What is fake news and what do we do about it? About 170 unionists from the NTUC’s Industrial Workers Education and Training Fund (IWETF) had a chance to find out when they attended a talk given by the National Library Board (NLB) on 18 June 2018.
IWETF, now comprising 10 unions and four associate members, first came about when the Pioneer Industries Employees Union and the Singapore Industrial Labour Organisation restructured in 1982 to train workers in the industrial sectors.
In an interview before the event, NTUC Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng shared: “Potentially even more harmful than social media today are messages perpetuating on other platforms like Whatsapp and Telegram. It is a very insidious and damaging way of spreading false news because it comes from a friend, and he or she may not have checked the source.
“The collaboration with National Library Board is especially important because it is an institutionalised effort to educate and train each generation of workers and union leaders coming into the workforce. I hope that it will not only equip us with skills to discern at the personal level, but also encourage union leaders to exercise their responsibility to further stop and debunk such fake news.”
The event rides on NLB’s ongoing S.U.R.E public education campaign on information literacy. S.U.R.E stands for the four simple ways to distill information:
“Union leaders have many chat groups, e-mail distribution lists and social media channels with workers and management partners. We are often eager to disseminate and share useful news that we come across. It is important for us to understand fake news and know how to filter them out, because it is difficult to retract messages after they have been passed on,” explained NTUC Central Committee Member and Healthcare Services Employees’ Union President K Thanaletchimi.
Think you know how to combat fake news? Put your skills to test by taking this short quiz by NLB!
