Curbing True Lies

The answer may not be to enact laws to ban fake news, as Singapore has recently done.

- Akhileshwari Reddy

ON MAY 8, 2019, Singapore passed a law against fake news. Malaysia, France, Germany, and Russia already have such a law. Each of these countries has dealt with the fake news problem in different ways, including through the imposition of bans, penalties and through imprisonment. However, Singapore’s law has been at the receiving end of heavy criticism from civil rights organizations for being detrimental to free speech and press freedom. The new law gives the government and any minister overarching powers to force traditional and social media platforms to issue “corrections” to content that they deem to be “fake news” in the “public interest”.

The punishment includes a prison sentence up to 10 years as well as a fine of a million Singaporean dollars. The apprehension of activists is that these laws will become a way for governments to curb freedom of speech and dissent. In fact, such laws could easily morph into a muzzling mechanism against any form of dissent, as has been the case in the use of archaic sedition laws in India as a means to silence dissent and meaningful criticism.

While there is no universally accepted definition of fake news, the Ethical Journalism Network defines it as “information that is likely to be perceived as news, which has been deliberately fabricated and is disseminated with the intention to deceive others into believing falsehoods or doubting verifiable facts”. Its use to influence popular opinion first became apparent during the 2016 presidential elections in the US.