According to BuzzFeed, 75% of US adults believe fake news headlines. Hilary Clinton has said the phenomenon “is a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly.” And this has been greeted, by and large, as the consensus view. Yet developing nationsnation’s’ attempts at regulatory press measures often come in for sharp international censure. The inconsistency between these two positions reveals a double standard when it comes to freedom of expression.
To appreciate how this came about, the issue needs to be put in a historical context. The phenomenon of fake news is nothing new. As Angela Merkel, the latest international figure to weigh in on the fake news debate, stated: “Something has changed — as globalization has marched on, [political] debate is taking place in a completely new media environment.”
The proliferation of new technologies poses the same challenge, but in a different context. Legislation that has safeguarded the traditional media, holding it to standards of due diligence, has not kept pace with modernity. Of course, the challenges of policing the internet are laden with complexity. But the reasoning behind the need to do so – the arguments for regulation – remain the same.
At the risk of stating the banal: freedom of expression is a fundamental right. But all mature democracies across the world have curtailments on this right (granted, to different degrees). In reality, competing rights clash and collide. One’s freedom of speech can be at odds with one’s freedom from hate speech. It is the task of politicians to draw the lines between them – however imperfectly. And it is this imperative to balance these rights that underpin the theory for regulation of the press.
We are all dealing with the same problem, so why is there such mismatch in reactions to legislation from developed to developing countries? My own country was castigated by various groups last summer over the introduction of an ‘Act on Protection of Reputation and Freedom of Expression’. This tends to be the experience of many non-Western nations when they attempt to regulate their media. But young democracies do not come prefabricated with a press where norms of due diligence are embedded. They have to be encoded in law. Just as we are now likely to see statutes implemented in the West to curtail the spread of fake news on the internet.
Hilary Clinton says the danger of (new) fake news lies in its real world consequences. This was in response to the ‘pizzagate’ incident, in which a man opened fire in a pizza parlour because of a false story, circulated on the internet, which identified it as the heart of a paedophile ring. But the effects of lies in newspapers can be even more pernicious. To the keen eye, fake news stories can be spotted. However, the traditional press is supposed to be presumptively trusted as a matter of public life. The scope for negative real-world consequences is magnified.
Our reputation act simply gives succour to article 33 of the Maldivian constitution: “Everyone has the right to protect one’s reputation and good name”. Reputations should not be endangered by the peddling of mistruths in the media. And press regulation throughout the West embodies this ethic.
President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, when explaining the act, stated that if you claim “a thief is a thief – evidence should be there. But, if you say that a person you dislike is a thief … then it is unacceptable.” It was a pithy and concise summary of a complex issue.
Clearly, rights have to be backed by state power and legislation. Without it they lose meaning and value. And without recourse for redress through law, the rights enshrined in our constitution would not exist. Legislation is, by nature, a blunt instrument to solve societal problems. But it is also the last resort. And this is why the regulatory bill also puts in place explicit protection for the freedom of expression.
The media has never had a more pervasive reach in our democracies. It sets the tone for public debate and shapes the way people think. Without proper regulation, the civil function of the press plays becomes corrupted – with potentially devastating consequences. The West seems to recognize this, but only for themselves.
Democracy of course relies on freedom of speech. But a central tenet of democracy is also fair regulation. And this consensus should be for all.
Editor's note: Ishaq Ahmed is a Senior Policy Executive at the Ministry of Home Affairs.
