It is surprising that increasing numbers of people, who would ordinarily be sceptical about exercises of government power, have embraced the fake news paranoia, writes Martin Van Staden.
Government’s prohibition of so-called fake news surrounding the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, and the response to it, infantilises all South Africans and unjustifiably positions itself as a guarantor of accuracy. We buy into this deluded notion at our own peril.
It makes no sense for us to presume that government has the necessary expertise and insight to judge whether something is true or fake when governments are by far some of the biggest peddlers of lies in any societyIt makes no sense for us to presume that government has the necessary expertise and insight to judge whether something is true or fake when governments are by far some of the biggest peddlers of lies in any society.
John Stuart Mill, one of the intellectual pioneers of the free society most of us today inhabit, wrote poetically in On Liberty that: Common law and the Constitution already make ample provision for punishing those expressions that are, in fact, harmful, and they do not require additional legislation or, at worst, regulations to complement them.
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