Have you heard the “news”? The Mexican presidential hopeful Ricardo Anaya wants to help the United States build a wall on the Rio Grande. And the campaign of his leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is being organised out of authoritarian Venezuela. Meanwhile, Mexico’s first lady, Angelica Rivera, has called Lopez Obrador a “pobreton”, or pauper.
All of those stories are totally false.
They were summarised in a roundup of fake news stories by Mexico’s leading legitimate news network, Televisa. They represent just a sample of the mountain of false stories circulating on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and WhatsApp in advance of Mexico’s presidential election on July 1. This flurry of misinformation illustrates the ways in which, in the age of social media, fake news has become a global problem that can affect any political election in any country on the planet. Even the New York Times got pulled into the fake news of the Mexican election. A Facebook page showed a poll claiming to have been conducted by the Times putting Jose Antonio Meade of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party in first place. In reality, there had been no such poll.
So far, it is hard to discern whether the sea of misinformation is having a significant impact on the Mexican race — or whether dark forces have aligned to support a particular candidate, as they appeared to in the United States presidential election. The fake news could be coming from several angles.
Lopez Obrador leads by a chasm of more than 18 percentage points, according to the Bloomberg tracker. That is despite his being on the end of his share of fake smears, including one that he would seize second homes and another that his son secretly drives a Lamborghini. Mother Jones identified four “sketchy” websites — three of them designed to look like traditional news websites — that appeared to be mounting coordinated attacks on Lopez Obrador, 64, a former mayor of Mexico City.
Firmly in second place is Anaya, 39, of the conservative National Action Party. The fake news defaming him includes a photo doctored to make it appear that he is shirtless and arm in arm with a scantily clad dancer at a carnival.
Whatever the impact on polls, the spread of lies stains public debate and causes stress and confusion. A recent false message circulating on the messaging service WhatsApp said public health clinics had run out of medicine. Another fake story claimed that certain people won’t be allowed to vote, so they shouldn’t bother turning out.
Dubious players from the US election have also reared their heads here. In a report by Channel 4 News in Britain, Cambridge Analytica executives boasted of working in Mexico. Obrador and Anaya have called for an inquiry into which politicians may have hired the company — but none have owned up yet.
An admirable attempt to combat fake news has come from a group called Verificado 2018, which investigates whether reports are false. Members rightly point out that it is important to stop politicians using the spectre of fake news to attack genuine investigations into their corruption. Other organisations have also done valuable work on the issue: The Public Opinion Centre of Mexico’s Universidad del Valle has a series of studies on the immense impact of social media on Mexican society.
The spread of fake news comes as Mexico is still struggling to recover from its authoritarian past and the propaganda associated with it. The Institutional Revolutionary Party held the presidency for most of the 20th century, paying off journalists to report in their favour. At the same time, there is a history of devastating crimes that haven’t been satisfactorily solved, fuelling conspiracy theories.
A result is distrust in the government and the news media, while many Mexicans choose to believe what their emotions tell them. In such conditions, it is less that Mexico is entering a post-truth era as it is staying stuck in one. Fake news is yet another obstacle in the way of the many here who are struggling to build an honest and open society.
— New York Times News Service
Ioan Grillo has reported on Latin America since 2001 for international media including Time magazine, Reuters, CNN, the Associated Press, PBS NewsHour.
