Re­cent na­tion­al and glob­al events have stressed the need for far more rig­or­ous pri­vate and pub­lic ex­am­i­na­tion of what is pre­sent­ed to us as “fact” and “truth”.

This has al­ways been an ex­pect­ed func­tion of me­dia peo­ple whose pro­fes­sion­al scep­ti­cism ought, ide­al­ly, to rou­tine­ly guide their con­clu­sions for rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the re­spec­tive news and in­for­ma­tion plat­forms.

There are a few foun­da­tion­al guide­lines that are use­ful. They in­clude the need for mul­ti­ple iden­ti­fied sources (both in­de­pen­dent and open­ly bi­ased), ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in pro­fes­sion­al con­duct, and a num­ber of oth­er well-es­tab­lished eth­i­cal guide­lines.

In the pri­vate sphere, there are no such pro­fes­sion­al oblig­a­tions, but there is a per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that in­for­ma­tion shared with oth­ers is as truth­ful as hu­man­ly pos­si­ble.

Reck­less on­line trolls, par­ti­san sur­ro­gates, and sundry mis­chief-mak­ers typ­i­cal­ly do not con­sid­er them­selves bound ei­ther by the pro­fes­sion­al re­quire­ments of jour­nal­ists or even a per­son­al com­mit­ment to share strin­gent­ly ver­i­fied in­for­ma­tion.

Nowa­days, with per­va­sive so­cial me­dia, the lat­ter co­hort of in­for­ma­tion-shar­ers vast­ly out­num­bers those who con­sid­er it a du­ty to be truth­ful and ac­cu­rate—to the ex­tent that this is pos­si­ble with­in an en­vi­ron­ment that is not of­ten con­ducive to the free flow of re­li­able in­for­ma­tion. These are some of the “sup­ply side” com­po­nents of to­day’s in­for­ma­tion in­fra­struc­ture. You should be able to iden­ti­fy a few oth­er vi­tal el­e­ments and even name some of the dom­i­nant cul­prits in your vir­tu­al spaces.

In re­cent years, though, the UN sys­tem has pro­mot­ed a “de­mand side” ap­proach to man­ag­ing in­for­ma­tion flows. Such an ap­proach was per­haps al­ways there in the form of crit­i­cal-think­ing in­struc­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion—pre­sent­ed in dif­fer­ent forms in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and res­i­dent among the skills-sets of nu­mer­ous pro­fes­sions and vo­ca­tions. You prob­a­bly wit­ness this at work when you go to the me­chan­ic, vis­it the den­tist, or talk to farm­ers about their crops. There is an abil­i­ty to sift a va­ri­ety of cir­cum­stances to di­ag­nose and ad­min­is­ter what is re­quired to get their jobs done.

I think that the Me­dia and In­for­ma­tion Lit­er­a­cy (MIL) cam­paign of the UN now be­ing adopt­ed by gov­ern­ments and or­gan­i­sa­tions around the world, pro­vides us with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to achieve a hu­man rights-com­pli­ant ap­proach to mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion, and oth­er mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion dys­func­tion­al­i­ties.

The the­o­ry is that equip­ping con­sumers of me­dia con­tent with an abil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish fact from fic­tion, and truth from lies, has the po­ten­tial to great­ly di­min­ish the im­pact of the sup­ply of un­re­li­able news, in­for­ma­tion, and oth­er con­tent. This is an im­por­tant is­sue to con­sid­er, es­pe­cial­ly if we con­cede that dig­i­tal con­tent, in par­tic­u­lar, will con­tin­ue to grow and es­cape even the finest mesh of reg­u­la­tion. Pro­hi­bi­tion and reg­u­la­tion are of lim­it­ed im­pact.

Through de­mand-ori­ent­ed MIL, both di­rect and col­lat­er­al so­cial dam­age has the po­ten­tial to be avoid­ed, or at least min­imised. The low­er the re­cep­tiv­i­ty to every­thing on of­fer, the greater the hin­drance to un­in­ter­rupt­ed sup­ply.

This, how­ev­er, does not pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive shield. So, most de­fend­ers of rights agree that the pro­tec­tions cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ed to the sub­jects of me­dia con­tent, un­der com­mon law and statute, should con­tin­ue to ap­ply. Even the found­ing prin­ci­ples of free speech, as cap­tured by Ar­ti­cle 19 of the In­ter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Po­lit­i­cal Rights, iden­ti­fies du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and with them, wide­ly ac­cept­ed lim­i­ta­tions.

There are live­ly de­bates re­gard­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion of such lim­i­ta­tions. This res­onates along­side what we have to con­sid­er on ques­tions of me­dia and in­for­ma­tion lit­er­a­cy. For ex­am­ple, there are im­por­tant nu­ances to con­sid­er when it comes to things such as defama­tion, threats to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and in­cite­ment to dis­crim­i­na­tion, hos­til­i­ty or vi­o­lence. There is al­so the prin­ci­ple that ad­dress­es the in­fringe­ment of oth­er rights such as pri­va­cy, to cite one ex­am­ple.

This should clear the air among those un­der the mis­guid­ed as­sump­tion that peo­ple who ad­vo­cate for free­dom of ex­pres­sion are some­how en­vis­ag­ing a sit­u­a­tion of un­tram­melled lib­er­ty. In the Caribbean, progress with such an ap­proach has been rather slow. The speed of change in the vir­tu­al world has ac­cel­er­at­ed great­ly. The ad­vent of gen­er­a­tive Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) of­fers so­lu­tions but is al­so laden with se­ri­ous chal­lenges that test ver­i­fi­ca­tion process­es as noth­ing else has in hu­man mem­o­ry.

Whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay and, with it, a more ur­gent need to achieve much high­er stan­dards of me­dia and in­for­ma­tion lit­er­a­cy—chal­lenged as we al­ready are in the area of func­tion­al, tra­di­tion­al lit­er­a­cy.

Reg­u­la­tion and pro­hi­bi­tion won’t do the job. We have to hold this by the reins as so­ci­eties and not evade re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for mak­ing the nec­es­sary change as a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort in­volv­ing all con­cerned, in­clud­ing and es­pe­cial­ly our young peo­ple.