when I share things,
1:00:14
Speaker 1: what happens is on x all of my followers are
1:00:18
Speaker 1: at least I would say, affiliated with our way of
1:00:20
Speaker 1: seeing things. On Facebook, I have a combination of people
1:00:24
Speaker 1: from my former life as an academic and UK column viewers.
1:00:28
Speaker 1: So my Facebook friends get into some really good debates
1:00:31
Speaker 1: sometimes that I don't even participate, and I just let
1:00:34
Speaker 1: them do it right because all of the academics bought
1:00:37
Speaker 1: into the COVID narrative.
1:00:38
Speaker 2: I didn't. I'm one of the rare few who didn't.
1:00:42
Speaker 2: But then all of the UK column viewers.
1:00:44
Speaker 1: Know what happened, and then there's this back and forth
1:00:47
Speaker 1: about what do you mean The reason that there's so
1:00:50
Speaker 1: many excess desks is because of all the unvaccinated people
1:00:53
Speaker 1: that died of COVID about actually knowing what they're talking about,
1:00:57
Speaker 1: and then you have the other side coming in and
1:00:59
Speaker 1: yelling at them. It's a very very interesting thing to
1:01:03
Speaker 1: watch happen between this very large range of different types
1:01:08
Speaker 1: of people that I now have followed me on Facebook,
1:01:10
Speaker 1: and I'm really surprised that the academics have not unfollowed
1:01:14
Speaker 1: me or unfriended me at this point because they just
1:01:16
Speaker 1: get angry at what I post now, which is really.
1:01:18
Speaker 2: Kind of funny. You know, we're just about out of
1:01:21
Speaker 2: time here. Unfortunately, it has been a great discussion.
1:01:24
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that you would like to add
1:01:26
Speaker 1: that you haven't had a chance to say already.
1:01:28
Speaker 3: The only thing this I would like to add is
1:01:30
Speaker 3: this have been very disappointed recently in the way that
1:01:36
Speaker 3: Trump and Vance have implemented their executive Order in the USA,
1:01:43
Speaker 3: because what they're doing is increasing surveillance massively, for example
1:01:49
Speaker 3: at airports, and also they're building these new tech clubs.
1:01:56
Speaker 3: They're actually have interfered with the free speech of journalists
1:02:01
Speaker 3: to say things that they don't want to say, and
1:02:04
Speaker 3: of course they've done a lot of censorship of the
1:02:08
Speaker 3: Israel Palestine conflict. So I just think that you might
1:02:14
Speaker 3: hear a speech that you really like, like the JD
1:02:17
Speaker 3: event speech, but you really need you still have to
1:02:21
Speaker 3: stay on high alert.
1:02:22
Speaker 4: Even if somebody is saying.
1:02:24
Speaker 3: What you think you want to hear, you have to
1:02:27
Speaker 3: stay on high alert because on both sides there are
1:02:31
Speaker 3: sort of people who who mislead you. And I think
1:02:35
Speaker 3: that the most important thing of all, Diane, is for
1:02:38
Speaker 3: people to who have diverse viewpoints, to be able to
1:02:43
Speaker 3: sit down respectfully and talk to each other without without
1:02:51
Speaker 3: using derogatory terms like conspiracy theorists or sheeple or whatever,
1:02:56
Speaker 3: without using any derogatory terms, and to live and respectfully
1:03:01
Speaker 3: to what the other side says. Because that's if you
1:03:05
Speaker 3: like the people who want to rule the world, the
1:03:08
Speaker 3: most important thing for them is to keep us divided.
1:03:12
Speaker 4: But we need to.
1:03:15
Speaker 3: Be able to communicate, and unfortunately legislation is trying to
1:03:20
Speaker 3: hinder us from doing that. But nonetheless, we must find
1:03:26
Speaker 3: ways of communicating with people who've got the opposite viewpoint
1:03:30
Speaker 3: and to listen to them, maybe modify our own views,
1:03:35
Speaker 3: and then maybe they will also modify their views, because
1:03:39
Speaker 3: it's only by us working together that we are going
1:03:43
Speaker 3: to overcome this global governments which is being fast installed
1:03:50
Speaker 3: all over the world.
1:03:51
Speaker 2: Couldn't agree more with you and all of that.
1:03:53
Speaker 1: What I will say about Trump and Vance, and I
1:03:55
Speaker 1: said this from the beginning when they started issuing these
1:03:58
Speaker 1: executive orders, that it was all a distraction anyway that
1:04:02
Speaker 1: they put out executive orders that they knew that their
1:04:05
Speaker 1: voters would like to hear about with the you know,
1:04:07
Speaker 1: ending the DEI and ending the gender of stuff. But
1:04:10
Speaker 1: in the background, what's happened now, you know, all of
1:04:13
Speaker 1: the deals that's going on with the Israeli government and
1:04:15
Speaker 1: everything else that we've been covering in recent weeks, those
1:04:18
Speaker 1: were the things that I believe that they were distracting
1:04:21
Speaker 1: us from. But it's all a lot of MiPT to
1:04:23
Speaker 1: cause confusion, destruction, breakdown of society, all of these things
1:04:29
Speaker 1: that we talk about. But You're absolutely right that if
1:04:31
Speaker 1: we have to have conversations and they're making it, trying
1:04:35
Speaker 1: to make it as impossible as they can to make
1:04:38
Speaker 1: sure that we don't talk to each other, and.
1:04:40
Speaker 2: Then it creates division.
1:04:41
Speaker 1: And you know, some people are worrying about is there
1:04:45
Speaker 1: going to be civil war in the US civil war
1:04:47
Speaker 1: in the UK because you know, our governments are attacking us,
1:04:50
Speaker 1: we're attacking the other side, we're picking fights and colleague names.
1:04:55
Speaker 2: But you're right, that's absolutely what they want.
1:04:57
Speaker 1: And that's why I like to come here and have
1:05:00
Speaker 1: open conversations.
1:05:01
Speaker 2: Things that are always well sourced, as you do as well,
1:05:03
Speaker 2: that we know the importance of sourcing, and that you
1:05:06
Speaker 2: can actually track back and see that no, we're not
1:05:09
Speaker 2: making stuff up. This is all here.
1:05:10
Speaker 1: This is all accurate, and that's very important to us
1:05:13
Speaker 1: at UK Column, and for me in particular as the
1:05:17
Speaker 1: i'll call myself the Marianna Spring of UK Column.
1:05:20
Speaker 2: I hope that doesn't spread because I like to be
1:05:23
Speaker 2: the one that makes sure as the librarian.
1:05:26
Speaker 1: That works for us, that we're all sourcing things, especially
1:05:29
Speaker 1: in the written content that I'm not responsible for as
1:05:32
Speaker 1: our commissioning editor. But thank you again today for such
1:05:36
Speaker 1: a great conversation. I hope that this will inspire some
1:05:40
Speaker 1: people to potentially reach out and at least be respectful
1:05:44
Speaker 1: of people who don't see.
1:05:45
Speaker 2: Things the same way.
1:05:47
Speaker 1: I think that by preventing free speech from happening, especially
1:05:51
Speaker 1: in some cases, the speech that the governments don't like,
1:05:54
Speaker 1: I think unfortunately are the ones who tend to be
1:05:57
Speaker 1: the targets. But we have to be above. That has
1:06:00
Speaker 1: to start with us individually and with the groups that
1:06:03
Speaker 1: we associate with and who we talk to and how
1:06:05
Speaker 1: we choose to talk to them. So I really want
1:06:07
Speaker 1: to support you on that point, and I hope that
1:06:10
Speaker 1: this will inspire our viewers to do the same, even
1:06:12
Speaker 1: if some days it might not feel like that's what
1:06:14
Speaker 1: you want to do. But thank you again for your
1:06:17
Speaker 1: time today. Again, this is Diane Rethus and Macchetti with
1:06:20
Speaker 1: u K column News. Have just had a wonderful conversation
1:06:22
Speaker 1: here with doctor Juith Brown. And thank you again, Judith
1:06:26
Speaker 1: for your time. I really appreciate it.
1:06:28
Speaker 3: Thank you, Diane, thank you, thank you for your time.
1:06:30
Speaker 3: I've really enjoyed the interview.