Thank you. I decided to bring this debate forward this week because I've been considering the wider question of the quality and plurality of the Welsh media since being elected in 2007. In 2017, I said to my party conference that, quite often, the problem in Wales wasn't fake news but no news. I said it because it reflected what I and many others perceived to be such a scarcity of media in Wales, particularly when it comes to politics and current affairs. The lack of a wider established media—with national news in Wales essentially being dominated by three organisations, with, let's be fair, variations of quality and scale on occasion—means that there is a dangerous vacuum that could be filled by those with an agenda to mislead.

First, let's talk about the background to this. Of course, this first became a phenomenon in 2016, however, I would argue that this became an understandable and identifiable issue much further back. Fox News in the United States started deliberately misleading and presenting news that they called 'fair and balanced' in a way that is anything but a long time ago. In the year 2000, a constant campaign against Vice-President Gore of misinformation, including repeated claims, misleading ones, that he invented the internet, helped contribute to defeat.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, the channel lost all sense of balance or even the facade of impartiality in their coverage of that Iraq war, with one reporter declaring, 'Am I biased? You're damned right I am.' Here, of course, we're long used to tabloids and have become used to needing to take some stories with the proverbial grain of salt. We know, on occasion, that tabloids misrepresent and even outright resort to falsehoods and smears to further a political agenda.

What worries me, and should worry everybody, is the vacuum that is being filled online with sources. Many people simply do not know the veracity of the source, they have no idea what they're sharing is from an illegitimate, bot-like website and assume that what they are reading is the truth. I'd like to give you two poignant examples—one manipulation from the left and one from the right of politics. I chose both because I won't discriminate here. If the right makes mistakes or makes fake stories to fulfil an agenda, it's wrong, it's bad. And if the left do the same, it is likewise wrong. It is an attack on the truth and an attempt to confuse and mislead people.

This is a passage from what is claimed is former Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, on immigration, and I quote:

'This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, ‘THE RIGHT TO LEAVE’.'

This a hoax, of course, it's actually excerpts from an editorial by a US conservative congressman. The point of such a blatant hoax is to help legitimise views such as this by associating them with a world leader. These words, attributed to Gillard, were shared hundreds of thousands of times.