Radio-Canada has its “decipherers”, the Agence Science-Presse, its “rumor detector”, the newspaper The worldits “decoders”… Fact checking, fact checking in bad French, has been adopted by most major media around the world for around ten years. The election of Donald Trump, then the pandemic, kept journalists who have made the fight against fake news their specialty busy. But Is this type of journalism really effective in setting the record straight with an audience vulnerable to misinformation?
More or less, according to the different studies on the subject, as reported in October 2020 by the German media Deutsche Welle. Rather, it is demonstrated that in a context as polarized as an electoral campaign, there is little to shake deeply rooted beliefs or opinions. Even when they are contradicted by a journalistic article which provides clear evidence.
“There are people who will never believe us, no matter what we say. Even if we deny a conspiracy theory, they will just be happy to believe it even more, because they are convinced that we are propaganda agents in the service of the government. But that’s not the majority. There are people who rely on our work. The false information we are looking at is often sent to us by members of the public. This is news that they see circulating on social networks, and they ask us to verify whether it is true or false,” underlines journalist Jeff Yates of the show Decryptors.
In its podcast, in its TV show or even on the Radio-Canada website, the team of Decryptors uncovers false information of all kinds. Among the lot, there are hoaxes that especially make you smile, like the famous image generated by artificial intelligence of Pope Francis in a large white quilted coat à la Puff Daddy. But the Decryptors also attack major conspiracy theories, often knowingly fueled for political purposes, of the type of thesis defended by QAnon, popular among supporters of Donald Trump, which associates the elites of the Democratic Party with a vast network of pedophilia .
Some conspiracies seem so preposterous, so marginal, that one might wonder why a team of journalists takes the trouble to focus on them in order to deny them. What is the point of caring about those who believe the Earth is flat or who claim that the COVID-19 vaccine has a chip linked to 5G?
“It’s true that the media has sometimes made a spectacle of some of the extreme theories. But we, our goal, Decryptors, it has never been about laughing at people who believe in it. We rather say to ourselves that it is important to be interested in it, because unfortunately, yes, there are people who believe in it and there could be an escalation in their radicalism,” responds Jeff Yates, who is a journalist in verification of made for 10 years.
Change of tone
In 2014, two years before the election of Donald Trump popularized the expression ” fake news », Jeff Yates was a pioneer by launching the Viral Inspector blog on the website of the defunct newspaper Metro. In an especially humorous tone, he had fun dismantling implausible and generally quite harmless news, but which nevertheless received a certain response on the Web.
The phenomenon of disinformation has since grown. The deterioration of the political climate in the United States has contributed greatly to this. Then, the pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine, and now, that in the Middle East. Fake news is no laughing matter today, and fact-checking has taken on a much more serious tone as a result.
“At first it was very light. The first topic of the Viral Inspector was a fake news story which said that Caesar “the man who talks to dogs” had died. Back then, people created fake news to get more clicks on their site and make money. There was no ulterior political motive. Quebec somewhat escaped this first wave of fake news, because the market was too small for it to pay to invent news. But things really changed during the pandemic. Now disinformation is internationalized. The same theories that we find in the United States and France will also find their followers here,” notes Jeff Yates.
Risky Business
Independent journalist Camille Lopez has also been at the forefront of the evolution of fact-checking. When Jeff Yates left the newspaper Metro pFor Radio-Canada, she succeeded him in the Viral Inspector section. She then made fact-checking her specialty, “her beat ”, as we say in journalistic jargon. During the pandemic, Camille Lopez was in great demand, collaborating with different media, such as News and Noovo.
Then, when the crisis ended, she felt the need to distance herself from this type of journalism. “I was exhausted. I felt alone, as I was a freelance journalist. I didn’t have a team with me, like the Decryptors. To tell people “here are the facts”, it was a lot of pressure for a single person,” confides Camille Lopez, who received threats as part of her work.
A far-right activist was also found guilty in 2019 of having made hateful comments targeting her following the publication of an article. In the end, this “ beat » caused him a lot of stress. In hindsight, was it worth it?
“I never thought that the fact checking could change the opinion of someone who deeply believed false information. On the other hand, it is essential for those who doubt. If someone hears, for example, that there is a pink elephant walking around the Vatican, they will Google “pink elephant and Vatican”. If no one has fact-checked this information, he will come across the false news and he will perhaps believe it. But if I write an article on this subject to say that it is not true, at least there is a good chance that the person will come across my text,” argues Camille Lopez.
The journalist is convinced that fact-checking is not a fashion; it is a journalistic genre which will always have its raison d’être, at least as long as there is false information being conveyed on social networks. And the phenomenon is unfortunately not about to fade away with the rise of artificial intelligence.