There’s a lot of talk these days about fake news. And it’s a legitimate truth that there are a number of satirical and flat-out tabloid-style websites and services that provide totally made up news, and much of it gets passed around on Facebook as though it were real. That’s a problem in itself, but it’s worse when the “legitimate” news sources use them as a scapegoat to draw attention away from their own fakeness.
I know, there I go, sounding like a crazy person again. Look, the reality of modern life is that journalism is dead. As Denzel Washington pointed out recently, the media has become more focused on being first than on being right. I’ll carry that a little farther, though. They’re focused on being first, and they’re all about sensationalism, and the first outlet to break the stories gets all the attention. The reason being first and being sensational matter is because it’s a ratings game. Nobody pays attention anymore unless the news is dramatic, shocking, spectacular. We watched the World Trade Towers fall live on national television. We watched the bombing of Baghdad live on television. Twice. Everybody has a camera in their pocket now, and a platform to share what they see. The media is competing with social media. They’re competing with us. It’s hard to get our attention because we’re so saturated with sensory input from around the world on a constant basis. Truth doesn’t sell anymore. Narratives do.
True journalism is supposed to be objective, just reporting facts and allowing the reader, listener, or viewer, to draw their own conclusions based on the evidence presented. A really great piece of investigative journalism would gather lots of pertinent facts from various sources, including some which spoke on the condition of anonymity, and would connect the dots without fabricating connective tissue that isn’t there.
But most reporting these days, even from reputable, “legitimate” news sources, isn’t like that. Most of what passes for journalism these days is written from an emotional point of view, where the reporter leads the audience to subjective conclusions based on an emotional reading of the facts, assuming they bother with any facts at all.
You want an example? How about the fact that Buzzfeed and CNN just spent the day claiming that Reince Priebus compared Donald Trump to Jesus? What happened was they took this statement from the RNC:
And decided that Priebus was talking about Donald Trump because…why? Why would anyone assume that? Because the Republicans just won the presidency and in a few weeks Trump will be sworn in as Commander-in-Chief? Nowhere in that message does Priebus mention Trump, or the presidency, or the election, or our nation really at all. He talks about Jesus, and he talks about worshiping Jesus in 2016 as the Magi did circa 6 BC. The only reason to read anything else into that is because of your personal feelings, and that has no place in journalism. That’s nothing but actual, naked fearmongering.
CNN has become no better than Glenn Beck, crying in front of a blackboard with a demented, Kafka-esque flow-chart linking Barack Obama to everything from Satan to tooth decay.
Here’s another example. The Dakota Access Pipeline. Though I have usually commented on the major news stories of the last year or two, I didn’t say anything about the Dakota Access Pipeline. The main reason for that was that it was nearly impossible to gather any facts, and once I did, I was honestly afraid I was going to get ripped into for speaking the truth.
Most of the media coverage of DAPL was emotionally-charged, talking about how the Standing Rock Sioux’s land was being desecrated by the white man and his oil, how the pipeline was crossing the reservation and the protesters were peaceful and the law enforcement and military were being called upon to intimidate, harass, and attack them.
All of this is awful, and got me a little irate, but I took a deep breath and asked myself, “is any of this pipeline reporting objective?” When the answer was no, I Googled and Googled and eventually found one or two pieces of reporting that cited sources and facts, and remained unemotional about the entire thing, and the conclusion I drew is that the entire thing was fairly complex, that both sides had legitimate concerns, and there was a whole mess of confusion in the middle caused by third parties.
As near as I can tell, the pipeline’s proposed route doesn’t enter the reservation at all, though it does cross the Missouri river at the site of an existing natural gas pipeline crossing. The Army Corps of Engineers (who are very thorough and never do anything without checking and re-checking carefully) worked with a team of archaeologists and met repeatedly with various tribal leaders in order to choose a path that was clear of sacred and historically significant sites.
Of course, the Natives had concerns about the river crossing, because it was only a few miles from the reservation, and should the pipeline leak at the crossing, it would pollute the river and would be devastating for the reservation. I’d call that a reasonable concern on their part, without need of embellishment. However, various environmental activist groups got involved, and that’s where things get tricky. It seems that the environmentalists escalated the protests, which led to escalation by government and law enforcement. Construction workers felt so scared and intimidated that they started packing heat, and even then protesters succeeded in running them off the road, even sometimes dragging them from their vehicles.
I consider that a strategic move on the part of the environmentalists as it led to greater media coverage by making for more dramatic, sensational news stories. That’s just good political strategy. Finally the Army Corps of Engineers backed down, and they did it because the whole thing had become so ugly, dangerous, and, frankly, a circus; so that strategy by the organizers in the environmental groups certainly paid off.
So why didn’t the media report it objectively? Well, because the narrative created by the activists was sexier. Opposing the pipeline is in line with fighting climate change; it’s part of a larger narrative that is important to many journalists and by crusading on the pipeline issue, they are crusading for the planet. If they can package that under a veil of half-truths about Natives getting screwed, it’s even sexier. Hit ‘em right in the White Guilt. Works every time.
Journalists have always been crusaders. That’s nothing new. What’s new is that many of them no longer crusade for the truth, they crusade for political causes. They’re telling you fairytales and horror stories, in service of what they think is the greater good. I’ve referenced this before, but a lie in service of the greater good is still a lie.
So let’s come back to the “fake news” discussion for a moment. As Elbert Hubbard once said, “responsibility is the price of freedom.” I brought that concept up when talking about gun control. If you’re going to be truly free, you have to be responsible for yourself and your actions; and if you’re going to give up responsibility then you also give up freedom. Responsibility must be taught, by parents to children, or else learned through a series of comprehensive and potentially cataclysmic failures. If children don’t understand the concept of personal responsibility, they grow up, turn to the government and say, “take care of me.” And that’s where freedom dies.
What has this got to do with fake news, you ask? In the words of Jacob Marley: “Much.”
After all, who gets to decide what is fake news? See the First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Freedom of the press. If the press is free, and the price of freedom is responsibility, then the press is responsible for what they print. Any attempt by the government to regulate it, and the press is no longer free. The second that happens, it becomes nothing more than government propaganda which is the exact antithesis of what it was created to be. Which is why it’s so telling that the media finally jumps on the “ fake news” train the moment their candidate loses out. Meanwhile CNN wants you to believe that Reince Priebus thinks Donald Trump is Jesus Christ.
Ultimately, we have to accept that the first amendment protects all of this garbage, at least to a degree, and that changing the first amendment would be too dangerous to even consider. So instead, we must ask ourselves, what can we do?
Well, the first thing is we can remember that every single media outlet is a business. And because they are businesses, what we spend money on is what we support. And in the online world, sometimes what you click on is what you support. What you “like” on Facebook is what you support. What you share, is what you support. So if you don’t like it, drop it like it’s hot. Basic economics, right there.
The second thing, which pairs nicely with that, is when you see a news story, fact-check it, sure, but not only that; ask yourself, “is this fact-based journalism, or are my emotions being played?” And if the answer to that is, “no, and yes,” then regardless of the masthead at the top of the page, or whose face it’s coming out of, what you have is not news. Journalism may be persuasive, but it ought not be propaganda. Which is to say that a journalist may gather and report the facts, and then use those to draw certain conclusions, and while there is a subjectivity inherent there, you get to look at all the same facts and decide if you agree with the reporter’s conclusions or not. Ideally, the reporter is intelligent and objective enough to draw reasonable conclusions, and change their own point of view if necessary as facts are discovered. The propagandist, on the other hand, twists the facts or outright fabricates information in order to promote a specific viewpoint.
I don’t need a journalist to tell me how I ought to feel about a given thing, and neither, I suspect, do you. Don’t get me wrong, everybody’s free to have an opinion. But by that same token, everyone is responsible for forming their own. Which really only happens if we can get our hands on true and accurate information. In the digital age, that’s surprisingly damned difficult. It’s a jungle out there.
