A lie can travel halfway ‘round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. –Rev. Charles Spurgeon, 1865 sermon*
The point of April Fools Day was to set aside a special day to indulge our mischievous proclivities to spin increasingly outrageous stories, or to perhaps try to punk somebody into believing a more subtler deception. Whether big or small, the lies generated on that day were to varying degrees a mixture of a shared eye wink, and an out-and-out hoodwink.
But, alas, the day is no longer special. The advent of fake news and pointedly distorted imagery has become commonplace to the point where more traditional press outlets (e.g. newspapers, network news, etc.) occasionally report the deliberate falsehood as news.** The public consequently has increased difficulty ferreting out the accurate, from the nearly accurate, to the sloppy and grossly inaccuracy due to incompetence, and now, the complete fabrication.
President Donald Trump gave the term “fake news” currency during his 2016 campaign. He used it to refer to CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Associated Press – basically anything that isn’t Fox. The success of the rhetorical practice of decrying all dissenting information (especially such objective information as science) as “propaganda” rests in the long-standing false premise that corporate media has a liberal bias, if not a liberal agenda. If anything, mainstream media have a corporate bias, which by its nature is aligned with corporate/industrial values of profit, brand maintenance, market share, stock price and so on.
Moreover, many purveyors of fake news have demonstrated an openly right-wing, pro-Trump agenda of their own, and for reasons not hard to understand. Reporters objectively reporting on the President have had to bring up a long list of issues that make Trump look very bad. To recount just a few, (1) admitting to sexually assaulting women to Billy Bush; (2) his open call for Russia to spy on a political opponent; (3) The business ties he and his associates have with Russia; (4) the liaison of Russian Intel with people representing either him or his campaign, (5) his strong support among KKK, Nazi and other white supremacist/nationalist groups, and his refusal to disassociate himself from these organizations, or for that matter his father’s own connection to hate groups; (6) his failed business deals and his refusal to honor contracts as a real estate developer, and so on.
Undoubtedly, if you were Donald Trump or a Trump supporter, you wouldn’t like these questions, and might even have some animosity towards those asking them. And you would know that the information they're based on could very well be true. Still, it would be a nice thing if the whole thing was fake, a bad dream, a hoax perpetrated by someone else. So to that end, we can credit the rapid success of fake news to wishful thinking.
As many of you probably know, the survivors of the recent Parkland High School shooting were targeted numerous times by pro-gun advocates in false news reports. Most of them center on Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg. With respect to the latter, a number of fake news sites – i.e., sites dedicated to providing politically serviceable content while fully aware of the fraudulent nature of the material they were generating – declared that he wasn’t at Parkland, but rather thousands of miles away in California. As the opening quote would indicate, this misinformation disseminated almost instantaneously among hard-right channels (within twenty-four hours) before those affected by it (Hogg, other survivors, families of the dead, etc.) discovered the untruth and could respond to it. Gonzalez has seen her image digitally altered, miss-captioned and displayed contrary-to-context. In one instance, a Cuban flag patch on her jacket was represented as a loyalty to communism, or Fidel Castro, when it was actually a homage to her Cuban ancestry and nothing more. A photograph representing her as beating a truck with umbrella actually shows singer Britney Spears. A GIF image has recently been altered to make it seem as though Gonzalez is ripping up a copy of the US Constitution.
Figure 1. A Woman Who Is Not Emma Gonzalez
Cameron Harris, a former aide of Republican Delaware State Legislator David Vogt III founded ChristianTimesNewspaper.com, a site where you can learn that “tens of thousands of pre-marked ballots casting votes for Hillary Clinton were found in a warehouse in Ohio.” Vogt immediately fired Harris, who later told press that although Republican, he didn’t create fake news stories because of his political leanings, but because fake news clickbait made him lots of money. Why he targeted right-wing consumers as opposed to leftist or centrist he explained:
Given the severe distrust of the media among Trump supporters, anything that parroted Trump’s talking points people would click. Trump was saying ‘rigged election, rigged election.’ People were predisposed to believe Hillary Clinton could not win except by cheating.One of the most visible sites is National Report. Many of its posts are quite funny, reading more like The Onion, The World Weekly News or other outlets purposefully engaged in humor. Here you can find such headlines as “Trojan Name New Ultra-Thin Skin Condom after Donald Trump,” “Trump to Nominate Chris Christie to Supreme Food Court,” “Sarah Palin Bans Muslims from Entering Bristol Palin,” and “Millions Mourn as Rocker/Activist Ted Nugent, age 68, Found Alive.”
National Report not only has admitted to planting false news stories, but in setting deliberate traps for conservative pundits, hoping to get them to circulate the story until it aired, as news, on Fox, or other right-wing venues. Similarly minded sites have done the same thing. In one instance, the baiting resulting in one pundit leaving his job. As Stream reported:
Neal Larson, a radio talk show host in Idaho, quit his job as a conservative columnist for The Twin Falls Times-News last month after being viciously savaged on the internet for referencing a fake news story. In his article, Larson accused the famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson of attacking a nine-year-old girl on Twitter. Unfortunately, the article he cited was from the fake news site Clickhole.National Report and Clickhole are by no means alone in this enterprise. A cottage industry of fake news sites has become the staple of social media fodder, with articles linked to and circulated on FaceBook, Twitter and other venues. A partial list of other sites would include World News Daily Report, Huzlers, Empire News, Stuppid, News Examiner, Newswatch 33, Naha Daily, The Stately Harold (note spelling), News Buzz Daily, The Reporters, Empire Herald, Satira Tribune, Nevada County Scooper, React365, The Burrard Street Journal, The Last Line of Defense, As American as Apple Pie, Freedom Junkshun, Breaking, and News 365. And that’s not counting such sites as Breitbart.com, which serve as a hub and a platform for many of these stories to make it into the mainstream.
Tyson was furious and publicly debunked Larson in a rebuttal in the Times-News. Larson wrote in his farewell column about how the mistake devastated him. ‘I had no recourse, no comparable media platform at my disposal. It was as terrible and as helpless as you can imagine,’ he said. ‘Even more disappointing, a few people that I honestly thought were friends, shared online my unfortunate story with glee.’
What I find more pernicious are sites that spoof the name of more mainstream news sources. One site, abc-us.com, apes the appearance of ABC News’ actual website, and even boasts the familiar ABC logo in the top-left corner. Now8News likewise mimics the style of eyewitness local news. These and such sites as Associated Media Coverage confuse issues by confusing the messenger. On one hand, they can easily trick a reader into thinking that outlandish stories actually came from a news outlet they think (deservedly or not) is reputable, and therefore likely to be true. On a deeper level, it gives ammunition to those decrying fake news by the mainstream press because they seem to come from mainstream press.
On a rather ironic note, Snopes.com, a site relied upon by professionals and non-professionals for determining the veracity of urban legends, rumors and news reports, has lost access to its advertising revenue, and has resorted to starting a gofundme campaign in order to raise legal fees and to keep the site operational.
What this means is that the season for creating tall tales and spreading them around has extended beyond that of a twenty-four hour period to an annual 365-day cycle (366 in leap year). That renders April Fools Day rather meaningless. Therefore, I am hereby canceling April Fools Day until further notice.
And I have the authority to do that.
Honest.
____________________
*Quote often erroneously attributed to Mark Twain.
**Click here to see an example reported by Sky News.