01-16-2017, 12:18 PM
All apologies to those of you who disdain "block quotes" when a simple link might suffice to pique the reader's interest...but I view them as "teasers" of a sort, much like TV programs that announce upcoming segments before cutting to two minutes worth of 30-second commercials (Aargh!). I laughed at one this morning (paraphrasing here): "When we return from break, the NBA and other sports leagues are looking into ways to cut game times, as Millennials increasingly tune out overlong games because of their short attention spans..." (Sheesh, talk about painting an entire generation with a broad brush.)
I ran across this article from the Columbia Journalism Review today: "The Real History of Fake News"
http://www.cjr.org/special_report/fake_news_history.php
Some excerpts appear below:
In an 1807 letter to John Norvell, a young go-getter who had asked how to best run a newspaper, Thomas Jefferson penned what today would make for a fiery Medium post condemning fake news.
“It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly [sic] deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood,” the sitting president wrote. “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”
That vehicle grew into a commercial powerhouse in the 19th century and a self-reverential political institution, “the media,” by the mid-20th. But the pollution has been described in increasingly dire terms in recent months. PolitiFact named fake news its 2016 “Lie of the Year,” while chagrined Democrats have warned about its threat to an honest public debate. The pope compared consumption of fake news to eating feces. And many of the wise men and women of journalism have chimed in almost uniformly: Come to us for the real stuff.
“Whatever its other cultural and social merits, our digital ecosystem seems to have evolved into a near-perfect environment for fake news to thrive,” New York Times CEO Mark Thompson said in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club...
A little bit of brake-tapping may be in order: It’s worth remembering, in the middle of the great fake news panic of 2016, America’s very long tradition of news-related hoaxes. A thumbnail history shows marked similarities to today’s fakery in editorial motive or public gullibility, not to mention the blurred lines between deliberate and accidental flimflam. It also suggests that the recent fixation on fake news has more to do with macro-level trends than any new brand of faux content...
“The existence of an independent, powerful, widely respected news media establishment is an historical anomaly,” Georgetown Professor Jonathan Ladd wrote in his 2011 book, Why Americans Hate the Media and How it Matters. “Prior to the twentieth century, such an institution had never existed in American history.” Fake news is but one symptom of that shift back to historical norms, and recent hyperventilating mimics reactions from eras past...
Take Jefferson’s generation. Our country’s earliest political combat played out in the pages of competing partisan publications often subsidized by government printing contracts and typically unbothered by reporting as we know it. Innuendo and character assassination were standard, and it was difficult to discern content solely meant to deceive from political bomb-throwing that served deception as a side dish. Then, like now, the greybeards grumbled about how the media actually inhibited the fact-based debate it was supposed to lead...
In his 1897 book critiquing American news coverage of the Cuban War of Independence, Facts and Fakes about Cuba, George Bronson Rea outlined the stages of embellishment between minor news events outside of Havana to seemingly fictionalized front-page stories in New York. Cuban sources wanted to turn public opinion against Spain, while American correspondents were eager to sell newspapers.
“But the truth is a hard thing to suppress,” Rea wrote, “and will sooner or later come to light to act as a boomerang on the perpetrators of such outrageous ‘fakes,’ whose only aim is to draw this country into a war with Spain to attain their own selfish ends...”
[I'm not so sure the "boomerang" effect to which Rea refers to here is really operable anymore. Substitute the word "Iraq" for "Spain," and ask yourself, "Who has really paid a political price in the George W. Bush administration for hyping "weapons of mass destruction" and "mushroom clouds" as a pretext for war?" No one that I can discern. Rather than shamefully going into a self-imposed exile from the public eye, they get to write their memoirs for seven-figure advances, or else appear as paid commentators on cable news. And lest I be accused of partisanship, why wasn't Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, while serving in the Obama administration, ever indicted for committing perjury for his mendacious testimony before Congress?]
Public trust of the media has been in decline for decades, though the situation now feels particularly cataclysmic with the atomization of media consumption, partisan criticism from all corners, and the ascension of Donald Trump to the White House. Just as Watergate gave the media a bright story to tell about itself, fake news provides a catchall symbol—and a scapegoat—for journalists grappling with their diminished institutional power.
[And the first sentence of the paragraph is the very point I made in my second post to this thread. (By the way where did it go, Dan?) My point being that the atomization of the media and our endemic polarization are feeding off one another in a way that poses a real threat to the legitimacy of the Fourth Estate, and by extension to our republic.]
It’s telling that the most compelling reporting on fake news has focused on distribution networks—what’s new—even if those stories have yet to prove they’ve exacerbated the problem en masse. In the meantime, let’s retire the dreaded moniker in favor of more precise choices: misinformation, deception, lies. Just as the media has employed “fake news” to discredit competitors for public attention, political celebrities and partisan publications have used it to discredit the press wholesale. As hard as it is to admit, that’s an increasingly unfair fight.
I ran across this article from the Columbia Journalism Review today: "The Real History of Fake News"
http://www.cjr.org/special_report/fake_news_history.php
Some excerpts appear below:
In an 1807 letter to John Norvell, a young go-getter who had asked how to best run a newspaper, Thomas Jefferson penned what today would make for a fiery Medium post condemning fake news.
“It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly [sic] deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood,” the sitting president wrote. “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”
That vehicle grew into a commercial powerhouse in the 19th century and a self-reverential political institution, “the media,” by the mid-20th. But the pollution has been described in increasingly dire terms in recent months. PolitiFact named fake news its 2016 “Lie of the Year,” while chagrined Democrats have warned about its threat to an honest public debate. The pope compared consumption of fake news to eating feces. And many of the wise men and women of journalism have chimed in almost uniformly: Come to us for the real stuff.
“Whatever its other cultural and social merits, our digital ecosystem seems to have evolved into a near-perfect environment for fake news to thrive,” New York Times CEO Mark Thompson said in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club...
A little bit of brake-tapping may be in order: It’s worth remembering, in the middle of the great fake news panic of 2016, America’s very long tradition of news-related hoaxes. A thumbnail history shows marked similarities to today’s fakery in editorial motive or public gullibility, not to mention the blurred lines between deliberate and accidental flimflam. It also suggests that the recent fixation on fake news has more to do with macro-level trends than any new brand of faux content...
“The existence of an independent, powerful, widely respected news media establishment is an historical anomaly,” Georgetown Professor Jonathan Ladd wrote in his 2011 book, Why Americans Hate the Media and How it Matters. “Prior to the twentieth century, such an institution had never existed in American history.” Fake news is but one symptom of that shift back to historical norms, and recent hyperventilating mimics reactions from eras past...
Take Jefferson’s generation. Our country’s earliest political combat played out in the pages of competing partisan publications often subsidized by government printing contracts and typically unbothered by reporting as we know it. Innuendo and character assassination were standard, and it was difficult to discern content solely meant to deceive from political bomb-throwing that served deception as a side dish. Then, like now, the greybeards grumbled about how the media actually inhibited the fact-based debate it was supposed to lead...
In his 1897 book critiquing American news coverage of the Cuban War of Independence, Facts and Fakes about Cuba, George Bronson Rea outlined the stages of embellishment between minor news events outside of Havana to seemingly fictionalized front-page stories in New York. Cuban sources wanted to turn public opinion against Spain, while American correspondents were eager to sell newspapers.
“But the truth is a hard thing to suppress,” Rea wrote, “and will sooner or later come to light to act as a boomerang on the perpetrators of such outrageous ‘fakes,’ whose only aim is to draw this country into a war with Spain to attain their own selfish ends...”
[I'm not so sure the "boomerang" effect to which Rea refers to here is really operable anymore. Substitute the word "Iraq" for "Spain," and ask yourself, "Who has really paid a political price in the George W. Bush administration for hyping "weapons of mass destruction" and "mushroom clouds" as a pretext for war?" No one that I can discern. Rather than shamefully going into a self-imposed exile from the public eye, they get to write their memoirs for seven-figure advances, or else appear as paid commentators on cable news. And lest I be accused of partisanship, why wasn't Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, while serving in the Obama administration, ever indicted for committing perjury for his mendacious testimony before Congress?]
Public trust of the media has been in decline for decades, though the situation now feels particularly cataclysmic with the atomization of media consumption, partisan criticism from all corners, and the ascension of Donald Trump to the White House. Just as Watergate gave the media a bright story to tell about itself, fake news provides a catchall symbol—and a scapegoat—for journalists grappling with their diminished institutional power.
[And the first sentence of the paragraph is the very point I made in my second post to this thread. (By the way where did it go, Dan?) My point being that the atomization of the media and our endemic polarization are feeding off one another in a way that poses a real threat to the legitimacy of the Fourth Estate, and by extension to our republic.]
It’s telling that the most compelling reporting on fake news has focused on distribution networks—what’s new—even if those stories have yet to prove they’ve exacerbated the problem en masse. In the meantime, let’s retire the dreaded moniker in favor of more precise choices: misinformation, deception, lies. Just as the media has employed “fake news” to discredit competitors for public attention, political celebrities and partisan publications have used it to discredit the press wholesale. As hard as it is to admit, that’s an increasingly unfair fight.