Europe want to crack down on fake news. But one person’s fake news is another’s democratic dissent.
Europe want to crack down on fake news. But one person’s
fake news is another’s democratic dissent.
By Michael Birnbaum April 25 at 5:12 PM
BRUSSELS — The European Union on Thursday will unveil a
strategy for fighting fake news that could be a model for Western nations, but
already it has run into trouble defining the line between disinformation and
dissent.
The new E.U. proposals will encourage voluntary pledges
from Facebook and others to highlight the sources of information they feature
and to promote content from credible media outlets. The E.U. also wants to push
news literacy education and to fund private fact-checking organizations that
subscribe to standards of political independence and objectivity.
Other countries, including the United States, are also
cooperating with each other to combat fake news. France, Germany and Italy are
working on national plans.
But a separate E.U. effort to combat foreign interference
illustrates what can go awry.
The E.U.’s East Stratcom Task Force compiled a hall of
shame of 3,800 news articles it says reflect Kremlin attempts to influence
political discussions in the West. Last month, however, the task force made an
embarrassing about-face after three Dutch news outlets complained they were
singled out because they quoted people out of step with the European
mainstream.
“It’s a reminder of how really difficult it is, and
potentially problematic, if public authorities take it upon themselves to be
arbiters of truth,” said Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of research at the
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, who
advised the E.U. on its new proposals.
The task force cited each of the three Dutch outlets for
promoting a dark view, advanced by the Kremlin, of Ukrainian corruption and
alleged fascism.
One article, published by the Post Online, conveyed that
“Ukraine is an oligarch state with no independent media” and that “the
resistance army, which killed thousands of Polish Jews during the Second World
War, is still respected,” the task force wrote on its website, EUvsDisinfo.eu.
In fact, the article was summarizing a lecture delivered
by a journalist who had spent time in Ukraine.
The Post Online editor Bert Brussen said his publication
was targeted because Brussels dislikes critics of its pro-Ukrainian policies.
“For us, it was easy to show the world this is how it
happens: You write something negative about Ukraine, you do everything right,
they black-label it as fake news,” said Brussen, whose website regularly
skewers centrist Dutch politicians and mainstream journalists who, he said,
cover up problems with Muslims and migration.
In a second case, the task force appeared to take
literally the views expressed in a tongue-in-cheek piece — an apparent
byproduct of an article that was flagged by a non-Dutch speaker using Google
Translate to search for evidence of Kremlin bias.
The task force has a staff of 14 with just three people
working full time on the database, and it relies on volunteers across Europe to
identify articles of concern. All three Dutch articles were sent in by
Ukrainian activists, none of whom speak Dutch.
The news outlets — the Post Online, GeenStijl, a
far-right news blog, and De Gelderlander, a regional newspaper — complained
they had no notice before they were included in the database and had no clear
way to appeal.
After they filed a lawsuit, the E.U. backed down,
removing the three articles from its database and softening how it refers to
outlets that publish what it says is disinformation.
“Some of the things did get lost in translation,” said
Maja Kocijancic, a spokeswoman for the European External Action Service, the
foreign-policy arm of the European Commission that oversees the task force.
“What they do as a team is done in a very transparent
way. This in no way interferes with freedom of expression and freedom of
speech,” she said.
But damage was already done. After the Dutch outlets
filed their complaint, sympathetic Dutch lawmakers forced a debate in their
national parliament. A motion to send their interior minister to Brussels and
push to strip the task force of its funding passed a voice vote with wide
support from political parties.
“Addressing fake news is very important, but what is fake
news?” asked Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, a lawmaker from the ruling center-right
People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy who co-sponsored the bill. She said
she thought it was appropriate for governments to intervene when foreign actors
try to undermine democracies.
But when local newspapers report on meetings, she said,
“then you are getting involved in the content of media. And I think that is
super dangerous.”
The concerns extend beyond the Netherlands.
“The lack of methodology has been opening the door to
abuses of expression,” said Alberto Alemanno, a law professor at HEC Paris, a
business school, who filed a separate complaint about the task force’s work.
“They are clashing with the right of the self-determination of readers, of
listeners.”
Despite the criticism, the task force retains E.U.
backing. It recently won a $1.5 million budget increase, and at a meeting of
the E.U.’s 28 foreign ministers this month, it was singled out for unanimous
support — including from the Dutch government.
Members of the task force are not allowed by their
superiors to speak out publicly, a restriction that hampers their ability to
respond quickly to charges. Spokeswoman Kocijancic said the rule ensures their
messages are part of the broader foreign policy strategy of the European Union.
An official familiar with the group’s plans said members
want to use some of the increased funds to pay for better and more standardized
vetting of the coverage they monitor. They may also shift focus away from
countries such as the Netherlands, where sensitivities about government
oversight of journalism is high, toward more direct monitoring of the
Russian-language media, said the official, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to explain internal thinking at the task force.
“The core of the issue is the resources,” said Jakub
Janda, the director of the Prague-based European Values think tank, which is
among the most active groups that flag possible disinformation for inclusion in
the E.U. database. He said that Russian efforts to discredit the British
government’s account of the nerve agent attack against ex-spy Sergei Skripal in
Salisbury, England, last month help highlight the need for a public project to
fight Kremlin narratives.
Private groups do similar work, but the E.U. task force
sends an important message, Janda said.
“It shows that this whole issue of Russian disinformation
is a major national security issue,” he said. “It’s an official database, which
is guaranteed by an E.U. institution.”
Quentin Ariès contributed to this report.
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