The US President launches an initiative to train Iraqi journalists to confront a “fake crisis”
The US President launches an initiative to train Iraqi journalists to confront a “fake crisis”
2024-06-07 04:52
Shafaq News/ The American “Judicial Watch” website revealed that President Joe Biden’s administration has resorted to funding programs to train journalists and others to combat misleading information issued by artificial intelligence programs, including a group of journalists in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
But the American report, translated by Shafaq News Agency, criticized Biden’s initiative, which he described as “ridiculous and expensive” and which aims to combat disinformation generated by artificial intelligence, which has now affected Iraq.
The report indicated that American taxpayers will allocate tens of thousands of dollars to train influential figures on social media, journalists, and journalism students in the Kurdistan Region and in Kirkuk Governorate, in order to detect false information in artificial intelligence.
The report quoted a government grant announcement related to combating misinformation, saying, “The emergence of artificial intelligence-generated misinformation raises significant concerns about the ability of the public and the media to provide fair and accurate reporting on current events, given the ability of robots to spread information, and deep fakes to become difficult to achieve.” “Distinguishing between fact and fiction, which puts democracy itself at risk.”
The report criticized the use of what it described as “repeatedly troubling language” to justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to combat a “fake crisis” created by the president and his advisors with the aim of controlling information.
The report explained that this American step began through the “Disinformation Management Council,” a controversial committee affiliated with the US Department of Homeland Security, and then expanded around the world through American-funded counter-disinformation networks, which train foreign correspondents and officials on how to confront information that is misleading. The US administration considers it inappropriate.
Before Iraq, the report said that a few weeks ago, Washington allocated half a million dollars to help journalists in Africa combat misinformation and young people discover the truth in fake news. Earlier this year, Washington allocated $50,000 to confront misinformation in Pakistan by training journalists at the hands of “carefully selected” American employees who have experience in this file.
According to the report, the new funding allocated to combating misinformation generated by artificial intelligence includes conditions that grant applicants must demonstrate how the program works to promote equality with respect to race, religion, income, geography, and disability, among other factors, and how it will benefit from… He describes them as “underserved communities,” from the program.
According to a grant announcement published this week, the goal is to train 15 social media influencers and 100 new journalists on how to use artificial intelligence to produce and spread misinformation, how to recognize misinformation, and how to explain it in plain language to the public.
The program requires influencers to create at least two pieces of unique content about misinformation for their audience, and journalists and journalism students must write and publish at least two reports on disinformation.
The report criticized the increasing role of US authorities in what it calls efforts to combat disinformation generated by artificial intelligence programs, including allocating funds to a public university in South Carolina to map and track the sources of disinformation on the Internet, as the Biden administration says the project is necessary to avoid “violent extremism.” “, as it appears that political events at the national level often become focal points for the spread of misinformation and are exploited by various individuals and groups to launch disinformation campaigns.
However, the report mentioned an investigation conducted by Congress last year, which revealed the existence of a “scandalous government disinformation scheme,” in which the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) colluded with a Ukrainian intelligence agency, “SBU,” to censor the speech of Americans and cancel verified accounts of Americans on social media. Social media, including a verified account affiliated with the US State Department and accounts belonging to US journalists.
shafaq.com
