Then & Now | The trouble with fake news – and fake ‘fake news’ – the dissemination of doubt

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory over forgetting,” wrote Czech author Milan Kundera. This fact is vital when considering what happened in the past, how prior events continue to shape our lives today, and what gets remembered – or forgotten – and why.

During the recent political unrest in Hong Kong, widespread accusations that supposedly neutral, objective reporting was heavily biased towards the government became controversial news items of their own. Generally accepted “versions of events” have always depended heavily on who did the telling.

The tendency to deride anything inconvenient as “fake news” further clouds public debate, a crucial element of any lasting return to peace and order in Hong Kong. Local broadcaster TVB, in particular, came under sustained criticism for its allegedly biased coverage of the protests and its reporters were regularly derided by angry protesters.

In the 1950s, “mosquito press” was a local term for sensational, factually flimsy stories in rags (often subsidised by clandestine political funds) that provided the “fake news” of yesteryear. To counter their wilder exaggerations and control the “narrative”, government information services provision in Hong Kong was ramped up in the 60s and 70s. Widespread introduction of television helped; radio had served a similar function a few decades earlier. Otherwise isolated – and perhaps illiterate – groups clustered around a crackling wireless set and received public informa­tion crafted to official agendas.

Skewing perceptions to make a broader point is nothing new. General Douglas MacArthur’s dramatic landing at Leyte Gulf, in the Philippines, in 1944, during the closing stages of the Pacific war, was an early “fake news” moment. The picture of the American general wading ashore, in the famous “I have returned” image, was staged for the cameras with the conquering hero far away from enemy bullets.