Fakenews: “Who is responsible for protecting democracy from big, dangerous lies?”

Fatoumatta: Lying as an official policy did not start with President Adama Barrow’s regime. Our governments, since independence, have always been the ultimate dissimulator. When was the last time anyone believed official data, correct budgetary figures, allocations and estimates, casualty figures of tragedies – particularly during the previous regime? We run our country on two levels of truth. Our generation grew up to meet a nation that gives and sanctions two versions of any public occurrence: The official angle and the ‘other’ angle. The public is left forever bewildered, groping for where the truth lies. Someone said a lie does not necessarily mean not telling the truth – when you hide the truth, you are a peddler of fake news. It is a big task to confront “big, dangerous lies” because they are almost always government babies. You sometimes listen to our government and feel like asking them if the news is no longer fact-based, factually-accurate, and truthfully-presented reports of recent events or previously unknown information. You feel like asking them what to call official reports that fail the test of factuality, which is also deficient in structural credibility. So, as the government rolls out the tanks against small men with small and big lies, who helps us confront the lions of government which scent deadly lies and feed everyone with sweetened feces?

Fatoumatta: Robert Reich, a former US Secretary of Labor and currently a public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley, asked a crucial question in The Guardian: “Who is responsible for protecting democracy from big, dangerous lies?” He asked and added a probable but imprecise solution: “If a president and his enablers are peddling vicious and dangerous lies, we need reliable intermediaries that help us see them.” He sees there what we see here: a government whose lies “have grown more vicious and dangerous,” a government that “conjures up conspiracies, spews hate and says facts are lies and lies are truths.”

Fatmatta: Nazis called it ‘Lügenpresse;’ here, it is ‘fake news’ or ‘hate speech’ or both. It can be used by anybody to deal with anybody – and it is in use. Adolf Hitler wielded it as a double-edged sword to destroy his ‘enemies’ – the free press. Both sides of our political aisle haul it – and deny it. With untruth soaking official and private spaces like Banjul’s triumphant floods, shall we not start calling it folk news since information fakery is now the fad, a craze?

Fatoumatta: No responsible government will sit by and allow fake news and hate speech to dominate its media space because of the capacity of this menace to exploit our national fault lines to set us against each other and trigger a national conflagration. That is why the government should continue to evolve to tackle fake news and hate speech until it is banished both. However, where will it start? From the government and its fake news mill or with the miserable another side? Beyond deploying crude state power, how much control does his government have over its (social) media space?

Fatoumatta: There is a film titled: ‘All Governments Lie…’ True, they all do. The difference is in how people manage their lying regimes. The Washington Post said three weeks ago that by his 1,000th day in office, President Donald Trump had told 13,435 lies. That gives them how many lies per day? We have them too, but we do not count their lies here -because we must not. Doing that is as dangerous as stepping on a viper’s tail. We listen to the lies, clap for the gifted liars, and wait for the next. Now, the regime wants to assist us to fight lies and hate speech.

When a third world government vows to deal with fake news, it is logical to infer that it has fighting its opponents in mind. Its definition of fake news may be right and may be very different from the universal. We wait to see who the first Gambian culprits will be. However, what is certain is that this government will use the Police of all colors and uniforms to deal with anyone whose definition of terms differs from its own. However, between deploying bouncers at gates and erecting smart doors, which one works better? The global gnomes called Facebook and Twitter are genies out of their creators’ bottles. They are poisonous snakes in the wild, untamable; not even their minders are safe.

Fatoumata: It is good that the government is determined to fight fake news and its creators. Gambians need that war now! However, government lies too – and competes with the e-liars – and in ways that take ‘vicious’ and ‘insulting’ as adjectives. It does it as a matter of duty; injecting lies repeatedly into the nation’s bloodstream. We have a government that announced a state of emergency powers regulations but quietly slammed fines (charges) on persons dumb enough to trust it and go that way. We have a government that will not stop telling us it has embarked on reforms and fighting corruption but would delay enacting anti-corruption legislation to fight corruption. So, how do we (and why should we) trust this monster that is roaring towards equity with soiled hands?

Fatoumatta: We remembered that when the Gambia Police Force seized a container that was loaded with 1,263 rifles. The guns imported from Turkey belonged to Abubakar Jawara, the chief executive officer of GACH Security Ltd. The importation of deadly semi-automatic rifles, channeling illicit bribe money through proxy Foundations, and releasing convicted Norwegian pedophiles who have violated Gambian children as young as three years old by the former Attorney General. The seizure of cocaine involving foreign nationals and the Diplomatic Passport racketeering and the Tax Evasion Commission scandal where prominent lawyers and influential politicians found culpable of tax evasion is – also the dubious sale of former President Yahya Jammeh’s properties to friends and close relatives without due process, accountability and transparency many Gambians said when they first heard it, they thought it was yet another grotesque product of fake news. Scholars had earlier warned that the Third World War might be caused by fake news – and a lethal lie.

Fatoumata: The press release issued by the Presidency reads: “President Adama Barrow in the exercise of the powers conferred on him under Sections 71 (1) and 71 (3) of the Constitution of the Republic of the Gambia, has appointed Bakary Jammeh, Governor of the Central Bank of The Gambia as Minister for Trade, Industry, Regional Integration and Employment with effect from 1st October 2020.”

“Consequently, President Barrow in the exercise of the powers conferred on him under Section 162 (2) of the Constitution appoints Buah Saidy, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs as Governor of the Central Bank of the Gambia, also with effect from 1st October 2020.”

Fatoumatta: Information minister Ebrima Sillah, in an interview with West coast radio coffee time, dismisses claims that former Central Bank Governor Bakary Jammeh never wrote any rejection letter as confirmed by Jammeh himself in an interview with Foroyaa. “The rejection letter that we all saw in social media was fake; Jammeh never wrote that letter,” said Ebrima sillah quoted saying, “I do not know where they got that fake letter,” Minister Silah said due consultations were made by the Secretary-General and the appointees before their appointments. He said the new CentralBank Governor has already started work in earnest.

According to Foroyaa, “Bakary Jammeh, the former Governor of the Central Bank Monday clarified that he did not say or write anything regarding whether or not he will complete his five-year term of office at the bank as mentioned earlier, contrary to what is trending on social media. He told Foroyaa: “It is not true. I never say that neither did I write it.”.

According to Kerr Fatou, “we contacted the Governor on the phone for clarification, and he replied: “I am the one who wrote the letter being circulated online though I am not sure how it got online. However, I can confirm that I wrote it, and I intend to serve out my contract, which only ends in May 2022,” Governor Jammeh told Kerr Fatou. In any case, Kerr Fatou stands by the story. Governor Jammeh had declined the offer and had questioned the legality of his removal or transfer as has been reported by this medium on Friday’

Fatomatta: Whatever defies mediation cannot truthfully be called media. I have friends who dread Facebook like death. That Asian country called China does too. Moreover, Mark Zuckerberg would lament three weeks ago that despite his efforts to take his freedom technology to China, “they never let us in.” Is China right or wrong to slam its door against Facebook and others of the same blood? However, we see how these platforms sweat to shoot down or shut out the wrong customers and harmful content.

Furthermore, in doing that, they are fighting their war too. Twitter last week announced a ban on political adverts because it believed “political message reach should be earned, not bought.” However, Facebook said it would not ban political adverts – with all the lies and half-truths – because it is about free speech and empowering the powerless: “Banning political ads favors incumbents and whomever the media covers.” Both sides, whomever that carefully packaged lies, are the tires that wheel political adverts, yet they will not agree on ending untruths on their platforms without injuring democracy.

Instead of issuing threats, the Gambia government can learn from the British government, which, a few months ago, announced plans to call a summit of social media companies to “discuss what more they can do to fight online misinformation.” Earlier, in April last year, it had hinted of a slew of new rules under which social media tech companies could be fined or blocked if they did not protect users from harmful content.

Significantly, the government must stop ruling with lies; fighting darkness with darkness will not give light. It must know that lie begets lies. It must win the confidence of all for there to be a common ground on which we fight. Today, the sharp divisions between us will not let us believe anything or agree on anything. Even colors as primary as white and black evoke debates and inflame passions. Some persons would join this fake news war with their party membership card dictating their weapons direction in their millions. We have persons who would argue that “it is not a lie if no one (around them) is hurt.” However, there are others – cynics, who would wonder why anyone would bother at all about truth in today’s world of useful lies.

Fatoumata: The war against fake news must be fought on all mountains and down all valleys – and must be won. The first step is for the physician to heal himself before coming out to deliver this health talk about the evil twins of fake news and hate speech. You cannot be hawking insecticides and yet claim you cannot hurt flies. The government must stop baking big, poisonous loaves of fake news daily if it will end small, medium, and big lies online. It importantly needs education and knowledge, not rude and crude policing and prison cells, to fight this war if it desires a win. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and all others are not weak, feeble, rebellious that can be closed down with stained, whimsical press releases. They are global behemoths that need informed engagements if we genuinely desire deliverance.