EgyptAir flight 804 from Paris to Cairo vanishes from the radar in the middle of the night. Only a handful of journalists are at work in Finnish editorial teams. The first news reports about the missing aircraft were based on the airline’s tweets and information from the news channel CNN.
Finding information is easy. However, assessing the reliability of information is becoming increasingly difficult. With the development of AI, the degree of difficulty has increased exponentially in a short period of time.
Some of the information provided to us on a daily basis is deliberate disinformation, while some unreliable information is misinformation that each of us can spread unintentionally and unknowingly.
The fact that some information is widespread and popular does not make it true. Social media algorithms distribute posts based on the reactions they receive, not on the basis of the information being correct. Algorithms do not analyse – they calculate.
However, there is a method for producing reliable and up-to-date information: journalism. Journalists select topics that are relevant right now. From the point of view of professional ethics in journalism, it is essential that the editorial team chooses its own topics and the ways in which they are handled. Background research is conducted on the news because it increases knowledge or understanding in the present moment. The reliability of information is investigated by looking through various sources, investigating their backgrounds, comparing information, asking further questions and also considering what information may still be missing or has not been disclosed.
The more time has passed since the news event, the more information and sources journalists have to compare and, in principle, this increases the reliability of the news.
Within an hour of the first news of the aircraft’s disappearance, the news media provide more detailed information about the passengers and background on Egypt’s previous aircraft accidents, in an attempt find out what has actually happened, piece by piece.
However, from the very first moment of the news breaking, disinformation also begins to circulate.
Spreaders of disinformation have different motives: political, economic, ideological – even simply trolling and sowing confusion. At this point, the amount of misinformation can also increase when people spread information and engage in discussions in their own channels.
At worst, the situation can turn into information warfare, where the systematic aim is to influence people’s attitudes and actions whilst neglecting the accuracy of the information. Journalism also attempts to find out about such operations and report them to the public.
Certain countries, such as China and Russia, make journalists’ work more difficult or even prevent it. They spend billions of euros annually on the production and dissemination of disinformation. These states target both their own citizens and other countries with false and misleading information through different channels. In both cases, the aim is to confuse people and the public discourse: undermining trust and sowing division are the tools of an authoritarian leader to keep power in their own hands.
But what happened to EgyptAir’s passenger plane, which disappeared from the radar on its way from Paris to Cairo? For years, journalists continued to report on the investigation of the cause. Now we know for sure that the plane crashed into the Mediterranean Sea in the middle of the flight and 66 people died in the accident.
The likely cause of the accident was a fire that broke out in the aircraft’s cabin and spread quickly. This was the conclusion based on the black boxes and the remains of the aircraft found in the sea one month after the accident. It was only three years after the accident that it was revealed that the aircraft was no longer airworthy and should never have taken off in the first place.