Sensationalism and disinformation are two sides of the same coin. Sensationalism in news refers to the presentation of news in a way that provokes an emotional response from the audience, thereby often encouraging biases and manipulating the story’s truth. Disinformation is false information deliberately created to deceive people.
With the digital revolution becoming the heart of capitalization of viewership, the danger of disinformation without accountability and fact-checking becomes easier.
The recent disinformation campaign used against the 14th Dalai Lama is an example of the dangers of disinformation and sensationalism.
Between Tuesday last week and Saturday, news channels were rampantly broadcasting explosive news titles such as “Dalai Lama Kisses a Boy.”
The story dominated many major social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
On Feb. 28, the Dalai Lama addressed 120 recently graduated Indian college students and members of the M3M Foundation at Dharamsala, India. The public meeting was simultaneously broadcast live by several Tibetan media outlets.
During the question-and-answer session, a boy asked the Dalai Lama for a hug. The Dalai Lama did so, with interaction between the Dalai Lama and the boy lasting about a minute.
The Dalai Lama not only gave him a hug, but also tried to play with him by tickling him and touching his forehead, a tradition practiced by Tibetans as a gesture of greeting and best wishes.
At the end of their interaction, he said to the boy: “Now suck my tongue” in a playful manner.
Among Tibetans, this kind of gesture is often used to indicate that this is the end of an interaction — there is nothing more to say or do.
The Dalai Lama then gave the boy advice about being a good person and the importance of humanity.
The entire video in which the Dalai Lama covered important topics such humanity, the climate crisis and peace of mind barely garnered 5,000 views.
A YouTube channel named OTV, which has 8.9 million subscribers (about half the population of New York), uploaded a video about the same event, attracting only about 3,800 views.
The seconds-long extract was circulated widely, with millions of views accumulated in four days. It was clearly spread to malign the public perception of the Dalai Lama.
The video taken from 17 minutes of original content was cropped from a minute-long segment of interaction between the boy and the Dalai Lama, and then further cut down to a few seconds of video, where the Dalai Lama asks the boy to “suck my tongue.”
The video was further edited with a caption that spells out these one-minute interactions, even blurring the boy’s face to give audiences the false impression that the Dalai Lama made the boy “suck his tongue.”
The boy and his mother, after the event, expressed their gratitude for the Dalai Lama’s blessing. Those who had watched the few seconds of tailored content were outraged. Hateful and xenophobic comments about the Dalai Lama spread like wildfire.
The sensitive nature of sexual harassment against minors, even with no intention of any sexual expression, becomes a perfect weapon for Dalai Lama critics to spread antagonism against him.
Those who reacted harshly, including major media houses such as CNN and the BBC, reacted only to the cropped version, failing to show the full context and thus falling prey to those who edited the video to spread negativity toward the Dalai Lama.
Even though a few media outlets, celebrities and social influencers apologized later for not fact-checking, their judgement resulted from misinformation has caused hatred and social chaos.
It is no secret that the Dalai Lama is often targeted by the Chinese government, which calls him a “splittist,” “a wolf in monk robes” and a “demon,” among other things.
The Dalai Lama became the most trending topic on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. China has banned mention of him for decades.
The president of the Central Tibetan Administration, during a news conference on Friday, said that the cropped seconds-long video originated from someone sympathetic to Beijing.
Tibetan Buddhism expert Robert Thurman said that it was part of China’s anti-Dalai Lama campaign as a response to the Dalai Lama recognizing a US-born Mongolian boy as the 10th Khalkha Jetsun Dhampa Rinpoche.
Dolma Tsering is a postdoctoral candidate at National Cheng Kung University’s Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences.
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