The United Nations under-secretary-general for global communications, Melissa Fleming gives her keynote address on the final day of the IPA’s 34th International Publishers Congress at Guadalajara. She describes the mounting dangers of “disinformation so convincing, so personalized, that even expert fact-checkers are struggling to spot it in real time.” Image: CANIEM
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
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The United Nations under-secretary-general for global communications, Fleming is also an author and has an enviable stage presence that communicates both warm compassion and a steely focus on tasks ahead. While thought of by many in the diplomatic and humanitarian communities as the specialist she is in the state of the UN’s Sustainability Development Goals—currently staggered at so many levels in their bid for achievements by 2030—Fleming has done what her brief demands: She has gone a step further to bring real clarity to one of the things most hobbling to the “SDGs’ success: disinformation.
While many people can’t seem to grasp the difference between disinformation and misinformation, Fleming is clear that the issue is not misinformation, which can be the accident of a mere typo. The problem is disinformation, a deliberate deployment of falsehoods.
At its core, her message to the world publishing community seated in its biennial congress this month in Mexico was that the book industry’s most important responsibility may be to counter the destructive chaos in which disinformation thrives by remaining steadfast to publishing’s ethos of authenticity, accuracy, clarity, truth.
“What is the power of a book?” she asked her audience, people whose careers are based in—and articulated by—books.
“What can a few hundred printed pages offer our troubled world at a time like this? A time of plummeting attention spans. A time of too much information and still somehow never enough. A time of war on facts and science.”
As a furious assault on vaccination science today is being driven by reckless disinformation at the highest levels of power in Washington and elsewhere, it was immediately apparent in Guadalajara to everyone listening that Fleming was defining the darkest resistance to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to the 17 SDGs that depend on truth for their success in human equity, the climate crisis, food security, and so many other struggles. She spoke of:
“The constant stream of content—much of it contaminated with misinformation, disinformation, and hate—is what now passes for our public sphere. But it is a public sphere that too often shuts down meaningful debate. A space where vicious trolls silence dissent. Attacking and driving out vulnerable, or minority voices. And harming individuals all over the world. Whether it’s a young person bullied into to despair, or even suicide. A female leader bombarded with rape and death threats. Or a climate activist attacked for speaking out on behalf of the planet.
“This, as platforms decimate or reduce their trust and safety teams. And as much of this content is being supercharged by generative AI. Tools capable of creating misleading content at scale. Fake news sites, deep fakes —disinformation so convincing, so personalized, that even expert fact-checkers are struggling to spot it in real time.
“This is eroding trust—in institutions, in science, and in facts themselves. No wonder so many people no longer know what to believe.
“At the UN, we have long been warning that this information ecosystem is toxic, and is causing grave harm to our world. Digital platforms—in their current form at least—seem unwilling and incapable of serving us a nutritious information diet, a diet of reliable, accurate, and timely content about the issues that matter. The kind of information we need to make meaningful decisions about our lives, and our futures.
“This is seriously impacting our efforts to make the world a better place.”
“This, as platforms decimate or reduce their trust and safety teams. And as much of this content is being supercharged by generative AI. Tools capable of creating misleading content at scale. Fake news sites, deep fakes —disinformation so convincing, so personalized, that even expert fact-checkers are struggling to spot it in real time.It didn’t need to be said, of course, that even book publishing—so in the thrall of social-media marketing—can find itself walking down corridors of disinformation in search of potential book-buyers. There may be times when a hard decision must be made if a busily trafficked platform simply isn’t the approriate venue for a book’s earnest ads.
When Freedom of Opinion is ‘a Farce’
Fleming, onstage, pointed to the Oxford University Press phrase of the year, brain rot, something she had mentioned earlier in the week at a news conference in the press center of the Guadalajara International Book Fair.
Per the definition assigned it, brain rot is the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”
And Fleming had a surprise for this astute audience about the phrase brain rot.
“The first recorded use of brain rot, she pointed out, “was found in Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, which reports his experiences of living a simple lifestyle in the natural world. As part of his conclusions,” she said, “Thoreau criticizes society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas, or those that can be interpreted in multiple ways, in favor of simple ones, and he sees this as indicative of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort: ‘While England endeavors to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot—which prevails so much more widely and fatally?’
“He wrote that in 1854!” Fleming said. “What would Thoreau think of the state of our brains today?”
She also mentioned the German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt’s line from Between Past and Future: “Freedom of opinion is a farce unless factual information is guaranteed, and the facts themselves are not in dispute.”
“As it stands now,” Fleming said, “in our toxic information ecosystems, the facts are very much in dispute.”
“Nonfiction that both entertains and educates. Produced by ethical journalists and authors acting in the public interest. And printed by independent publishers exercising their full freedom to publish.”Melissa Fleming, UN under-secretary-general
She didn’t have to mention high-ranking politicos’ purposeful distortions, such as the absurd phrase “alternative facts,” to make some of her publishing audience wince with the aching relevance of facts in their own books—nowadays dismissed and even challenged with lawsuits from craven autocrats as “defamation.”
“Facts are the foundation on which we build our shared reality,” Fleming said.
“This, then, is the power of a book in an age like ours. Books are our antidotes. Libraries, our sanctuaries, in an age when our minds are crying out for more nutritious information, more contemplation.
“So, what does that diet look like?” she asked. “It looks like nonfiction that both entertains and educates. Produced by ethical journalists and authors acting in the public interest. And printed by independent publishers exercising their full freedom to publish.”
The UN’s Global Principles for Information Integrity
Fleming had come with a gratifyingly eloquent message for the Publishers’ Congress, about a new program, released in June and called the United Nations Global Principles for Information Integrity. That framework has five principles:
- Societal trust and resilience
- Healthy incentives
- Public empowerment
- Independent, free and pluralistic media
- Transparency and research
In her concept of what these principles can mean, Fleming is clear: “A vision of a different future. One in which all actors are held accountable for the integrity of the information they publish. And in which thriving independent publishing and media industries are free to deliver us the information diet we so desperately need. In this vision, social media elevates facts and demotes lies—not the other way around. The most accurate and reliable information is the most accessible. And books are both read—and readily available.”
“This coming year, as you consider titles for publication, I hope you’ll remember the power of a book in an age like this. … And restore trust in facts, science, and institutions. Offer us an antidote to our modern affliction: brain rot.”Melissa Fleming, UN under-secretary-general
Fleming had come with an assurance to the assembly at Guadalajara from the world body. “The UN stands firmly behind a free and independent media and publishing industry, and is urging all actors to uphold the right of journalists and publishers to operate independently.
“In return, we’re asking you to take full responsibility for the integrity of the information you publish. Double down on fact checking and accuracy. And uphold the highest editorial standards. Not only to avoid libel, or for the sake of your reputations, and your authors. But also to help restore our information ecosystems—and our societies—to health.
“So, to come back to our question, what is the power of a book at a time like this? Answer: Books are nothing short of world-changing.”
Melissa Fleming’s welcoming, warm personality was evident throughout the publishers’ congress. She’s quick to laugh and listens intently in conversation. If anything, the many members of the international publishing leadership who had met her and chatted, now understood easily the contrast of her solemnity onstage. Examples of seeing her own work undermined by disinformation made the truth of her own seriousness perfectly evident.
“This coming year, as you consider titles for publication,” she told the publishers, “I hope you’ll remember the power of a book in an age like this. I urge you to prioritize books that will change the world for the better. And restore trust in facts, science, and institutions. Offer us an antidote to our modern affliction: brain rot.
“Keep publishing diverse voices from all over the world,’ Melissa Fleming said on the Conjunto Santander stage, “particularly from the vulnerable groups under attack and misunderstood in our digital age.”
A dropped pin could easily have been heard as she pressed her point home.
“It is down to us to keep our eyes fixed on a better tomorrow,” she said. “A future in which societies are guided by science, and united by facts. And in which a healthier, and better-informed public debate brings the meaningful change our world so desperately needs.
“We hope you will join our growing movement of people,” Melissa Fleming said, “of those striving to restore integrity to our information, and trust to our public sphere.”
The United Nations’ under-secretary-general for global communications Melissa Fleming speaks with Guadalajara International Book Fair director Marisol Schulz and the Mexican publishers’ association (CANIEM) president Hugo Setzer. Image: CANIEM
More from Publishing Perspectives on the International Publishers Association is here, more on the IPA’s biennial International Publishers Congress series is here, and more on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and related programs and initiatives in book publishing is here.
Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner. Porter Anderson is the former Creative Advisor and Multi-Media Manager to the UN’s World Food Programme, posted to Rome HQ.