It was 150 years ago that the satirist Jonathan Swift said of humans’ love for rumour and innuendo: “Falsehood flies while the truth comes limping after it.”

These words are all the more relevant today as misinformation's spread is sped up by anonymous online groups on social media.

As the case of the slandering of La’auli Leauta Schmidt - revealed in full on Monday - makes clear, false information has become a powerful weapon in modern politics. 

The extent to which former President Donald Trump won his way to the White House by working in tandem by establishing hazy links with dark corners of the internet and through lies spread about his opponents is a well known example. 

But as the case of the chairman of the Fa'atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (F.A.S.T.) party makes clear these grubby tactics are now being used in Samoan politics.  

This newspaper has, for days, been exposing as false accusations that La’auli had made derogatory sexual remarks against women.

Sadly, there was no great feat of journalistic investigation required to do this. 

As a madding crowd began to call for his head, we simply checked the facts. We watched the original interview in which La’auli was accused of making the remarks and a subsequent one in which the caretaker Prime Minister suggested they carried nasty sexual undertones.

We put the two side-by-side on our Facebook page and invited readers to draw their own conclusions. The response was overwhelming. The post reached more than 70,000 people, 950 of whom commented.

By a margin of 9 to 1 readers concluded that La’auli had said nothing offensive and, if anything, the TV3 reporter interviewing the caretaker Prime Minister on the issue gave rise to the suggestion that he did.

A representative comment from one of our readers was as follows: “I was angry when I saw what was shared. But after watching the actual footage [...] the reporter is at fault.”

This followed an example of politics at its most cynical by Tuilaepa Dr. Sa'ilele Malielegaoi when he raised the falsehoods and accused the media, non-Government organisations and the United Nations of failing to condemn the issue. 

Cloaking character assassination with principles is deviously simple. But it worked. A certain corner of the internet who are spring-loaded to breathe fire in response to perceived outrages duly took the bait.

So too, to its immense shame, did the United Nations. 

After Tuilaepa accused them of not speaking out  they dutifully responded by releasing a statement that, while purporting to be politically neutral, was obviously a response to Tuilaepa’s call, repeatedly focusing on verbal abuse.

“[We remain] committed to ensuring women feel safe in addressing gender-based violence and voicing their concerns when threatening and aggressive language is used,” a statement by the Office of the Resident Coordinator said.

Dutifully responding to Tuilaepa's command, the U.N. did none of its own research and were duped into lending legitimacy to a political attack.

(Why the organisation has never before spoken out when Tuilaepa has denigrated women so freely about their looks, weight and intelligence is a question that must be answered.)

But for involving itself in our national politics and its sheer credulity the United Nations' reputation as a force for political neutrality has been dealt a crushing blow. 

There are those who say there is never a problem with taking a stance against gendered abuse; as we wrote last week, that is a cause that most every right-thinking person would support. 

But the question has to be asked, why should people be mobilised about this issue now in particular? At the precise time that Tuilaepa was spreading slander about one of his political opponents?

There is nothing objectionable about women speaking out against violence unless they are being cynically drafted to serve as adornments in political games being played by men. And indeed, women provided the imagery on Monday's march but the main event involved a man speaking out against another man. So much for women's empowerment.

In other countries political operatives move subtly and in the shadows; it took more than a year to unravel how the Trump campaign was using online disinformation.

But in Samoa we can at least count ourselves lucky that our spin doctors are clumsy operators. 

On Monday, days after the Samoa Observer first raised the alarm, we were given a complete anatomy of how an innocent man’s reputation came to be tarnished by the combined forces of a political party’s machine and social media. 

It was only after it was raised in such a skewed way during a TV3 interview with Rula Su’a Vaai that the claim that La’auli had made denigrating remarks moved from party political enclaves on the internet and into the mainstream. 

On Monday, the network made clear that it had got it wrong. It is not easy to own one’s mistakes, but by responding immediately and having Rula forensically detail how she had unwittingly come to play a role in an H.R.P.P. attack was the only way in which the station could have emerged from this crisis with their credibility intact. For this, we commend them.

Rula’s admission was extremely revealing for its honesty about how the media can be manipulated. 

We might thank the reporter for her honesty but her journalism broke almost elementary rules of the profession making her a perfect choice for serving as an unwitting patsy. 

Rula committed her first journalistic sin by giving Tuilaepa advanced warning of the questions she was about to ask him. (The Samoa Observer has not asked a question of the caretaker Prime Minister for two years because he insists he will only take them in written form, turning what is meant to be an exercise in accountability into a public relations opportunity). 

But she went even further by allowing him to tell her what question to ask. This was no longer journalism but giving a politician a chance to tee off on a political opponent and using the media as a vehicle for doing so. 

Rula revealed that Tuilaepa told her to ask a question about recent remarks made by La’auli, something she agreed to do despite being unfamiliar with what he had actually said. 

Luckily the caretaker Prime Minister's spin doctors were on hand to provide her with a distorted account of La'auli's remarks that she duly repeated, breathing life into a non-scandal. 

"There [were] also representatives of the Savali in there,” she said.

“[They said he] suggested that women be taken to an open field [to have] lights [shined] on them and [then] to call upon the aumaga (untitled men). 

“Then the caretaker Prime Minister told me to ask him a question about it. That is why I asked him the question."

And so Tuilaepa was able to use the media to further his political agenda, just as he has used women’s advocates by enjoining them to mobilise against verbal abuse with the aim of slandering political foes.

“I should have been prepared for it,” Rula said before indicating that she had only seen second-hand versions of La’auli’s remarks, being propagated online by H.R.P.P. supporters.

There was a time when major and independent media outlets could be relied upon as a source of reliable facts on major issues. 

As social media has grown as a source of information that role is needed more than it ever has been. There are no editors on Facebook pages, many of which are nakedly biased and exist solely to produce content smearing their political opponents.

Sometimes this rumour and gossip meets its creators’ aims by seeping into the mainstream. But rarely do we see such an obvious example of an untruth being directly inserted into media coverage.

Tuilaepa has shown that he is a shameless political operator: a feminist when he wants to be; an internationalist when he courts foreign donors; and a protector of Samoan traditions when there are votes to be won.

There is only one way to make sure all our political figures are consistent and honest brokers. That will require Samoa’s few independent media sources to lift our standards and fall back onto the very first principle of reporting - speaking the truth.