The far right, disinformation and the Southport riot
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2024
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Last night police in Southport were pelted with bricks and rocks as hundreds of people gathered in protest outside a mosque - after disinformation about the suspect of the stabbing attack was spread online.
Today we talk about the power of ‘disinfluencers’ and the menace they create - for money, power or clicks - destabilizing vulnerable communities at a time of grief.
How should we deal with ‘shared’ misinformation? And what responsibility do our leaders have to make sure conspiracies aren’t spread through their words?
Editor: Tom Hughes
Producers: Natalie Indge & Zeynel Can Yuce
Digital Editor: Michaela Walters
Social Media Editor: Georgia Foxwell
Video Production: Rory Symon, Shane Fennelly & Arvind Badewal
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The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.4 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:19.3 | Last night in Southport, a town at the centre of that terrible, terrible stabbing on Monday. |
| 0:26.9 | Police found themselves pelted with bricks and bottles, vans were set alight |
| 0:31.6 | as hundreds of people gathered a mob, a riot, outside a mosque, |
| 0:37.0 | after misinformation about the suspect of the Southport |
| 0:40.6 | attack was spread online. |
| 0:43.1 | So today on the newsagents, we're going to look at the wider picture of whether this is |
| 0:47.7 | just about Southport or this is about a world of misinformation, deliberately spread, designed to cause maximum chaos anywhere |
| 0:58.1 | in the Western liberal democratic world. |
| 1:01.8 | And the links go right around the world. |
| 1:06.2 | Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:11.0 | The news agents. |
| 1:12.9 | It's John. |
| 1:13.8 | It's Emily. |
| 1:14.7 | And I thought last night in Southport, we saw the very best of humanity, and we saw |
| 1:20.8 | some of the worst. |
| 1:22.4 | And this morning, as people started clearing up outside the mosque, where the EDL had descended, seeing local |
| 1:31.3 | Southport people joining in to clear up the streets, to clear up the mess that was left behind |
| 1:37.5 | by the rioters showed what was good. There had been a vigil that had taken place in the town last night to mourn the three |
| 1:46.6 | girls who were lost and to pray for those who had survived but are still in a critical |
| 1:51.8 | condition. And then a mob descends on a mosque on the basis of misinformation that maybe the |
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