Fakey News

Watching the news media get its shorts all in a wrinkle along with journalism-related organizations about something they’re calling “fake news” is kind of like watching Captain Renault in Casablanca when he discovers that gambling is going on in Rick’s casino. He said, as you may recall, “I’m shocked. Shocked!”

What is the big deal?

Truth is, our republic has been producing fake news every day of every year since before America’s founding. No, I wasn’t there at the time, but it was close. The point is, this is a huge distraction from the fact that all of our standard news resources and polling people have been faking the news literally since the beginning of time, but their dramatic outing occurred big time, and quite obviously, during this last election. 

The issue was further ignited by a Trump spokespeople using the phrase, “alternative facts.” Yes, but... where is the surprise here?

Compare the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal every day. They keep coming to opposite conclusions... based on the same events, information, data and sources. Which one has the real facts? Compare the Heritage Foundation views with the nearest liberal think tank and which has the facts? Fox News and CNBC? Republicans versus Democrats?

One group’s facts are another’s myths. Our First Amendment guarantees that even alternative facts have standing. Our politics thrive on the conflict created by alternative views and facts. Alternative facts are enshrined in our language with expressions involving phrases like “different points of view.” The news media itself often strives for balance. Balance of what you ask? Of alternative facts.

Look, the most egregious and relentless producer of fakey news is CNN, who manufactures “news” right before our eyes and has for decades, 24 hours a day. It’s very easy to tell when they’re making it up; they put a headline up, turn on the “breaking news” sign (usually a total lie) and the next thing you know, you’re watching a panel of 6-8 people you’ve never heard of, or heard too much from (doesn’t really matter), just sitting there bloviating, bellyaching and back-bench griping, some of them from way, way back. No script, no vetting, no credibility, no truth – fake news. They have taught the world’s news organizations how to do it.

The next big faker is Fox News. They haven’t been making things up for quite as long, but how else can they have so much opinion by people clearly making it up as they go, inventing their own facts and data?

Next we find the Wall Street Journal, which does occasionally have real news in its pages; however, editorially, like CNN, it’s another gang of bloviators who are now in deep depression because they don’t have the Clintons to pick on as they have daily for the last 16 years. Thankfully, for them, our new president is doing and saying things that even the most creative news organization couldn’t make up.

Close behind the Wall Street Journal is the New York Times, the big grey lady of journalism. They’re actually much more blatant about how they make up the news, having more anonymous sources in their pages daily than probably all the rest of the nation’s daily newspapers combined. These sources have the best quotes; the best anecdotes; the most interesting, insightful comments and questions; and the best inside information… every single day. The Times must have a special department, whose name is “Anonymous,” where they make up their stuff daily.

If anonymous sources were real and revealed, the preponderant characteristics would be: liars, tattletales, fabricators, sickos, faux victims, score settlers, delusional do-gooders and those who get paid in some way for making stuff up.

There are now so many fact-slingers around, from so many places. What we have learned is that facts and data never lead to the truth because facts and data always irritate rather than educate. They victimize or demonize somebody, sometimes most everybody.

Both Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) issued self-serving statements on the issue. Neither of which actually took a stand or suggested a course of action to address the issue of fake news. Neither organization has any enforcement power. Neither organization directly criticizes or corrects the media, any producer of fake news, or anybody else.

I do believe that facts and data matter, and perhaps, matter to most of us.

Over the years, I’ve learned that defining truth is a little more difficult. My working definition of truth is 15% facts and data and 85% emotion and point of reference - where you were at the time you saw or heard what you thought you saw, heard or learned. Turns out the truth is pretty individualized. Each of us sets our own truth based on our own lives and who we trust. 

Just a reminder that American fake news began before our own revolution. Let me recommend an interesting book called Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism by Eric Burns. The book is about George Washington and his confusion over how he could be so famous, globally, as well as locally, and yet have many local newspapers ragging on him every single day about everything he said, did and proposed. Those journalists, later called muckrakers, made news up then as vigorously as news is being made up today.

The difference today is that there are a lot more doing it. Anyone with a laptop or smartphone and access to the internet and a thought or two about anything they want to share is all it takes. For journalism, the not-so-funny part is that it is these outsiders, non-journalists, fabricators, phonies and philistines that the public has grown to believe and trust.

Turns out that in the real world, the validity of a facts is more dependent on a trusted, validated source than on any supporting data.

I guess many of us hoped that the legacy media eventually would protect us from the bloviators and bellyachers. Turns out, in 2016, Mr. Trump generated so much media revenue the media bosses got sucked in by their own greed. They didn’t believe he was real. They were wrong. They got rich anyway. We got, well, you know who.

The lesson in all of this is that journalism, under our First Amendment, has remained the same essentially since the start of our republic. It is unlikely to change in the future, even with segments of the industry getting extinguished systematically in our economy.

The news media has serious ethical problems that can only be self-addressed:

1. Almost no real checking of information before it’s published or broadcast. Today competition demands that reporting be instant. When it’s wrong the alibi is that the source was wrong.
2. Continuous fabrication, made up stories especially the promotional set up and the conclusions.
3. The myth of breaking news…

In television, every piece of video that is shown needs to be dated and visibly metered, to show how many times a particular piece of video has been shown. Some of them have been shown thousands of times.

This year may be the tripping point year for accelerating the slide of American journalism into trivia land. No one is weeping over the death of journalism, except other journalists. This comes to mind just using the last two years of media mistakes, blunders, and total ignorance of tone and temperament signals in American society.

Does Journalism care? know? understand? Intend to change? Probably not despite public negativity getting more visible and palpable in the Trump anti- media environment. These are the behaviors we see all too often.

1.    No integrity

- Constant deception, mistakes and uncorrected errors

2.    No empathy

- “Get the dead guy’s daughter to cry on queue and on camera.”

3.    No apology

- Never admit mistakes, and when the blame gets pretty close, quickly shift that blame to someone else

4.    No compassion

- Constantly fabricated speculations and guessing that hurt people needlessly

5.    No humility

- I have my facts, you don’t, I am smarter than you.

6.    No forgiveness

- “Not our job” says journalism, we present the facts(sic), we let you decide.

7.    No prisoners

- Except for Donald Trump, who seems beyond media apprehension.

Question: Can journalism be an ethical profession if they ignore every semblance of ethical behavior? See the 1-7 list above. They defend themselves by saying some things are so important we can skip the ethical part to get the story. See Chapter 6: "Deception, Doing Ethics in Journalism."

Maybe, despite the First Amendment, journalism needs to impose some ethical restrictions and integrity indicators on its own practitioners before someone else tries? Where is any trustable ongoing independent analysis of news story facts and quality? Where is credible self-policing and outside criticism? Who does hold the media accountable? Certainly, none is wanted by the media.

The journalism industry isn’t dying because of Donald Trump or malicious, though unspecified, forces. It’s dying of its own smugness, arrogance and denial. They have lost the trust of most of the American people. Turns out that trust matters even more than facts and data. Facts or alternate facts and data alone never build trust.

Let’s have an Anonymity contest: Please send me your favorite New York Times (or other news organization) excuse for using an anonymous source. I will include your candidate excuse in a to be published lexicon of New York Times fakery. Yes, please source it (so I can check it).

Author’s Note: My career as a news junkie began in the fall of 1973, when I became an adult student intern in the press office of former Minnesota governor, Wendell R. Anderson. My first assignment in that office was to read every daily newspaper in Minnesota every day and strip out articles that the governor might be interested in (they gave me a lexicon). The articles were on his desk at 7:30 am, seven days a week. The next step was easy - watching television on politics, reading magazines on politics, then newsletters, then digital sources, then various platforms . . .

When the web came, I was reading the web on politics and now all of the social media platforms are part of my reviewing and constant searching, ironically, for different points of view.