In 1896, Adolph Ochs purchased The New York Times and transformed it into the country's first serious newspaper. His slogan, "All the News That's Fit to Print," emphasized the Times' focus on serious journalism, differentiating the paper from the likes of William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner, whose yellow journalism, or more sensationalist ethos, dominated the press. The pinnacle of Hearst's yellow journalism was the headline, "Destruction of the War Ship Maine Was the Work of an Enemy!" referring to a sunk warship off the coast of Cuba. The unsubstantiated claim that Spain had buried a bomb in the U.S.S. Maine became the pretext for the Spanish-American War.
The Times' emphasis on facts and evidence became the gold standard for 20th century American journalism and a cornerstone of American democracy. It wasn't until the emergence of social media, little more than a decade ago, that fake news came back with a vengeance.
But today's disinformation ecosystem is different from the early days of yellow journalism. With more powerful and virulent tools, fake news can travel at near two thirds the speed of light, often without human regulation. Victims of disinformation can be sucked unwittingly into propaganda vortexes based on demographics and browsing histories. Trained artificial intelligence (AI) bots can invent infinite variations on lies. Fake news started wars in the late 19th century. Today, it sways elections.
I watched an election hijacking unfold while living in Bogotá, Colombia, where I was writing about the social unrest that exploded throughout Colombia during the pandemic. The turbulent 2021 Colombian protests lasted four months and set the stage for the 2022 election of a fringe party candidate and former guerrilla. Through my research and interviews with Colombian military, citizens, and politicians, I learned that Colombia's adversaries (Russia, Venezuela, and a narco-friendly political party) had organized and financed the protests in order to discredit the administration of former President Iván Duque. Slander of the established political apparatus boosted a fringe party candidate, in what was at the time one of the oldest and most established democracies in Latin America.
In 2023, I interviewed Diego Molano, who was Colombia's defense minister during the 2021 protests. According to Molano, Duque's government created a task force to identify and understand the protesters' complaints. They found that roughly, "Ninety percent of the complaints were based on false information, with the remaining 10 percent legitimate grievances and pandemic-related economic woes," Molano said. The false claims ranged from police brutality to complaints about government elites excluding the poor from education—ignoring the fact that Duque had launched an educational assistance program called Matrícula Zero, which aimed to leave no poor person behind.
Colombian intelligence found that much of the disinformation in 2021, and the election period of 2022, originated from Russian and Venezuelan bot farms. According to Ryan Berg of the Council on Strategic and International Studies, "Gustavo Petro's presidential campaign received a strong boost from Russia with fake accounts, orchestrated hashtags and mentions that sought to position the then candidate of the Historical Pact."
The social upheaval paved the way for the election of Gustavo Petro, an anti-establishment, Venezuela-friendly president. Just one year into the former guerrilla's presidency, I interviewed Petro voters for CNN and learned many of them felt they had been duped. Petro's approval rating today hovers around 20 percent. He has been accused of destroying Colombia's exemplary health care system, expropriating pension funds, paying off delinquent youth with government funds, and ordering the military to cease capturing crime gang leaders.
To be sure, the U.S. is not in danger of cartel rule anytime soon. But Americans are so accustomed to our many democratic freedoms that it's hard to wrap our heads around the subtle signs of democratic decline. Freedom of the press and access to reliable information are pillars of democracy—freedoms which aspiring despots can manipulate to manufacture convenient new narratives, and rise to power.
It's impossible to prove conclusively that disinformation swayed the 2024 U.S. presidential election. But former President Donald Trump's well-understood penchant for mendacity was supercharged leading up to the election. A recent CNN article called his campaign "relentlessly dishonest." From slanderous claims of Haitian immigrants eating pets, to litanies of untruths about pervasive election fraud, Trump has lied more than any U.S. president on record. His disinformation campaign heavily targeted Hispanics; it's no surprise then that a record percentage of Latinos voted for Trump.
Russia amped up its support of Trump too, hiring Americans to spread disinformation online. As with all successful propaganda, they bury in it a kernel of truth, stoking preexisting fears with exaggerated claims and polarizing rhetoric. AP found exaggerated reports about murders committed by illegal immigrants.
Finland's anti-fake-news program, launched in 2014, is an excellent model for the U.S. to emulate. It teaches students, citizens, politicians, and journalists how to spot disinformation, furnishing a checklist of methods of deception to help citizens discern truth from lies. According to The New York Times, Finland ranked No. 1 in 41 European countries in resilience against disinformation. Such educational efforts implemented in the U.S. would not immediately bring everybody the politicians they want. But treating disinformation as the crisis it has become would be, at least, a proactive step in the right direction.
Kristina Foltz is a journalist and frequent contributor to Newsweek. She lives in South America.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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