UK Parliament’s Fake News Inquiry Publishes HR Submission

Following Russian interference on social media allegedly affecting the discourse in a number of countries around the world, fake news has been recognized as a serious threat to democracies.

Over the past few months, the UK Parliament has been conducting its own inquiry into fake news and invited submissions from interested parties.

HonestReporting is no stranger to exposing fake news when it is aimed at damaging Israel. While most mainstream media outlets do not intentionally set out to create fake news about Israel, there have been examples where naive journalists have failed to fact check the credibility of their sources and have indeed spread fake news stories.

We submitted a brief overview of this phenomenon to the Parliamentary inquiry in February 2018 around the same time as Professor Richard Landes, an expert on “Pallywood,” the staging of scenes by Palestinian journalists in order to present the Palestinians as hapless victims of Israeli aggression.

Disturbingly, however, while other submissions appeared on the Parliamentary inquiry’s website within a short time of being submitted, neither Professor Landes’ nor HonestReporting’s were published online. It was particularly notable that submissions from students and schoolchildren were being published despite a clear lack of expertise on the issue. (It is, of course, a positive aspect of the inquiry that anyone can contribute.)

But no sign of ours.

Is it a coincidence that two submissions dealing with fake news as it relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were seemingly being ignored by the Parliamentary inquiry’s staff?

Only after the intervention of UK Lawyers For Israel, a voluntary organization of lawyers who support Israel using their legal skills, were the submissions published.

It is unpleasant to contemplate the possibility that the organs of UK democracy may have interfered with the right to be heard and that it took a lawyer’s letter to rectify this.

Nonetheless, HonestReporting’s submission is now online and part of the inquiry’s record.

Featured image: CC BY Kenneth Lu;