1 00:00:02,640 --> 00:00:08,320 On September the 17th 1903, The Daily Telegram shared a sad story 2 00:00:08,320 --> 00:00:12,280 with its readers in Clarksburg, West Virginia. 3 00:00:14,040 --> 00:00:19,320 A dispute over a pet dog between two immigrant miners 4 00:00:19,320 --> 00:00:21,120 had led to a tragedy. 5 00:00:21,120 --> 00:00:24,000 This programme contains some strong language. 6 00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:25,320 GUNSHOT 7 00:00:25,320 --> 00:00:28,240 It was one of the miners who took the bullet, 8 00:00:28,240 --> 00:00:31,760 a man called Mejk Swenekafew. 9 00:00:34,480 --> 00:00:38,640 The next day, a rival publication, The Clarksburg Daily News, 10 00:00:38,640 --> 00:00:43,720 also printed this heart-rending story of the dog and the shot Slav 11 00:00:43,720 --> 00:00:46,640 but, in fact, they'd been caught in a brilliant trap laid 12 00:00:46,640 --> 00:00:48,400 by their competitor. 13 00:00:48,400 --> 00:00:52,240 The Clarksburg Telegram had long suspected The Clarksburg Daily News 14 00:00:52,240 --> 00:00:56,440 of stealing their stories, so they'd simply made this one up 15 00:00:56,440 --> 00:00:58,280 and put it in as bait. 16 00:00:59,960 --> 00:01:05,720 Just read the victim's name backwards, "we fake news". 17 00:01:07,960 --> 00:01:10,000 The ruse worked brilliantly. 18 00:01:12,600 --> 00:01:16,440 So, none of it happened, and no animals were harmed 19 00:01:16,440 --> 00:01:18,840 in the faking of this story. 20 00:01:18,840 --> 00:01:22,960 But what it does show us is that fake news was a problem 21 00:01:22,960 --> 00:01:27,280 long before our own uncertain and confused times. 22 00:01:28,600 --> 00:01:34,280 They are the fake, fake, disgusting news. 23 00:01:34,280 --> 00:01:37,120 In this programme, I want to see if we can learn 24 00:01:37,120 --> 00:01:41,440 any lessons about today's fake news crisis from earlier eras, 25 00:01:41,440 --> 00:01:46,200 when new media and new technology led to new levels of lying. 26 00:01:47,400 --> 00:01:50,960 It was vastly sensationalised and overblown and it 27 00:01:50,960 --> 00:01:54,800 had a sometimes malign influence. 28 00:01:54,800 --> 00:01:57,880 I'm heading to the nation that pioneered mass-market news 29 00:01:57,880 --> 00:02:01,200 in the 19th century, and also the 21st-century's 30 00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:02,960 information wars. 31 00:02:02,960 --> 00:02:05,320 There's just so much evil! I'm not trying to... 32 00:02:05,320 --> 00:02:09,160 If you look up my name, it's disgusting what appears. 33 00:02:09,160 --> 00:02:12,200 And people get hurt from these things. 34 00:02:12,200 --> 00:02:17,640 I'm looking to history to figure out what motivates fake news. 35 00:02:17,640 --> 00:02:21,400 I am destroying America one fake news article at a time. 36 00:02:21,400 --> 00:02:24,640 From propaganda and paranoia... 37 00:02:24,640 --> 00:02:28,920 It's easy to dress up fake news to make it look as real as possible. 38 00:02:28,920 --> 00:02:31,400 ..to profit and politics. 39 00:02:31,400 --> 00:02:34,720 President Trump is a total and complete dipshit. 40 00:02:38,920 --> 00:02:41,840 One thing I can promise you, all the news coming 41 00:02:41,840 --> 00:02:46,240 up in this programme will be fake, and that's the truth. 42 00:02:55,360 --> 00:03:00,160 Back in August 1835, New Yorkers were thrilled 43 00:03:00,160 --> 00:03:02,280 by a series of newspaper articles 44 00:03:02,280 --> 00:03:05,880 headlined "great astronomical discoveries". 45 00:03:08,080 --> 00:03:11,240 The reports described how a scientist had built 46 00:03:11,240 --> 00:03:15,640 the world's largest telescope and trained it on the moon. 47 00:03:17,040 --> 00:03:22,400 The surface of the moon was clearly made of basaltic rock, 48 00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:28,240 but profusely covered with a flower of deepest red, 49 00:03:28,240 --> 00:03:32,200 and there are herds of miniature bison. 50 00:03:33,560 --> 00:03:39,720 Those quadrupeds were sometimes hunted by flying man-bats 51 00:03:39,720 --> 00:03:44,200 and, naturally, the moon was also home to unicorns. 52 00:03:45,640 --> 00:03:48,040 At this point, dear viewer, you may have rumbled 53 00:03:48,040 --> 00:03:50,200 that this was fake news. 54 00:03:50,200 --> 00:03:53,240 It's very easy, looking back from the 21st century, 55 00:03:53,240 --> 00:03:57,080 to feel smug about how much smarter we are than our ancestors, 56 00:03:57,080 --> 00:04:00,280 but remember, this was an age of constant scientific invention 57 00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:04,000 and new discoveries, and it was years before man 58 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:06,840 would set foot on the moon. 59 00:04:06,840 --> 00:04:10,960 That is, if you believe that NASA mission DID go to the moon. 60 00:04:15,280 --> 00:04:20,400 The story was serialised over six days, with new revelations on each, 61 00:04:20,400 --> 00:04:25,160 including some salacious details about lunar lovemaking. 62 00:04:26,840 --> 00:04:30,160 Crowds thronged here, to the offices of the newspaper 63 00:04:30,160 --> 00:04:34,760 that broke the story, eager for each fresh new day's instalment. 64 00:04:34,760 --> 00:04:38,640 One eyewitness commented on the "almost universal impression 65 00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:41,360 "and expression of the multitude, 66 00:04:41,360 --> 00:04:45,520 "that of confident wonder and insatiable credence." 67 00:04:45,520 --> 00:04:47,120 They were fooled! 68 00:04:49,600 --> 00:04:52,960 Duping large numbers of people all at the same time, 69 00:04:52,960 --> 00:04:56,840 like this, had only just become possible. 70 00:04:56,840 --> 00:05:02,920 1830s New York was the birthplace of modern mass-market news media, 71 00:05:02,920 --> 00:05:06,520 and the moon story ran in the world's first example 72 00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:08,720 of what we'd call a tabloid. 73 00:05:10,160 --> 00:05:13,280 A paper with a very appropriate name. 74 00:05:16,440 --> 00:05:20,040 I know, it's unthinkable that any publication called The Sun 75 00:05:20,040 --> 00:05:23,560 wouldn't be scrupulously accurate in its reporting. 76 00:05:23,560 --> 00:05:27,200 The New York Sun was a product of new technology, 77 00:05:27,200 --> 00:05:30,680 the steam-powered printing press, and because the paper was cheaply 78 00:05:30,680 --> 00:05:35,320 mass-produced, it was priced at a sixth of the cost of most rivals, 79 00:05:35,320 --> 00:05:38,760 just one cent, and, in another innovation, 80 00:05:38,760 --> 00:05:41,200 it was sold on the city streets. 81 00:05:42,480 --> 00:05:47,400 The Sun offers a new kind of news for a new readership, 82 00:05:47,400 --> 00:05:52,440 working-class people, urban people who didn't care about politics. 83 00:05:52,440 --> 00:05:55,320 These are people who were not used to having a newspaper central 84 00:05:55,320 --> 00:06:00,520 to their lives. And The Sun gave them news in a small, cheap format 85 00:06:00,520 --> 00:06:02,720 that they could just pick up and buy. 86 00:06:02,720 --> 00:06:06,960 And did The Sun mind what they printed was not 87 00:06:06,960 --> 00:06:08,720 necessarily true? 88 00:06:08,720 --> 00:06:11,560 Well, they didn't and neither did their readers. Yup. 89 00:06:11,560 --> 00:06:14,840 The Sun drew them in as a kind of a game - 90 00:06:14,840 --> 00:06:17,600 "Read this story, decide for yourselves, 91 00:06:17,600 --> 00:06:19,000 "it doesn't really matter." 92 00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:22,520 What was more important was people in the taverns and in the streets 93 00:06:22,520 --> 00:06:25,280 were discussing it, "Did you see that? Do you believe it or not?" 94 00:06:25,280 --> 00:06:27,440 and then they would have debates and fights, 95 00:06:27,440 --> 00:06:29,960 and that was really what it was all about. 96 00:06:31,600 --> 00:06:35,880 The Sun claimed to have obtained its facts about life on the moon 97 00:06:35,880 --> 00:06:41,400 from an obscure scientific journal. But after a week of "lunacy", 98 00:06:41,400 --> 00:06:45,920 the New York Herald gleefully printed a report of its own. 99 00:06:45,920 --> 00:06:48,760 The Sun's source didn't exist. 100 00:06:48,760 --> 00:06:51,480 They'd made the whole thing up. 101 00:06:51,480 --> 00:06:54,520 The Sun, said its rival newspaper, 102 00:06:54,520 --> 00:06:59,800 "is impudent, unprincipled, mercenary and low-bred", and worst of all, 103 00:06:59,800 --> 00:07:02,400 "it tells untruths for money." 104 00:07:02,400 --> 00:07:04,400 Can you believe it? 105 00:07:06,040 --> 00:07:09,200 But The Sun was laughing all the way to the bank. 106 00:07:09,200 --> 00:07:13,280 With the moon story, it achieved the highest circulation figures 107 00:07:13,280 --> 00:07:16,640 on Earth, and spin-off pamphlets and engravings 108 00:07:16,640 --> 00:07:19,360 were hugely profitable, too. 109 00:07:19,360 --> 00:07:23,440 Not bad for a paper that was less than two years old. 110 00:07:25,920 --> 00:07:29,720 It was the first great example of one of the enduring motives 111 00:07:29,720 --> 00:07:33,640 for faking news - lies sell. 112 00:07:34,880 --> 00:07:37,600 The public doesn't just want to be informed, 113 00:07:37,600 --> 00:07:40,280 it also wants to be entertained. 114 00:07:41,880 --> 00:07:44,680 It's also cheaper to make things up, 115 00:07:44,680 --> 00:07:46,960 rather than find things out, 116 00:07:46,960 --> 00:07:49,880 which the proprietors of America's 117 00:07:49,880 --> 00:07:51,960 new popular press loved. 118 00:07:51,960 --> 00:07:54,520 And they soon discovered fake news 119 00:07:54,520 --> 00:07:56,840 could help in the pursuit of... 120 00:07:56,840 --> 00:08:00,000 BELL RINGS 121 00:07:56,840 --> 00:08:00,000 ..grander ambitions. 122 00:08:03,840 --> 00:08:06,840 In the 1890s, Joseph Pulitzer 123 00:08:06,840 --> 00:08:09,520 was the world's most powerful media mogul. 124 00:08:11,240 --> 00:08:14,720 This contemporary cartoon shows the kind of news 125 00:08:14,720 --> 00:08:18,120 with which he made his name. 126 00:08:18,120 --> 00:08:21,640 Later in life, to atone for this sensationalism, 127 00:08:21,640 --> 00:08:24,440 he used some of the fortune it had made him to fund 128 00:08:24,440 --> 00:08:27,960 the Pulitzer Prize for better-quality journalism. 129 00:08:30,680 --> 00:08:34,560 Aspiring to similar wealth and influence was a younger, 130 00:08:34,560 --> 00:08:37,520 devilish rival, William Randolph Hearst. 131 00:08:39,600 --> 00:08:43,280 His name lives on to this day, in a publishing empire 132 00:08:43,280 --> 00:08:48,000 and in New York's Hearst Tower, which his fortune paid for. 133 00:08:49,760 --> 00:08:53,840 William Hearst imitated Joseph Pulitzer's successful formula 134 00:08:53,840 --> 00:08:58,040 of crime and celebrity, popular, attention-grabbing stories 135 00:08:58,040 --> 00:09:02,280 under lurid headlines, a sort of 19th-century click bait, 136 00:09:02,280 --> 00:09:05,200 but he also felt there might be a market for stories 137 00:09:05,200 --> 00:09:07,880 of adventure and patriotism. 138 00:09:07,880 --> 00:09:12,040 What could really boost circulation, he decided, was a good war. 139 00:09:15,880 --> 00:09:19,880 During the 1890s, Cuban rebels were fighting for independence 140 00:09:19,880 --> 00:09:23,120 from their colonial rulers, the Spanish Empire. 141 00:09:24,760 --> 00:09:29,320 Hearst's New York Journal called for a war on Spain, 142 00:09:29,320 --> 00:09:32,840 and to drum up support he sent staff to Cuba. 143 00:09:32,840 --> 00:09:36,160 Among them, one of America's leading illustrators, 144 00:09:36,160 --> 00:09:38,000 Frederic Remington. 145 00:09:41,440 --> 00:09:43,920 The artist spent much of his time in Havana, 146 00:09:43,920 --> 00:09:46,360 drinking cocktails in his hotel. 147 00:09:46,360 --> 00:09:49,480 He telegraphed Hearst, saying, "Everything is quiet, 148 00:09:49,480 --> 00:09:52,360 "there's no trouble here, there will be no war. 149 00:09:52,360 --> 00:09:55,360 "I wish to return. Remington." 150 00:09:55,360 --> 00:09:59,600 Hearst is reported to have wired back, "Please remain. 151 00:09:59,600 --> 00:10:02,880 "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." 152 00:10:10,560 --> 00:10:13,920 Although there's no proof that this oft-repeated exchange 153 00:10:13,920 --> 00:10:18,960 actually occurred, Remington did produce a highly provocative image 154 00:10:18,960 --> 00:10:21,800 of the sort his proprietor demanded. 155 00:10:23,520 --> 00:10:27,520 On February the 12th 1897, Hearst's paper ran a story 156 00:10:27,520 --> 00:10:31,640 about Spanish officials boarding an American steamship and seizing 157 00:10:31,640 --> 00:10:35,680 a woman they suspected of spying for the Cuban rebels. 158 00:10:35,680 --> 00:10:38,520 She was then strip-searched. 159 00:10:40,360 --> 00:10:43,080 Pulitzer and Hearst were in a race to the bottom, 160 00:10:43,080 --> 00:10:46,640 and in this feature, page two in the Journal, 161 00:10:46,640 --> 00:10:48,160 Hearst had won. 162 00:10:48,160 --> 00:10:51,640 This is titillation masquerading as outrage 163 00:10:51,640 --> 00:10:54,920 and, of course, the readers loved it and there were serious questions 164 00:10:54,920 --> 00:10:58,280 asked in Congress. But what had actually happened 165 00:10:58,280 --> 00:11:01,200 was nothing like Remington's picture. 166 00:11:04,200 --> 00:11:08,760 The woman hadn't been searched on deck by a gang of rough men, 167 00:11:08,760 --> 00:11:13,160 but in a private cabin by one respectable older woman. 168 00:11:15,600 --> 00:11:19,920 Hearst himself had changed the crucial details of the report, 169 00:11:19,920 --> 00:11:22,040 prompting the journalist who filed it 170 00:11:22,040 --> 00:11:25,080 to vow never to work for the proprietor again. 171 00:11:27,400 --> 00:11:29,720 Even the reporter thought that he had gone too far. 172 00:11:29,720 --> 00:11:32,360 But Hearst didn't care? Hearst didn't care, Hearst never cared, 173 00:11:32,360 --> 00:11:35,600 and Hearst loved stories about ladies in danger, 174 00:11:35,600 --> 00:11:40,320 about lustful and horrifying foreigners of all kinds, 175 00:11:40,320 --> 00:11:43,760 and he sent his reporters there and kind of directed them 176 00:11:43,760 --> 00:11:45,800 what kind of stories they were supposed to get. 177 00:11:48,840 --> 00:11:53,800 This paddle steamer isn't in Cuba, by the way, it's on the Thames. 178 00:11:53,800 --> 00:11:56,560 Less Havana, more Kingston. 179 00:11:56,560 --> 00:11:59,160 Typical BBC - fake cruise. 180 00:12:03,440 --> 00:12:06,680 Another Cuban story, also set at sea, 181 00:12:06,680 --> 00:12:12,040 was used by both Hearst and Pulitzer to help tip America into war. 182 00:12:13,160 --> 00:12:14,960 EXPLOSION 183 00:12:19,040 --> 00:12:21,000 On February the 15th 1898, 184 00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:25,200 an explosion ripped apart an American warship called the Maine, 185 00:12:25,200 --> 00:12:27,480 which had been harboured near Havana, 186 00:12:27,480 --> 00:12:30,920 causing the loss of 260 lives. 187 00:12:30,920 --> 00:12:35,200 No evidence has ever been found that the Spanish were responsible, 188 00:12:35,200 --> 00:12:38,120 but in the papers, the reality that it was probably 189 00:12:38,120 --> 00:12:40,440 an accident got short shrift. 190 00:12:41,520 --> 00:12:44,600 In the Journal, there's no room for doubt. 191 00:12:44,600 --> 00:12:48,200 "The destruction of the warship Maine was the work of an enemy." 192 00:12:48,200 --> 00:12:51,600 But there's a fantastic bit of humbug in the small print. 193 00:12:51,600 --> 00:12:52,960 This is very tiny. 194 00:12:52,960 --> 00:12:56,560 It says, "The captain of the ship and the consul general both urge 195 00:12:56,560 --> 00:12:58,680 "that public opinion be suspended 196 00:12:58,680 --> 00:13:01,200 "until they've completed their investigation." 197 00:13:01,200 --> 00:13:03,280 Well, there's no chance of that happening, 198 00:13:03,280 --> 00:13:08,320 and everything here says "they did it" and it's incredibly successful. 199 00:13:08,320 --> 00:13:11,600 It's the first time the paper sold more than a million copies. 200 00:13:11,600 --> 00:13:15,120 MUSIC: The Stars And Stripes Forever 201 00:13:18,920 --> 00:13:21,800 Nine weeks later, Pulitzer and Hearst got the war 202 00:13:21,800 --> 00:13:23,600 they'd been clamouring for, 203 00:13:23,600 --> 00:13:29,440 and America defeated the Spanish Empire quickly and decisively. 204 00:13:29,440 --> 00:13:32,760 The patriotic hysteria whipped up by the press 205 00:13:32,760 --> 00:13:34,800 had massive consequences. 206 00:13:34,800 --> 00:13:38,200 1898 was the start of the USA's ascendancy 207 00:13:38,200 --> 00:13:40,880 into becoming a global superpower, 208 00:13:40,880 --> 00:13:45,000 yet the war that began all this might never have happened 209 00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:47,480 without the help of fake news. 210 00:13:51,280 --> 00:13:55,160 The nation that unleashed the power of fake news in the 19th century 211 00:13:55,160 --> 00:13:59,560 is also where more recent panic about the subject began. 212 00:13:59,560 --> 00:14:01,280 TRUMP: It's fake news, it's fake... 213 00:14:01,280 --> 00:14:03,840 I'm telling you, it's just fake news. 214 00:14:03,840 --> 00:14:06,920 It was during the last race for the White House that we started 215 00:14:06,920 --> 00:14:10,280 hearing so much about fake news. 216 00:14:10,280 --> 00:14:13,920 The winner's definition of the term, however, parts company 217 00:14:13,920 --> 00:14:16,320 with the usual meaning. 218 00:14:16,320 --> 00:14:19,200 When President Trump talks about fake news, 219 00:14:19,200 --> 00:14:22,080 which he has done more or less constantly since being elected 220 00:14:22,080 --> 00:14:27,560 in 2016, what he means is real news that he doesn't like. 221 00:14:27,560 --> 00:14:30,520 Your organisation is terrible. I'm not going to give you a question. 222 00:14:30,520 --> 00:14:34,840 Can you state categorically...? You are fake news. Sir... Go ahead. Can you state categorically that...? 223 00:14:34,840 --> 00:14:39,440 In Trump's topsy-turvy world, by denouncing real news as fake news, 224 00:14:39,440 --> 00:14:43,000 he and his supporters allow real fake news to flourish. 225 00:14:43,000 --> 00:14:45,360 Confused? You're meant to be. 226 00:14:47,760 --> 00:14:50,200 Trump tweets the phrase regularly 227 00:14:50,200 --> 00:14:53,720 as part of his war on the mainstream media, 228 00:14:53,720 --> 00:14:57,160 and a frequent target is The New York Times. 229 00:14:58,400 --> 00:15:02,200 Ironically, a paper that has long been renowned for its accuracy 230 00:15:02,200 --> 00:15:06,240 owes a massive debt to the fake news crisis of the 1890s. 231 00:15:07,800 --> 00:15:11,960 A man called Adolph Ochs was so horrified by the sensationalism 232 00:15:11,960 --> 00:15:14,000 of Pulitzer and Hearst, 233 00:15:14,000 --> 00:15:18,160 he purchased The Times to provide a more reliable alternative. 234 00:15:19,400 --> 00:15:23,520 It's now run by ex-BBC head Mark Thompson. 235 00:15:23,520 --> 00:15:26,200 Adolph Ochs bought the failing New York Times, 236 00:15:26,200 --> 00:15:32,080 it really was failing in the 1890s, with a vision of a different 237 00:15:32,080 --> 00:15:33,240 kind of journalism. 238 00:15:33,240 --> 00:15:35,800 It was going to be accurate, it was going to be serious, 239 00:15:35,800 --> 00:15:40,320 it was going to be accompanied by intelligent and civil opinion 240 00:15:40,320 --> 00:15:43,760 from every perspective, and it changed journalism. 241 00:15:43,760 --> 00:15:48,240 His vision was an idealistic one, but he made it work financially. 242 00:15:48,240 --> 00:15:52,520 To the surprise of a very cynical industry, there was a real call 243 00:15:52,520 --> 00:15:57,280 for it, and the story of real news has been a commercial success story 244 00:15:57,280 --> 00:15:58,760 for most of the time. 245 00:15:58,760 --> 00:16:02,880 But I'm interested because real news is under attack. 246 00:16:02,880 --> 00:16:06,760 At this moment in time, the President's trying to define you 247 00:16:06,760 --> 00:16:08,200 as fake news. 248 00:16:08,200 --> 00:16:11,000 Yeah, it's a very interesting and in some ways rather clever 249 00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:15,280 little trope by Donald Trump that, you know, you should doubt all news, 250 00:16:15,280 --> 00:16:21,320 that all of this comes from some agenda, and who's to say what's true 251 00:16:21,320 --> 00:16:24,400 and what's not true? They're not necessarily even trying to persuade 252 00:16:24,400 --> 00:16:26,320 people to believe their version, 253 00:16:26,320 --> 00:16:29,520 they're just trying to cast doubt on all of it. 254 00:16:29,520 --> 00:16:33,440 It's sort of an attack on the idea that we communally share a view 255 00:16:33,440 --> 00:16:34,880 of what might be true. 256 00:16:34,880 --> 00:16:37,080 You could argue that Donald Trump 257 00:16:37,080 --> 00:16:41,120 and some of the other populist leaders have decided that reality 258 00:16:41,120 --> 00:16:43,240 may not suit their purpose, 259 00:16:43,240 --> 00:16:45,960 and would therefore like to cast doubt on it. 260 00:16:45,960 --> 00:16:49,840 In the end, the best journalism is grounded on an idea 261 00:16:49,840 --> 00:16:52,560 that there are facts, that things actually happen, 262 00:16:52,560 --> 00:16:56,400 and that although, of course, every journalist brings some 263 00:16:56,400 --> 00:16:59,800 preconceptions to the party, notwithstanding that, 264 00:16:59,800 --> 00:17:05,160 you can do a pretty good job of reflecting the world as it is. 265 00:17:06,600 --> 00:17:09,440 When it comes to capturing the world as it is, 266 00:17:09,440 --> 00:17:13,280 the written word is only one of the available tools. 267 00:17:15,040 --> 00:17:19,400 Images have also long been used to represent reality, 268 00:17:19,400 --> 00:17:23,840 though with these, too, fakery is always a danger. 269 00:17:23,840 --> 00:17:27,160 At this memorial to the American Civil War, 270 00:17:27,160 --> 00:17:33,960 artistic tradition brings a familiar idealised heroism to its subject. 271 00:17:33,960 --> 00:17:37,720 But that conflict was also one of the first to be portrayed 272 00:17:37,720 --> 00:17:40,360 with a new technology. 273 00:17:40,360 --> 00:17:43,360 Since its invention in the 1830s, 274 00:17:43,360 --> 00:17:48,000 photography had promised a new standard of authenticity. 275 00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:51,600 War photographs, like these by Alexander Gardner, 276 00:17:51,600 --> 00:17:55,200 displayed an unprecedented level of realism. 277 00:17:55,200 --> 00:18:00,880 He took this photo in 1863, after the Battle of Gettysburg. 278 00:18:00,880 --> 00:18:05,360 It's a powerful shot, but this pioneering photojournalist 279 00:18:05,360 --> 00:18:08,560 thought he could achieve an even more potent image, 280 00:18:08,560 --> 00:18:13,240 so he and an assistant dragged the dead body of the Confederate soldier 281 00:18:13,240 --> 00:18:16,280 40 yards away from where he'd actually fallen, 282 00:18:16,280 --> 00:18:20,000 and rearranged it in a more dramatic setting. 283 00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:27,160 For extra pathos, the corpse's head has now been turned 284 00:18:27,160 --> 00:18:29,040 to face the camera. 285 00:18:30,800 --> 00:18:35,240 And that's not the fallen soldier's rifle pointing up to the heavens. 286 00:18:35,240 --> 00:18:39,040 It's a prop that Gardner carried around with him. 287 00:18:39,040 --> 00:18:41,440 To inspire pity in the viewer, 288 00:18:41,440 --> 00:18:43,280 he's composed the photo 289 00:18:43,280 --> 00:18:45,800 as if it were a painting. 290 00:18:45,800 --> 00:18:49,200 There was an understanding photography could be flexible. 291 00:18:49,200 --> 00:18:51,240 Nowadays, we wouldn't accept any of this. 292 00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:53,560 We would not, no, this would be definitely seen 293 00:18:53,560 --> 00:18:56,520 as an ethical violation, but at the time, 294 00:18:56,520 --> 00:19:01,320 people were learning the rules of photography of real situations. 295 00:19:02,520 --> 00:19:05,880 What was acceptable behaviour for photojournalists 296 00:19:05,880 --> 00:19:08,400 took decades to resolve. 297 00:19:08,400 --> 00:19:12,160 At a meeting of the Photographers' Association Of America, 298 00:19:12,160 --> 00:19:14,160 one speaker declared he sought, 299 00:19:14,160 --> 00:19:18,080 "Not literal but spiritual and eternal truth." 300 00:19:18,080 --> 00:19:22,000 He rejected what he called "the falseness of ultra realism" 301 00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:26,400 and confessed, "I admire legitimate faking, 302 00:19:26,400 --> 00:19:30,080 "faking which produces the results desired." 303 00:19:34,680 --> 00:19:37,280 But the photography of William Mumler, 304 00:19:37,280 --> 00:19:39,320 like this self-portrait, 305 00:19:39,320 --> 00:19:43,720 was felt by many to go way beyond legitimate faking. 306 00:19:45,080 --> 00:19:49,200 Look at the slightly blurry woman on the left. 307 00:19:49,200 --> 00:19:54,000 During the 1860s, when Gardner was rearranging Confederate corpses, 308 00:19:54,000 --> 00:19:57,720 Mumler opened studios in Boston and New York, 309 00:19:57,720 --> 00:20:02,040 where customers would sit for him, alone. 310 00:20:04,320 --> 00:20:07,960 But when Mumler delivered the prints, another figure appeared 311 00:20:07,960 --> 00:20:12,360 in the frame, a ghostly photo-bomber from beyond the grave, 312 00:20:12,360 --> 00:20:16,120 and many of Mumler's customers were convinced that the camera 313 00:20:16,120 --> 00:20:19,480 could detect what their own eyes could not - 314 00:20:19,480 --> 00:20:23,080 the presence of a dear, departed loved one. 315 00:20:26,720 --> 00:20:30,280 Since America was grieving on an unprecedented scale 316 00:20:30,280 --> 00:20:32,360 during the Civil War years, 317 00:20:32,360 --> 00:20:36,040 Mumler had no shortage of clients. 318 00:20:36,040 --> 00:20:39,320 Spiritualism was a growing movement at the time, 319 00:20:39,320 --> 00:20:45,040 and some thought his work offered scientific proof of the afterlife. 320 00:20:45,040 --> 00:20:49,200 He was using the mystification of a new technology, 321 00:20:49,200 --> 00:20:52,600 but it was definitely cheating, and he would go off and develop them 322 00:20:52,600 --> 00:20:55,080 and come back and say, "Look, here in this picture, 323 00:20:55,080 --> 00:20:58,200 "over your shoulder, you know who that is, don't you?" 324 00:20:58,200 --> 00:21:01,160 And the sitter would say, "Uncle Homer?" 325 00:21:01,160 --> 00:21:03,800 "Yes! Uncle Homer! It's Uncle Homer!" 326 00:21:03,800 --> 00:21:07,520 It was ludicrous, and that's where it becomes a little troubling, 327 00:21:07,520 --> 00:21:12,600 cos he preyed on people's real grief and desire and passion, and he made 328 00:21:12,600 --> 00:21:14,520 a lot of money from it. 329 00:21:17,320 --> 00:21:23,280 The New York authorities arrested Mumler and charged him with fraud. 330 00:21:23,280 --> 00:21:27,320 And he wasn't the only one put on trial in 1869. 331 00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:33,120 So was photography itself. 332 00:21:33,120 --> 00:21:37,560 The prosecution called a series of photographers who put forward 333 00:21:37,560 --> 00:21:39,600 nine different techniques 334 00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:42,880 by which Mumler could've achieved his results, 335 00:21:42,880 --> 00:21:46,160 and none of them were supernatural. 336 00:21:46,160 --> 00:21:51,040 Mumler's legal team called a large number of his satisfied customers, 337 00:21:51,040 --> 00:21:54,000 including a Supreme Court Judge. 338 00:21:54,000 --> 00:21:57,960 These people absolutely believed what the camera told them, 339 00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:01,440 and they saw no reason for the law to interfere. 340 00:22:01,440 --> 00:22:04,880 The prosecution hit back with a star witness, 341 00:22:04,880 --> 00:22:09,240 a man who'd made a fortune creating fake exhibits for his circuses, 342 00:22:09,240 --> 00:22:11,760 Phineas T Barnum. 343 00:22:11,760 --> 00:22:14,680 On the basis of "it takes one to know one", 344 00:22:14,680 --> 00:22:17,840 Barnum declared Mumler a charlatan, 345 00:22:17,840 --> 00:22:22,240 and he made a sensational photograph of his own. 346 00:22:25,800 --> 00:22:30,040 Hovering over Barnum's shoulder is President Lincoln, 347 00:22:30,040 --> 00:22:34,520 who had been assassinated four years previously. 348 00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:38,160 When the judge gave his verdict, he declared himself, 349 00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:42,680 "Morally convinced that trick and deception has been practised 350 00:22:42,680 --> 00:22:44,520 "by the prisoner." 351 00:22:44,520 --> 00:22:50,040 These visions of the afterlife were fake views but, legally, 352 00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:54,600 the prosecution had failed to prove which fraudulent technique 353 00:22:54,600 --> 00:23:00,880 Mumler had used, so, reluctantly, the judge had to dismiss the case. 354 00:23:04,040 --> 00:23:07,240 Yet even after the disgrace of the trial, 355 00:23:07,240 --> 00:23:11,040 Mumler still attracted select customers. 356 00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:14,160 Three years later, he was commissioned to take a portrait 357 00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:17,520 of Mary Lincoln, the widow of Abraham Lincoln, 358 00:23:17,520 --> 00:23:22,320 who, yes, you guessed it, made a posthumous appearance. 359 00:23:22,320 --> 00:23:26,840 Why would an intelligent woman believe this was an actual photo 360 00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:30,240 of her dead husband, given that Barnum had demonstrated 361 00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:35,440 in court how easy it was to fake this exact scenario? 362 00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:38,640 Presumably, she wanted to believe that the great man 363 00:23:38,640 --> 00:23:41,040 was still there to look after her. 364 00:23:41,040 --> 00:23:45,040 After the trauma of seeing him gunned down in the theatre, 365 00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:49,040 she must have wanted consolation from any source, 366 00:23:49,040 --> 00:23:51,560 however implausible. 367 00:23:51,560 --> 00:23:56,000 And that is the common thread with many fake news stories - 368 00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:02,240 people are more likely to believe a lie if they want it to be true. 369 00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:09,600 And just as Mumler hadn't been entirely discredited by the trial, 370 00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:14,040 photography hadn't been entirely vindicated either. 371 00:24:15,360 --> 00:24:18,800 "Who, henceforth, can trust the accuracy of a photograph?" 372 00:24:18,800 --> 00:24:22,040 wrote a shocked journalist from the New York World. 373 00:24:22,040 --> 00:24:25,760 "Photographs have been treasured in the belief they could not lie, 374 00:24:25,760 --> 00:24:29,200 "and now comes the revelation they can be made to lie, 375 00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:32,240 "and with a most deceiving exactness." 376 00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:38,480 In the age of Photoshop and selfie filters, 377 00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:41,760 most people are well aware of how easy it is to crop out 378 00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:47,160 unflattering details or smooth away blemishes from a still image. 379 00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:54,560 By contrast, for most of their history, moving pictures 380 00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:57,880 were seen as more trustworthy. 381 00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:01,280 You basically needed a Hollywood special effects budget 382 00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:04,000 to create convincing fakes. 383 00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:06,280 So, documentaries, for instance, 384 00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:09,120 just show you human life the way it really is. 385 00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:14,160 Obviously you would never find fakery on the BBC, 386 00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:17,080 and I would never mislead you. 387 00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:20,360 UPBEAT CLASSICAL MUSIC REMIX 388 00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:35,560 As you can see, I'm now ready for Strictly. 389 00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:43,080 And I think you'll agree I'm an obvious winner. 390 00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:54,360 OK, so I confess, and you may possibly have suspected, 391 00:25:54,360 --> 00:25:56,080 that wasn't me. 392 00:25:56,080 --> 00:26:00,640 The sequence you just saw was created by visual artist Eric Drass, 393 00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:03,320 who explores the effects of technology 394 00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:05,120 on our understanding of truth. 395 00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:13,200 So, this is created using a piece of software that learns your face, 396 00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:15,400 what's known as deepfake. 397 00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:18,200 The software itself comes from the internet, 398 00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:22,160 downloaded for free, and if you've got a teenager 399 00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:25,160 with a super-powerful gaming computer in their bedroom, 400 00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:28,160 that's just the kind of kit you need to do this kind of fakery. 401 00:26:28,160 --> 00:26:32,800 Right. Deepfake is generally used for pornographic clips. 402 00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:37,600 You take the face of a famous actress and you map it onto the body 403 00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:41,440 of a pornographic star and you send that out. 404 00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:42,640 Secret sex tape. 405 00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:45,880 Oh, well, I'm delighted you haven't decided to do that with it! 406 00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:49,480 It immediately seems to be, "Well, I can put someone in a compromising 407 00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:52,200 "position, I can blackmail someone"? Absolutely. 408 00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:55,840 Well, this one here of Obama... 409 00:26:55,840 --> 00:26:58,640 We're entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like 410 00:26:58,640 --> 00:27:01,960 anyone is saying anything at any point in time. 411 00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:04,960 For instance, they could have me say things like, 412 00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:08,400 "President Trump is a total and complete dipshit." 413 00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:13,280 The actor Jordan Peele is able to not only give a convincing voice, 414 00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:16,720 but he's able to manipulate the video footage of Obama to match. 415 00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:18,880 But how we move forward... 416 00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:21,480 in the age of information, 417 00:27:21,480 --> 00:27:23,480 is going to be the difference 418 00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:27,040 between whether we survive or whether we become some kind of 419 00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:28,840 fucked-up dystopia. 420 00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:32,680 Pretty effective. Is the dystopian vision the correct one? 421 00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:35,120 It's inevitably going to used for something really grim. 422 00:27:35,120 --> 00:27:37,880 That clip of Obama, we enjoy the fact that it sounds like him 423 00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:41,280 and looks like him, but we know it's not because of what he says, 424 00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:44,040 whereas if you make it something plausible, 425 00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:46,640 it's much more likely to spread. Yeah. 426 00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:50,560 We all live in our own filter bubbles and tend to share content 427 00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:54,200 that we agree with, so if I see a politician I hate 428 00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:57,240 saying something objectionable, I'm much more likely to pass it on 429 00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,280 to my friends and believe that it's true 430 00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:01,920 because my own world view is being supported. 431 00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:04,360 And do we have any defence against that? 432 00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:08,640 The best defence is to remain suspicious. 433 00:28:11,360 --> 00:28:15,000 But as we keep seeing, people often aren't suspicious 434 00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:17,480 about things they want to believe. 435 00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:20,800 And that helps explain the popularity of a particular type 436 00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:23,800 of fake news online. 437 00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:25,240 Here's an example. 438 00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:28,600 During 2016's American elections, 439 00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:31,080 the Pope endorsing Trump was the 440 00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:33,880 most shared news item on Facebook. 441 00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:37,840 It was written as a wind-up, but was so widely believed 442 00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:41,000 some even think it swung the election. 443 00:28:42,720 --> 00:28:47,080 This is worrying terrain for me because the defence used by several 444 00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:50,360 of the most controversial sources of fake news 445 00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:53,600 is that they are producing satire. 446 00:28:56,240 --> 00:28:58,240 One of the leading offenders, 447 00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:02,920 who keeps fictionally bumping off Hillary Clinton in ludicrous ways, 448 00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:07,520 is a former construction worker, called Christopher Blair. 449 00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:11,040 A purveyor of fake news, that's me. 450 00:29:11,040 --> 00:29:13,560 Right. I'm glad you're laughing. 451 00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:16,880 VOICEOVER: His most popular stories have been read by millions, 452 00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:20,880 including one reporting that Obama has made a fortune in royalties 453 00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:23,520 from the word "Obamacare". 454 00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:26,560 Every once in a while, a post will go viral. 455 00:29:26,560 --> 00:29:29,920 It means that the headline plus the featured image plus the story 456 00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:32,920 elicited an emotional response from a whole bunch of people, 457 00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:35,800 and if you get a million page views on something and you have ads, 458 00:29:35,800 --> 00:29:38,880 you're going to make some money on it. Do we make a lot of money? 459 00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:41,760 Sometimes. There have been times when I made a whole bunch of money. 460 00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:43,720 Typically, no, we make next to nothing. 461 00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:45,880 I'm interested in the people who read it. 462 00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:51,960 I make it my business to mess with not necessarily just people 463 00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:55,560 who have different political views, but political extremists 464 00:29:55,560 --> 00:29:58,760 on the other side, the "alt-right" is what we call them. 465 00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:01,240 OK, so tell me how you actually do it. 466 00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:06,920 So, you take Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, and attach something to it, 467 00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:11,680 a crime, an injury, a death, and add something as silly 468 00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:14,560 as possible to make sure that some reasonable person 469 00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:17,880 is going to be able to say, "I don't know about this." 470 00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:20,400 How do you feel about the people who do believe it? 471 00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:23,680 Because I'm terribly worried that you would put a story out 472 00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:27,320 and that becomes part of their world view, and you've done that. Right. 473 00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:29,800 Every article has the word "satire" in it. 474 00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,920 It's before the title, after the title again. 475 00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:35,440 The entire operation is satire. 476 00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:38,720 But why do they believe it, then? What is it? An emotional response? 477 00:30:38,720 --> 00:30:40,840 Confirmation bias, 100%. 478 00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:44,200 It's so easy to just pass something along that confirms 479 00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:46,040 what you believe. 480 00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:48,000 I'm serving them what they want. 481 00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:52,320 The number-one comment that we get on our pages, 482 00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:54,560 "I hope this is true." 483 00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:57,440 I'm still not entirely convinced that stories 484 00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:00,920 like these don't have real-world consequences, 485 00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:04,480 especially in our politically polarised times. 486 00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:07,840 Is your conscience clear? Oh, I sleep very well at night. 487 00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:13,080 I don't believe that I'm doing anything different from the people 488 00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:15,160 who sell the supermarket tabloids. 489 00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:17,680 Do you believe if there was, you know, the next election, 490 00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:20,520 and you were out there in force, you could change minds either way? 491 00:31:20,520 --> 00:31:23,680 No, I don't believe I can change minds. People who share my headlines 492 00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:26,800 out into cyberspace without reading them, without looking at them, 493 00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:29,480 things like that, they were going to vote for Donald Trump. 494 00:31:29,480 --> 00:31:32,720 They weren't sitting on some fence waiting for my satire to push them 495 00:31:32,720 --> 00:31:35,960 over to the dark side. That's not the way this works. 496 00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:38,360 Unfortunately, they are lower-information, 497 00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:41,280 lower-educated, ignorant people. 498 00:31:41,280 --> 00:31:43,880 My goal is to say, "Why are you so dumb?" 499 00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:52,360 Now, the magazine I edit has itself been accused of being fake news. 500 00:31:52,360 --> 00:31:55,320 An American university put us on a media black list, 501 00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:58,720 basically cos they didn't understand when we were serious 502 00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:00,760 and when we were joking. 503 00:32:00,760 --> 00:32:04,640 As we keep seeing, just because something looks like news, 504 00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:08,560 that doesn't mean it is. And that critical attitude 505 00:32:08,560 --> 00:32:12,440 is also central to any investigative journalism. 506 00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:17,360 Rule number one has to be, "Is this from a reliable source?" 507 00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:20,040 Take, for example, a book that's getting five-star reviews 508 00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:23,360 and purports to be "a shocking expose". 509 00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:27,560 "A must-read if you want the truth." 510 00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:31,040 "Essential to understanding the Hidden Hand by which the world 511 00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:33,520 "is governed and led." 512 00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:37,160 "This is propably," probably, "one of the books that's 513 00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:41,440 "going to be banned, so buy it when it's still possible." 514 00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:45,240 At the moment, it's certainly not difficult to get hold of. 515 00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:47,760 Just one click and it can be at your door. 516 00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:55,800 The Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of Zion purports to reveal 517 00:32:55,800 --> 00:32:59,000 the detailed plans with which a Jewish elite 518 00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:02,680 will take over the world, starting with finance, 519 00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:05,040 politics, and the media. 520 00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:09,720 Spoiler alert - there is no such plot. 521 00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:14,320 This is an idiotic and largely incomprehensible 522 00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:16,960 anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, 523 00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:22,440 which was comprehensively debunked nearly 100 years ago. 524 00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:28,760 What is unbelievable is that it's so freely available now 525 00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:33,760 and so many people still choose to believe it's true. 526 00:33:33,760 --> 00:33:36,400 But then, I would say that, wouldn't I? 527 00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:42,360 Because the press is already entirely in their hands. 528 00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:49,400 Baseless preconceptions.. 529 00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:49,400 BELL RINGS 530 00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:51,760 ..and irrational obsessions... BELL RINGS 531 00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:56,200 ..have spawned some of the most malign fake news. 532 00:33:56,200 --> 00:34:00,040 A Russian newspaper, in 1903, first brought to life 533 00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:02,320 the Elders Of Zion. 534 00:34:02,320 --> 00:34:05,360 They were blamed for spreading "decadent capitalism" 535 00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:09,480 and "dangerous democracy" in order to undermine the Tsar. 536 00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:12,960 A few years later, the Protocols were used as proof 537 00:34:12,960 --> 00:34:16,680 that the Communist revolution had been dreamt up by Jews, 538 00:34:16,680 --> 00:34:20,120 who'd also instigated the First World War. 539 00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:26,400 The Protocols updated anti-Semitism for the age of the mass media, 540 00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:31,440 making prejudice seem more legitimate by presenting it as news. 541 00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:35,320 The introduction to the early editions claimed that the minutes 542 00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:40,360 of this Jewish plot had been stolen from a secret meeting and passed 543 00:34:40,360 --> 00:34:44,640 to the publisher by someone who mysteriously died. 544 00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:49,040 It sounds like classic undercover, investigative journalism, 545 00:34:49,040 --> 00:34:53,040 but it's simply lies disguised as leaks. 546 00:34:55,320 --> 00:35:00,320 Yet despite clearly recycling ancient, offensive stereotypes, 547 00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:05,560 people across Europe still chose to believe that this book was true. 548 00:35:08,240 --> 00:35:12,280 In Britain, it prompted serious calls for an official enquiry 549 00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:14,840 into the alleged conspiracy. 550 00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:21,400 In 1921, however, The Times published a series of articles 551 00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:25,160 which showed how long passages of the Protocols had in fact 552 00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:30,320 been copied, more or less word for word, from an old French novel, 553 00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:34,000 one which had nothing to do with Judaism. 554 00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:38,760 The sinister Elders Of Zion were shown to be entirely fictitious. 555 00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:41,040 They were fake Jews. 556 00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:45,880 This was encouraging evidence that journalism can correct lies 557 00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:48,120 as well as spread them. 558 00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:50,960 And the reality is that nowadays, 559 00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:53,800 journalists have to do more and more of this. 560 00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:57,600 When I started, the main job was finding new stories. 561 00:35:57,600 --> 00:36:02,880 Now, more and more time is spent debunking fake stories. 562 00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:06,720 Depressingly, even when you lay out the facts clearly 563 00:36:06,720 --> 00:36:09,800 and comprehensively, as The Times does here, 564 00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:12,760 sometimes it's still not enough. 565 00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:15,680 The most pernicious thing about conspiracy theories 566 00:36:15,680 --> 00:36:21,200 is how they persist, even after they've been thoroughly discredited. 567 00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:23,320 HE SPEAKS GERMAN 568 00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:26,680 When the Nazis came to power, Joseph Goebbels declared 569 00:36:26,680 --> 00:36:30,760 the Protocols could still be put "to very good use", 570 00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:34,240 and so, by the 1930s, the book was being studied 571 00:36:34,240 --> 00:36:36,240 in German classrooms. 572 00:36:36,240 --> 00:36:38,360 Goebbels didn't care it was forged. 573 00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:42,200 What mattered, he said, was "the inner, not the factual truth 574 00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:45,080 "of the Protocols". 575 00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:48,600 Goebbels' boss had used a different argument when he praised 576 00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:51,560 the Protocols in Mein Kampf. 577 00:36:51,560 --> 00:36:55,600 Hitler did concede that some German newspapers had reported 578 00:36:55,600 --> 00:37:00,240 that the Protocols were forgery, but these "groans and moans", 579 00:37:00,240 --> 00:37:07,080 he argued, were actually "evidence in favour of their authenticity". 580 00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:11,520 "If these newspapers say they're fake, they must be true." 581 00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:14,640 Basically, he's telling his followers not to believe 582 00:37:14,640 --> 00:37:16,640 in the mainstream media. 583 00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:24,480 70 years after the defeat of the Nazis, the Protocols live on, 584 00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:27,240 notably in the Islamic world. 585 00:37:27,240 --> 00:37:32,840 Here it is in 2019 at a Cairo book fair. 586 00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:37,800 Online, anti-Semitism sits alongside hatred of every religious, 587 00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:40,800 ethnic or minority group imaginable. 588 00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:46,440 Fake news stories on Facebook fuelled violence against Muslims 589 00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:49,800 in Burma, while in India, people have been lynched 590 00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:52,880 as a result of lies spread on WhatsApp. 591 00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:58,320 And back in Washington, this pizzeria suffered grim, 592 00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:03,600 real-world consequences from online conspiracy theories. 593 00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:08,040 I've come to meet its owner, James Alefantis. 594 00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:11,640 If you look up my name now, on any platform... Yeah. 595 00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:13,720 ..it's disgusting what appears. 596 00:38:13,720 --> 00:38:17,960 If you look up the name of the restaurant, it's pretty bad, too. 597 00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:23,840 YouTube and Instagram and everything is filled with just...lies. 598 00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:30,240 This story began in 2016, when WikiLeaks released e-mails 599 00:38:30,240 --> 00:38:33,520 from Hillary Clinton's campaign. 600 00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:37,520 Among them was an exchange about James supplying pizza 601 00:38:37,520 --> 00:38:41,000 for a Democrat fundraising dinner. 602 00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:43,880 That was all conspiracy theorists needed 603 00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:47,880 to spin some fantastical accusations. 604 00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:53,360 So, you find out that you are online being described as running 605 00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:56,800 an enormous paedophile ring, based, as far as I can see, 606 00:38:56,800 --> 00:39:03,280 on the fact that Comet Ping Pong and cheese pizza has the initials CP, 607 00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,120 which is the same as child pornography. 608 00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:08,880 I mean, this is the level of the evidence, isn't it? 609 00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:11,160 People think that Comet Ping Pong, 610 00:39:11,160 --> 00:39:13,680 which is a family-friendly restaurant, 611 00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:16,680 is the centre of a place where Hillary Clinton 612 00:39:16,680 --> 00:39:19,480 and these political people were either kidnapping children 613 00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:24,800 and selling them, in order to retain their immense wealth, 614 00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:29,200 or sacrificing them in ritualistic sacrifices, 615 00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:32,280 or sexually abusing them. 616 00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:35,080 There was a big thing about this place was operating 617 00:39:35,080 --> 00:39:36,240 with a basement? 618 00:39:36,240 --> 00:39:39,240 They claim there are tunnels leading from this to the White House 619 00:39:39,240 --> 00:39:42,440 and that Obama is travelling here to Comet in secret tunnels 620 00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:46,920 from the White House. And you pointed out there's not a basement. 621 00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:50,720 It's difficult to exaggerate just how mad this is. 622 00:39:50,720 --> 00:39:54,120 In the beginning, we thought, this is just an online something. Yeah. 623 00:39:54,120 --> 00:39:58,280 And until it broke through, out of this online computer screen 624 00:39:58,280 --> 00:40:02,320 and into the real world, we were basically OK. 625 00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:07,080 The headline is "Pizzagate is real". 626 00:40:07,080 --> 00:40:10,320 The only question is, exactly what is it? But something... 627 00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:14,640 American shock jock Alex Jones recklessly broadcast the theory 628 00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:18,000 to a much wider audience through his show. 629 00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:19,840 There's just so much evil... 630 00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:22,760 In a trademark rant, he urged his followers 631 00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:24,360 to investigate further. 632 00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:26,880 It's up to you to research it for yourself, but... 633 00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:29,760 And one of them duly drove from North Carolina 634 00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:31,960 to the Washington restaurant. 635 00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:38,240 It was December 4th and a man walked in the front door 636 00:40:38,240 --> 00:40:41,160 into a crowded dining room filled with families eating, 637 00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:46,000 carrying a loaded, large AR-15 assault rifle, 638 00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:51,440 walked through this dining room here, down this bar. 639 00:40:51,440 --> 00:40:54,920 VOICEOVER: Of course, he couldn't find the basement full of horrors, 640 00:40:54,920 --> 00:40:56,840 because it didn't exist. 641 00:40:56,840 --> 00:41:01,280 This gunman went to this one locked spot and at this point 642 00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:04,520 he shoots his AR-15... He lets off his rifle? 643 00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:07,320 Yes, into this door, and the bullets went 644 00:41:07,320 --> 00:41:10,480 into our computer system here. Can I have a look? Yeah. 645 00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:14,680 Just check. And there's our computer system still there, 646 00:41:14,680 --> 00:41:16,200 and our messy closet. 647 00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:19,520 But no secret basement. 648 00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:22,720 So he realised that there's nothing there. 649 00:41:22,720 --> 00:41:27,760 Yeah, and immediately laid down his weapons and he surrenders 650 00:41:27,760 --> 00:41:29,400 to the police. 651 00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:32,120 And he ended up just shooting a computer. Yeah. 652 00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:34,160 I like the symbolism of that! 653 00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:37,600 He shot the only thing that had actually spread the trouble 654 00:41:37,600 --> 00:41:41,120 in the first place. Did he say anything? 655 00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:45,280 Later, in an interview, he said maybe the intel wasn't 100%. 656 00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:47,080 One of the great understatements. 657 00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:53,720 Luckily, no-one here was killed, but as the judge said in this case, 658 00:41:53,720 --> 00:41:55,880 many people could have. 659 00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:59,840 I still get lots of threatening messages and the conspiracy theory 660 00:41:59,840 --> 00:42:01,920 continues very strongly online. 661 00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:05,920 They claim that this gunman is a false flag and that Hillary Clinton 662 00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:10,760 or I had hired him to distract from our heinous crimes. 663 00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:15,840 Why is it so hard to argue with this sort of fake news? 664 00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:20,160 I mean, you come up with a complete and utter rebuttal of all the things 665 00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:23,040 they say, and they believe it anyway. 666 00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:25,200 There is no appropriate response. 667 00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:27,400 If someone calls you the worst thing in the world, 668 00:42:27,400 --> 00:42:29,960 and you say, I'm not that thing, it's obviously evidence 669 00:42:29,960 --> 00:42:31,680 that you are that thing. Yeah. 670 00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:35,480 It's not disprovable, because the truth isn't what it's about. 671 00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:37,280 The truth doesn't matter. 672 00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:43,840 This place is a powerful testament to the damage that can be caused 673 00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:46,320 by malicious individuals, 674 00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:50,960 but potentially even more corrosive is another category of fake news. 675 00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:56,520 On April the 17th 1917, 676 00:42:56,520 --> 00:42:59,720 as the First World War dragged gruellingly along, 677 00:42:59,720 --> 00:43:03,560 British newspapers carried a horrifying story. 678 00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:08,760 This is the discovery behind enemy lines 679 00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:12,480 of a kadaververwertungsanstalt, 680 00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:14,560 which The Times helpfully translates 681 00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:17,720 as a corpse exploitation establishment. 682 00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:23,920 A factory was extracting fat from the bodies of dead soldiers 683 00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:30,240 to be used in the manufacture of soap, pig food and explosives. 684 00:43:30,240 --> 00:43:36,840 The report cited German documents and gave some grisly details. 685 00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:42,240 A great cauldron, where human flesh is steamed for six to eight hours. 686 00:43:42,240 --> 00:43:47,000 It's specific, it's repulsive - and, yes, it's fake. 687 00:43:48,640 --> 00:43:50,680 There are occasions where fake news 688 00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:54,480 has been undertaken with the full knowledge of the state and justified 689 00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:56,560 as being in the national interest. 690 00:43:56,560 --> 00:43:58,200 BELL RINGS 691 00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:02,440 And it's not just nasty dictators 692 00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:05,280 who get up to such dirty tricks. 693 00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:08,280 Sometimes, the good guys do it, too. 694 00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:12,920 So if it's our lot responsible, 695 00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:14,160 is that OK? 696 00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:22,240 The corpse factory story 697 00:44:22,240 --> 00:44:26,120 was signed off and spread around the world from here. 698 00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:31,520 In 1917, the Foreign Office housed the innocuous-sounding 699 00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:33,800 Department of Information. 700 00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:37,800 In fact, the British Empire's HQ for disinformation. 701 00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:43,520 The staff within these walls knew full well that the enemy was not 702 00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:47,200 turning corpses into bombs and bars of soap. 703 00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:50,480 The piece in The Times hinged on official references 704 00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:53,080 to processing cadavers. 705 00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:56,120 But the German word for cadaver in this context 706 00:44:56,120 --> 00:44:58,280 clearly meant animal carcasses, 707 00:44:58,280 --> 00:45:01,400 not human bodies - and they were aware of it. 708 00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:05,560 But the Ministry of Information chose to ignore this 709 00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:09,040 and let that fact be lost in translation. 710 00:45:12,360 --> 00:45:17,240 The story caused global outrage, particularly in China, 711 00:45:17,240 --> 00:45:20,960 where the dead are especially venerated. 712 00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:25,160 British spies believed the corpse factory lie was what persuaded 713 00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:28,360 the Chinese to abandon their previous neutrality 714 00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:30,640 and join the war on Germany. 715 00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:36,080 So, could the government claim to be justified 716 00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:39,040 in weaponising this story? 717 00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:42,680 After years of slaughter in the trenches, some people 718 00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:46,840 believed Britain should try anything which might help to finally 719 00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:48,600 win the war. 720 00:45:50,240 --> 00:45:52,960 The caricature of the barbaric Hun 721 00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:56,600 was frequently used to stiffen resolve at home, 722 00:45:56,600 --> 00:46:00,000 and since the Germans really did commit some atrocities, 723 00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:04,280 surely it didn't matter if not every story about them was true? 724 00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:09,520 On the other hand, doesn't lying make us as bad as the enemy? 725 00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:12,520 Stafford Cripps, who served in Churchill's War Cabinet 726 00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:15,920 a generation later, said of black propaganda, 727 00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:19,000 "If this is the sort of thing needed to win the war, 728 00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:21,040 "why, I'd rather lose it." 729 00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:28,320 The trouble is, lies have unforeseeable consequences. 730 00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:32,800 25 years after the corpse factory story, Germans really did build 731 00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:36,320 industrial facilities to process human bodies. 732 00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:40,480 But earlier reports of the Holocaust were disbelieved because, 733 00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:44,600 as one American diplomat put it, they sounded too much like 734 00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:48,360 "leftover horror tales of the last war." 735 00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:51,400 That's one of the biggest problems with fake news - 736 00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:53,960 it makes people doubt the truth as well. 737 00:46:53,960 --> 00:46:59,360 If, say, in the future, a dictator had weapons of mass destruction, 738 00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:03,120 who would believe the government or the journalist who said so? 739 00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:12,320 The British state no longer runs disinformation campaigns abroad, 740 00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:14,320 or at least, so we're told. 741 00:47:16,760 --> 00:47:20,560 But other states are less squeamish about propaganda. 742 00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:26,400 We know Russia has paid for online advertisements, 743 00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:31,000 including these, to influence elections in America and Europe. 744 00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:35,640 It is estimated over 350 million unsuspecting voters have seen 745 00:47:35,640 --> 00:47:41,320 the material, which pretends to be posted by concerned local citizens. 746 00:47:41,320 --> 00:47:45,640 And in 2018, in response to accusations they'd sent Novichok 747 00:47:45,640 --> 00:47:49,960 to Salisbury, the Kremlin took to Twitter and its noisy polemical 748 00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:53,240 TV channel, Russia Today. 749 00:47:53,240 --> 00:47:56,360 And to top all that off, the British insisted... 750 00:47:56,360 --> 00:48:01,480 They put forward 46 alternative theories for whodunnit and why. 751 00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:04,080 Contradictions everywhere. 752 00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:11,280 This is the type of disinformation which most worries our politicians. 753 00:48:17,920 --> 00:48:20,640 There is a deliberate strategy from the Russians to try 754 00:48:20,640 --> 00:48:24,240 and influence news and opinion in other countries, and elections 755 00:48:24,240 --> 00:48:26,200 as well, through these techniques. 756 00:48:26,200 --> 00:48:29,000 I think principally to divide communities and societies, 757 00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:30,800 to turn people against each other. 758 00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:33,720 We've seen them putting out all sorts of conspiracy theories 759 00:48:33,720 --> 00:48:36,520 about things like the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury. 760 00:48:36,520 --> 00:48:39,080 And do you think this is effective, you know - they're not hugely 761 00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:40,520 convincing, are they? 762 00:48:40,520 --> 00:48:43,440 They're not, but their purpose is not necessarily to persuade you 763 00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:46,560 of an alternative truth, it's to make you disbelieve everything, 764 00:48:46,560 --> 00:48:49,880 so you no longer know what's true or not true. 765 00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:53,920 And I think they are glad to see that sort of chaos being unleashed. 766 00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:55,800 You led an investigation, 767 00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:58,280 a Parliamentary investigation into fake news. 768 00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:01,320 So, how scared should we be? 769 00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:03,320 I think we should be scared by this. 770 00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:08,280 Not just by the fact that I think fake news is crowding out real news 771 00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:11,560 on social media and people find it often very difficult to 772 00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:14,280 distinguish between what is fake and what's real. 773 00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:18,040 And alongside that, about half the people in this country consume news 774 00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:21,400 from a social media feed, and that feed could easily be gained 775 00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:24,960 by bad actors who want to change what you think and what you see. 776 00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:28,360 Without any... There is no regulator that can stop that happening. 777 00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:31,560 And that means, I think, that our democracy, 778 00:49:31,560 --> 00:49:36,440 our society, is open to massive abuse by anyone who wants to invest 779 00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:38,360 their resources in doing it. 780 00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:41,560 I mean, that's the diagnosis - we should be frightened, 781 00:49:41,560 --> 00:49:44,720 democracy is at risk. What do we do? 782 00:49:44,720 --> 00:49:47,200 If you take, for example, the Russians buying adverts 783 00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:48,880 on social media to target Americans 784 00:49:48,880 --> 00:49:50,920 in the American presidential election, 785 00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:53,720 those ads were approved by the Facebook ad-check team. 786 00:49:53,720 --> 00:49:55,760 This is someone committing a federal offence 787 00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:58,600 by using foreign money to try and influence voters in America. 788 00:49:58,600 --> 00:50:00,840 And when we asked Facebook about this, they said, 789 00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:03,880 "If we'd been told this was going on, we would have looked into it 790 00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:06,960 "and done something about it and cooperated with the investigation." 791 00:50:06,960 --> 00:50:09,560 So it's your fault for not telling us? Exactly, so... 792 00:50:09,560 --> 00:50:12,680 The company with the most complex research teams in the world. 793 00:50:12,680 --> 00:50:15,400 If you ran a bank like that, you'd lose your licence. If you said, 794 00:50:15,400 --> 00:50:18,160 "I can see someone is laundering money, but no-one asked me about it, 795 00:50:18,160 --> 00:50:19,560 "so I didn't do anything." 796 00:50:19,560 --> 00:50:23,160 So, in that situation, the only people that could really intervene 797 00:50:23,160 --> 00:50:25,560 are the companies that are providing the technology. 798 00:50:30,960 --> 00:50:34,760 The British Museum, that traditional temple to truth, 799 00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:39,040 might seem an unexpected destination for a history of fake news. 800 00:50:41,200 --> 00:50:44,880 But at the end of the 19th century, people here were confronted 801 00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:50,240 with the same question Parliament is grappling with in the 21st century - 802 00:50:50,240 --> 00:50:53,000 what can be done about fake news? 803 00:50:58,480 --> 00:51:03,080 For 140 years, this was the home of the British Library. 804 00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:06,720 The reading room was built to be a cathedral of knowledge, 805 00:51:06,720 --> 00:51:10,440 and obliged by law to keep a copy of every British book, 806 00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:14,360 and as many foreign ones as possible, as well. 807 00:51:14,360 --> 00:51:20,160 But in 1893, someone discovered fake news on these shelves. 808 00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:24,960 What happened next has uncanny parallels with much more recent 809 00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:27,040 debates about the internet. 810 00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:29,640 Do people have the right to be forgotten, 811 00:51:29,640 --> 00:51:33,440 and who should be held responsible for fake news about them? 812 00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:38,640 The victim of the fake news in question was a remarkable American 813 00:51:38,640 --> 00:51:43,200 called Victoria Woodhull, who campaigned for female suffrage, 814 00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:48,080 and in 1872, was the first woman ever to run to be president. 815 00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:55,760 The contentious material originated from that time and from New York, 816 00:51:55,760 --> 00:52:00,280 where Woodhull was also the editor of her own newspaper. 817 00:52:00,280 --> 00:52:04,040 Arguing for sexual freedom and against male hypocrisy, 818 00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:08,280 Woodhull published an expose about a famous preacher of the day, 819 00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:13,760 Henry Ward Beecher, who was having an adulterous affair. 820 00:52:13,760 --> 00:52:17,360 For exposing the truth about the great and well-connected 821 00:52:17,360 --> 00:52:22,600 clergyman Beecher, she found herself smeared by fake news reports. 822 00:52:22,600 --> 00:52:26,520 Papers and pamphlets accused her of being a drunk, 823 00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:31,640 the mistress of a gambling den, or the queen of prostitutes. 824 00:52:33,280 --> 00:52:36,440 It's really easy to shut down a woman by calling her a slut, 825 00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:39,120 it instantaneously takes away all her credibility. 826 00:52:39,120 --> 00:52:42,160 It really works. It has worked for generations. 827 00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:46,400 You always criticise uppity women for being sexually unconventional, 828 00:52:46,400 --> 00:52:51,200 you smear them with whatever is seen as bad in the context 829 00:52:51,200 --> 00:52:54,160 of the times, and she was smeared with all of that... Yeah. 830 00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:58,040 ..because she was challenging these very entrenched and important mores, 831 00:52:58,040 --> 00:52:59,720 she was assaulted. 832 00:53:02,240 --> 00:53:05,680 Woodhull was made out to be the devil, literally. 833 00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:09,520 And to escape the media storm, she fled to Britain. 834 00:53:11,600 --> 00:53:15,080 But when she discovered the lies about her were preserved 835 00:53:15,080 --> 00:53:17,360 for posterity in the British Museum, 836 00:53:17,360 --> 00:53:20,560 she and her husband sent them a letter of complaint. 837 00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:23,800 They accused the Library of 838 00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:25,920 "bringing within the reach of the public, 839 00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:29,240 "obscene and defamatory literature." 840 00:53:29,240 --> 00:53:32,600 What Victoria wanted was for the offending publications 841 00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:36,680 to be taken down off the shelves permanently. 842 00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:42,680 This caused great concern to the chief librarian, 843 00:53:42,680 --> 00:53:46,200 who the next day wrote, "The trustees will not, 844 00:53:46,200 --> 00:53:49,840 "I'm sure, sanction the principle that a book is to be withdrawn 845 00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:52,320 "merely because it is objected to. 846 00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:55,520 "Such a principle might have very extensive 847 00:53:55,520 --> 00:53:58,680 "and very undesirable consequences." 848 00:53:58,680 --> 00:54:01,720 He believed, of course, that a library shouldn't be 849 00:54:01,720 --> 00:54:06,040 in the business of banning books, nor of censoring history. 850 00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:10,560 But Victoria was not a woman who took no for an answer and, 851 00:54:10,560 --> 00:54:15,000 incredibly, she decided to sue the British Museum for libel. 852 00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:21,200 At a High Court hearing in 1894, 853 00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:24,320 the museum's lawyer warned of the consequences 854 00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:27,800 if Victoria proved victorious. 855 00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:34,040 He estimated that the library would need to employ 110 experts 856 00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:38,960 in libel law to inspect the 315,000 new books 857 00:54:38,960 --> 00:54:41,600 added to the collection every year. 858 00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:43,240 Surely, he argued, 859 00:54:43,240 --> 00:54:48,040 no library could be expected to fact-check the books on its shelves? 860 00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:52,400 Set against these arguments, however, 861 00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:56,360 was the persuasive testimony of Victoria herself. 862 00:54:56,360 --> 00:55:03,120 And the jury...sensationally found in her favour. 863 00:55:03,120 --> 00:55:06,160 However, on appeal, the museum won. 864 00:55:06,160 --> 00:55:09,040 Clearly, they hadn't actually published the material 865 00:55:09,040 --> 00:55:13,080 that Victoria objected to, neither had they originated it. 866 00:55:13,080 --> 00:55:18,800 The judge ruled that librarians must not be found guilty by association. 867 00:55:18,800 --> 00:55:23,280 This was an important verdict for freedom of information. 868 00:55:23,280 --> 00:55:27,160 And, to this day, most people would agree that libraries 869 00:55:27,160 --> 00:55:30,360 should not be held liable for their contents. 870 00:55:30,360 --> 00:55:34,800 But should the principle apply to all sites that store information? 871 00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:38,480 The British Museum's arguments have been put forward more recently 872 00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:40,760 by the giants of Silicon Valley. 873 00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:44,760 They say they can't be expected to fact-check what's on their sites 874 00:55:44,760 --> 00:55:48,600 and they are not publishers, merely platforms. 875 00:55:48,600 --> 00:55:53,000 Tech companies have a responsibility because they are not just making 876 00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:56,960 the content available to you, they are curating what you see. 877 00:55:56,960 --> 00:56:00,000 You are seeing content that's been selected for you by the tech company 878 00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:02,680 because it thinks that's what you're most interested in. Yes. 879 00:56:02,680 --> 00:56:05,120 Which is very different from a library. Indeed. 880 00:56:05,120 --> 00:56:07,880 It's a system that's been designed to make money for the platforms 881 00:56:07,880 --> 00:56:10,960 out of advertising. Though the technology that's being used 882 00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:13,680 to direct you towards the perfect pair of trainers 883 00:56:13,680 --> 00:56:16,920 could also be used to direct you towards radicalised hate speech, 884 00:56:16,920 --> 00:56:20,440 disinformation, other harmful content as well, and I think we 885 00:56:20,440 --> 00:56:24,160 should call the tech companies out on this and say they can do more to stop it. 886 00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:27,800 # We're half-awake 887 00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:31,040 # In a fake empire... # 888 00:56:32,880 --> 00:56:36,640 Given so many people are online so much of the time, 889 00:56:36,640 --> 00:56:39,800 and so much of what's out there isn't true, 890 00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:44,120 I believe there are potentially very real threats from fake news. 891 00:56:45,600 --> 00:56:49,520 The more hatred and vitriol that shows up on these platforms, 892 00:56:49,520 --> 00:56:53,480 the more people are engaged, and the more revenue they receive. 893 00:56:53,480 --> 00:56:57,040 So they have monetised hatred and fake news is the way 894 00:56:57,040 --> 00:57:02,040 they've done it? Yes. And people get hurt from these things. 895 00:57:03,960 --> 00:57:06,360 But all is not yet lost. 896 00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:09,680 I think we can draw some hope and some inspiration 897 00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:14,200 from how previous eras dealt with their crises of trust. 898 00:57:14,200 --> 00:57:17,880 Back in the 1890s, the arrival of superfast printing presses 899 00:57:17,880 --> 00:57:21,960 and advertising created a crazy period in the media. 900 00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:25,440 You know, highly exaggerated journalism arrived. 901 00:57:25,440 --> 00:57:28,160 Now, we're seeing some of the similar things with digital, 902 00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:30,920 the immediacy of digital, its global reach, 903 00:57:30,920 --> 00:57:35,480 again makes it prey to all sorts of distortions and abuse. 904 00:57:35,480 --> 00:57:38,720 If you are an optimist, you say history suggests that what happens 905 00:57:38,720 --> 00:57:42,880 is people get used to this, they take it with a pinch of salt, 906 00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:48,080 they calm down and eventually you get a kind of new equilibrium. 907 00:57:51,200 --> 00:57:55,000 If we are to have genuine grounds for such optimism, 908 00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:59,960 we do need to be ruthless about a tendency all of us have, 909 00:57:59,960 --> 00:58:03,840 and one we've seen time and again in the past and the present. 910 00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:06,520 We have to stop believing news stories 911 00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:08,760 just because we want them to be true. 912 00:58:08,760 --> 00:58:11,640 I'm not saying don't believe in anything - 913 00:58:11,640 --> 00:58:14,800 that's exactly what the peddlers of fake news would love, 914 00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:17,840 the idea that no-one even cares what the truth is any more. 915 00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:22,000 But there are still such things as objective facts, 916 00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:24,800 events either did or didn't happen. 917 00:58:24,800 --> 00:58:27,680 Not everything is a matter of opinion. 918 00:58:27,680 --> 00:58:30,960 So I'm not arguing for a more cynical public, 919 00:58:30,960 --> 00:58:35,960 I want a more sceptical public, who question the new social media 920 00:58:35,960 --> 00:58:40,080 in the same way they do the old mainstream media. 921 00:58:40,080 --> 00:58:42,640 Who is telling me this and why? 922 00:58:42,640 --> 00:58:45,680 And do they actually know anything about it? 923 00:58:45,680 --> 00:58:50,600 In short, you have to be very critical about who you trust. 924 00:58:50,600 --> 00:58:52,320 Apart from me, obviously. 925 00:58:52,320 --> 00:58:53,880 MUSIC: Fake Empire by The National 926 00:58:53,880 --> 00:58:56,520 # Turn the light out, say goodnight 927 00:58:56,520 --> 00:59:00,200 # No thinking for a little while 928 00:59:00,200 --> 00:59:02,080 # We're half-awake 929 00:59:02,080 --> 00:59:05,160 # In a fake empire 930 00:59:06,960 --> 00:59:09,040 # We're half-awake 931 00:59:09,040 --> 00:59:12,440 # In a fake empire... #