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The Big Threat: When terror strikes, fake news follows
What’s not to love about France? The food, the wine, the culture. I was reminded of what a remarkable country it is earlier this year when I travelled there as part of a Churchill Fellowship to discover what steps other countries are taking to help their kids thrive in the digital age. Unsurprisingly, the French take the mission of digital literacy very seriously - with the government throwing millions of euros at it every year to ensure their citizens are disinformation-resilient. And as we’ll discover in Episode 5 of The Big Threat which drops today, it’s an effort that was turbocharged by a moment of terror.
When terror strikes, fake news follows
I had the very great fortune of living in France for a decade in the early noughties. And one of the things that struck me was how seriously the French take the role of the media in society.
It was something that was only underscored in 2015 when terrorists stormed the office of the popular French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo - killing 12 people.
The street protests that followed in support of press freedom were among the largest Paris had ever seen.
And since then, the country has taken seriously the effort to ensure every French child receives comprehensive media literacy instruction at school - to spot the sort of disinformation that flourished in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. It’s government-funded and universal.
I took great pleasure in this week’s episode visiting a Paris high school to watch a media literacy lesson in action.
I also sit down with Agence France-Presse and learn how journalists employed in its fact-checking unit are subjected to trolling and doxing, and in an interview with a leading European media literacy advocate, how Elon Musk’s decimation of USAID is being felt on The Continent.
You can listen to Episode 5 of The Big Threat here or tune in on YouTube - and hit subscribe while you’re at it. And scroll on for highlights from my conversations.
Interview Highlights
Highlight 1: On Charlie Hebdo disinformation
Isabelle Wirth, Entre Les Lignes: “[As a teacher] how are you supposed to react when a child says: “Yeah, but they deserved to be killed for a satirical drawing about the Prophet”?”
Highlight 2: On the dangers of fact-checking
Sophie Nicholson, Agence France-Presse: “We've had attacks. We've had people come into our offices to threaten journalists.”
Highlight 3: On preparing for war
Juliane von Reppert Bismarck, Lie Detectors: “Media literacy should be something that is considered a basic literacy - a core literacy alongside reading and writing and counting. The ability to check whether what you're reading is actually true or whether what you're seeing is actually true.”
What are we doing about it?
That would be our world-leading daily news podcast for 7-12yos, Squiz Kids, and our media literacy program Newshounds…
Since 2020, our investment in ensuring Australia’s next generations become critical consumers of news and information online has been significant, and we’re committed to the cause.
How can you help? Recommend Squiz Kids to the parents, carers and teachers in your life - and if you fall into one of those categories yourself, dive in. We’re in more than 6,000 classrooms and many more family homes around the country, fuelling kids’ interest in the news every day.
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