‘Develop institution to filter fake news,’ Ex-SolGen urges public
Former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay urged the public to have an institution that would regulate news and develop policies to filter fake news.
Hilbay said the institution should counter dishonesties of public officials and would not take interest in the media and freedom of expression.
“It will not be interested in the media which is a private entity; it will not be interested in the freedom of expression of people,” Hilbay said during the Media Law and Social Media Ethics conference on Oct. 18.
Hilbay said the institution is needed to protect the integrity of information because the “quality of public conversations will go down” if the information value goes down.
The proposed institution has to have a “tally mechanism” such as notifying Facebook of suspected “fake news” sites and to tag them as false information, shutting down its posts, and the institution may also instil a system of fines as a form of regulation if they spread false information, Hilbay said.
‘Political affiliations, emotional attachments’
Hilbay said the government thinks every criticism it receives is an “attack on [its] entiree personality, [its] entire administration.”
He said it is a problem when fake news comes from the government because what public officials say affects foreign policy and the domestic market.
“If the president provides false information , that becomes conversation for one entire day or one entire week [and] that can affect our foreign relations,” he said.
Hilbay also mentioned that people generally prefer the truth over false news but attachmment to certain political figures make them blind as “political affiliation is an emotional attachment.”