Ethiopia is besieged with so many misconceptions and misinformation about the compulsorily run law enforcement operation peculiarly via some paid western media and the social ones.
Needless to state, numerous fake news, misinformation, disinformation, falsehood fabrications have been produced by the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) Junta leftovers, their accomplices and anti-peace and anti-Ethiopia elements. Even the great democratic nation US has shamefully been well cheated by their chameleon nature to the extent that it tried to set up a puppet government knitting litters and straw together.
Besides, unmentionable lies have been fabricated and disseminated to the extent that they have even potentially changed the minds of global powers. Based on the baked lies, the US is heard of urging the government to reach a consensus with the late TPLF Junta remnants.
Surprisingly, United States of America kept quiet when TPLF committed immeasurable human right abuses, sufferings and atrocities, castrated males, buried people alive, looted the nation and banked overseas as well as immersed in unmentionable corruption and embezzlement. How dare it condemn Ethiopia for defending sovereignty after the national frontlines? Even it has been flattering at Ethiopian and Ethiopians equating them with a terrorist group. Shame on that country! It has been urging to ‘ceasefire’ and hold ‘talks’ creating an questionable and objectionable moral equivalence between who had scrupulously triggered a mammoth loss—the terrorist Junta and who had forcibly acted a legitimate self-defense—great Ethiopia.
Hopefully, the country would revise its stance after understanding the reality on the ground in Ethiopia and was methodically tricked.
Surprisingly, who is misinformation produced for? Whose interest is it serving? A growing body individuals, groups or countries are trying to create a lapdog in Ethiopia as they have accustomed to playing a game using a group of ‘yes men’ even via sorting out who can bargain the sovereignty of their country as per their intention and preference. This is what the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) led administration had done for close to thirty years.
TPLF has now been a dead and buried corpse. However, its remnants continue lying and misguiding people whom they have never known their mischievous nature. Even after death and being designated as a terrorist group, Junta leftovers are working from dawn to dusk to make Ethiopia restless and withhold all rounded developments that can potentially help the country lift out of the trap of poverty and dependency it finds itself in.
Their day to day activity right now is producing fake news and falsehood fabrications targeting at creating rivalry between religions, tribal segments and even among family members as they have been doing for about three decades via disseminating misinformation and disinformation. Taking advantage of this gap and using the submissive nature of TPLF as a fertile ground to pull the reform back, many are working against Ethiopia’s change and progress. Fortuitously, they’ll never succeed.
A recent laughter the best trick the Junta residuals have done is amalgamating pieces of utterances spoken by the Prime Minister at different scenarios for different purposes as if they are presented at the Prosperity Party executive committee assembly so as to provide their proponents with hope ‘void hope’ of course. The Junta allies recently produced fake bangs with a view to misleading many. Yes, a number of people are misled and take the falsehood fabrications, unknowingly or calculatingly, for granted. Many have also been experiencing with fake news and misinformation in their everyday lives focusing how they use traditional and social media to meet their information needs, and how they navigate information ecosystems with a particular emphasis on news literacy strategies as it is the system they have been actively engaged with.
The society has to be well aware of their tricks and develop trust in credible sources as these ones have been disseminating findings by the “mainstream” news media and the public find them most trustworthy.
Fake news is often only on a conceptual level although many people understand the consequences of them. It is most probably found that the link between disinformation and things like political sabotage, electoral manipulation and blackmailing the path to democracy is too abstract for users to grasp. Of course, some fake news and disinformation is harder to identify than other kinds.
While users show a fair amount of scrutiny on political updates especially in Ethiopia, they are less stringent if a news story positively affirms an aspect of their identity. However, the youth are more focused on ethnic and religious allegiances than the generations before them, and so are more likely to be driven by these identities when sharing fake news as the Junta regime has debatably syringed ethnic and religious poison in their blood.
Often they care more about who the sender is than the source. They might trust that a story is true because the sender is someone they trust to share worthy news or who belongs to the race they have come from. Their moral, diligence, patriotic gesture has deliberately been eroded to make them paralyze in thinking about national pride and sense of belongingness. Had things kept at the same rate and the TPLF bankrupt ideology persisted, it would have been excellently possible to create a lapdog in Ethiopia.
However, thanks to the recent reform driven by Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed, designating a pseudo government, which wags tails as the US and Western bark and is quiet submissive to their hanky-panky inputs, has become prettily unthinkable.
Undoubtedly using social media is quite pivotal if optimistically managed. However, for some, it is a civic duty. They will share information, regardless of its veracity, because they want to warn and update others. Maybe there is a person who didn’t know about it may take irrelevant steps.
Of course, verifying information can be difficult because of the lack of reliable, accurate and independent data across a lot of sectors; instead manipulation of information is easier.
Facebook users frequently fail to distinguish between fake news content and legitimate news on their feeds. Sensationalist headlines used by parts of the mainstream journalistic sources, and the rush to publish without verification, are further muddling the lines between legitimate journalism and blatant misinformation.
In developing countries such as ours disinformation campaigns have been used to influence political agenda.
While some misinformation or fake news may be harmless, others might pose a serious threat by misleading the general populace to depend on the unwarranted claims for political move, religious protection and defending rights. Hence, very accurate information flow is vital for the ultimate benefit of the multinational countries like Ethiopia. In the era of 21st century where vibrant and unswerving governments are emerging, thinking about forging a ‘lapdog’ portrays how some countries haphazardly run activities and belittle the worth of bilateral ties.
What is the best way to deal with fake news? How can people be sure journalists themselves have the highest ethical standards so long as they are paid? Have to be the two fundamental questions to be replied to. It is unanimously agreed that fake news is a major problem with political activists and foreign powers accused of spreading lies via social media and other related podiums.
The prevalence of fake news has given government’s hard time to tight their schedule that should have been allotted to run nation building and activities aim at creating productive, civic minded and competitive generation to firmly denounce the creation of ‘symbol’ government in a given nation—superior powers lapdog!
The good thing is such an obsolete fashion has never have space in Ethiopia as it is a sovereign nation even before the creation of some developed ones as states.
BY MENGESHA AMARE
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD JUNE 3/2021
