Table of Contents

Table of Contents

  1. Why we need a right to be informed
  2. How the world has changed
  3. Platforms versus publishers
  4. What we can achieve with a right to be informed
  5. How dangerous are the new technologies?
  6. Omitting to publish
  7. How the news industry has changed
  8. Freedom of expression
  9. The attack on science
  10. Principle of best current evidence
  11. The global struggle for freedom, rights and science

11. Misinformation versus freedom, rights and science

The ambushing of President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House with Donald Trump repeating the false conspiracy theory of a white genocide in South Africa exemplifies the way disinformation is baked into Trump’s methodology. And not only Trump’s: in other democracies too, strongmen are using misinformation to fuel fear.

That is why the fight for the right to be informed is so urgent.

Strongmen ruling Turkey, Hungary, India, Argentina, El Salvador and the United States have effectively used the new forms of media and misinformation to spread fear — of foreigners, of people who are different, or of perceived threats to the traditional nuclear family.

Though they rule by popular mandate, these leaders are increasingly eroding constitutional principles. We see this daily in news reports from the US under the Trump administration, where human rights and norms for good governance are being rapidly pushed aside.

The post-World War II period has shown how countries can flourish when human rights, democracy and science come together. This combination has brought numerous technological innovations that have lengthened life expectancy and made living easier for many people.

Most recently, medical science gave us vaccines that helped millions survive the Covid pandemic. In the 2010s there were anti-vaxxers, but they were a fringe movement. Now the United States Secretary of Health RF Kennedy Jr is a vaccine sceptic and the Trump administration is weakening the National Institutes of Health, the world's leading funder of medical research.

The United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite measure of health, education and standard of living. The graph shows the rise in HDI across the world, with some blips, such as the toll the HIV epidemic took upon South Africa in the late 1990s and 2000s, and the global rise in deaths caused by Covid in 2020. This rise in HDI is in part a result of the ascendancy of science in society.

Scientific progress has also brought existential threats: nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, and civilisation-threatening climate change. Most recently, it has given rise to artificial intelligence which can be used to spread misinformation at an alarming scale.

Widespread respect for human rights in constitutional democracies in which most citizens are scientifically literate is probably the best way to counter all these threats.

But we are witnessing the increasingly authoritarian Trump regime treating constitutional democracies in Europe, Canada, and South Africa, with contempt.

At the same time, the respected global institutions which can set minimum standards of human behaviour, address conflicts and help us face challenges such as climate change, are under attack. Though the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the World Health Organisation, the World Trade Organisation, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, are all flawed, they can be used to distribute power across the planet more evenly, and ensure the spread of fairness and justice. But they are under attack, especially from the populist strongmen regimes.

The future of the World Health Organisation is particularly in peril. It was battered by misinformation during the height of the Covid pandemic and there has been a natural progression from there to the US, under Trump, pulling out of the organisation.

Misinformation is certainly not the sole preserve of the strongmen, exemplified by the likes of Trump, Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, and their supporters. But most of the lies, anti-science and mass manipulation is currently coming from them. The strongmen depend on misinformation to undermine constitutional democracies in order to cement their power. They actively work to erode trust in global institutions so that they cannot be held to account for their human rights violations and capricious treatment of weaker populations and countries. They destroy universities — physically blowing them up in the case of Netanyahu — because these are often centres of resistance against autocracy, as well as places where critical voices counter the falsehoods that prop up wannabe-dictators.

These populist leaders are the biggest threat to the spread of constitutional democracy, human rights, freedom and the benefits of science. They will oppose a right to be informed. And their views are in fashion. This is a human right, like most others in history, that can only be achieved through struggle.

OSZAR »