Bend it like BJP’s primetime news warriors

‘Why call comedians to comedy shows in TV, when these BJP leaders can put up a far better show?’  
That is one of the social media trolls which have been doing the rounds about BJP leaders in Kerala whose histrionics on primetime TV news debates have spawned an avalanche of memes and trolls. Satire-happy social media users attest that the primetime news debates involving BJP leaders are stress-busters, which have started shaping the social media’s political satire zeitgeist. Will they soon be Kerala’s answer to America’s Comedy Central, competing with any comedy programme worth the salt? 
The average Malayalee is touted as too political. He can leave his head un-marinated with his daily dose of coconut oil, but he cannot live without the daily dose of news. The state has seen the birth of a plethora of television channels – a considerable of them dish out full-time news – pandering to the Malayalee’s news-hungry predilections. Yes, he is spoilt for choices with a choice of TV new channels that fit into all ideological combinations: left, right, extreme right, centre, and centre-left. Those animated discussions on politics that used to enliven that nondescript village tea shop have shifted to living rooms when the evening news debates come alive.    
And in this ephemera of one-hour-long TV news debates, any publicity is free publicity, and yes good publicity, too. These nocturnal news debates give the political novices their one-way ticket to instant political gratification and mass recognition. And, none other than the BJP and its ‘leaders’ have benefited immensely from this primetime glory. What would have been quite unthinkable a decade ago – mass popularity and political stardom – is a reality for many primetime news warriors of the BJP today without contesting or winning even in a village, all thanks to the proliferation of TV news. Kerala’s television news channels have helped them attain instant limelight by circumventing the age-old entry barriers to reach a certain level of mass acceptability without having to go through the pains of building a political career by way of years-long grass-root-level works.   
So a party with little to boast politically – the BJP continues to be a political pariah in the state with the party just scoring its first lone MLA in the last assembly elections – gets equal treatment and mainstream acceptability like the Communists and the Congress, all because of the primetime news. And the state BJP ‘leaders’, with little political pedigree or hands-on experience to boot, should be thankful to these TV channels for elevating their position from near-anonymity into the mainstream. If Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen were to pay a part of their royalty to the fatwa-happy nutty Mullahs for elevating their literary careers to lofty planes, same way the Kerala unit of BJP owes a lot to the TV news channels.     
BJP’s primetime news warriors can amuse you, flummox you and give you ponder-worthy novel insights as they go on dishing out nocturnal nostrums and glib answers to knotty problems. They thrive on churning out absurdities, didn’t-that-Mulla-rape kind of obtuse whataboutery, outright lies, and blinkered retorts on Hindu nationalism that often vacillate between inanity and profanity. And what gets drowned in the cacophony of shrill rhetoric and bigotry is the fast-shrinking room for sanity and common sense. Sane arguments and decent debates be damned!
Here are some of the brain-stimulating nuggets that can be inducted into BJP’s Prime Time Hall of Brilliance. In a news debate on beef ban, you had a BJP primetime warrior making the bizarre claim that camel meat is banned in Gulf countries; his insinuation was that camel is considered a holy animal in the Gulf region like cow is in India! The social media has since then knighted him with Ottakam, the Malayalam for camel, in reverence to his intelligence mastery. Another primetime warrior repeated the nonsense after his north Indian counterpart that cow emits oxygen! In another TV discussion on Deendayal Upadhyaya, the same cow-oxygen-maverick was seen saying that VD Savarkar sent apology letters six times to the British so that he could come out of the jail and fight against the British for India’s freedom! The news anchor had a hard time suppressing the bouts of laughter. She immediately apologized for laughing live. 
In the latest discussion on Narendra Modi’s now-controversial accusation that no Congress leaders visited Bhagat Singh in jail, another primetime news warrior, known for her vitriolic nature, had a wonderful interpretation to make. She argued, exuding copious amount of conviction and certainty, that PM meant to say nobody visited Bhagat Singh after he became ‘shaheed’ (martyr). She has since been knighted ‘Shaheed’ by the social media. 
Astonishingly enough, warriors like these continue to serenade the primetime moments with their august presence as before. What makes them the darlings of the TV channels? Oh, don’t ask us, how can we not give due representation to the ruling national party?  
When confronted with truths, these primetime warriors use their time-tested modus operandi of showing utter contempt or shouting the other panelists down with aggression and ad hominem attacks. Did they copy from the playbooks of BJP’s national-level leaders or is it the other way around? The head of state BJP recently assured journalists that he would check the instances where his colleagues have been uttering nonsense during TV discussions. Now, let’s wait for an enquiry commission!  
So, how do they get away with it? What explains this method to such commonsense-defying nightly madness? Indeed, the BJP as a party stands to gain by this perverse and sustained emission of primetime lies and misinterpretations of facts. And it is a fact that they bask even in the subsequent social media trolls and ridiculing, because that too is a form of publicity! Probably, by uttering hogwash on TV they may be seeking to gain legitimacy to their brand of hatred politics and make their self-delusional followers continue to live in their own self-delusional cocoons. Comedy may just be an unwitting byproduct of this larger game plan. While this comedy is enjoyable for social media users, it is a tragedy for democracy and the culture of sensible debates. 

(First published in Countercurrents) ttps://countercurrents.org/2018/05/16/bend-it-like-bjps-primetime-news-warriors/

You’ve got a video, and it’s fake!

Picture this: The world wakes up to a video wherein US President Donald Trump makes the shocking announcement of an imminent nuclear attack on North Korea. Or this: a video in which Mukesh Ambani makes a calamitous-worthy announcement, sending the stock market into a tizzy and shareholders scurrying to save their asses.

These two instances are not slices from a dystopian fictional account, but could be possible, thanks to the disruptive powers of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The marriage between news dissemination and technology has already led to the unwitting and disastrous birth of fake news. And now artificially created fake videos that look ultra-realistic are heralding a new era in fake news. Yes, video-faking technology is posed to blur the gossamer-thin line between real and fake.

Technology, internet in particular, has enabled the democratization of information and news. But it has come with a price. Today, the sly art of morphing and doctoring is longer sly. Anybody with a smart phone can execute his whims, perverse fancies or discreet political agendas by creating and spreading fake videos. AI and deep-learning make it possible for anyone to create a video from a single static image. What was hitherto a complicated and time-consuming job executed mostly by techno savants at big film production houses (we owe them for the Jurassic Park!) can now be done with consummate ease by anybody with a smart phone.

This face-swapping technology, assisted by deep-learning, can be used for harmless purposes. May be you can use your life-like image for a video chat in case your physical presence is warranted somewhere else. Or you can have your video persona created and make it available for a virtual game. However, such benign deployment of this technology will happen only in our dreams as the world we are living now is given far more to misuse than use.   

Already, websites like Reddit have been awash with fake porn videos of celebrities such as Israel model-actress Gal Gadot, Aubrey Plaza, Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, etc. These fake videos are created using techniques like DeepFakes, which blends AI and deep-learning. Fake video-creating apps, such as FakeApp, make the technique of face-swapping much easier. FakeApp, according to its website, was “designed to make the process of creating realistic face-swaps with deep learning as smooth, simple, and quick as possible.” FakeApp makes use of open source machine-learning tools that were developed by the AI division of Google. 

Innocuous video-trolls targeting individuals; revengeful personal videos; counterfeit clips of important politicians of the world; fake videos of riots, police firing on crowds, politicians making outlandish and outrageous announcements that can alter the world order and disrupt the equanimity… Doctored videos can force their way in varied hues and can be potent weapons for disaster. By the time a certain video has been proved fake, the damage would already have been done. Well, that is exactly what the creators of such doctored videos seek to achieve in the first place. Imagine the kind of ramifications a doctored video of Donald Trump declaring nuclear attack on North Korea or any of his rival country can cause. Knee-jerk chest-thumping and retaliatory war cries can be followed by more dangerous actions.

Political campaigners, lobbyists and professional spin doctors, who have already perfected the fine art of subterfuge and covert manipulation using technology – remember Russian intervention in US presidential polls – have now these AI-assisted tools at their disposal to manipulate things to their advantage. The phenomenon of fake videos can be quite unsettling and plain scary as it fundamentally erodes our trust in the very institution called media and worldwide web. One may tend to develop an uncanny sense of distrust over news itself. The flip side of technological advancement is that it throws up a dystopian dilemma where we won’t be able to believe our own eyes.

The world is already waking up to the problem. TechCrunch has reported that the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded contracts to SRI International, a nonprofit research group, for identifying manipulated videos and deepfakes. US lawmakers have sounded alarm over the potential dangers posed by fake videos. Legislations, however, cannot arrest the scourge of fake videos just as an ‘anti-virus law’ cannot eradicate computer viruses.

What then are the ways in which people can restrain themselves from falling into the fake video trap? Of course, we have not reached a stage of panic yet. However, experts warn that the world will have to live with the phenomenon in the days to come, and it is imperative to find a solution. Social media platforms will need to work on their algorithms and introduce effective authentication methods to stem counterfeit videos. Biometric-assisted authentication methods to distinguish real people from impersonators will have to be introduced. Soon, we may have software installed on our PC/mobile, on the lines of anti-virus software, which can detect and forewarn about fake videos.

Until sufficient mechanism is developed to authenticate genuine videos, one needs to be extremely vigilant and exercise a fair amount of circumspection and a sense of discernment in the face of such mischievous videos. Think thrice before believing such suspicious videos, double-check with authentic and reliable sources, and most importantly, refrain from spreading such suspicious videos. Awareness creation is the key. Students at school/college level need to be educated on the need to remain critical and wary of such phenomena.

Following recent air strikes on three Syrian targets by the UK, the US, and French forces, Twitter and Facebook were filled with fake pictures and videos of the attacks on the conflict-ravaged country. Al Jazeera reported that even leading media corporations like NBC News and PressTV showed a widely circulated video as the attack on Syria, which in reality was an artillery attack on the city of Luhansk in Ukraine way back in 2015. This is just one example of how even the mainstream media fall prey to the insidious nature of fake news and videos. Just one more reason to be wary of this fake phenomenon.

(First appeared in Delhi Post) 

http://delhipostnews.com/youve-got-a-video-and-its-fake/