​Experts: Communicating real and fake info at the same time; correction notices are more transparent and can help to differentiate fake news

Lianhe Zaobao, page 6

The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill was tabled in Parliament on April 1. Prof Ang Peng Hwa from NTU Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information said that most governments would choose to remove or block falsehoods to prevent it from continuing to mislead the public. Singapore’s requirement to publish a correction has provided a fresh perspective. Benjamin Ang, who leads the Cyber and Homeland Defence Programme of the Centre of Excellence for National Security at RSIS, said taking down fake news would usually backfire as it would spur other netizens to repost the article as protest. “The more the government ‘deletes’, the more it will cause the public to criticise the government for limiting freedom of speech and suspect that it is hiding the truth.”