The recent US elections have brought to light the growing issue of ‘Fake news’.
There are now multiple articles and TV stories dutifully covering what is being presented as an alarming trend. However, in the words of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
While highlighting the difficulty of discerning fake news in either contemporary and social media, the fact that it is presented as a new phenomenon highlights the media’s lack of honesty about the fact that governments, religions and the media themselves have used media in all its forms to propagate and promulgate information that might generously be called a distortion of fact, and in other instances would be considered an outright lie.
From stories about Jews killing and drinking the blood of babies in the 1700’s[1], to the Reds under the beds in the 1940’s, to the recent election, harnessing the power of persuasive writing to bend/shape and at times create the ‘truth’, is not new. While the source of this quote is disputed, its essence remains the same; “if you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth”.
Fake news is not new news, in fact many countries have laws to prevent domination of the media by either government or private enterprise, citing the need to ensure a fair and free press.
This tells you the problem is bigger than a Facebook post. In fact, during wartime, government and the media are willing partners and embrace propaganda against the ‘other’ side, regardless of what side you were on.
“The first casualty when war comes is Truth ” – U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917[2]
Beyond war however, tabloid journalism has its place in the market, with stories of alien abduction, cross species children and yetis hanging out in national parks. Gossip magazines are allowed to exaggerate or fabricate news stories about some royal or celebrity. Even the mainstream and so-called respected media outlets have had their share of stories that have not been properly vetted, are twisted for maximum ‘shock value’ or are considered outright fabrications. There are ordinary citizens who have committed suicide as a result of the ‘spin’ taken by the media[3].
Well before the Internet, from print to radio to TV media, the one constant in fake news is that it SELLS — or more to the point, people buy it, both in the financial and conceptual sense.
Yes there is a problem with fake news online, but the problem being reported in the media at the moment is much like the way the Church dealt with cases of child sexual abuse; at first it denied the problem, it then blamed the victims, it then tried to infer the issue was an isolated problem that the institutions themselves had no knowledge of, until the weight of evidence is slowly (very slowly) cracking open what is becoming understood to be an institutionalised cover up and tacit condoning of what has to be considered abhorrent behaviour.
With the media at the moment, we are at the stage of inferring Fake news is an isolated or even new problem. However, the moment a journalist chooses an ‘angle’ that will trigger more emotion and hook the reader, we have found a door called fake news. The moment we the public do not discern that the article is being written to ‘hook’ and hold you and we BUY that product, we have thrown the door wide open.
Fake news is not something being forced on us, it is something we BUY and thus endorse.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” – Hamlet, William Shakespeare
With ever increasing sophistication in how fake news is put together, our only recourse is to FEEL what is being written.
Clairsentience, is our ability to feel life at an energetic level; we all have it, we all do it to varying degrees and with varying accuracy. Feel a website, an article, a journalist’s name and even before you read you can get a sense of what is being offered.
Ultimately we have opened the door to our homes, computers and our lives to fake news, so it is our responsibility to close the door.
References:
[1] http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/fake-news-history-long-violent-214535[2] http://www.globalissues.org/article/157/war-propaganda-and-the-media[3] http://universalmedicinefacts.com/jane-hansen-a-seasoned-journalist-with-a-murky-past/
Originally published at: http://www.unimedliving.com/accountability/media-today/fake-news-is-not-new-news.html