Democracy Classroom on Fake News

Enumerated in a Green Paper published on 5 January was a long list of the many instances of deliberate falsehoods that have destabilised societal security and in other cases even alleged to have swayed entire national elections around the world. Here in Singapore, two cases stood out particularly – the threat of “foreign interference” exemplified by the closure of The Herald and Eastern Sun in the 1970s for alleged “foreign funding”. Participants, however, were reminded by facilitators that the allegations are still in dispute – a reality that, unmentioned in the Green Paper, would have downplayed the alarmist rhetoric of fake news.

As the discussions raged on, most participants agreed on an issue of prevalence, that fake news is rampant. As one participant put it, every Singaporean would know at least one auntie or uncle guilty of repeatedly forwarding chain hoaxes on WhatsApp and email. But while prevalent, the consensus was also that the gravity of damage wrought by fake news is barely palpable in Singapore. The poorly crafted WhatsApp chain hoax messages about plastic rice or the death of a local celebrity do not amount to a national security threat, nor do they steal elections. After all, they are easily and rapidly repudiated by a quick public statement, Google searches or calmer minds among members of the group chat.

One faculty member raised an observation that, on the flip side, “fake news” has been weaponised by governments themselves. Mass media reportage on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (an accusation that was never proven and now widely criticised) enabled the Bush Administration’s unilateral aggression in the Middle East in 2003 – the legacy of which is still felt today from the rise of ISIS to the many civil wars and civilian deaths. Another participant raised the point of how, even in Singapore, the 1987 Operation Spectrum and the detention without trial of 22 Singaporeans for their involvement in unproven allegations of a “Marxist Conspiracy” was an example of how the state media’s “fake news” reportage enabled what some participants called “state terrorism”.

Nonetheless, regardless of the actual realities of fake news in Singapore, the potential for fake news to threaten national security lingered.

The Real Singapore, the sensationalist website remembered for arousing the passions of xenophobes with its vitriolic “fake news” until it was shut down a few years ago, remains a fresh memory that was repeatedly brought up in the discussions. If anything, it was a stark glimpse of the potential it had in threatening communal harmony. However, the facts of the matter speaks for itself. Our laws are already broad, adequate and readily used. TRS was efficiently shut down with the use of existing laws, its editors imprisoned and its reputation in ignominy.

Nonetheless, a comment was made that our laws are inadequate in responding to coordinated “fake news” campaigns, the same kind alleged to have occurred in the U.S., with hackers and thousands of foreign-funded bots on social media shaping public opinions and swaying elections. Our laws do not provide the means by which the government can control what people read and what people share on social media, and because of this our national security remains at stake.

In response, other participants raised concerns on legislative excess and the counter-productivity of such laws in fostering societal resilience and security. In seeking to contain the spread of “fake news” with stronger laws, not only would the most reasonable exceptions of personal privacy be encroached, but due process too, a key tenet of our justice system, could easily be invalidated. Vague wordings of a stronger legislation can also easily criminalise any incident of netizens sharing fake news with a caption stating that they disagree with it, and to the satirical as well. As one faculty member joked, such a law could see the editors of The Onion arrested.

More perniciously, a NUS Sociology student brought up the concern that state paranoia and the ability to label anything remotely destabilising or taboo as “fake news” would aggravate the state’s already existing powers to shut down discourse on important, bread-and-butter issues of race, religion and LGBT issues, among a great many other issues. It is important to have open, responsible discourse on such central concerns that have often flared up community tensions when swept under the carpet. One participant mentioned how laws protecting religious harmony in Singapore had the unintended consequence of limiting civic discourse on the 2017 reserved presidential elections.

A few other participants also reached a common consensus that increasingly draconian laws, even when unintended, can exacerbate a culture of fear. Journalist would be increasingly unwilling to engage in investigative reporting if they run a greater risk of legal punishments when accused of spreading fake news. NGOs and academics too would be fearful of speaking out of line, especially if research data is insufficient or disputed – an inevitable aspect of academic research that could easily be misconstrued as falsehoods. Examples were given of whistleblowers in the NKF corruption case and City Harvest were already being silenced with the threat of libel lawsuits; how much worse it could be if vague, overreaching laws on “fake news” are put in place! One participant mentioned that with fewer people putting forward diverse and contrarian viewpoints, Singapore runs the dangerous risk of homogenous, echo-chamber groupthink – a danger that could have greater, long term implications on Singapore’s resilience than fake news itself.

Fake news of the kind that maliciously destabilises national security like that of coordinated bot campaigns remain a potent threat, yet laws to combat this threat are a cacophony of even worse implications. Fundamentally, as most participants agreed, this malicious type of fake news proliferates from societal distrust of our state institutions. When people do not trust mainstream media outlets, when people dismiss the government’s public statements – from that of ministries to the Police Force, when people think evidence of foreign bots are a state conspiracy, when people perceive laws against fake news as an attempt by the government to control free speech or fix the opposition, fake news wins.

Building strong civic trust is our best defence. When democratic institutions are strong – a vibrant independent and yet responsible media environment, a dynamic and healthy civil society of strong, outspoken NGOs, student groups, academics, a first world parliament of robust, well-represented debate, and a healthy polity of engaged active citizens – high levels of community and institutional trust can be nurtured. Institutional trust will also be enhanced with greater governmental transparency which as a NUS law student commented during the discussions, “where other countries have a Freedom of Information Act, Singapore has a direct opposite – the Official Secrets Act”.

High institutional trust and concomitantly higher levels of political literacy also equips citizens with a culture of healthy scepticism and discernment that would be the strongest defence against fake news. These are, in essence, the very principles of social and psychological defence that has already been enshrined in the oft-peddled idea of Total Defence.

More than anything in an era of post-truth politics, it is not an instinctive, knee-jerk retreat to illiberal and authoritative heavy-handedness, but our resilience as a civic community and our commitment to democratic values that would best safeguard Singapore.