McHugh's Miscellany: Truth in fake social media plague will be local newspapers

There is something that needs to be discussed with our news, in fact, all online content. 

As I have been immersed in it for some time, I think I can talk about the newspaper and media industry. 

It has changed dramatically in those years from individual pages being made up and photographed to make a metal plate to today and the few second electronic transfer to print works that can be in Ireland or indeed anywhere in the world. 

While the online imprint of a newspaper has grown exponentially over recent years across the social media platforms, in what has nationally and internationally become a declining sales market, so too has every half baked and half faked news conspirator and the multiplicity of BS that is part and parcel of the bulbous bonkers that is being hurled at us each week. 

You can call them whatever you want, but keyboard warriors are simply the modern take of the old classic ‘bar room philosophers’. And an active audience will simply see the decibel levels rising. 

On top of that, be it wars, westerns or wet days the fact is that anyone can now utilise or rather weaponise AI to just about fake everybody and everything online, indeed that now extends into fake voices of those that we might even trust. 

And many, particularly young people and more vulnerable members of society are not questioning the basic facts and taking much of the nonsense that we now view online, as a given. 

It can be as realistic as anything that the mainstream media presents but when baked and faked, can be presented looking like it has the same gravitas.

And soon, even the naysayers of the internet will not know themselves what the difference is  between the real and fake. . 

The fake news itself will become faked and eventually the internet itself will become little more than a comic strip where people look at things in wry amusement not knowing whether to believe it or not, but enjoying the craic it brings. That is my hope anyway!

In recent months, I have noticed items that are dressed up as local news coming from outside agencies that are simply not adding up. 

The copy relates to small events that a website half a world away should really not have anything to do with. Out of curiosity, I started reading and observing the copy.

And while it looked like a duck, it neither quacked like a duck nor walked like a duck.

Put simply, it was original content from this part of the world, taken from sources in this part of the country,  that had been taken and put through some AI or GPT washing machine, rinsed, spun and dried before being presented as fresh news.

And forget about copyright or unique content. Everything is game ball when as I say, it is rewashed and hung out to dry anew.

The biggest problem over the next ten years will not be access to the news, it will be accessing the news that bears any semblance to the truth, any semblance of reality and something that people can identify with on a stable and truthful basis.

That is not to say, that it will be palatable to everyone, but at least there is a modicum of decency in the content that is being shared by the more reliable media.

And that is why I think, like the great circle of life, people will come back to newspapers, and their online content. For when it comes to the chase, they have been the purveyors of truthful news, both good and bad, for generations.

And while some have flaws, they are a lot more reliable than the increasingly utter unregulated nonsense that we all seem to be clicking onto, each and every day, with more alarming regularity than ever. 

Again, while I see this week that the first ever rules for artificial intelligence for the EU being voted upon by MEP’s in a positive light, it may be a case of the genie already having left the bottle.

But the humble local newspaper - it might save us yet!