I'm not ashamed to admit that I went on a loop yesterday. I've been scratching my head for hours in a fruitless attempt to pick a topic for today's comment. Because, for God's sake!, this is a newspaper and everything in it must have a fresh informational occasion, for example why Daniel Mitov gave up being foreign minister. And as my eyes darted here and there through the postings on the web, suddenly, with a squealing of tires, I was nailed on the words: “…it could also take away our freedom, our democracy, and even the planet…“
Brew, don't let him see it! How do you take a planet, people?! I widened my confused gaze to take in the entire sentence: “False information robs us of our money, our health, but it can also rob us of our freedom, our democracy, and even the planet.
Can you imagine! You open another website, you read: “They can't arrest Zhivko Kotsev, you changed your social security number last week” and – Poof! – the planet disappears. And it doesn't even disappear, but they take it away from you, which is much more humiliating.
With the quoted sentence begins an article, in itself too puzzling – here is the fresh information occasion. The title is “Citizens of Pazardzhik discussed the pitfalls of fake news”, but it was not so much a discussion as a briefing conducted by two Mediapool journalists in front of as many as 60 Pazardzhik residents. From beginning to end, the article is just plain talk and one never gets to understand how to protect oneself from fake news. But we are reassured by the thought that in Pazardzhik there are already 60 people aged 19 (students from the Professional High School of Mechano-Electrical Engineering, who are particularly vulnerable to fake news) to 70+ years old, who already know how to recognize a lie in the media and will hardly fall into the treacherous networks of the enemy.
The article looks more like a report on earmarked funds than a journalistic text. And if you make it to the end, you'll find that it really is a report, because it ends like this:
„In May, the Mediapool team will visit Kyustendil and Sandanski. During the summer months - from July to September, 4 meetings are planned - in Shumen, Varna, Ruse and Silistra.
The series of seminars are part of the media literacy project "Be MediaWise Bulgaria" of the world famous American journalism institute "Poynter" and its international digital media literacy initiative "MediaWise".
The project targets different population groups – pupils, students, adult citizens, as well as vulnerable social groups. The other partners of "Poynter" in the Bulgarian project are the "Together in an Hour" Foundation and the American University in Bulgaria”.
In short, we are expected to accept at face value, as a message without any ulterior motives, an action financed by 5 (five) non-governmental organizations. So much for the specific case.
I have seen many texts, many media messages, and I can assure you that it is an exception for any of them to be absolutely objective and impartial, as they all try to present themselves. Even in the weather forecast there is a relationship.
A day or two ago I was told a headline by some American (I haven't read the text) that the war in Ukraine is lost and that there is no point in spending more wrong money. Wait, huh! For some lost, for others won!
When Venelin Petkov was still reading the news, he had a special face – he paused and pursed his lips in one corner. It will say: what I am telling you is not okay, it deserves censure, sympathy or some other emotional action on your part. When his face was glowing, it meant that everything was fine.
Even the circumstance of whether you will publish a news item or pass it by with significant silence as if nothing happened, or at least nothing that important happened, already determines the audience's attitude to the event.
No, there is no unbiased reporting of news. Each submission evokes an expected and sought-after reaction. But not this subtle manipulation is our subject, but the outright lie.
Let's put our hand on our heart and admit it: we are all becoming increasingly lazy recipients of information. I use this exaggerated formula to save the finding that we are getting dumber day by day with technical progress and the development of communication technologies. We stopped reading newspapers and magazines to watch television. We ditched the TV to read websites. We ended up ditching the sites to browse memes and scroll through those short tik tok clips.
All memes are manipulative, and some of them – blatantly false (isn't that an oxymoron?). For example, there is a whole group of memes that depict banknotes from the time of communism with the image of Georgi Dimitrov and list in text what we could have bought for one or two leva back then. Of course, no one remembers what the average salary was.
Another way to lie on social media is simply delightful in its brazen frankness. The mechanism is as follows: I make a site and call it something sensational. Then on this site I post whatever craziness I want and finally share this “publication” in the social network. So, I'm not telling you this, so even if I wanted to lie to you, I can't. I'm just letting you see what the media is saying. And quite a few people get hitched. Because it's like in that joke:
– Defendants, how could you so grossly lie to the people who trusted you!
– But, Mr. Judge, how could I lie to people who do not believe me!
I am afraid that no matter how many seminars, no matter how many tours are financed, they will not deal with this scourge, they will not eradicate the lie from the media space. Therefore, there is only one way out, and I said it a long time ago, and then they even jumped at me to scold me for killing freedom of speech and imposing fascist censorship. There are two steps. First, the painful and decades-long process of digitalization of the state administration is finally coming to an end. Everyone gets an ID card with a chip. This chip has it all – his health card, electronic signature, etc.
Is it difficult to implement something like this in social networks? To have an account, you register with your electronic signature. And then you are responsible for everything you write. Don't you want to answer? I, for one, very rarely say anything that I wouldn't shout from the rooftops in front of everyone. And I think that anyone who fights for anonymity is not doing a clean job – he started lying and slandering. This will eliminate all fake profiles and all trolls who clumsily push the props of the outsourcer for yellow pennies. All made up fake news sites will disappear. Let there be analysts and commentators from all countries – that's okay that's nice But without lies and fraud.
Freedom is commitment and discipline. This also looks like an oxymoron, but it is not. Freedom is the ability to choose the path to truth and follow it, however difficult it may be. Not everyone has this freedom, not everyone can walk the path to Truth. And to slip pink panties on your head and scream in front of everyone that from tomorrow you will eat through your ass and no one has the right to interfere with you – this is not freedom.
The fight for the truth begins from the heart, not from the seminars organized and financed by various NGOs, behind which you do not know who is sitting and what their goals are. Besides, I think that Carthage should be destroyed.