‘No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused’ – Edward Snowden
The government has announced measures to ‘crack down on false information’ about Covid-19 on various social media platforms.
A ‘high-tech monitoring and evaluation process’ is being rolled out to intercept misinformation about the virus and government responses to the outbreak, according to a statement by the communications department.
‘We are stepping up our campaign against digital misinformation, particularly in relation to Covid-19 and related actions such as the national lockdown,’ said Minister in the Presidency Jackson Mthembu.
‘We also need to remind South Africans that spreading fake news or disinformation about Covid-19 is a punishable offence,’ Mthembu added.
‘Arrests have already been made, and they will continue if people persist in spreading fake news.’
Worth pointing out is that the ‘campaign’ is mentioned ‘particularly in relation to Covid-19’. Was Mthembu being careless or did he mean that the government would go beyond the remit of the epidemic?
Excuse to interfere with free speech
It may be considered somewhat paranoid, but this is not a government which should have any excuse to interfere with free speech.
With a flourish of grandiosity only to be expected from Bheki Cele, the police minister said during a recent ministerial briefing: ‘There is one boy that was arrested yesterday. He was on social media saying that there is no such thing as the coronavirus here. He is at Themba police station right now, in the cell, arrested. So if you go to social media and spread fake news then we won’t spare you.’
It is unclear what the ‘boy’ was alleged to have said or on what platform.
Under emergency laws enacted last month aimed at curbing growing infections, peddling misinformation on the deadly coronavirus in South Africa will attract up to six months in jail or a fine.
The media and members of the public will now be able to report any ‘disinformation’ to a special task team composed of government, the private sector and civil society representatives. The new team can order platform owners to take down false posts and submit certain cases to the police.
But who will determine what is or is not fake news?
Regulations 11 and Regulation 11B of the Final Lockdown Regulations provide, inter alia, that:
‘11(5) Any person who publishes any statement, through any medium, including social media, with the intention to deceive any other person about
(a) COVID-19;
(b) COVID-19 infection status of any person; or
(c) any measure taken by the Government to address COVID-19, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine or imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months, or both such fine and imprisonment.’
Doesn’t have to be untrue
The Regulations raise two criteria that have to be met for a conviction: the first is that the comment doesn’t have to be untrue; it refers to ‘any statement’. Second, whether false or not, the statement will only be judicable if the intention of the person making the statement is to deceive another person.
So, what happens if someone says that, say, certain reputable scientists believe the lockdown is the wrong way to fight the disease and gives reasons why this is so? The person’s defence, surely, would be that the information was of interest, wasn’t untrue, and he/she had no intention to deceive anybody. The utterer would have to actually exhort the recipients to ignore the lockdown as a result. Intention would be difficult to determine.
So far, all we know is that a few people have been arrested for allegedly contravening the Regulations. We don’t know, however, what the result of the court cases has been. This is a crucial issue that the media should be covering to ensure that freedom of speech is not being violated by the state. If people are found guilty, we need to understand how a magistrate came to a decision.
Another concern is that the police could persuade an unsuspecting person to make an admission of guilt to avoid incarceration and a court process. The accused is unlikely to know what the requirements are for being found guilty and that the state has a heavy onus to prove guilt. The admission then becomes a criminal record.
To what extent have the utterances made thus far shown a real threat to the lockdown process, which cannot be withdrawn through persuasion by the police?
Crack-down formalised
The government’s crack-down on ‘fake news’ has been formalised by the re-launch of ‘REAL411. KEEPING IT REAL IN DIGITAL MEDIA.’
REAL411 is the brainchild of Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) – ‘Supporting human rights and democracy through media since 1993’ – which provides several ‘relevant and targeted
services’ designed to fall within its mandate and promote MMA’s work in human rights, democracy and media.
‘These services include Monitoring and Evaluation, Monitoring Assistance, Media Profiles, Media Clippings, Policy, Complaints Commission and Editorial Code Formulation, Training and Skills Development, and Pay for Print.’
MMA believes that ‘monitoring the media is not just about capturing and analysing data around the media’s performance.’ Rather it sees it as a ‘form of advocacy where data and analysis are the first step towards active and ongoing engagement with media and related civil society organisations. We believe that it will improve the quality of reporting on identified issues.’
MMA says that its data is invaluable for media practice to advocate for better coverage of human rights issues; that its figures help to monitor and evaluate the performance of media and media campaigns.
REAL411 originally started in the lead-up to the 2019 elections for the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). It may be one thing to work with a nominally independent organisation like the IEC: it’s quite another to work for the government itself.
MMA says that the purpose of REAL411 is to provide ‘a system that would enable members of the public to report disinformation and ensure it was addressed in an open, transparent and accountable manner within our laws and constitutional principles’.
‘We also found that during the lead-up to the elections people weren’t just wanting to report disinformation but also cases of incitement and hate speech. We have decided to add those to the new version of Real411.’
Independence and integrity
If MMA wants to retain its reputation for independence and integrity, it should not be co-operating with a government operating under a State of Disaster, no matter how good the apparent cause.
According to Real 411, digital disinformation is ‘false, inaccurate, or misleading information designed, presented and promoted to intentionally cause public harm’.
‘Real411 has been created to give the public the power to report digital disinformation, incitement and hate speech. The circulation of unfiltered messages online can allow hate speech to spread widely and quickly. The role of digital media and social media in the incitement of violence is something to be highly aware of but more importantly, to act on. When you report to the Real411, you are reporting to the Digital Complaints Committee. The DCC will assess instances of disinformation for appropriate action to be taken.’
It’s unclear whether the MMA realises that it will play a potentially Orwellian role in surveillance of the public. There are many comparisons that come to mind, but probably the most resonant is that of the infamous Stasi of the German Democratic Republic, better known as East Germany. The Stasi had the largest body of public informers of any totalitarian state.
There will probably be no shortage of citizens who relish the opportunity to snitch, human nature being what it is. It’s not for a private media organisation to encourage people to do so for the government.
The other non-governmental participants are CovidComms SA, ‘a network of communications volunteers working alongside government’, Business For South Africa, a Business Unity South African portal, the United Nations In South Africa, and a ‘Dr. Fundi – the Health Expert’, a private family physician with a health website.
Media organisations must be alert at all times to the possibility that a government, however democratic, may say or do something that infringes on citizens’ rights unnecessarily, even in a pandemic. Freedom of expression is the most crucial right because it is from free speech that all other rights can be exercised.
Appropriated powers
Generally the South African public has accepted and respected the government’s handling of the Covid-19 lockdown, but the government, through the regulations promulgated under the Disaster Act, has appropriated powers to itself that it doesn’t have as a matter of course.
We have seen the autocratic and boorish behaviour and attitude of Police Minister Bheki Cele. His approach has been draconian, lacking in common sense and heavy-handed. Cele represents that side of the governing party whose ideological goal is to create a socialist state, which by definition appropriates the rights of people to the government, usually with dire consequences.
In the case of Covid-19, the media has been responsive and supportive, and consumers of media have co-operated. Businesses have put the government’s information link on their home pages.
Certainly, arguments on the wisdom of the lockdown, the health consequences and the economic consequences, have been presented in the media both for and against the government’s position. This is how it should be.
But collaboration with a government with a deep desire to diminish democracy threatens to ruin the reputation of independence of organisations like the MMA. If fake information is having a pandemic-like effect in undermining the lockdown, this is for the government to do, if it needs doing at all.
What happens if it’s the government that’s putting out fake information? The media cannot be player and referee.
We don’t have enough information about how big a problem it is. We hear about a few isolated instances but the public has insufficient knowledge of the problem of fake news insofar as it threatens the lockdown.
Credible news media
On 2 April, the South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) called on citizens to help in the fight against disinformation and ‘fake’ news by checking Covid-19-related information on social media against reports in credible news media, official government information and fact-checking services – and never to forward unverified information to others.
As part of the national effort, SANEF has committed to assisting government to communicate information pertaining to the spread and containment of the virus, ensuring the safety of journalists covering the disease and counteracting disinformation and misinformation – and provides regular updates on media industry efforts.
It is not the role of a national body representing media editors to put out a plea to the citizenry as to how to deal with Covid-related information.
The media’s role is to report the facts that it has properly verified. The role envisaged by REAL411 is not that role. Members of SANEF are likely to find the call in contravention of their professional ethics.
Remember that five days after SANEF’s statement, the largest online news portal, News24, printed some fake news about Bill Gates and a vaccine for Covid-19.
On Saturday 4 April, News24 published an article titled ‘Bill Gates confident a potential coronavirus vaccine will work in Africa, but Twitter does not think so’. It was based on responses to a tweet by President Cyril Ramaphosa. Ramaphosa’s tweet stated that Gates was assisting with testing and research – not vaccines – and he posted a short clip of a 22-minute interview Gates had done with The Daily Show host and South African comedian Trevor Noah.
The responses to the tweet were excessively critical of Gates and Ramaphosa, and interpreted the content as confirmation of the conspiracy that Gates intended to test vaccines in Africa – now apparently with Ramaphosa’s help.
As Noah later pointed out on Twitter, neither he nor Gates once mentioned vaccines being tested in Africa during the entire interview.
The origin of the claim that Gates was planning on testing a Covid vaccine in Africa originated from a Facebook post attributed to a French doctor, Didier Raoult of the DFRLab. The Facebook post, which went viral, described Raoult as ‘a French physician and microbiologist specialising in infectious diseases [who] made a name for himself after claiming that the anti-malarial drug chloroquine was a cure for Covid-19’.
Raoult’s employer denied he authored the post and, following a fact-check by Agence France Presse, it was debunked on 1 April. The original post had around 47 000 shares on Facebook.
The claim was picked up by a number of influential South African Twitter accounts that helped give the rumour legs.
The media’s role is to expose fake news directly to the citizenry not via the government. Twitter is too often used by South African journalists as a source of news which they fail to verify.
It must not be forgotten that under a Declaration of Disaster none of the provisions of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution may be derogated – and that includes the right to free speech.
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