In an interview with Time newsmagazine in 1975, abrasive Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci, was accused of sometimes fabricating quotations that she attributed to her interviewees, for which she was derogatively nicknamed “Oriana Fallacious!”
In her response to the Time magazine interviewer, Oriana retorted that the accusation was vulgar, because it was untrue, saying, “It’s ridiculous. If I have the tape (recording) with the voice, how can they claim they never said what they did?”
Though Oriana Fallaci may not have been a fabricator of lies reported in the form of news, the phrase, “Oriana Fallacious”, has probably become a metaphor for journalists, mostly on online platforms, who fabricate stories, or fake news, usually to serve some purposes.
In Nigeria, some of these media houses and amateur citizen journalists, who are usually armed with cell phones, are paid to spread fake news, or outright lies, to deceive the public or publish hate speech that puts unwary victims in the line of physical or verbal attacks or discrimination.
Sometimes they spread falsehoods to mislead people. At other times, they report a true and accurate story, but in a manner that could be inimical to the subject of the story. This is common during political campaigns that mostly resemble war propaganda.
Perhaps the vilest lie told in recent times about the obviously “sexed up” story of possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction against Iraqi strongman, Saddam Hussein, by European and American superpowers under America’s President George Walker Bush, Jr., and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Weapons of Mass Destruction imply chemical and biological weapons of war that include nuclear-grade missiles with launch ranges exceeding the extent imposed by the United Nations. Some of the chemical weapons that Iraq was said to possess included mustard gas, sarin, cyclosarin and VX.
“The semblance of fake news is turning up even in unexpected places, in the defamation tango between two attorneys, nonagenarian Afe Babalola, and civil rights activist Dele Farotimi, who published a book with content that Babalola thought was a defamation of his character and reputation.”
After prosecuting a devastating war against probably bewildered citizens of Iraq, American G.I.s ferreted Hussein out of an underground bunker, after which, he and his Minister of Defence, Ali Majid “Chemical Ali” al-Tikriti, were hanged in a Baghdad prison.
But later, Prime Minister Blair expressed “sorrow, regret, and apology” for the needless war and accepted “full responsibility without exception or excuse, for the consequences of the war”. But he neither confirmed nor denied that Iraq truly had WMD, beyond saying that there appeared to be mounting evidence of WMD.
In explaining the real reason he joined America in prosecuting the war, a partially repented Blair said “…because I thought it was right”, and, in the mode of Captain America, wanted to set the Iraqi people free from the tyranny of despot Hussein.
Such a good and generous heart. The spokesman and Director of Communications and Strategy of the Tony Blair Administration, Alistair Campbell, who denied that was a “sexing up” of intelligence reports, however, said that the issue would haunt Tony Blair till his dying day.
The phrase, Weapon of Mass Destruction, has become so notorious that America’s Lake Superior University describes it as the height of aggression, before banishing it into its list of terms of “misuse, overuse and general uselessness”.
Lately, to convince their citizens of the need to send military hardware to Ukraine, the West invented the story that Russia was about to invade the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation military alliance of North America, Western and Central European countries.
NATO conveniently omitted to add that Russia, led by Mikhail Gorbachev, only agreed to the pulling down of the Berlin War in 1989 for the unification of Germany in 1990 on the condition that NATO would not expand eastwards towards Russia.
Ukraine, the theatre of the Ukraine-Russian War now wants to join NATO, like Poland, another member of the defunct Warsaw Pact nations led by Russia. Russia strongly objects to that because of its common border with Ukraine. America’s Secretary of State James Baker, during the second term of President Ronald Reagan, had promised that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward.”
Just 11 days before America’s 2016 presidential election, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, unnecessarily told the American electorate that the FBI was looking into newly discovered emails of Hilary Clinton, who was contesting to be America’s President.
She lost the election because the disclosure might have affected voters’ assessment of her integrity. In 2019, four years after the deed had been done; America’s State Department reported that “None of the emails at issue were marked as classified!”
Take a look at recent incidences of outright lies peddled as the truth in Nigeria, starting from the hoax on social media that former President Olusegun Obasanjo was dead. Understandably, Obasanjo, who wondered why anyone would wish him dead, had pronounced, “Those who harbour such thoughts will not escape such tragedy themselves.”
This is a reminiscence of the rumour of the death of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first (ceremonial) President of Nigeria in 1989. A committee of friends was even formed for his burial. Just as Obasanjo had done, Azikiwe cursed those who had spread the rumour, and two prominent members of his political family involved in that perfidy predeceased him.
A local stakeholder, lacking knowledge of the technicalities of the operation of a petroleum refinery, came on TV to declare a hoax, the announcement by Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited that the smaller Port Harcourt refinery was now operational. People believed him because of numerous false claims of the refinery rehabilitation by NNPCL.
A professor of medicine, who appears to be a lobbyist of Sahel nations, is suggesting that France is cozying up to Nigeria to establish a military base in Northern Nigeria, obtain rights to Nigeria’s mineral resources and obtain petroleum and gas concessions. The Chief of Defence Staff denied any plans for a French military base in Nigeria.
While many were wondering if Seyi, the son of President Bola Tinubu, indeed wanted to be Governor of Lagos State in 2027, it took a swift announcement to debunk the fake news that was already taking the shape of the Holy Grail.
The semblance of fake news is turning up even in unexpected places, in the defamation tango between two attorneys, nonagenarian Afe Babalola, and civil rights activist Dele Farotimi, who published a book with content that Babalola thought was a defamation of his character and reputation.
Farotimi alleged that Babalola got the Supreme Court of Nigeria to reverse its judgment by correcting what amounted to a clerical error, which Farotimi, lawyer to one of the other parties, probably considered to be a substantially corrupt variation of the earlier judgement.
The police probably charged Farotimi to court on criminal grounds by relying on the article, “When False Publications May Amount to Criminal Libel”, wherein Babalola was said to have argued that, apart from civil claims, “a publication of false and misleading information can give rise to criminal prosecution”.
Though Babalola acknowledged that “defamation is a dual-nature offence, and it can be a civil wrong as well as a criminal act”, the Ekiti State Police Command may want to stretch and test the efficacy of criminal sanction that the Cybersecurity Act prescribes for online defamation.
One thing is clear: The outcome of the criminal suit will help define fake news and its consequences, as one wonders if the defamatory act attributed to Farotimi was his way of getting justice after a judgment.
