Hold the line on fake political content
Another day another example of blatantly fake political campaign content. The election campaign is widening the gulf between political campaigning and the norms of organisational communication.
The Labour Party published its manifesto yesterday.
Just before the launch the Conservative Party published a fake website version. The faux manifesto cites Labour policy as having no plan for Brexit, higher taxes and pushing for two more referendums.
I’m not going to share it, but Google, Facebook and Twitter will help you find it. It’s circulating widely. As a form of propaganda, it’s blatant.
The issue isn’t whether Facebook, Google or Twitter should not share fake content. I’ll return to their roles as platforms versus publishes in the future.
The issue in question is whether a political campaign should pollute discourse with disinformation in the form of fake owned or shared content.
The CIPR and PRCA both called out the Twitter switch but have been mute on the fake manifesto.
Therein lies an issue. Disinformation quickly wears down traditional norms and becomes acceptable. It’s exhausting but it’s absolutely not acceptable and it must be called out.
This General Election campaign is widening the gulf between political campaigning and the conventional norms of organisational communication. It is more transgressive than what has come before and is normalising what is acceptable.
The approaches of the former Conservative Government and the Conservative Party could not be starker.
The Government Communication Service (GCS) highlighted fake media and ethics as two of the five biggest issues facing professional communicators. In March it published a guide to countering disinformation (opens as a PDF).
GCS is part of the civil service and is held to account by The Civil Service Code.
The danger is that once the election campaign is over and we return to our day jobs both public and private sector communicators will be expected to apply these tactics in practice.
It’s an issue that I’ve discussed at length Dan Slee, co-founder and community manager of comms2point0.
“Public sector people take pride in being politically neutral and creating communications that has public service and a high standard of ethics at their core” said Slee.
“It's fair to say that many public sector people are aghast at some of the well documented behaviour in the campaign.
“Their worry isn't just abstract. The concern is them now being expected to behave more unethically once the election is over.
“That should be a worry throughout the rest of the industry. Elections are petri dishes for communications and the winning formulas often translate into day-to-day campaigns. The clear danger is a nose-dive in standards.
“I'd strongly urge the CIPR, the PRCA and others to draw a line in the sand over what's acceptable and condemn what's not.”
Hold the line.
