All language subtitles for Fake.News.A.True.History.2019.720p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

On September the 17th 1903, The
Daily Telegram shared a sad story

with its readers in Clarksburg,
West Virginia.

A dispute over a pet dog between
two immigrant miners

had led to a tragedy.

This programme contains some strong
language.

GUNSHOT

It was one of the miners
who took the bullet,

a man called Mejk Swenekafew.

The next day, a rival publication,
The Clarksburg Daily News,

also printed this heart-rending
story of the dog and the shot Slav

but, in fact, they'd been caught
in a brilliant trap laid

by their competitor.

The Clarksburg Telegram had long
suspected The Clarksburg Daily News

of stealing their stories,
so they'd simply made this one up

and put it in as bait.

Just read the victim's name
backwards, "we fake news".

The ruse worked brilliantly.

So, none of it happened,
and no animals were harmed

in the faking of this story.

But what it does show us
is that fake news was a problem

long before our own uncertain
and confused times.

They are the fake,
fake, disgusting news.

In this programme,
I want to see if we can learn

any lessons about today's fake news
crisis from earlier eras,

when new media and new technology
led to new levels of lying.

It was vastly sensationalised
and overblown and it

had a sometimes malign influence.

I'm heading to the nation
that pioneered mass-market news

in the 19th century,
and also the 21st-century's

information wars.

There's just so much evil!
I'm not trying to...

If you look up my name,
it's disgusting what appears.

And people get hurt
from these things.

I'm looking to history to figure out
what motivates fake news.

I am destroying America
one fake news article at a time.

From propaganda and paranoia...

It's easy to dress up fake news
to make it look as real as possible.

..to profit and politics.

President Trump is a total
and complete dipshit.

One thing I can promise you,
all the news coming

up in this programme will be fake,
and that's the truth.

Back in August 1835,
New Yorkers were thrilled

by a series of newspaper articles

headlined
"great astronomical discoveries".

The reports described
how a scientist had built

the world's largest telescope
and trained it on the moon.

The surface of the moon was clearly
made of basaltic rock,

but profusely covered
with a flower of deepest red,

and there are herds
of miniature bison.

Those quadrupeds were sometimes
hunted by flying man-bats

and, naturally, the moon
was also home to unicorns.

At this point, dear viewer,
you may have rumbled

that this was fake news.

It's very easy, looking back
from the 21st century,

to feel smug about how much smarter
we are than our ancestors,

but remember, this was an age
of constant scientific invention

and new discoveries,
and it was years before man

would set foot on the moon.

That is, if you believe that NASA
mission DID go to the moon.

The story was serialised over six
days, with new revelations on each,

including some salacious details
about lunar lovemaking.

Crowds thronged here,
to the offices of the newspaper

that broke the story, eager for each
fresh new day's instalment.

One eyewitness commented on the
"almost universal impression

"and expression of the multitude,

"that of confident wonder
and insatiable credence."

They were fooled!

Duping large numbers of people
all at the same time,

like this, had only
just become possible.

1830s New York was the birthplace
of modern mass-market news media,

and the moon story ran
in the world's first example

of what we'd call a tabloid.

A paper with a very
appropriate name.

I know, it's unthinkable
that any publication called The Sun

wouldn't be scrupulously
accurate in its reporting.

The New York Sun was
a product of new technology,

the steam-powered printing press,
and because the paper was cheaply

mass-produced, it was priced at a
sixth of the cost of most rivals,

just one cent,
and, in another innovation,

it was sold on the city streets.

The Sun offers a new kind of news
for a new readership,

working-class people, urban people
who didn't care about politics.

These are people who were not used
to having a newspaper central

to their lives. And The Sun gave
them news in a small, cheap format

that they could just
pick up and buy.

And did The Sun mind
what they printed was not

necessarily true?

Well, they didn't and neither
did their readers. Yup.

The Sun drew them in
as a kind of a game -

"Read this story,
decide for yourselves,

"it doesn't really matter."

What was more important was people
in the taverns and in the streets

were discussing it, "Did you see
that? Do you believe it or not?"

and then they would
have debates and fights,

and that was really
what it was all about.

The Sun claimed to have obtained
its facts about life on the moon

from an obscure scientific journal.
But after a week of "lunacy",

the New York Herald gleefully
printed a report of its own.

The Sun's source didn't exist.

They'd made the whole thing up.

The Sun, said its rival newspaper,

"is impudent, unprincipled,
mercenary and low-bred", and worst
of all,

"it tells untruths for money."

Can you believe it?

But The Sun was laughing
all the way to the bank.

With the moon story, it achieved
the highest circulation figures

on Earth, and spin-off pamphlets
and engravings

were hugely profitable, too.

Not bad for a paper
that was less than two years old.

It was the first great example
of one of the enduring motives

for faking news - lies sell.

The public doesn't just
want to be informed,

it also wants to be entertained.

It's also cheaper to make things up,

rather than find things out,

which the proprietors of America's

new popular press loved.

And they soon discovered fake news

could help in the pursuit of...

BELL RINGS

..grander ambitions.

In the 1890s, Joseph Pulitzer

was the world's most
powerful media mogul.

This contemporary cartoon
shows the kind of news

with which he made his name.

Later in life, to atone
for this sensationalism,

he used some of the fortune
it had made him to fund

the Pulitzer Prize for
better-quality journalism.

Aspiring to similar wealth
and influence was a younger,

devilish rival,
William Randolph Hearst.

His name lives on to this day,
in a publishing empire

and in New York's Hearst Tower,
which his fortune paid for.

William Hearst imitated
Joseph Pulitzer's successful formula

of crime and celebrity, popular,
attention-grabbing stories

under lurid headlines,
a sort of 19th-century click bait,

but he also felt there
might be a market for stories

of adventure and patriotism.

What could really boost circulation,
he decided, was a good war.

During the 1890s, Cuban rebels
were fighting for independence

from their colonial rulers,
the Spanish Empire.

Hearst's New York Journal
called for a war on Spain,

and to drum up support
he sent staff to Cuba.

Among them, one of America's
leading illustrators,

Frederic Remington.

The artist spent much
of his time in Havana,

drinking cocktails in his hotel.

He telegraphed Hearst, saying,
"Everything is quiet,

"there's no trouble here,
there will be no war.

"I wish to return. Remington."

Hearst is reported to have wired
back, "Please remain.

"You furnish the pictures
and I'll furnish the war."

Although there's no proof
that this oft-repeated exchange

actually occurred, Remington did
produce a highly provocative image

of the sort his proprietor demanded.

On February the 12th 1897,
Hearst's paper ran a story

about Spanish officials boarding
an American steamship and seizing

a woman they suspected of spying
for the Cuban rebels.

She was then strip-searched.

Pulitzer and Hearst
were in a race to the bottom,

and in this feature,
page two in the Journal,

Hearst had won.

This is titillation
masquerading as outrage

and, of course, the readers loved
it and there were serious questions

asked in Congress.
But what had actually happened

was nothing like Remington's
picture.

The woman hadn't been searched
on deck by a gang of rough men,

but in a private cabin
by one respectable older woman.

Hearst himself had changed
the crucial details of the report,

prompting the journalist
who filed it

to vow never to work
for the proprietor again.

Even the reporter thought
that he had gone too far.

But Hearst didn't care? Hearst
didn't care, Hearst never cared,

and Hearst loved stories
about ladies in danger,

about lustful and horrifying
foreigners of all kinds,

and he sent his reporters there
and kind of directed them

what kind of stories
they were supposed to get.

This paddle steamer isn't in Cuba,
by the way, it's on the Thames.

Less Havana, more Kingston.

Typical BBC - fake cruise.

Another Cuban story,
also set at sea,

was used by both Hearst and Pulitzer
to help tip America into war.

EXPLOSION

On February the 15th 1898,

an explosion ripped apart an
American warship called the Maine,

which had been harboured
near Havana,

causing the loss of 260 lives.

No evidence has ever been found
that the Spanish were responsible,

but in the papers,
the reality that it was probably

an accident got short shrift.

In the Journal,
there's no room for doubt.

"The destruction of the warship
Maine was the work of an enemy."

But there's a fantastic bit
of humbug in the small print.

This is very tiny.

It says, "The captain of the ship
and the consul general both urge

"that public opinion be suspended

"until they've completed
their investigation."

Well, there's no chance
of that happening,

and everything here says "they did
it" and it's incredibly successful.

It's the first time the paper
sold more than a million copies.

MUSIC: The Stars And Stripes Forever

Nine weeks later,
Pulitzer and Hearst got the war

they'd been clamouring for,

and America defeated the Spanish
Empire quickly and decisively.

The patriotic hysteria
whipped up by the press

had massive consequences.

1898 was the start
of the USA's ascendancy

into becoming a global superpower,

yet the war that began all this
might never have happened

without the help of fake news.

The nation that unleashed the power
of fake news in the 19th century

is also where more recent panic
about the subject began.

TRUMP: It's fake news, it's fake...

I'm telling you,
it's just fake news.

It was during the last race
for the White House that we started

hearing so much about fake news.

The winner's definition of the term,
however, parts company

with the usual meaning.

When President Trump
talks about fake news,

which he has done more or less
constantly since being elected

in 2016, what he means is
real news that he doesn't like.

Your organisation is terrible. I'm
not going to give you a question.

Can you state categorically...?
You are fake news. Sir... Go ahead.
Can you state categorically that...?

In Trump's topsy-turvy world, by
denouncing real news as fake news,

he and his supporters allow
real fake news to flourish.

Confused? You're meant to be.

Trump tweets the phrase regularly

as part of his war
on the mainstream media,

and a frequent target
is The New York Times.

Ironically, a paper that has long
been renowned for its accuracy

owes a massive debt to the fake news
crisis of the 1890s.

A man called Adolph Ochs was
so horrified by the sensationalism

of Pulitzer and Hearst,

he purchased The Times to provide
a more reliable alternative.

It's now run by
ex-BBC head Mark Thompson.

Adolph Ochs bought
the failing New York Times,

it really was failing in the 1890s,
with a vision of a different

kind of journalism.

It was going to be accurate,
it was going to be serious,

it was going to be accompanied
by intelligent and civil opinion

from every perspective,
and it changed journalism.

His vision was an idealistic one,
but he made it work financially.

To the surprise of a very cynical
industry, there was a real call

for it, and the story of real news
has been a commercial success story

for most of the time.

But I'm interested because
real news is under attack.

At this moment in time,
the President's trying to define you

as fake news.

Yeah, it's a very interesting
and in some ways rather clever

little trope by Donald Trump that,
you know, you should doubt all news,

that all of this comes from some
agenda, and who's to say what's true

and what's not true? They're not
necessarily even trying to persuade

people to believe their version,

they're just trying to cast doubt
on all of it.

It's sort of an attack on the idea
that we communally share a view

of what might be true.

You could argue that Donald Trump

and some of the other populist
leaders have decided that reality

may not suit their purpose,

and would therefore
like to cast doubt on it.

In the end, the best journalism
is grounded on an idea

that there are facts,
that things actually happen,

and that although, of course,
every journalist brings some

preconceptions to the party,
notwithstanding that,

you can do a pretty good job
of reflecting the world as it is.

When it comes to capturing
the world as it is,

the written word is only one
of the available tools.

Images have also long been used
to represent reality,

though with these, too,
fakery is always a danger.

At this memorial
to the American Civil War,

artistic tradition brings a familiar
idealised heroism to its subject.

But that conflict was also one
of the first to be portrayed

with a new technology.

Since its invention in the 1830s,

photography had promised
a new standard of authenticity.

War photographs,
like these by Alexander Gardner,

displayed an unprecedented
level of realism.

He took this photo in 1863,
after the Battle of Gettysburg.

It's a powerful shot,
but this pioneering photojournalist

thought he could achieve
an even more potent image,

so he and an assistant dragged the
dead body of the Confederate soldier

40 yards away from
where he'd actually fallen,

and rearranged it
in a more dramatic setting.

For extra pathos, the corpse's
head has now been turned

to face the camera.

And that's not the fallen soldier's
rifle pointing up to the heavens.

It's a prop that Gardner
carried around with him.

To inspire pity in the viewer,

he's composed the photo

as if it were a painting.

There was an understanding
photography could be flexible.

Nowadays, we wouldn't
accept any of this.

We would not, no,
this would be definitely seen

as an ethical violation,
but at the time,

people were learning the rules
of photography of real situations.

What was acceptable behaviour
for photojournalists

took decades to resolve.

At a meeting of the Photographers'
Association Of America,

one speaker declared he sought,

"Not literal but spiritual
and eternal truth."

He rejected what he called
"the falseness of ultra realism"

and confessed,
"I admire legitimate faking,

"faking which produces
the results desired."

But the photography
of William Mumler,

like this self-portrait,

was felt by many to go
way beyond legitimate faking.

Look at the slightly
blurry woman on the left.

During the 1860s, when Gardner
was rearranging Confederate corpses,

Mumler opened studios
in Boston and New York,

where customers would
sit for him, alone.

But when Mumler delivered the
prints, another figure appeared

in the frame, a ghostly photo-bomber
from beyond the grave,

and many of Mumler's customers
were convinced that the camera

could detect
what their own eyes could not -

the presence of a dear,
departed loved one.

Since America was grieving
on an unprecedented scale

during the Civil War years,

Mumler had no shortage of clients.

Spiritualism was a growing
movement at the time,

and some thought his work offered
scientific proof of the afterlife.

He was using the mystification
of a new technology,

but it was definitely cheating,
and he would go off and develop them

and come back and say,
"Look, here in this picture,

"over your shoulder,
you know who that is, don't you?"

And the sitter would
say, "Uncle Homer?"

"Yes! Uncle Homer!
It's Uncle Homer!"

It was ludicrous, and that's
where it becomes a little troubling,

cos he preyed on people's real grief
and desire and passion, and he made

a lot of money from it.

The New York authorities arrested
Mumler and charged him with fraud.

And he wasn't the only one
put on trial in 1869.

So was photography itself.

The prosecution called a series
of photographers who put forward

nine different techniques

by which Mumler
could've achieved his results,

and none of them were supernatural.

Mumler's legal team called a large
number of his satisfied customers,

including a Supreme Court Judge.

These people absolutely believed
what the camera told them,

and they saw no reason
for the law to interfere.

The prosecution hit back
with a star witness,

a man who'd made a fortune creating
fake exhibits for his circuses,

Phineas T Barnum.

On the basis of
"it takes one to know one",

Barnum declared Mumler a charlatan,

and he made a sensational photograph
of his own.

Hovering over Barnum's shoulder
is President Lincoln,

who had been assassinated
four years previously.

When the judge gave his verdict,
he declared himself,

"Morally convinced that trick
and deception has been practised

"by the prisoner."

These visions of the afterlife
were fake views but, legally,

the prosecution had failed to prove
which fraudulent technique

Mumler had used, so, reluctantly,
the judge had to dismiss the case.

Yet even after the disgrace
of the trial,

Mumler still attracted
select customers.

Three years later, he was
commissioned to take a portrait

of Mary Lincoln,
the widow of Abraham Lincoln,

who, yes, you guessed it,
made a posthumous appearance.

Why would an intelligent woman
believe this was an actual photo

of her dead husband,
given that Barnum had demonstrated

in court how easy it was
to fake this exact scenario?

Presumably, she wanted
to believe that the great man

was still there to look after her.

After the trauma of seeing him
gunned down in the theatre,

she must have wanted
consolation from any source,

however implausible.

And that is the common thread
with many fake news stories -

people are more likely to believe
a lie if they want it to be true.

And just as Mumler hadn't been
entirely discredited by the trial,

photography hadn't been entirely
vindicated either.

"Who, henceforth, can trust
the accuracy of a photograph?"

wrote a shocked journalist
from the New York World.

"Photographs have been treasured
in the belief they could not lie,

"and now comes the revelation
they can be made to lie,

"and with a most
deceiving exactness."

In the age of Photoshop
and selfie filters,

most people are well aware
of how easy it is to crop out

unflattering details or smooth away
blemishes from a still image.

By contrast, for most
of their history, moving pictures

were seen as more trustworthy.

You basically needed a
Hollywood special effects budget

to create convincing fakes.

So, documentaries, for instance,

just show you human life
the way it really is.

Obviously you would never
find fakery on the BBC,

and I would never mislead you.

UPBEAT CLASSICAL MUSIC REMIX

As you can see,
I'm now ready for Strictly.

And I think you'll agree
I'm an obvious winner.

OK, so I confess,
and you may possibly have suspected,

that wasn't me.

The sequence you just saw was
created by visual artist Eric Drass,

who explores the effects
of technology

on our understanding of truth.

So, this is created using a piece
of software that learns your face,

what's known as deepfake.

The software itself
comes from the internet,

downloaded for free,
and if you've got a teenager

with a super-powerful gaming
computer in their bedroom,

that's just the kind of kit
you need to do this kind of fakery.

Right. Deepfake is generally used
for pornographic clips.

You take the face of a famous
actress and you map it onto the body

of a pornographic star
and you send that out.

Secret sex tape.

Oh, well, I'm delighted you haven't
decided to do that with it!

It immediately seems to be, "Well,
I can put someone in a compromising

"position, I can blackmail someone"?
Absolutely.

Well, this one here of Obama...

We're entering an era in which our
enemies can make it look like

anyone is saying anything
at any point in time.

For instance, they could
have me say things like,

"President Trump
is a total and complete dipshit."

The actor Jordan Peele is able
to not only give a convincing voice,

but he's able to manipulate
the video footage of Obama to match.

But how we move forward...

in the age of information,

is going to be the difference

between whether we survive
or whether we become some kind of

fucked-up dystopia.

Pretty effective. Is the
dystopian vision the correct one?

It's inevitably going to used
for something really grim.

That clip of Obama, we enjoy the
fact that it sounds like him

and looks like him, but we know
it's not because of what he says,

whereas if you make it
something plausible,

it's much more likely to spread.
Yeah.

We all live in our own filter
bubbles and tend to share content

that we agree with,
so if I see a politician I hate

saying something objectionable,
I'm much more likely to pass it on

to my friends and believe
that it's true

because my own world view
is being supported.

And do we have any
defence against that?

The best defence
is to remain suspicious.

But as we keep seeing,
people often aren't suspicious

about things they want to believe.

And that helps explain
the popularity of a particular type

of fake news online.

Here's an example.

During 2016's American elections,

the Pope endorsing Trump was the

most shared news item on Facebook.

It was written as a wind-up,
but was so widely believed

some even think it
swung the election.

This is worrying terrain for me
because the defence used by several

of the most controversial
sources of fake news

is that they are producing satire.

One of the leading offenders,

who keeps fictionally bumping off
Hillary Clinton in ludicrous ways,

is a former construction worker,
called Christopher Blair.

A purveyor of fake news, that's me.

Right. I'm glad you're laughing.

VOICEOVER: His most popular stories
have been read by millions,

including one reporting that Obama
has made a fortune in royalties

from the word "Obamacare".

Every once in a while,
a post will go viral.

It means that the headline plus
the featured image plus the story

elicited an emotional response
from a whole bunch of people,

and if you get a million page views
on something and you have ads,

you're going to make some money on
it. Do we make a lot of money?

Sometimes. There have been times
when I made a whole bunch of money.

Typically, no,
we make next to nothing.

I'm interested in
the people who read it.

I make it my business to mess
with not necessarily just people

who have different political views,
but political extremists

on the other side, the "alt-right"
is what we call them.

OK, so tell me how
you actually do it.

So, you take Obama, Clinton, Pelosi,
and attach something to it,

a crime, an injury, a death,
and add something as silly

as possible to make sure
that some reasonable person

is going to be able to say,
"I don't know about this."

How do you feel about
the people who do believe it?

Because I'm terribly worried that
you would put a story out

and that becomes part of their world
view, and you've done that. Right.

Every article has the word
"satire" in it.

It's before the title,
after the title again.

The entire operation is satire.

But why do they believe it, then?
What is it? An emotional response?

Confirmation bias, 100%.

It's so easy to just pass
something along that confirms

what you believe.

I'm serving them what they want.

The number-one comment
that we get on our pages,

"I hope this is true."

I'm still not entirely
convinced that stories

like these don't have
real-world consequences,

especially in our politically
polarised times.

Is your conscience clear?
Oh, I sleep very well at night.

I don't believe that I'm doing
anything different from the people

who sell the supermarket tabloids.

Do you believe if there was,
you know, the next election,

and you were out there in force,
you could change minds either way?

No, I don't believe I can change
minds. People who share my headlines

out into cyberspace without reading
them, without looking at them,

things like that, they were going to
vote for Donald Trump.

They weren't sitting on some fence
waiting for my satire to push them

over to the dark side.
That's not the way this works.

Unfortunately,
they are lower-information,

lower-educated, ignorant people.

My goal is to say,
"Why are you so dumb?"

Now, the magazine I edit has itself
been accused of being fake news.

An American university put us
on a media black list,

basically cos they didn't understand
when we were serious

and when we were joking.

As we keep seeing, just because
something looks like news,

that doesn't mean it is.
And that critical attitude

is also central
to any investigative journalism.

Rule number one has to be,
"Is this from a reliable source?"

Take, for example, a book that's
getting five-star reviews

and purports to be
"a shocking expose".

"A must-read if you want the truth."

"Essential to understanding
the Hidden Hand by which the world

"is governed and led."

"This is propably," probably,
"one of the books that's

"going to be banned,
so buy it when it's still possible."

At the moment, it's certainly not
difficult to get hold of.

Just one click and it
can be at your door.

The Protocols Of The Learned Elders
Of Zion purports to reveal

the detailed plans with which a
Jewish elite

will take over the world,
starting with finance,

politics, and the media.

Spoiler alert -
there is no such plot.

This is an idiotic
and largely incomprehensible

anti-Semitic conspiracy theory,

which was comprehensively debunked
nearly 100 years ago.

What is unbelievable
is that it's so freely available now

and so many people still choose
to believe it's true.

But then, I would say that,
wouldn't I?

Because the press is already
entirely in their hands.

Baseless preconceptions..

BELL RINGS

..and irrational obsessions...
BELL RINGS

..have spawned some of the most
malign fake news.

A Russian newspaper, in 1903,
first brought to life

the Elders Of Zion.

They were blamed for spreading
"decadent capitalism"

and "dangerous democracy"
in order to undermine the Tsar.

A few years later,
the Protocols were used as proof

that the Communist revolution
had been dreamt up by Jews,

who'd also instigated
the First World War.

The Protocols updated anti-Semitism
for the age of the mass media,

making prejudice seem more
legitimate by presenting it as news.

The introduction to the early
editions claimed that the minutes

of this Jewish plot had been stolen
from a secret meeting and passed

to the publisher by someone
who mysteriously died.

It sounds like classic undercover,
investigative journalism,

but it's simply lies
disguised as leaks.

Yet despite clearly recycling
ancient, offensive stereotypes,

people across Europe still chose
to believe that this book was true.

In Britain, it prompted serious
calls for an official enquiry

into the alleged conspiracy.

In 1921, however, The Times
published a series of articles

which showed how long passages
of the Protocols had in fact

been copied, more or less word
for word, from an old French novel,

one which had nothing
to do with Judaism.

The sinister Elders Of Zion were
shown to be entirely fictitious.

They were fake Jews.

This was encouraging evidence
that journalism can correct lies

as well as spread them.

And the reality is that nowadays,

journalists have to do
more and more of this.

When I started, the main job
was finding new stories.

Now, more and more time
is spent debunking fake stories.

Depressingly, even when you
lay out the facts clearly

and comprehensively,
as The Times does here,

sometimes it's still not enough.

The most pernicious thing
about conspiracy theories

is how they persist, even after
they've been thoroughly discredited.

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

When the Nazis came to power,
Joseph Goebbels declared

the Protocols could still be put
"to very good use",

and so, by the 1930s,
the book was being studied

in German classrooms.

Goebbels didn't care it was forged.

What mattered, he said, was
"the inner, not the factual truth

"of the Protocols".

Goebbels' boss had used a different
argument when he praised

the Protocols in Mein Kampf.

Hitler did concede that some
German newspapers had reported

that the Protocols were forgery,
but these "groans and moans",

he argued, were actually "evidence
in favour of their authenticity".

"If these newspapers say
they're fake, they must be true."

Basically, he's telling his
followers not to believe

in the mainstream media.

70 years after the defeat
of the Nazis, the Protocols live on,

notably in the Islamic world.

Here it is in 2019
at a Cairo book fair.

Online, anti-Semitism sits alongside
hatred of every religious,

ethnic or minority group imaginable.

Fake news stories on Facebook
fuelled violence against Muslims

in Burma, while in India,
people have been lynched

as a result of lies
spread on WhatsApp.

And back in Washington,
this pizzeria suffered grim,

real-world consequences
from online conspiracy theories.

I've come to meet its owner,
James Alefantis.

If you look up my name now,
on any platform... Yeah.

..it's disgusting what appears.

If you look up the name of the
restaurant, it's pretty bad, too.

YouTube and Instagram and everything
is filled with just...lies.

This story began in 2016,
when WikiLeaks released e-mails

from Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Among them was an exchange
about James supplying pizza

for a Democrat fundraising dinner.

That was all conspiracy
theorists needed

to spin some
fantastical accusations.

So, you find out that you are online
being described as running

an enormous paedophile ring,
based, as far as I can see,

on the fact that Comet Ping Pong and
cheese pizza has the initials CP,

which is the same as
child pornography.

I mean, this is the level
of the evidence, isn't it?

People think that Comet Ping Pong,

which is a family-friendly
restaurant,

is the centre of a place where
Hillary Clinton

and these political people
were either kidnapping children

and selling them, in order
to retain their immense wealth,

or sacrificing them
in ritualistic sacrifices,

or sexually abusing them.

There was a big thing
about this place was operating

with a basement?

They claim there are tunnels leading
from this to the White House

and that Obama is travelling
here to Comet in secret tunnels

from the White House. And you
pointed out there's not a basement.

It's difficult to exaggerate
just how mad this is.

In the beginning, we thought, this
is just an online something. Yeah.

And until it broke through,
out of this online computer screen

and into the real world,
we were basically OK.

The headline is "Pizzagate is real".

The only question is, exactly what
is it? But something...

American shock jock Alex Jones
recklessly broadcast the theory

to a much wider audience
through his show.

There's just so much evil...

In a trademark rant,
he urged his followers

to investigate further.

It's up to you to research
it for yourself, but...

And one of them duly
drove from North Carolina

to the Washington restaurant.

It was December 4th and a man
walked in the front door

into a crowded dining room
filled with families eating,

carrying a loaded,
large AR-15 assault rifle,

walked through this dining room
here, down this bar.

VOICEOVER: Of course, he couldn't
find the basement full of horrors,

because it didn't exist.

This gunman went to this one
locked spot and at this point

he shoots his AR-15...
He lets off his rifle?

Yes, into this door,
and the bullets went

into our computer system here.
Can I have a look? Yeah.

Just check. And there's our
computer system still there,

and our messy closet.

But no secret basement.

So he realised
that there's nothing there.

Yeah, and immediately laid
down his weapons and he surrenders

to the police.

And he ended up just
shooting a computer. Yeah.

I like the symbolism of that!

He shot the only thing
that had actually spread the trouble

in the first place.
Did he say anything?

Later, in an interview,
he said maybe the intel wasn't 100%.

One of the great understatements.

Luckily, no-one here was killed,
but as the judge said in this case,

many people could have.

I still get lots of threatening
messages and the conspiracy theory

continues very strongly online.

They claim that this gunman is a
false flag and that Hillary Clinton

or I had hired him to distract
from our heinous crimes.

Why is it so hard to argue
with this sort of fake news?

I mean, you come up with a complete
and utter rebuttal of all the things

they say, and they believe it
anyway.

There is no appropriate response.

If someone calls you the worst
thing in the world,

and you say, I'm not that thing,
it's obviously evidence

that you are that thing. Yeah.

It's not disprovable, because
the truth isn't what it's about.

The truth doesn't matter.

This place is a powerful testament
to the damage that can be caused

by malicious individuals,

but potentially even more corrosive
is another category of fake news.

On April the 17th 1917,

as the First World War dragged
gruellingly along,

British newspapers carried
a horrifying story.

This is the discovery
behind enemy lines

of a kadaververwertungsanstalt,

which The Times helpfully translates

as a corpse exploitation
establishment.

A factory was extracting fat
from the bodies of dead soldiers

to be used in the manufacture
of soap, pig food and explosives.

The report cited German documents
and gave some grisly details.

A great cauldron, where human flesh
is steamed for six to eight hours.

It's specific, it's repulsive -
and, yes, it's fake.

There are occasions where fake news

has been undertaken with the full
knowledge of the state and justified

as being in the national interest.

BELL RINGS

And it's not just nasty dictators

who get up to such dirty tricks.

Sometimes, the good guys do it, too.

So if it's our lot responsible,

is that OK?

The corpse factory story

was signed off and spread
around the world from here.

In 1917, the Foreign Office
housed the innocuous-sounding

Department of Information.

In fact, the British Empire's
HQ for disinformation.

The staff within these walls knew
full well that the enemy was not

turning corpses
into bombs and bars of soap.

The piece in The Times hinged
on official references

to processing cadavers.

But the German word for cadaver
in this context

clearly meant animal carcasses,

not human bodies -
and they were aware of it.

But the Ministry of Information
chose to ignore this

and let that fact
be lost in translation.

The story caused global outrage,
particularly in China,

where the dead are
especially venerated.

British spies believed the corpse
factory lie was what persuaded

the Chinese to abandon
their previous neutrality

and join the war on Germany.

So, could the government
claim to be justified

in weaponising this story?

After years of slaughter
in the trenches, some people

believed Britain should try anything
which might help to finally

win the war.

The caricature of the barbaric Hun

was frequently used to stiffen
resolve at home,

and since the Germans really did
commit some atrocities,

surely it didn't matter if not
every story about them was true?

On the other hand, doesn't lying
make us as bad as the enemy?

Stafford Cripps, who served
in Churchill's War Cabinet

a generation later,
said of black propaganda,

"If this is the sort of thing
needed to win the war,

"why, I'd rather lose it."

The trouble is, lies have
unforeseeable consequences.

25 years after the corpse factory
story, Germans really did build

industrial facilities
to process human bodies.

But earlier reports of the Holocaust
were disbelieved because,

as one American diplomat put it,
they sounded too much like

"leftover horror tales
of the last war."

That's one of the biggest
problems with fake news -

it makes people doubt
the truth as well.

If, say, in the future, a dictator
had weapons of mass destruction,

who would believe the government
or the journalist who said so?

The British state no longer runs
disinformation campaigns abroad,

or at least, so we're told.

But other states are less squeamish
about propaganda.

We know Russia has paid
for online advertisements,

including these, to influence
elections in America and Europe.

It is estimated over 350 million
unsuspecting voters have seen

the material, which pretends to be
posted by concerned local citizens.

And in 2018, in response
to accusations they'd sent Novichok

to Salisbury, the Kremlin took
to Twitter and its noisy polemical

TV channel, Russia Today.

And to top all that off,
the British insisted...

They put forward 46 alternative
theories for whodunnit and why.

Contradictions everywhere.

This is the type of disinformation
which most worries our politicians.

There is a deliberate strategy
from the Russians to try

and influence news and opinion
in other countries, and elections

as well, through these techniques.

I think principally to divide
communities and societies,

to turn people against each other.

We've seen them putting out
all sorts of conspiracy theories

about things like the
Skripal poisoning in Salisbury.

And do you think this is effective,
you know - they're not hugely

convincing, are they?

They're not, but their purpose
is not necessarily to persuade you

of an alternative truth, it's to
make you disbelieve everything,

so you no longer know
what's true or not true.

And I think they are glad to see
that sort of chaos being unleashed.

You led an investigation,

a Parliamentary investigation
into fake news.

So, how scared should we be?

I think we should be scared by this.

Not just by the fact that I think
fake news is crowding out real news

on social media and people find
it often very difficult to

distinguish between what is fake
and what's real.

And alongside that, about half the
people in this country consume news

from a social media feed, and that
feed could easily be gained

by bad actors who want to change
what you think and what you see.

Without any... There is no regulator
that can stop that happening.

And that means, I think,
that our democracy,

our society, is open to massive
abuse by anyone who wants to invest

their resources in doing it.

I mean, that's the diagnosis -
we should be frightened,

democracy is at risk.
What do we do?

If you take, for example,
the Russians buying adverts

on social media to target Americans

in the American
presidential election,

those ads were approved
by the Facebook ad-check team.

This is someone committing
a federal offence

by using foreign money to try
and influence voters in America.

And when we asked Facebook
about this, they said,

"If we'd been told this was going
on, we would have looked into it

"and done something about it and
cooperated with the investigation."

So it's your fault for not
telling us? Exactly, so...

The company with the most complex
research teams in the world.

If you ran a bank like that, you'd
lose your licence. If you said,

"I can see someone is laundering
money, but no-one asked me about it,

"so I didn't do anything."

So, in that situation, the only
people that could really intervene

are the companies that are
providing the technology.

The British Museum,
that traditional temple to truth,

might seem an unexpected destination
for a history of fake news.

But at the end of the 19th century,
people here were confronted

with the same question Parliament is
grappling with in the 21st century -

what can be done about fake news?

For 140 years, this was
the home of the British Library.

The reading room was built
to be a cathedral of knowledge,

and obliged by law to keep
a copy of every British book,

and as many foreign ones
as possible, as well.

But in 1893, someone discovered
fake news on these shelves.

What happened next has uncanny
parallels with much more recent

debates about the internet.

Do people have the right
to be forgotten,

and who should be held responsible
for fake news about them?

The victim of the fake news in
question was a remarkable American

called Victoria Woodhull,
who campaigned for female suffrage,

and in 1872, was the first woman
ever to run to be president.

The contentious material originated
from that time and from New York,

where Woodhull was also
the editor of her own newspaper.

Arguing for sexual freedom
and against male hypocrisy,

Woodhull published an expose
about a famous preacher of the day,

Henry Ward Beecher,
who was having an adulterous affair.

For exposing the truth
about the great and well-connected

clergyman Beecher, she found herself
smeared by fake news reports.

Papers and pamphlets
accused her of being a drunk,

the mistress of a gambling den,
or the queen of prostitutes.

It's really easy to shut down
a woman by calling her a slut,

it instantaneously takes away
all her credibility.

It really works.
It has worked for generations.

You always criticise uppity women
for being sexually unconventional,

you smear them with whatever
is seen as bad in the context

of the times, and she was smeared
with all of that... Yeah.

..because she was challenging these
very entrenched and important mores,

she was assaulted.

Woodhull was made out
to be the devil, literally.

And to escape the media storm,
she fled to Britain.

But when she discovered the lies
about her were preserved

for posterity in the British Museum,

she and her husband sent them
a letter of complaint.

They accused the Library of

"bringing within the reach
of the public,

"obscene and defamatory literature."

What Victoria wanted
was for the offending publications

to be taken down
off the shelves permanently.

This caused great concern
to the chief librarian,

who the next day wrote,
"The trustees will not,

"I'm sure, sanction the principle
that a book is to be withdrawn

"merely because it is objected to.

"Such a principle might
have very extensive

"and very undesirable consequences."

He believed, of course,
that a library shouldn't be

in the business of banning books,
nor of censoring history.

But Victoria was not a woman
who took no for an answer and,

incredibly, she decided to sue
the British Museum for libel.

At a High Court hearing in 1894,

the museum's lawyer warned
of the consequences

if Victoria proved victorious.

He estimated that the library
would need to employ 110 experts

in libel law to inspect
the 315,000 new books

added to the collection every year.

Surely, he argued,

no library could be expected to
fact-check the books on its shelves?

Set against these arguments,
however,

was the persuasive testimony
of Victoria herself.

And the jury...sensationally
found in her favour.

However, on appeal, the museum won.

Clearly, they hadn't actually
published the material

that Victoria objected to,
neither had they originated it.

The judge ruled that librarians must
not be found guilty by association.

This was an important verdict
for freedom of information.

And, to this day, most people
would agree that libraries

should not be held liable
for their contents.

But should the principle apply
to all sites that store information?

The British Museum's arguments
have been put forward more recently

by the giants of Silicon Valley.

They say they can't be expected
to fact-check what's on their sites

and they are not publishers,
merely platforms.

Tech companies have a responsibility
because they are not just making

the content available to you,
they are curating what you see.

You are seeing content that's been
selected for you by the tech company

because it thinks that's what
you're most interested in. Yes.

Which is very different
from a library. Indeed.

It's a system that's been designed
to make money for the platforms

out of advertising. Though the
technology that's being used

to direct you towards
the perfect pair of trainers

could also be used to direct you
towards radicalised hate speech,

disinformation, other harmful
content as well, and I think we

should call the tech companies out
on this and say they can do more to
stop it.

# We're half-awake

# In a fake empire... #

Given so many people
are online so much of the time,

and so much of what's out there
isn't true,

I believe there are potentially
very real threats from fake news.

The more hatred and vitriol
that shows up on these platforms,

the more people are engaged,
and the more revenue they receive.

So they have monetised hatred
and fake news is the way

they've done it? Yes. And people
get hurt from these things.

But all is not yet lost.

I think we can draw some hope
and some inspiration

from how previous eras dealt
with their crises of trust.

Back in the 1890s, the arrival
of superfast printing presses

and advertising
created a crazy period in the media.

You know, highly exaggerated
journalism arrived.

Now, we're seeing some of the
similar things with digital,

the immediacy of digital,
its global reach,

again makes it prey to all sorts of
distortions and abuse.

If you are an optimist, you say
history suggests that what happens

is people get used to this,
they take it with a pinch of salt,

they calm down and eventually
you get a kind of new equilibrium.

If we are to have genuine grounds
for such optimism,

we do need to be ruthless
about a tendency all of us have,

and one we've seen time and again
in the past and the present.

We have to stop believing
news stories

just because we want them
to be true.

I'm not saying
don't believe in anything -

that's exactly what the peddlers
of fake news would love,

the idea that no-one even cares
what the truth is any more.

But there are still such
things as objective facts,

events either did or didn't happen.

Not everything
is a matter of opinion.

So I'm not arguing
for a more cynical public,

I want a more sceptical public, who
question the new social media

in the same way they do
the old mainstream media.

Who is telling me this and why?

And do they actually
know anything about it?

In short, you have to be very
critical about who you trust.

Apart from me, obviously.

MUSIC: Fake Empire
by The National

# Turn the light out, say goodnight

# No thinking for a little while

# We're half-awake

# In a fake empire

# We're half-awake

# In a fake empire... #