FAKE NEWS?

Fake news can come in all shapes and sizes as well as from even so-called "official" sources. You have only got to watch American television, for example, and see the reports of their President's various tweets to know that these days you can't even trust our duly elected leaders to tell the truth. It is with this in mind that we all need to be very aware of any attempts by politicians (both local as well as foreign) to try and manipulate their respective electorates. And with an election due sometime later this year we here in good old T&T will not be spared attempts by our local politicians to spread fake news in order to persuade us to vote for them.

That is why I read a piece on social media that said in essence (my words) that the Rowley led PNM was trying to get either CNN or  the BBC to interview our erstwhile Prime Minister  about how Trinidad & Tobago had such success in dealing with COVID-19 that it ranked Number One in the whole world!

Well, the problem here is that we really don't have enough information to be able to assess for ourselves whether that boast is really valid. For example, we don't really know how much testing has been done. The last time I looked (which was very recently) the number of tests was less than two thousand! (In a population of about 1.4 million that ain't a very good number!) Then, although there have only been eight reported COVID-19 deaths, there is a grave suspicion that this number is actually higher. Is this suspicion verifiable? No. There isn't enough information. Is the suspicion reasonable in all of the circumstances? Unfortunately, yes. You see, if you check the number of pneumonia related deaths in, say,  for the WHOLE of 2018, and then you check the number of pneumonia related deaths for the first three months of this year all of a sudden you will find that the number of pneumonia related deaths in the first three months of this year, you will find that this year in the first three months the death rate for pneumonia was more than double that for the whole of 2018!

Hmmm! Suspicious? Very! Especially when reports say that the COVID-19 symptoms are very similar to those of pneumonia.

So? Back to CNN and the BBC. Question: will their reporters care enough to check on what I've just said above and ask the appropriate questions? Or because this will not be a very big international story and will probably get about three minutes of airtime (if that) they will just let the Prime Minister speak, not question him with anything difficult  ... in other words, give him a free pass ... and then report how well T&T has done.

This has relevance, because both CNN and the BBC have very good reputations and if one (or both) report that T&T has done very well you can just imagine how this will play out on the political hustings! And the poor CNN/BBC reporters will have been unwitting stooges who have been cleverly duped by the Government and who will never understand that the real purpose of their being invited to make this interview was to change the narrative of the real problems that we face with the Delcy Rodriguez/Fuelgate fiasco. 

But , of course, the whole purpose of fake news is to try and change the narrative, deflection,  and it always sounds so much better when the fake news comes from a supposedly reliable source. You have to hand it to the PNM strategists, because if they have indeed thought this one up it's brilliant! But then , nobody ever said they were stupid! They might be a lot of other things, but stupid is definitely not one of them.