Quote of the day 31st July 2018

“We are facing nothing less than a crisis in our democracy, based on the systematic manipulation of data to support the relentless targeting of citizens, without their consent, by campaigns of disinformation and messages of hate.”


(Damian Collins MP, Conservative chairman of the House of Commons' all-party Culture, Media and Sport select committee.

He was speaking about the committee's interim report on "Disinformation and Fake News," which calls for updated rules for elections and referenda which take better account of the way social media campaigns now operate and better education about how reliable and truthful online information is - or all too often isn't.)

Comments

Jim said…
actually if you look at it all, you will get a far better picture of things than you will find, or wont find, on the Legacy media.
8:55 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Both social media and the more traditional media contain a vast amount of information, some that is accurate and some that is not, some opinion that is reasonable and some that is daft, some things offered with integrity and some which is malicious.

Uncritical acceptance of everything you read in either is a recipe for disaster.

Both the law of libel, and rules for balance during elections in respect of the more traditional media are far more up-to-date than those for social media, which appear to be completely ineffective.
3:41 am
Anonymous said…
Brexit happened because of decades of "Disinformation and Fake News" peddled by the right wing traditional media and people like Damian Collins MP refusing to call it out as such.
6:42 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
There's an element of truth in the first half of that anonymous quote although if we are really trying to be honest there was a lot of disinformation and fake news on both the pro- and anti-EU sides of the argument even in the decades before the referendum.

I would argue that Brexit happened because the "Leave" campaign managed to persuade a lot of very disaffected people that voting "Leave" was the way to let "the establishment" know that they were unhappy.

Think you will find Damian was one of the people who did call out some of the fake news.
8:37 am
Anonymous said…
British bureaucrats do a good enough job of fxxking up Britain without the need to the help of European ones.
8:50 am
Chris Whiteside said…
I think that comment is representative of the views of a lot of leave voters.

And although I voted Remain - after weeks of agonising about how to vote - I don't think people who think that way are all idiots or racists either.

Many of the criticisms of the EU made in the press were untrue or unfair, but others were not. There were plenty of legitimate arguments on both sides.
4:06 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more