Opinion: Even the pope can be a victim of misinformation

As soon as Cardinal Dominique Mamberti stepped onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica and declared, “I announce to you a great joy: We have a pope!” the just-elected Pope Leo XIV of Chicago was bathed in both joyous surprise and rank misinformation.

His past and present were mangled and fabricated online. You could even find what claimed to be a New York Times story about his being a founding member of an anarchist autonomous zone in Portland called CHAZ, writing for an anarchist magazine on how to fist-fight police.

In fact, as NewsGuard, an anti-misinformation company, disclosed, The Times never reported anything of the sort. A comedian’s screenshot of a purported Times article, which was distributed widely on social media, is phony. And CHAZ refers to a real police-free zone in Seattle, not Portland, briefly controlled by Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020.

The May 8 screenshot

More Top Picks Best Kids Mattresses For Growing Children

Misinformation is an equal opportunity abuser and harms the religious and the secular, and individuals and corporate goliaths, alike. Creators and victims of misinformation cross political lines, and recent days have been sadly typical.

A low-resolution video purported to show French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer with a bag of cocaine and a coke spoon on a train ride to Kyiv. That was disseminated by pro-Kremlin and far-right sources, in an apparent attempt to smear European leaders supporting Ukraine.

For sure, earlier this month, the three leaders, along with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, traveled by train to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russian state media and far-right accounts circulated the low-quality video and claimed that it showed Macron, Starmer and Merz using cocaine (Tusk wasn’t in the video.)

The claim was that Macron hid a bag of cocaine while Merz concealed a spoon when photographers entered their train car. High-resolution videos and photos published by credible media including Agence France-Presse and The Associated Press show that the “cocaine” was a white paper tissue, while the “spoon” was a cocktail stirrer. 

As NewsGuard’s McKenzie Sadeghi and Eva Maitland reported: From May 10 to May 12, there were 167,000 X posts mentioning “Macron” and “cocaine” that generated 83.2 million views combined. By May 12, the hashtag #CocaineGate was trending on X.

They wrote: “The claim was shared widely in Russian media, including by Russian state news outlets RIA Novosti and RT, Moscow-based newspaper Eurasia Daily, and the Pravda network of approximately 150 news sites,” with at least 102 articles pushing the bogus claim.

Meanwhile, YouTube channels that regularly share artificial intelligence-generated fabrications declared that Toyota, Nissan and Honda are pulling out of the U.S. auto market because of costly tariffs. However, no such plans have been announced by the automakers.

A prime culprit is a channel called Auto Central, which appears to be an AI-created content farm. It posts low-quality, AI-generated videos with outlandish titles and headlines. The video posted May 7 by Auto Central, which has 17,900 subscribers, has received more than 215,000 views and 3,900 likes as of early Monday afternoon.

Now, consider the millions of young people who probably don’t read a well-edited news source, are flooded with social media folderol and aren’t taught media literacy in school.

Consider what Anthony Powers, librarian at DePaul College Prep, a Catholic private school in Chicago, has to say: “One of the most difficult challenges of working with young adults when it comes to teaching information and media literacy is in changing the desire to read anything that extends beyond the normal limits of a social media post.”

After the selection of a new pope was announced, some viral posts from liberals sympathetically claimed that the pope had made “pro-woke” comments, while conservatives claimed he was a registered Republican in Illinois. What appeared to be a screenshot of a voting record for a “Robert F Prevost” was used to support the latter claim; the image includes the notation “Party Republican.”

NewsGuard’s Sarah Komar and Giulia Pozzi identified a May 8 X post by conservative commentator and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk. He wrote: “Our Turning Point Action team pulled the voting history for Pope Leo XIV. He’s a registered Republican who has voted in Republican primaries when not living abroad.” The post received 6.5 million views and 32,000 likes in a day.

The state does not have a political party registration system. Prevost cannot register as a Republican.

Powers said: “It is more likely that the false news regarding the pope’s voting record put out by agents of disinformation on social media platforms gets consumed by more individuals than a long-form article in the NYT (New York Times), Chicago Sun-Times and other credible news providers about the pope’s works and initiatives during his career.”

Let’s leave the last, somewhat reassuring word to Leo, or at least to Dan McGrath. He’s, a journalist and president of Chicago’s all-male Leo Catholic High School, which is named after Pope Leo XIII.

More Top Picks Instant Pot Duo Plus V4

“News literacy is an important part of the curriculum at Leo,” McGrath said. “Our students, like most students, are voracious consumers of social media, and social media has no standards for fairness, accuracy, or even taste. So, we try to provide guidance into what’s believable, useful and important.”

As Pope Leo of Dolton might tell McGrath, “Pax vobiscum.”

Jim Warren, a former managing editor of The Tribune, is executive editor of NewsGuard.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].