Why the sudden concern for Facebook ‘fake news’ by the mainstream media? It is nothing new. It is likely much more sinister than benevolent. The reality is that the misinformation allowed on mainstream media is much more dangerous.
CNN’s Brian Stelter laments about Facebook fake news
We should all want to scream about the mainstream media’s sudden concern with ‘fake news’ on Facebook. The reality is that mainstream media’ misinformation is worse as it comes with a degree of gravitas.
President Obama recently called out ‘fake news’ on social media as a threat to our democracy. He forgot to mention the sources that likely did the most harm to his governance was the mainstream media.
The mainstream media is acting as if disinformation is a new problem. It is not. In fact, way before it was vogue on Facebook or other social media domains, it was rampant in print, on cable news and broadcast news. And I am not just talking Fox News even though they made it an art form.
One must not forget that New York Times reporter Judith Miller willfully allowed others to mislead her into writing the lies that led us into the Iraq War. She gave the Bush administration lie the cover of objective journalism that was not objective at all. Her lies were complicit in getting hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and thousands of American soldiers killed because it helped lay the framework to war on false pretenses.
Mainstream media were instrumental in a less than optimal Affordable Care Act. Why? They were pass through conduits for lies from the right. They knowingly allowed terms like ‘government takeover of healthcare,’ ‘throw grandma under the bus,’ ‘death panels,’ and other verifiable lies to become part of the lexicon. In other words, they were delivering ‘fake news’ on behalf of the right. Currently, they allow Paul Ryan’s lies to go mostly unchecked. Ryan is using the false claim that Obamacare made Medicare less solvent. He needs that talking point as a bridge to not only dismantling Obamacare but to give a plausible reason for privatizing Medicare.
And then there is Hillary Clinton’s email server. The same media that informs all Americans on the fact that every email or post lives forever on the internet, they would have you believe that Clinton could somehow scrub her server and all her emails would disappear without a trace. Emails are one to one or one to many type communication. In the process, every email likely resides on many servers, not just the personal server. One should remember that the NSA or some other agency in Homeland Security is likely monitoring all the internet pipes as well. Destroying the data on the personal server does not preclude its existence elsewhere. The mainstream media’s characterization of the email server issue was ‘fake news,’ and it was partially responsible for making Donald Trump our president.
One could continue to present cases ad nauseam where the mainstream media either misled or allowed themselves to be a conduit of misinformation and lies in many more instances. Their use of false equivalences defeats the purpose of journalism as the check on government and corporations.
Mainstream media allow misinformation to foster an audience based on sensationalized headlines. As well, they simply become an unchallenged conduit for lies. And why do they leave lies unanswered? Chuck Todd accidentally revealed that answer when he told a truth that many already knew. He said that they don’t challenge guests for fear of not having a show.
This new concern by the mainstream media for ‘fake news’ after the election is disingenuous. And my hunch is that it is two pronged. It is a bait and switch. They want to blame Americans’ ignorance on the misinformation they receive from Facebook and other social media thus reducing the credulity of the medium with the expectation of gaining back the audience they’ve lost to social media. Unfortunately what the mainstream media want you to ignore, is that they were in fact, the catalyst for misinformation. The misinformers in social media saw how well the mainstream media’s misinformation worked. They were great teachers.
America must not allow the mainstream media to mislead them. Social media is the future. It is the future the mainstream media fears because it democratizes the dissemination of information. No longer are the big corporate media types the gatekeepers of news. American will have to educate themselves about good and bad sources of information. It is something they have to do both with social media and mainstream media.