When You Say, "Fake News", You Harm Us All
"I don't know what to believe anymore" - Various friends on Facebook
The First Amendment comes first in the Bill of Rights for good reason. The free exchange of ideas is one of the most important ways we preserve our democracy. We take our free press for granted. It is how we stay informed and keep the government accountable. Without a free press, it would be easy for the government to manipulate us. We can't all attend the speeches. We can't all be in the war rooms and board rooms. We can't all be on the battlefields. We can't all be in the Capitol watching sessions of Congress. We rely on the press to do these things for us and honestly report what it sees so we know what's going on.
Imagine the United States without our free press. Imagine if the information presented to us was censored by the government to make the itself look good. Imagine if we had no press at all. Think of Congress passing bills and creating laws that we never knew about. Think of banks stealing your money. Think of of the corporate crime and corruption that would never be uncovered. Think of covert military operations in other countries being funded by your tax dollars. If we didn't have the press to help us hold the government accountable, what would we do?
Throughout the course of history journalists have risked their reputations and their lives to bring the truth to the people. Rather than constantly dismissing "The Media" as this mindless, faceless entity that provides us with an endless stream of false information, we should be grateful we live in a country that allows "The Media" to exist. We should be thanking journalists the same way we thank teachers. Both professions are meant to keep our society from sinking into ignorance.
How did our society become one that is unwilling to ever accept any information we don't want to hear as real? Ever since he took office, Donald Trump has dismissed any information that doesn't portray him in a favorable light as "fake". It's one thing to be skeptical of the supermarket checkout tabloids. It is another thing to accuse venerable institutions, whose entire reputations are founded on their ability to report accurately, of deliberate falsehoods .
When one runs for office and accepts the position one is elected to, it means understanding one will be under constant scrutiny. Here in the US, it is not the job of the press to make a politician look good. The press serves the people (and the corporate owners) and not the politicians. Being criticized by the media and having one's every misstep be publicly exposed is part of the job. If a politician can't handle that, he shouldn't take the job. *
I remember when Trump's inauguration and the photographs of skimpy crowds were released. Trump and those in his circle denied what was obviously in front of them. Kellyanne Conway declared the press was presenting "alternative facts."
I thought the term "alternative facts" was terrifying. I was reminded of Newspeak in 1984. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Alternative facts." How can facts be alternative? A fact is a fact by definition. How can one refute a fact when the hard evidence is right there?
Soon I began to see Trump at press conferences and in interviews, angrily dismissing any negative coverage of him as "fake news". He gave no evidence that the news was false. He only argued like a petulant child that the information provided wasn't true. He offered no clear refutations. He didn't present any explanations or provide facts (real, not alternative) of his own. His only response was to say the press was somehow out to get him, or that they were being mean to him. He doesn't understand it isn't the job of the press to be nice. It's the job of the press to keep politicians honest.
Is the press deliberately telling false stories about Trump in order to defame his character? There is a term for that. It's called libel. If the press knowingly publishes or broadcasts a false story with the intent to destroy the reputation of a public figure, it's illegal. Trump would have every right to sue that news outlet publishing those stories. Someone as lawsuit-crazy as Donald Trump should know this. If the media are intent on punishing him by telling lies about him, then why isn't he going after them legally? Is it because in order to win a libel suit, you have to prove the story was both false and published with malicious intent (correctly informing the public of what the government is doing is not malicious intent)?**
Let's be real, folks. Trump doesn't think the news is fake. He wants all of us to think it's fake. He needs you to believe it's fake. He wants to undermine Americans' confidence in the press. If you lose faith in the press, it will create confusion. It could potentially create chaos. He wants to be seen as the bearer or truth. Even if he knows not everyone will believe him, he can at least feel comforted they won't believe anyone else either.
We are at a time in history when news could not be more accurate. For centuries humans relied on word of mouth. We relied on a journalist's ability to remember correctly and write information down accurately. Now we have recording devices. We have cameras. Journalists can capture words and pictures as they happen. Yes, there are ways to hack and retouch the results, but there are many ways to tell when recordings have been altered, and originals still exist. Thanks to the internet, everything is archived.
We also have fact checkers. There are fact checking websites all over the internet to check the veracity of a claim. Sometimes those claims are made to deliberately denigrate a political enemy or group (such as the many claims that go around social media) and can be dismissed out of hand. Sometimes a politician or pundit may overstate or understate the facts to support a cause (and a good fact checking site will tell you how much of the statement is accurate). Sometimes a politician or pundit will innocently restate something false with the sincere belief it is true. A good statesman will be willing to own up to the mistake.
Information comes at us from all areas now. We have the traditional media of TV, newspapers, and radio, but we also have the internet and 24-hour cable news channels. Americans are no longer sitting down to watch or read the news and then accept it as factual. With so many media outlets available to us, we can pick and choose the ones that tell us what we want to hear.
Anything we don't like is now called "fake" or, if you want to go back on an old gem, "liberally biased". News outlets that try to stick to hard facts and eliminate opinions are called liberally biased. Fact checkers are liberally biased. If your favorite politician or pundit gives false information and is caught in the act, then whoever is reporting it is liberally biased.
I think it's time we accept something about fact checkers. Facts are facts. They aren't biased (although how one interprets them could be). If it can be proved Donald Trump told eighteen thousand lies during his time in office, then he told eighteen thousand lies. No amount of wishful thinking will change that.
The conservative lament over fact checkers is that they pick on conservatives more than they pick on liberals. Liberal politicians and pundits are fact-checked far less often than conservatives. Why is that?
I think it's time to face the truth that conservatives lie more than liberals do.
Before you stop reading and tell me I'm a terrible person, I will qualify that statement. I am not saying, "All conservatives everywhere have lied more than liberals for all time." The current world is full of honest conservatives. History is full of honest conservatives. Unfortunately, at this point in history, the conservatives who are out there making statements in public and being covered by the news are making many false statements.
"But the media are all liberally biased except for Fox," you lament. "If fact checkers are covering the media, they're only covering the bad stuff about conservatives." The "Liberal Media" is another lie politicians and oligarchs feed to the American public. It's another way to foster mistrust. In a perfect world, journalists would report everything they see and hear and bring it to us unvarnished. That would mean many of us would hear things we don't like to hear. Unfortunately, this isn't the fully the case.
The media are biased, but they aren't biased they way we think they are. Almost all of the our news media are owned by a few giant corporations (this wasn't always the case and it was illegal at one point, but I don't want to go too off-topic in this post). Corporations have one goal. That goal is to bring money to its shareholders. The news media are going to report the news in a way that will make them the most money.
Right now we have two consumers of news media at cross purposes with each other. We have conservatives who say, "Stop being liberally biased or I will watch your competitor." Then we have liberals who say, "Please just report the facts as they are." The resulting news is so watered down we don't get any clarity anymore. In a desperate attempt to not seem too liberal, the news media are trying to always present both sides of everything. If there is a story about a group of neo-nazi puppy torturers, there will likely be some kind of op-ed about a controversial study about how puppy torture has immense psychological benefits. If the puppy torturers were Trump supporters, we're going to hear about how they are nice people when they're not torturing puppies.
For many years we had a policy in place called The Fairness Doctrine. This was a legal requirement for news outlets to give equal time to opposing viewpoints. Ronald Reagan overturned it in 1987. The rationale for this was that too much airtime would be wasted giving equal time to any trivial matter that arose. The ironic part of the story is that news outlets now feel compelled to do just that. We have to see both sides of an issue even when the other side has little basis in fact or reason. We as consumers are being told we have to acknowledge another side exists even if that side is irrelevant or downright harmful. Any news medium that doesn't do this will be accused of being "fake news" or "liberally biased."
For anyone who believes it's wrong for the press to cover any scandal regarding Donald Trump, I want you to look at it from the other side. What if Barack Obama was accused of the same scandals Trump was accused of. You would want to know about it wouldn't you? You want the press to cover "Obamagate". In fact, you want to know every detail of that scandal. You wanted full coverage of Monica Lewinsky and the Clinton impeachment. You ate up every bit you could learn about Benghazi. You delighted in anything you could find out about Hillary Clinton's emails. I got an earful about Fast and Furious from Republican friends. Imagine if the press never covered the gross misuse of office by former NY governor Eliot Spitzer, once a rising star in the Democratic Party.
You can't have it both ways. You can't demand the press tell the truth about the politicians you don't like and then complain when it goes after the politicians you support. The press doesn't exist to make you feel good about your choices. The press exists to keep you informed. It exists to help you make the best choices possible going forward.
I will close this with a quote that is the motto of the "liberally biased" Washington Post.
"Democracy Dies in Darkness."
When you call it "fake news,"you are the one turning off the light.
*It's sad to think I wrote that three years ago and nothing has changed.
**I guess I did learn something in that Communication Law and Ethics class they made me take in college.
The First Amendment comes first in the Bill of Rights for good reason. The free exchange of ideas is one of the most important ways we preserve our democracy. We take our free press for granted. It is how we stay informed and keep the government accountable. Without a free press, it would be easy for the government to manipulate us. We can't all attend the speeches. We can't all be in the war rooms and board rooms. We can't all be on the battlefields. We can't all be in the Capitol watching sessions of Congress. We rely on the press to do these things for us and honestly report what it sees so we know what's going on.
Imagine the United States without our free press. Imagine if the information presented to us was censored by the government to make the itself look good. Imagine if we had no press at all. Think of Congress passing bills and creating laws that we never knew about. Think of banks stealing your money. Think of of the corporate crime and corruption that would never be uncovered. Think of covert military operations in other countries being funded by your tax dollars. If we didn't have the press to help us hold the government accountable, what would we do?
Throughout the course of history journalists have risked their reputations and their lives to bring the truth to the people. Rather than constantly dismissing "The Media" as this mindless, faceless entity that provides us with an endless stream of false information, we should be grateful we live in a country that allows "The Media" to exist. We should be thanking journalists the same way we thank teachers. Both professions are meant to keep our society from sinking into ignorance.
How did our society become one that is unwilling to ever accept any information we don't want to hear as real? Ever since he took office, Donald Trump has dismissed any information that doesn't portray him in a favorable light as "fake". It's one thing to be skeptical of the supermarket checkout tabloids. It is another thing to accuse venerable institutions, whose entire reputations are founded on their ability to report accurately, of deliberate falsehoods .
When one runs for office and accepts the position one is elected to, it means understanding one will be under constant scrutiny. Here in the US, it is not the job of the press to make a politician look good. The press serves the people (and the corporate owners) and not the politicians. Being criticized by the media and having one's every misstep be publicly exposed is part of the job. If a politician can't handle that, he shouldn't take the job. *
I remember when Trump's inauguration and the photographs of skimpy crowds were released. Trump and those in his circle denied what was obviously in front of them. Kellyanne Conway declared the press was presenting "alternative facts."
I thought the term "alternative facts" was terrifying. I was reminded of Newspeak in 1984. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Alternative facts." How can facts be alternative? A fact is a fact by definition. How can one refute a fact when the hard evidence is right there?
Soon I began to see Trump at press conferences and in interviews, angrily dismissing any negative coverage of him as "fake news". He gave no evidence that the news was false. He only argued like a petulant child that the information provided wasn't true. He offered no clear refutations. He didn't present any explanations or provide facts (real, not alternative) of his own. His only response was to say the press was somehow out to get him, or that they were being mean to him. He doesn't understand it isn't the job of the press to be nice. It's the job of the press to keep politicians honest.
Is the press deliberately telling false stories about Trump in order to defame his character? There is a term for that. It's called libel. If the press knowingly publishes or broadcasts a false story with the intent to destroy the reputation of a public figure, it's illegal. Trump would have every right to sue that news outlet publishing those stories. Someone as lawsuit-crazy as Donald Trump should know this. If the media are intent on punishing him by telling lies about him, then why isn't he going after them legally? Is it because in order to win a libel suit, you have to prove the story was both false and published with malicious intent (correctly informing the public of what the government is doing is not malicious intent)?**
Let's be real, folks. Trump doesn't think the news is fake. He wants all of us to think it's fake. He needs you to believe it's fake. He wants to undermine Americans' confidence in the press. If you lose faith in the press, it will create confusion. It could potentially create chaos. He wants to be seen as the bearer or truth. Even if he knows not everyone will believe him, he can at least feel comforted they won't believe anyone else either.
We are at a time in history when news could not be more accurate. For centuries humans relied on word of mouth. We relied on a journalist's ability to remember correctly and write information down accurately. Now we have recording devices. We have cameras. Journalists can capture words and pictures as they happen. Yes, there are ways to hack and retouch the results, but there are many ways to tell when recordings have been altered, and originals still exist. Thanks to the internet, everything is archived.
We also have fact checkers. There are fact checking websites all over the internet to check the veracity of a claim. Sometimes those claims are made to deliberately denigrate a political enemy or group (such as the many claims that go around social media) and can be dismissed out of hand. Sometimes a politician or pundit may overstate or understate the facts to support a cause (and a good fact checking site will tell you how much of the statement is accurate). Sometimes a politician or pundit will innocently restate something false with the sincere belief it is true. A good statesman will be willing to own up to the mistake.
Information comes at us from all areas now. We have the traditional media of TV, newspapers, and radio, but we also have the internet and 24-hour cable news channels. Americans are no longer sitting down to watch or read the news and then accept it as factual. With so many media outlets available to us, we can pick and choose the ones that tell us what we want to hear.
Anything we don't like is now called "fake" or, if you want to go back on an old gem, "liberally biased". News outlets that try to stick to hard facts and eliminate opinions are called liberally biased. Fact checkers are liberally biased. If your favorite politician or pundit gives false information and is caught in the act, then whoever is reporting it is liberally biased.
I think it's time we accept something about fact checkers. Facts are facts. They aren't biased (although how one interprets them could be). If it can be proved Donald Trump told eighteen thousand lies during his time in office, then he told eighteen thousand lies. No amount of wishful thinking will change that.
The conservative lament over fact checkers is that they pick on conservatives more than they pick on liberals. Liberal politicians and pundits are fact-checked far less often than conservatives. Why is that?
I think it's time to face the truth that conservatives lie more than liberals do.
Before you stop reading and tell me I'm a terrible person, I will qualify that statement. I am not saying, "All conservatives everywhere have lied more than liberals for all time." The current world is full of honest conservatives. History is full of honest conservatives. Unfortunately, at this point in history, the conservatives who are out there making statements in public and being covered by the news are making many false statements.
"But the media are all liberally biased except for Fox," you lament. "If fact checkers are covering the media, they're only covering the bad stuff about conservatives." The "Liberal Media" is another lie politicians and oligarchs feed to the American public. It's another way to foster mistrust. In a perfect world, journalists would report everything they see and hear and bring it to us unvarnished. That would mean many of us would hear things we don't like to hear. Unfortunately, this isn't the fully the case.
The media are biased, but they aren't biased they way we think they are. Almost all of the our news media are owned by a few giant corporations (this wasn't always the case and it was illegal at one point, but I don't want to go too off-topic in this post). Corporations have one goal. That goal is to bring money to its shareholders. The news media are going to report the news in a way that will make them the most money.
Right now we have two consumers of news media at cross purposes with each other. We have conservatives who say, "Stop being liberally biased or I will watch your competitor." Then we have liberals who say, "Please just report the facts as they are." The resulting news is so watered down we don't get any clarity anymore. In a desperate attempt to not seem too liberal, the news media are trying to always present both sides of everything. If there is a story about a group of neo-nazi puppy torturers, there will likely be some kind of op-ed about a controversial study about how puppy torture has immense psychological benefits. If the puppy torturers were Trump supporters, we're going to hear about how they are nice people when they're not torturing puppies.
For many years we had a policy in place called The Fairness Doctrine. This was a legal requirement for news outlets to give equal time to opposing viewpoints. Ronald Reagan overturned it in 1987. The rationale for this was that too much airtime would be wasted giving equal time to any trivial matter that arose. The ironic part of the story is that news outlets now feel compelled to do just that. We have to see both sides of an issue even when the other side has little basis in fact or reason. We as consumers are being told we have to acknowledge another side exists even if that side is irrelevant or downright harmful. Any news medium that doesn't do this will be accused of being "fake news" or "liberally biased."
For anyone who believes it's wrong for the press to cover any scandal regarding Donald Trump, I want you to look at it from the other side. What if Barack Obama was accused of the same scandals Trump was accused of. You would want to know about it wouldn't you? You want the press to cover "Obamagate". In fact, you want to know every detail of that scandal. You wanted full coverage of Monica Lewinsky and the Clinton impeachment. You ate up every bit you could learn about Benghazi. You delighted in anything you could find out about Hillary Clinton's emails. I got an earful about Fast and Furious from Republican friends. Imagine if the press never covered the gross misuse of office by former NY governor Eliot Spitzer, once a rising star in the Democratic Party.
You can't have it both ways. You can't demand the press tell the truth about the politicians you don't like and then complain when it goes after the politicians you support. The press doesn't exist to make you feel good about your choices. The press exists to keep you informed. It exists to help you make the best choices possible going forward.
I will close this with a quote that is the motto of the "liberally biased" Washington Post.
"Democracy Dies in Darkness."
When you call it "fake news,"you are the one turning off the light.
*It's sad to think I wrote that three years ago and nothing has changed.
**I guess I did learn something in that Communication Law and Ethics class they made me take in college.
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