Tripoli / March 30th – The Libyan Center for Press Freedom, through its digital platform, “Falso for Monitoring Hate Speech and Fake News,” launches the first media campaign for the year 2021, by launching the final report for 2020 on “Editorial practices in newsrooms of 15 different Libyan media outlets, whose websites and Facebook pages have been monitored, with the aim of recording professional violations and breaches committed by them.
Over the past year, an expanded team of experts and observers conducted thousands of data collection and analysis operations to focus on problems related to media research, namely the extent of the impact of hate speech and fake news on Libyan society, division ,fragmentation, and falsification of facts.
Monitoring and controlling operations were carried out throughout the day for a period of 6 continuous months, which started on January 1st and until June 30th of last year, during which 24037 professional violations were detected.
The final results showed the extent of the fondness for using the vocabulary of hate speech, disinformation and hostility against the political class, the Libyan state institutions and the major Western countries overlapping in Libyan affairs, and the fierce attack against the popular intifada in 2011 by the Jamahiriya TV, which was the old name for Libyan television during the rule of the late Libyan president, Muammar Gaddafi.
According to the leaks of the “Stanford” observatory of electronic policies, the Russian company “Wagner” affiliated with the Russian businessman “Yevgeny Prigozhin” owns 49% of the shares of this Cairo-based satellite channel, and topped the list by 13%.
Al Tanasuh channel, which is based in the town of Tajoura, east of Tripoli, and is strongly biased in favour of the Libyan Dar al-Ifta camp, while the Libyan newspaper Al-Marsad, which is believed to be run by an international network in Arab capitals such as Amman, Abu Dhabi and Cairo, and is strongly biased in favour of the camp of the commander of the Dignity Operations Forces, General Khalifa Haftar, close to 11% each.
The months analysis shows that the months of March and April were the highest in the rates of committing professional violations with a number of recurrences exceeding 5,000 per month, and this comes after the signing of the joint military agreement between the Government of National Accord and the Turkish Republic, and the escalation of violent clashes that took place on the outskirts of Tripoli, accompanied by an unprecedented intensity in the media discourse, laden with rancor and hatred that feeds the fighters of the two sides of the conflict, and ended with the failure of the attempt of General Haftar’s forces to storm the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
Incitement, insult and public defamation were among the most common types of hate speech used on social media, at a rate of 69%, which means that newsrooms rely on intentionally committing professional violations, not to mention the lack of accuracy and objectivity in covering armed conflicts, at a rate of 13%, followed by accusations without evidence that Editors and news producers direct it to their political opponents, at a rate of 48%.
On the other hand, there are many forms of journalism that are used in incitement speech and spreading false news, the written news report or news, at a rate of 49%, in addition to pictures and videos, at a rate of 13%, followed by news bulletins and visual reports at a rate of nearly 9%.
In total, the results of the monitoring carried out for the first time in Libya on social networking sites, showed that the rates of hate speech, which reached 76.6%, are much higher than the publication of fake news, which reached 23.4%.
Perhaps everyone is asking? What are the parties that issue hate speech that make social media sites fraught with hatred? That made Hate messages spread like wildfire!
Monitoring operations showed that newsrooms, “press editors or producers”, are the first responsible for spreading hate and fake news, at a rate of 51%, followed by representatives of General Khalifa Haftar’s forces at a rate of 12%. They are accused of spreading lies and hate speech, then representatives of the Government of National Accord forces at a rate of 10%, and we do not forget the activists and political analysts who top television screens by 7%, and the list goes on.
On the other hand, you may ask who are the most targeted parties? And why are they being targeted?!
The complex monitoring processes show that General Khalifa Haftar’s forces are the most targeted in the media, at a rate of 33%, followed by the forces of the Government of National Accord, at a rate of 27%, meaning that the two parties to the conflict in Libya are the most advocating and spreading hate speech, and the most targeted by hate speech may seem an unclear equation. However, the reason is due to the ownership and bias of the media to both sides of the conflict.
