“A rumour is unverified information that circulates in informal media and its source is not what is traditionally known as official”, explained Marc Argemí, a Professor of Communication. With this definition in mind, some years ago Argemí began to research the credibility of rumours and news, especially during World War II, in archives from the United States and the United Kingdom, where there seems to have been a genuine rumour factory designed to downplay enemy attacks.
“For the book, I recovered a good part of the unedited documents in the British archives to see how the rumour factories came up with rumours and put them into circulation”, Argemí said. It was a way to throw off the enemy. “Misinformation and an excess of information were very effective ways of controlling the press, much more so than censorship. World War II shows that”, he explained. The book deals specifically with how the British government planned the distribution of over 8,000 rumours.
Because of its storyline, this essay could be considered a spy novel, but it started as a thesis on rumour-mongering directed by Prof. Salvador Cardús from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. At the book presentation, both he and journalist Arturo San Agustín agreed that many more books could come out of the thesis.
In Rumores en Guerra, the author talks about the importance of keeping this kind of information in mind, as journalism cannot possibly move as quickly as rumours. “Journalists become verifiers. A rumour is not necessarily a lie, but it needs to be verified”, Argemí explained. General uncertainty, personal distress, the importance of the issue, an excess or lack of information, a lack of transparency and the absence of official sources may all lead to the circulation of rumours and many of these conditions are commonplace. “Social networks provide most of these conditions when creating rumours, which is why I call the Internet the republic of rumours”, he said.
“Now more than ever, the future of journalism lies in verifying rumours. In the long run, the business of journalism will still reside in credibility, but the media has to earn it. We shouldn’t try to compete with the speed of rumours, but with their credibility. That is what journalism will be valued for in the future”, the journalist said in one of the many interviews he has given.
