Qatar National Library (QNL) hosted “Truth Matters: The Era of Fake News,” a panel discussion on the way so-called “fake news” is being used in the current political climate to manipulate political agendas and what should be done about it. The event was the first in a series of planned public panels hosted by QNL.
Panelists included Roger Cohen of The New York Times; Roly Keating, CEO of the British Library; Charles Henry, President of the Council on Library and Information Resources; and Maggie Salem, Executive Director of Qatar Foundation International. The panel was moderated by Samer Shehata, Professor of Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma.
Roger, a longtime journalist, opened the session with an exploration of what he called the “Great Disorientation,” as governments and malicious parties use social media and the ability to rapidly spread disinformation to assault the truth.
“In our age, velocity trumps veracity. The denial of fake news moves much slower than the fake news itself, and by the time the denial comes out, people have moved on,” he said.
“We are living in a time of shattered assumptions. However, I don’t know how a hyper-connected world can’t end up becoming a freer one,” he said. “Libraries such as this are so important, because only by reading and learning can children develop the media literacy that will enable them to differentiate between the truth and fake news.”
Though disinformation is not a new strategy, the power of social media to quickly spread fake news is a major contributor to the assault on truth, noted Salem. “We are seeing an extremeness of fake news, and I think social media is an accelerator,” she said. “We’ve always lied to each other, and governments have used disinformation to target their own people, usually in relation to a war or conflict. But social media has accelerated that.”
Keating pointed to institutions such as QNL has bastions of truth in the face of fake news, saying: “It is meaningful in the best sense to be debating this topic here today. Libraries are the guarantors of the truths we are talking about; they don’t get caught up in the velocity. Institutions like QNL are an antidote to the assault of fake news.”
Indeed, added Henry, libraries have an important role in changing the way people consume and analyze the increasing amount of information to which they are exposed. “The responsibility lies with us to figure out what the truth is, and why. That requires a far more vigorous reading of information—not just words on a page, but also the images, the context, the source. It falls to libraries to help show us how to do that.”
The panel was followed by a Q&A session with members of the public.
