When News is Fake
Fake news?
Yep, “fake” news is the Topic Du Jour on the Internet (excepting, of course, the election results).
Why does “fake” news come as a surprise to anyone? Not too long ago, I wrote an article warning you of just such dangers when “researching” online: take the time required to figure out who is running a given website or “news”site, what, if any, political affiliations does this site or organization have, and above all, read broadly so that something taken out of context and feverishly reported over here might be returned to its proper frame of reference over there.
There was a great deal of chatter online during the lead-up to the election that search results might be biased, filtering out bad news, and not returning legitimate results when it didn’t play the way the main purveyor (Google) wanted it to. This went doubly so for what was being fed into your “newstream” by Facebook.
But the conversation about what is “fake” and what is not is somewhat confusing. In a nutshell:
If you weren’t already aware of it, most “news” has become a form of entertainment. I remember my dad listening to a man on the radio he really disliked. He listened because, I think in retrospect, he got some pressure release by yelling at this silly “radio personality” pontificating. I suspect many of us choose our “news” stations for similar reasons – we can either nod in agreement and feel good about our wisdom and insight, or we can yell and stomp and be reassured about just how “stupid” and “biased” the Other Side is.
While for the most part the radio and television versions of this News and Commentary are pretty obvious —and they have become so obvious it’s almost impossible to listen to them without grinding your teeth and wishing for Old Walter Cronkite back again— the online versions are not as readily identifiable.
Some of them advertise themselves with self-aware names and don’t even try to disguise what type of news they’re trying to share: “Right Wing Propaganda.com” or “LeftistsRUs.com” (I’m making those names up, I hope!); others are less obvious and present themselves as middle of the road or “honest.”
The question of “Who will watch the watchers” has become the Question Du Jour.
The idea of Who Will Watch the Watchers is just what it says: if our Fourth Estate can’t be trusted, how about the Fifth (the “outlier” observers, like bloggers, podcasters, and the like)?
And what about the Gatekeepers who let us know of the existence of these sources?
Once upon a time, TV and Radio were offered to us simply by advertisers. News was supposed to be exempt from the scrutiny of advertisers, who could control the nature of the entertainment, and try to match it (comedy, drama, science fiction, variety show). As such, we had a certain amount of trust in it. Newspapers “advertised” their political persuasions and were understood as such.
With cable came so many more avenues of information —and with both cable and the Internet siphoning off listeners, radio became desperate for listeners. Someone realized that offering people something blatantly obvious, but also not available elsewhere might be a draw: Talk Radio boomed. And of course it was mostly Right Wing. The left tried to emulate it, but without success because the common understanding was that “mainstream,” i.e. regularly programmed “news” tended left. So the uniqueness factor wasn’t salable.
The Internet eventually moved into the mix of offerings for news and information, and now Confirmation Bias became a problem to contend with: was what we learned satisfactory because it seemed like a “real” story, or did we like it because it simply assured us that what we already thought was correct? In any case, as more and more “news” sites proliferated, searching for accuracy and honesty was like hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. And even if you found what you were pretty sure was a needle, how do you know who put it there and why?
I’ve often cautioned readers of this column to search out the owners of a given site, understand what they are hoping to achieve, and understand the information accordingly.
The recent uproar with news, fake news, and search results rested with the Gatekeepers: the Googles and more particularly, with Facebook.
The question arose whether search engines such as Google were returning results agnostic to political points-of-view, and Facebook acknowledged that it was deciding via one of its “algorithms” what were “fake” news sites and what real. Note: it was not saying “This is a Right/Left Wing site,” but this is a FAKE site. And Fake News sites were being removed from news feeds —and search results.
Now you can hunt for “Fake News” and you will find tables that identify for you, conveniently, what is fake and what is real.
If you believe their evaluation.
Once again, read with caution.
