Fake news is a problem, certainly, but we have reached a point where the label is recklessly and unjustifiably applied whenever someone disputes the facts in a published article or social media post. This has to stop before we wrongly discredit every source of news we have. The health of our democracy depends upon an informed electorate and the media plays a vital role in ensuring that we can have one. That is why we must stop accusing every news outlet that gets a story wrong and every story with an error in it of being fake news.
Over the 2016 US election campaign, we saw the rise of sites that deliberately used false stories, often intermingled with true stories. A significant number of the “fake news” sites were launched by Macedonian teens using false stories as a means to drive traffic to their websites. This allowed them to make a lot of money off of the ads placed on their sites. While this is disturbing and disruptive, their goal was purely a money grab, and not meant to be political.
But under the cover provided by these money-grabbing fake news sites, several political “dirty tricks” sites were using the same tactics, but with the goal of spreading false information about the opposing candidate. These fake news sites were part of an array of dirty tricks designed to suppress the turnout for one candidate or another (most famously, these were directed against Hillary Clinton).
Donald Trump’s role is multi-faceted. As a speaker of false statements throughout the campaign, he provided much fodder for the fake news sites. As a consumer of many sites spreading fake news, his views on issues were misshaped by bad information. But more to the point, Trump has been accusing mainstream media outlets that have been critical of him and his Administration of being fake news in a blatant attempt to discredit them.
Trump’s strategy, echoed by his influential supporters, is deliberate. “It is an intentional culture grab so that people in the middle don’t know what the truth is,” says Suzanne Turner, President of turner4D and long-time communications strategist. By accusing our most reliable and ethical news media of being fake news, Trump is systematically undermining public trust in the news. This allows him to rewrite facts (“alternative facts”) and give them credence they do not deserve.
But Trump can only succeed if we let him. If we accept his branding of mainstream media outlets as fake news, we allow him to present lies as facts. The result is a poorly informed electorate and the likely death of democracy.
“Fake news is made-up stuff, masterfully manipulated to look like credible journalistic reports that are easily spread online to large audiences willing to believe the fictions and spread the word.” It is fundamentally different from opinion articles we may find disagreeable, satire and journalists making mistakes in a story.
Opinion articles—whether they be editorials in a newspaper, opinion segments on news broadcasts, op-ed articles written by either columnists or experts—are not fake news. They are opinion. And opinions are never universally accepted. An opinion writer may deliberately attempt to mislead, but most likely, they believe what they write. But we usually know they are presenting opinion. It is typically labeled as such. That is good, and as a result, it is NOT fake news.
There are, however, deliberate efforts to blur the line between news and opinion. For example, few people realize that Fox News has both a news division and an entertainment division. But it goes deeper than that. In 2012, Fox owner Rupert Murdoch moved ALL of Fox News Network into a separate entertainment company, while the newspapers and book publishing were moved into a separate news company. In 2015, then Fox News Network president Roger Ailes admitted that his was not a news network, it was an entertainment network.
Within the Fox News Network (entertainment) company, there is a news division, which is led by Managing Editor Shepard Smith. And it is plain to see that his approach is what we normally expect from a news division, even if it may often have a conservative slant. On the other hand, many of the evening programs, hosted by Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and others, are NOT part of the news division. These are entertainment programs presenting opinion, not news.
We can see the implications of this difference by looking at the political contribution scandal that got Keith Olbermann suspended from MSNBC. Olbermann was a journalist anchoring a news program. MSNBC rules, consistent with journalistic ethics, prohibits its journalists from giving money to politicians. Meanwhile, over at Fox News, Sean Hannity was giving money to politicians without breaking any of Fox News’ rules. “Fox News has long said it considers Hannity, similar to Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, a host not a news anchor or journalist. A search of federal campaign disclosures found no Fox News on-air journalists such as Shepard Smith to have made contributions or donations.”
Meanwhile, across the news industry, when journalists make mistakes in their stories, the publication issues corrections. This is inherent in journalistic ethical expectations and a standard practice. In many cases, news media outlets have an independent Ombudsman whose job it is to be an advocate for the reader and to keep the publication honest. There is no such person protecting the public from misinformation shared by Sean Hannity.
Is Sean Hannity’s show a fake news show? If it were a news program, a strong case could be made for that point of view. But it is not a news show. It is an opinion/entertainment show. So it is not fake news. But by obscuring that is not a news program, Fox News opens the door to critics accusing Hannity of being fake news.
If a news outlet publishes an incorrect story, does that make it a fake news outlet? Certainly not. In order to be a fake news outlet, the false stories would be published deliberately and knowingly. And there would be no retractions or corrections.
Journalism is inherently a messy profession. Reporters are publishing their stories as they unfold. What we know today may very likely be superseded by what we learn tomorrow. Sources may lie to journalists. That is how the business works.
But professional journalists are taught how to check their facts. Traditionally, they seek out independent corroboration of facts before they print them. In recent years, due to the rise of social and digital media, there has been a growing drive to get stories out first. This carries the risk of publishing more errors. And while professional news outlets correct these errors as soon as they discover them, the errors have tarnished many reputations. Still, this is not fake news. It is the process of journalism in the digital age.
I would be remiss if I did not include a discussion of satire here. Truth be told, the phrase “fake news” was popularized, if not coined by Jon Stewart. He rightly pointed out that The Daily Show, along with SNL’s Weekend Update, are “fake news” programs. But they are fake for the purpose of presenting a humorous take on the news. They do not claim to be news programs, even if many Americans trust what they hear on them (satirical news, especially on The Daily Show, starts with a real news item and then twists it to highlight some real or ridiculous aspect of the story).
Satirical news outlets include The Onion, Last Week Tonight, and Real Time with Bill Maher. The Onion will often make stories up out of whole cloth, but in order to make a social comment on something real in the news. And Bill Maher’s show might more appropriately be characterized as satirical opinion, rather than news. Regardless, the bottom line is that the original concept of “fake news” as encapsulated in these comedy programs and publications is very different from the concept of “fake news” that has captured the national conversation.
At this point, we are seeing that the efforts by Trump and his supporters to discredit the press by wrongly accusing it of being fake news is working. More and more, we are seeing people who are not driven by politics falling into the trap of calling op-eds and news stories with mistakes “fake news.” This development is particularly disturbing, as can be inferred from the analysis above. Getting “people in the middle” to embrace this lax definition of “fake news” helps Trump in his efforts to discredit any news media that criticizes him.
And now that he has succeeded in blurring the line between “fake news” and news, Trump is going further. After wrongly accusing CNN for months of being “fake news” (even Fox’s Shep Smith called Trump out for this), Trump has just announced that White House spokespeople will no longer appear on CNN because CNN will not report the White House’s storylines because, as White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says, they have “no desire to actually get something right."
Personally, having watched Kellyanne Conway refuse to answer any questions in any interview she has done recently, respectable news media outlets should not invite her to be a guest, anyway. That said, Trump’s efforts to discredit real news outlets and to elevate truly biased and perhaps fake news outlets like Breitbart and Infowars, is a naked power grab designed to disinform and misinform the public. It is an attempt by the Trump Administration to control the news the way Putin does in Russia and the way the Communist Party does in China.
It is un-American, to say the least. I want no part of it. And none of us should. Even the most conservative among us should cringe at this assault on the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.