This week, Twitter was keen to share the news<\/a> about its new arrangement with The Associated Press and Reuters \u201cto expand our efforts to identify and elevate credible information\u201d on its platform.\u00a0 The company reiterates its commitment that people using its service are able to \u201ceasily find reliable information\u201d hoping to \u201cexpand the scale and increase the speed of our efforts to provide timely, authoritative text across the wide range of global topics and conversations\u201d taking place on the platform each day.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n The global head of user-generated content at Reuters, Hazel Baker, was businesslike in describing<\/a> a partnership that would \u201cleverage our deep global and local expertise to serve the public conversation with reliable information.\u201d\u00a0 Tom Januszewski, Vice President of Global Business Development at AP, was<\/a> \u201cparticularly excited about leveraging AP\u2019s scale and speed to add context to online conversations, which can benefit from easy access to the facts.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Such promises to \u201cleverage\u201d could well have been matched to any shadowy information department from the Cold War with the express purpose of ensuring what news was consumed when and by whom.\u00a0 Twitter will seek help<\/a> from the two newswires \u201cwhere facts are in dispute or when Twitter\u2019s Curation team doesn\u2019t have the specific expertise or access to a high enough volume of reputable reporting on Twitter.\u201d\u00a0 Those using the platform \u201ccan expect more Trends with contextual descriptions and links to reporting from trusted sources more frequently.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Bringing aboard these news giants is no guarantee that the text and information provided will be authoritative, credible or reliable.\u00a0 News wires are not immune to being disseminators of inaccurate information, or information that is slanted in favour of a power or interest.\u00a0 Often, they hide behind their reputations even as they ventriloquise different interests and planted narratives.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Take Reuters, which, by its claim<\/a>, \u201cshall supply unbiased and reliable news services to newspapers, news agencies, broadcasters, and other media subscribers and to businesses, governments, institutions, individuals, and others with whom Reuters has or may have contracts.\u201d\u00a0 In 1941, the company created its Trust Principles in agreement with The News Paper Proprietors Associated Limited and The Press Association Limited.\u00a0 These imposed obligations<\/a> on the organisation and its employees to \u201cact at all times with integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Noble in print, the practise did not always stack up. In 1969, a British government document available in the National Archives called \u201cFunding of Reuters by HMG\u201d (Her Majesty\u2019s Government) also outlined an agreement<\/a> with Reuters to do the sort of thing that has become popular at Twitter: curate the news.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n The way that curating would take place was what mattered.\u00a0 \u201cWe are now in a position to conclude an agreement providing discreet Government support for Reuters services in the Middle East and Latin America\u201d.\u00a0 The interests of HMG \u201cshould be well served by the new arrangement.\u201d\u00a0 The negotiations with the news outlet were led by the anti-Soviet propaganda unit known as the Information Research Department.\u00a0 \u201cThe new relationship established with Reuters in the Middle East and Latin America,\u201d John Peck, former head of the IRD notes<\/a> in the documents, \u201ccan lead to valuable goodwill and cooperation with the Agency on a global scale.\u201d Reuters \u201ccould and would provide\u201d what the government needed.<\/span><\/p>\n The scheme also brought in that other paragon of objective journalism, the BBC, which paid<\/a> an \u201cenhanced subscription\u201d to Reuters, which was then going through a financially lean time.\u00a0 That money was duly recouped from the Treasury\u2019s purse.\u00a0 Knowledge of this arrangement, approved by the BBC\u2019s head of external services Sir Charles Curran, was kept to a select few.<\/span><\/p>\n With these revelations, Reuters was keen to regard this practise as not only normal but acceptable \u2013 at least historically.\u00a0 \u201cMany news organisations received some form of state subsidy after World War Two,\u201d was the weak explanation<\/a> from the wire\u2019s spokesperson David Crundwell.\u00a0 The arrangement, he claimed, \u201cwas not in keeping with our Trust Principles and we would not do this today.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The BBC, through a spokeswoman, similarly said that<\/a>, \u201cThe BBC charter guarantees editorial independence irrespective of whether funding comes from the UK government, the license fee or commercial sources.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Much of this is wishful thinking.\u00a0 Such working understandings have not ceased in the post-Cold War era.\u00a0 If anything, the misinformation and disinformation stakes have reached a new frontier, pullulating with contenders.\u00a0 Max Blumental, editor of The Grayzone<\/i>, revealed<\/a> last February that Reuters and the BBC had been sponsored to engage in a covert information warfare campaign against that old adversary Russia.\u00a0 This involved a collaboration with the Counter Disinformation & Media Development (CDMD) section within the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).\u00a0 Media organisations worked alongside various intelligence contractors, training Russian journalists under the Reuters umbrella to produce \u201cattitudinal change in the participants\u201d. The aim, fluffily put, was to produce a \u201cpositive impact\u201d on their \u201cperception of the UK.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The development tracker of the UK government also reveals<\/a> that the CDMD programme involves working with various partners \u201cto enhance the quality of public service and independent media (including the Russian language) so that it is able to support social cohesion, uphold universal values and provide communities across Eastern Europe with access to reliable information.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Twitter\u2019s response to Blumenthal\u2019s work is a sign of things to come.\u00a0 Providing its own idea of context to the article, the platform placed a warning on all tweets linked to it.\u00a0 Far from discrediting the sources used, the message simply went on to warn<\/a> that the documents used \u201cmay have been obtained through hacking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n As for Twitter, we already know about executive connections between its operations and the military-intelligence establishment.\u00a0 In 2019, the Middle East Eye<\/i> found<\/a> that Gordon MacMillan, a senior executive with editorial responsibility for Middle East matters, was also moonlighting as a reservist for the 77th<\/sup> Brigade, the British Army\u2019s psychological warfare unit established in 2015 to find ways of waging \u201cnon-lethal\u201d war.\u00a0 According to General Nick Carter, the unit\u2019s primary task is to conduct research<\/a>into \u201cinformation warfare\u201d and give the British military \u201cthe capability to compete in the war of narratives at the tactical level\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n The battle against misinformation can very often become a battle against information you do not particularly like or want people to access.\u00a0 The line on this is not always clear, though hope springs eternal that the marketplace of ideas, to use that increasingly empty expression, can sort the wheat from the chaff.\u00a0 Twitter\u2019s calculating pivot towards this new information landscape shows a new strategy to anchor itself in an ecosystem already marginalising independent journalism. In doing so, it is courting the high priests who determine what counts as news and what doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 Soon, a sanitised platform will simply be code for a censored one.<\/span><\/p>\n Dr. Binoy Kampmark<\/strong> was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.\u00a0 He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. \u00a0He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email\u00a0protected]<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
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