The Editor-in-Chief of an American fact-checking website, PolitiFact, Ms Angie Holan, has said viral misinformation, commonly called fake news, is dangerous to the integrity of elections.
Citing fake news for the January 6 Capitol attack in Washington, the expert in fact-checking noted that claims by people that their votes did not count could also compromise the democratic process.
She stated these during a virtual briefing for international journalists on the 2022 United States midterm elections organised by the United States Department of State, with the theme, ‘Election 2022: Fact-checking and countering misinformation.’
Responding to a question from our correspondent about how misinformation impacted the integrity of the 2020 US presidential election, Holan submitted that journalists would continue to deal with misinformation and fake news often repeated by elected officials.
She said, “I think that the biggest problem we have faced as fact-checkers since 2020 are the claims that we fact-checked about election integrity; so was the 2020 election fair, was there election fraud?
“Former President Donald Trump has said multiple times without evidence that he won that election. I think all the fact-checkers have rejected that contention, as have many other knowledge authorities in the US, so the courts have rejected it, many of his own Republican Party have rejected it.
But it did create a lot of discussion about how elections are conducted, how people register to vote.”
“And the reason it’s so, just, like, dangerous for democracy is that if people don’t believe their votes count, then the whole democratic process is compromised. It’s really – it’s very pernicious misinformation,” Holan, who also serves on the advisory board of the International Fact-Checking Network, stated.
On how journalists can sidestep fake news, she said it was important to use authoritative sources while keeping their biases out of reporting.
“I think it’s more important than ever to go back to authoritative news sources. So, I am very skeptical about getting news from social media. I just think it is not a good strategy,” she affirmed.
While agreeing with Holan, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of FactCheck.org, Dr Kathleen Jamieson, urged reporters to abide by journalists’ norms that could help protect them from human biases.
The leading expert on the science of communication and countering misinformation stated, “So fact-checkers are not pontifical. Fact-checkers are not offering authority judgments based on their assessment as individuals. Fact-checkers are making an argument and offering evidence.”
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