It didn’t take long after the recent wave of riots in England began for there to be demands for tighter regulation.
It didn’t take long after the recent wave of riots in England began for there to be demands for tighter regulation (or, to call it what it is, censorship) of social media, demands from, among others, the police, a prominent human-rights lawyer, politicians, and journalists, demands that are not without a certain irony, given the history of Brits being “visited” by the police or facing criminal penalties for voicing the wrong sort of opinion on Twitter/X, Facebook and other such outlets. In this case, the would-be censors were fortified by the fact a major trigger for the riots were online “reports” that the individual responsible for the appalling knife attack that left three little girls dead, and other victims injured, was Muslim, an asylum-seeker, or both. This was simply untrue. The alleged killer is British-born, his parents are from Rwanda, and they are Christian.
These reports either triggered or were used as an excuse for a disgraceful wave of rioting, which included attacks on mosques and centers for asylum-seekers. According to a poll by YouGov, a large majority of Britons believed that the rioters were “thugs,” while only 16 percent thought that the rioters had “legitimate concerns.” Dig down deeper into the polling data, and the responses to a question about who or what was to blame for the unrest made for interesting reading. Eighty-eight percent (to varying degrees) of Brits thought the rioters either bore a “great deal” or a “fair amount of responsibility.” Eighty-six percent felt the same about social media, and 69 percent about “news media.” Others blamed included “far right” groups (74 percent). Sixty-seven percent, however, named “immigration policy in recent years.”
The discussion of these disturbances is only beginning, but writing in The Spectator, Stephen Webb, a former senior civil servant, who is now with Policy Exchange, a conservative think tank, has been quick to ask a key question. Why were “so many of those involved in the disorder — and their online supporters — . . . all too ready to believe malicious sources?”
Even if most of those rioting were thugs looking for an excuse to make trouble, the fact remains that many people sitting at home were prepared to believe the claims that were made.
Webb’s whole article is well worth reading, not least because it draws on his experience working for the British government “from the successive standoffs in Drumcree in Northern Ireland during the 1990s, through to the London riots of 2011.”
Webb:
There is now talk, once again, about tackling disinformation online. But the willingness to believe lies is a symptom of decaying trust in official channels. Government, the media and the police need to have a hard look at their own communications and whether they may have contributed to this mistrust, even from the best of intentions.
Many believe the authorities’ priority is to preserve community relations at all costs, including by damping down discussions of particularly sensitive crimes; and that many of the media outlets cooperate…
That’s some of it, but something else has also emerged, what the Swedes describe as an åsiktskorridor, an ”opinion corridor” an idea, which I discussed here, not dissimilar to that of the Overton Window, which basically defines the outer limits of what may or may not be said in polite society, including on the media. To deny that the setting of such boundaries in the U.K. is influenced by ideology as well as a basic need to keep the peace is either naïve or dishonest. The narrower that corridor, the greater people’s distrust of official sources of information, let alone of the news they hear from much of the mainstream media, especially when they are being told things contradicting what they can see for themselves.
Take the question of “two-tier” policing, a complaint that long predates the new Labour government.
Webb:
There are also claims that the way disturbances are policed has varied hugely. The police have faced questions that their handling of incidents like Harehills in Leeds — where there was widespread disorder after a child was taken into care — or the unrest between Bangladeshi groups in Whitechapel, looks different from the way the current riots are being tackled. Further back, there was a stark contrast between the policing of Black Lives Matter protests and anti-lockdown demonstrations. Claims of two-tier policing are serious and need to be given a proper response.
If further steps, beyond the existing law, are taken to limit what may be posted on social media they will only increase the distrust of information generated by government sources or the MSM. It will, in short, be a gift to those who spread disinformation online, a gift that they will be sure to accept, a gift that they should not be given.
And the answer is not to turn to the often spurious objectivity of “fact-checkers,” a rightly discredited caste, but to argue back. That is, after all, how liberal democracies are meant to work. This task would be easier if the institutions of the British state could do more to restore the reputation for objectivity and fairness they once (if never completely) enjoyed and if the country’s mainstream media could do more to remember that while reporting and opinion journalism each have their place, they are not the same thing.