OPINION | Anti-disinformation alliance is a robust antidote to fake news Last week, my aunt forwarded me a voice note on WhatsApp. Her voice was shaking as she told me that the government was planning to shut off electricity in our whole township because of a secret deal with a foreign company. She said a “friend of a friend who works at Eskom” had confirmed it. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Within two hours, that voice note was in five different family groups, two church groups, and someone had even posted it on Facebook with a dramatic…

Every great technological leap has forced humanity to reconsider what it means to know something to be true. The printing press made books cheap and abundant, but it also made it easier to spread falsehoods. Radio brought the world into people’s living rooms, yet it could also be used as a weapon of propaganda. The internet connected billions of minds, but it opened the floodgates to rumors, conspiracy theories, and deliberate disinformation. Now, artificial intelligence has arrived, and it is not simply another tool in the journalist’s kit. It is a force that transforms the entire landscape of information—how it…