01-15-2017, 10:38 AM
Some more political commentary to chew on, as it relates to "fake news," this time sourced from Jacobin magazine. (Yes, I know it's a "socialist rag," but insight--if not necessarily the "truth"--is where I find it.) Its articles are "fair-minded" only in the sense that it levels its attacks at both Democrats and Republicans, which its editors and contributors see as handmaidens of corporate capitalism.
"Truth and Politics" https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/trump...-buzzfeed/
Some passages are excerpted below:
At a press conference dominated by speculation over an alleged leaked memo detailing links between the president-elect and Russia, Donald Trump lambasted CNN as a “fake news” organization. The outburst, directed at CNN’s Jim Acosta, was met with a mixture of laughs, gasps, and applause from those in the room. This week Trump has similarly attacked BuzzFeed for publishing the document, which the outlet conceded was “unverified and potentially unverifiable.”
While some mainstream journalists turned to CNN’s defense, few extended the same solidarity to BuzzFeed. Certainly there are ethical questions pertaining to the release of unverified documents in any case, but for many critics it’s enough that BuzzFeed supposedly epitomizes the “clickbait” and “infotainment”-heavy character of new online media — regardless of inconvenient facts regarding BuzzFeed’s resources, the size of its readership, or the credentials of its top journalists. While a president-elect shouting down CNN is sinister, BuzzFeed is fair game — after all, we’ve all dissed it at some point or other, right?
It wasn’t so long ago the cry of “fake news” was heard most strongly among sore Clinton supporters, attributing Trump’s apparently inconceivable victory to the phenomenon — many going as far as to demand Facebook take action. Likewise in the United Kingdom, many “Remain” voters complained of fighting an uphill battle against misinformation during the EU referendum, and on both sides of the Atlantic we’ve been subjected to hot-take theories on the rise of the so-called “post-truth era.”
To the liberal mindset, “fake news” is so offensive because it inhibits the public’s ability to be well-informed enough to participate in democratic society in good faith. At first glance the sentiment may be agreeable enough, but scratch the surface and its implications begin to look more elitist. If people do not have access to a well-rounded set of views mediated by “objective” journalists, so the thinking goes, how are they supposed to arrive at considered conclusions?
Here we see the implicit assertion of the need for “real” news — imbued with all the favored buzzwords of the media world: impartial, neutral, balanced — cast as a hero that will deliver us from the evils of the “fake news” corroding our democracies...
The impulse to legislate away supposed “fake news” outlets on liberal democratic grounds — as in the case of those who turned their frustrations to Facebook’s algorithm — shies away from the very thing that makes democracy dynamic: politics...
It’s no coincidence that until now the accusation of “fake news” has most commonly been reserved for badmouthing the insurgent media outlets — including leftist ones — that are so irritating to establishment commentators. Such a tactic reeks of elitist snobbery, both towards smaller independent media projects and their presumably obtuse readers.
As it happens, the tactic is not a new one. In the early part of the twentieth century, the writer Walter Lippmann proselytized about the need for a disinterested media comprised of a professionalized stratum of journalists employed to manage the ignorance of public opinion through the top-down mediation of government policies. Lippmann’s proposals, still influential today, sought to deal with two key problems: first, a damaging critique of the (uncritical, arguably “fake”) way US newspapers had reported the Russian Revolution; second, a growing anxiety of the potential for the new technologies of mass media to rouse public opinion beyond manageable limits. Sound familiar?
While journalistic concerns about maintaining integrity (if that’s what we want to call it) amid an evolving technological landscape today seem as strong as ever, what’s less stable is who gets to define the parameters of the legitimate, authoritative, “real” news. Since the “fake news” label caught on, many establishment outlets have been unable to resist defining themselves against the term.
But Trump’s latest remarks demonstrate the malleable boundaries of the charge, leading even establishment outlets to take umbrage now that they’ve been forced to defend themselves — not against other journalists, but the president-elect of the United States...
Given the atomization of what now constitutes "the media" in the digital age, coupled with the endemic polarization of our body politic, the phenomenon of "fake news" is not going away anytime soon. Indeed, the atomization and polarization seem to be feeding off one another in altogether unhealthy ways. Is that a "positive feedback loop"? Someone better acquainted than I in systems theory might be able to shed some light on that.
"Truth and Politics" https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/trump...-buzzfeed/
Some passages are excerpted below:
At a press conference dominated by speculation over an alleged leaked memo detailing links between the president-elect and Russia, Donald Trump lambasted CNN as a “fake news” organization. The outburst, directed at CNN’s Jim Acosta, was met with a mixture of laughs, gasps, and applause from those in the room. This week Trump has similarly attacked BuzzFeed for publishing the document, which the outlet conceded was “unverified and potentially unverifiable.”
While some mainstream journalists turned to CNN’s defense, few extended the same solidarity to BuzzFeed. Certainly there are ethical questions pertaining to the release of unverified documents in any case, but for many critics it’s enough that BuzzFeed supposedly epitomizes the “clickbait” and “infotainment”-heavy character of new online media — regardless of inconvenient facts regarding BuzzFeed’s resources, the size of its readership, or the credentials of its top journalists. While a president-elect shouting down CNN is sinister, BuzzFeed is fair game — after all, we’ve all dissed it at some point or other, right?
It wasn’t so long ago the cry of “fake news” was heard most strongly among sore Clinton supporters, attributing Trump’s apparently inconceivable victory to the phenomenon — many going as far as to demand Facebook take action. Likewise in the United Kingdom, many “Remain” voters complained of fighting an uphill battle against misinformation during the EU referendum, and on both sides of the Atlantic we’ve been subjected to hot-take theories on the rise of the so-called “post-truth era.”
To the liberal mindset, “fake news” is so offensive because it inhibits the public’s ability to be well-informed enough to participate in democratic society in good faith. At first glance the sentiment may be agreeable enough, but scratch the surface and its implications begin to look more elitist. If people do not have access to a well-rounded set of views mediated by “objective” journalists, so the thinking goes, how are they supposed to arrive at considered conclusions?
Here we see the implicit assertion of the need for “real” news — imbued with all the favored buzzwords of the media world: impartial, neutral, balanced — cast as a hero that will deliver us from the evils of the “fake news” corroding our democracies...
The impulse to legislate away supposed “fake news” outlets on liberal democratic grounds — as in the case of those who turned their frustrations to Facebook’s algorithm — shies away from the very thing that makes democracy dynamic: politics...
It’s no coincidence that until now the accusation of “fake news” has most commonly been reserved for badmouthing the insurgent media outlets — including leftist ones — that are so irritating to establishment commentators. Such a tactic reeks of elitist snobbery, both towards smaller independent media projects and their presumably obtuse readers.
As it happens, the tactic is not a new one. In the early part of the twentieth century, the writer Walter Lippmann proselytized about the need for a disinterested media comprised of a professionalized stratum of journalists employed to manage the ignorance of public opinion through the top-down mediation of government policies. Lippmann’s proposals, still influential today, sought to deal with two key problems: first, a damaging critique of the (uncritical, arguably “fake”) way US newspapers had reported the Russian Revolution; second, a growing anxiety of the potential for the new technologies of mass media to rouse public opinion beyond manageable limits. Sound familiar?
While journalistic concerns about maintaining integrity (if that’s what we want to call it) amid an evolving technological landscape today seem as strong as ever, what’s less stable is who gets to define the parameters of the legitimate, authoritative, “real” news. Since the “fake news” label caught on, many establishment outlets have been unable to resist defining themselves against the term.
But Trump’s latest remarks demonstrate the malleable boundaries of the charge, leading even establishment outlets to take umbrage now that they’ve been forced to defend themselves — not against other journalists, but the president-elect of the United States...
Given the atomization of what now constitutes "the media" in the digital age, coupled with the endemic polarization of our body politic, the phenomenon of "fake news" is not going away anytime soon. Indeed, the atomization and polarization seem to be feeding off one another in altogether unhealthy ways. Is that a "positive feedback loop"? Someone better acquainted than I in systems theory might be able to shed some light on that.