Ramsha Jahangir on coda reports on the growing phenomenon of fake news in Pakistan:
“With clapping hands and cheering crowds, with beating hearts and smiling faces, international cricket is back in Pakistan,” said a man, dressed in a cricket jersey, to camera. The three-minute video was uploaded to the Facebook account of a news organization called CJ Post, which has 316,000 followers, and was posted hundreds of times on Twitter.
There was only one problem: CJ Post is not a real news outlet and the presenter is not a journalist, but an actor.
“Andrew Hamilton,” who has appeared in multiple videos shared by CJ Post, is a fictional newsreader played by a Cuban-born American man hired on the freelance platform, Fiverr.com.
Fake news, fake newscaster. But a real company providing the service. The goal?
According to Jack Stubbs, director of investigations at Graphika, such practices help PR companies to further their client agendas while preserving some degree of anonymity. “Outsourcing the work is often easier and safer for political actors who want to remain one step removed from the hands-on-keyboard operation.”
“All this shows how political groups can trade on the values of a free press to covertly advance their own interests,” he added.
AlphaPro’s clients include the Pakistan military’s media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), state-owned Chinese infrastructure firms, NGOs, universities and other government agencies.
That Pakistan’s military is involved is unsurprising but chilling. The Pakistani military is often an important element of the political scene. I wonder how important they think that the news be authentic in Pakistan, and I’m guessing Not very.
And what’s the business ethics of the company’s that produce these fake newscasts?
