Be Skeptical of this Campaign Against "Fake News"

Spotting "fake news" used to be easy. It tended to reside in the tabloid section near supermarket checkouts, and it tended to include stories of aliens endorsing presidential candidates. Then along came the Internet and suddenly information became easier to access. But people also became intellectually lazy. Purveyors of prevarications found a much larger audience, reachable within seconds. And many people who buy it, without doing a minimum amount of research to debunk the story. 

For a while, "fake news" was simply a way to identify which of your friends and family members were gullible. You could chuckle, as you thought, "I can't believe my friend actually fell for this." If you had a strong reaction to a friend's posts, or thought you were being helpful, you could post a comment with links to websites that debunked the so-called news account. 

But now, there are allegations that the proliferation of "fake news" may have tipped the balance in the 2016 presidential election. In response, social media platforms, such as Facebook, are looking into ways to restrict "fake news" from popping up in people's newsfeeds. The problem, however, is who is going to police those who are policing the so-called "fake news." That is, how do you prevent the campaign against "fake news" from becoming a with hunt of censorship?

Whether you want to admit it or not, media bias exists not only in the mainstream press, but also in the board rooms of those who operate social media such as Facebook. You can see it during presidential debates, when self-appointed fact-checkers attempt to portray one candidate as more truthful than another. What we are willing to accept as "facts" in many ways depends on our preconceived view of the world. And what we label as "fake" will also depend on preconceived biases. Not surprisingly, what the fact-checkers called a lie often depended on the fact-checker's own leanings. 

At the moment, the anti "fake news" campaign is focused on those websites that do make up stories whole cloth hoping the gullible post links and thus increase the site's ad revenues. Does anyone remember the so-called story of the FBI agent supposedly investigating the Hillary Clinton email scandal who allegedly committed a fiery murder-suicide a week after James Comey announced the re-opening of the case?  Those who held fast to the belief that the Clintons have a way of making opponents disappear bought the story hook, line and sinker, and tweeted or posted it for wide distribution. We now know that the event never occurred. Instead, cheeky Internet trolls put up a website that looked like a news site, and hoped to rake in ad profit by inflaming the passions of Hillary haters. 

But the problem is that some of the advice on how to tell if news is fake isn't very reliable. One piece of advice is to check to see if the news source is a reputable outlet. However, in the past twenty years or so, journalistic standards have declined to such a degree that even so-called reputable sources have published stories of dubious merit. Fact-checking is dead. Carefully selection of which facts and stories are worthy of publication weed out what information gets served to the public. So-called "government leaks" and "unnamed sources" allow the major news outlets to publish innuendo, rumor and outright spin. All the while, other major news outlets will simply cite to each other, as if the proliferation of stories covering nothing more than rumor elevates them to fact. 

Take for example the early reporting of Donald Trump's transition to the White House. Reporters were eager to cite unnamed sources to claim that Trump was unaware of the scope of the presidency, that his team was in disarray, and that the president-elect wanted security clearance for his children. Yet a closer look at the evidence cited showed that all of this was merely based on exaggerations of questions the president-elect and his team posed in private when meeting with White House staff. Yet, despite flimsy sources, major news talking heads cited each others' stories to elevate rumor and conjecture into fact. 

Yet very little has been reported on why Hillary Clinton failed to address her supporters on election night despite conceding the rave to Trump. A few days later the same type of "unnamed sources" claimed she was in a drunken rage, lashing out physically against top campaign aids. Yet, major news sources have ignored this story, despite the fact that it was based on the same type of evidence (rumor and conjecture) as the allegations of Trump's alleged incompetence. Which is to be considers "fake news"?  

While there are many stories that are verifiably fake, in many other instances what one person considers fake depends very much on that person's world view. Having a social media platform appoint itself as a "fake news" blood hound is a frightening concept as it smacks of unchecked censorship. Used wrongly, the campaign against "fake news" can deteriorate into just another method of subtly attempting to manipulate thought by selective interpreting what is a "fact" that can be fed to the masses. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.