K1: Ei Koo, have you noticed the arrival of something extraordinary in the news world?
K2: You don’t mean “fake news”?
- That’s precisely what I mean. These days, because of Twitterand Facebook, anyone can post “any item” on the web and claim that it is “news”!
- I’ve just seen one today, actually. It claims that a South African minister has proposed that he will allow the staff in his ministry to take a “sex break” of one hour each day!
- “Sex break?”
- Yes – they’d be allowed to go out of their offices for one hour each day, go home and have sex, and then come back. The report claims that the minister said this would “refresh” the staff and
- Enable them to work better!
- Absurd! How does he know that his staff would appreciate such a “sex-break”? After all, not everyone wants to engage in sex, even during non-working hours?
- I can see a certain friend of mine, whose ibid is pretty low, going home and having lunch and then being invited by his partner to come and “follow the Minister’s instructions!”
- Hahahahahaha! You think he’d run away?
- Well a lot of people do excuse themselves from their matrimonial duties, don’t they? Women have “head-aches”. Men claim “arthritic pains” or what have you.
- I don’t think any minister would be so stupid as to make such a suggestion. It’s probably an April Fool’s joke that has been outed prematurely. I mean, suppose a guy’s partner was having to put up with his premature-you-know-what I mean. Wouldn’t the prospect of enduring the mishap every lunch-time driver the woman crazy?
- Okay; let’s wait and see. The report claimed that the minister would be taking a bill to parliament on the issue. If that happens, then we’d know that it’s a serious matter. I am sure the debate on that Bill would become a best-seller in the world. Maybe you and I should put a few cedis together to buy Rands, and wait for the debate. Then we could make a proposal to the South African Parliament for the exclusive right to publish the full text of the debate.
- We’d become millionaires overnight.
- Unless, of course, the peddlers of fake news invented their own debate and published it before we could publish the authentic version.
- Hey, what do you think of President Donald Trump’s Tweets?
- Hahaha! The guy has turned fake news into an art. When genuine news is published about him and his administration that he doesn’t like, then he Tweets that the news is fake. And because the mainstream media in America and elsewhere regard every presidential pronouncement as genuine news, they disseminate what Trump has Tweeted! Then, when they begin to demand the evidence for the Trump Tweets, Trump’s Press Secretary, or one of his advisers, turns on the media and aggressively accuses them of “distorting” what Trump had meant in his One adviser actually stated that what Trump had said in a false Tweet was “alternative news!”
- So it means Trump always “wins”. If he lies – by saying something like “Obama wiretapped me”– and is contradicted by the heads of the FBI and the National Security Agency, his staff can say that Trump got his information not from the FBI or any of the recognised sources of governmental information, but from “alternative sources.” But what are these alternative sources? Trump supporters can easily believe that these “sources” exist and are either Russian hackers or other hackers such as After all, Trump’s side argues, the mainstream media use leaks provided by “anonymous sources that asked not to be identified”, when it suits them. Trump is only following their own practice.
- My goodness! That’s a very unhealthy situation.
- Yep! Trump even described three of the world’s most credible news organisations – the BBC, NBC and CNN – as purveyors of fake news at his first news conference as president, and refused to take questions from their representatives.
- But the man is crazy? The NBC and CNN might have an axe to grind, because they are American.
- Media, but the BBC? What would the BBC gain from publishing fake news about the President of a country (the UK) which did more propaganda against the Soviet Union than America itself, during the Cold War?
- Ask me oh!
- The Trump people have even suggested that Britain’s secret intelligence agencies – particularly the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) – did the alleged anti-Trust wiretapping, on the orders of Obama! The British think the allegation is “crazy”. And I think they are right, for why would the UK take the risk of angering a potential President (which Trump was, at the time of the alleged wiretapping) on behalf of Obama, a President who was due to leave office in a matter of a few weeks?
- Koo, the world is in trouble oh! If you have a President of the United States who can make his own news….
- Who discredits such reliable news sources as the NBC, the BBC and CNN ….
- Then when he says he’s going to bomb North Korea or Iran with nuclear weapons because both countries have launched an attack against the United States….?
- Or when he says he sent a drone to kill the President of Mexico because hewas planning to incite mass rioting against Trump by Latinos already in the United States….
- Then, who can believe Trump?
- And if the US armed forces cease to believe what Trump says, will they obey his orders?
- Koo, that is a trillion-dollar question. Remember that the Soviet Army once tried to do a coup d’etat against Mikhail Gorbachev?
- And Gorbachev hadn’t even presented them with
- a credibility gap of the sort Trump is creating!
- OK Koo, let’s come home. Have you read the number of statements former NDC officials have been making about why they lost the election?
- Koo, it’s unbelievable. It’s as if they have gone to the Tigare fetish at Ipala in Burkina Faso, been given red kola to eat, and can’t help engaging in what the media are calling “verbal diarrhoea”!
- And it isn’t fake news they are revealing!
- Wonders will never end, Koo!
By Cameron Duodu