So “fake news” is apparently a thing. I’ve only got one thing to say to that:
haHAHAHAHAHAHahaHAHAHAHAHAHA what the fuck took y’all so long?!
Ok...sorry….I had to get that off of my chest.
For the last several years it’s been something of an issue of mine, one I’ve often been told to let go. I’ve forged on, mostly alone.
The “fake news” problem is more than those fake sites on Facebook. So much more. Some examples I’ve encountered---and pushed back at---mostly alone:
- Every 2 or 3 months shitty tabloids in England (sorry, the UK-- until they dissolve in a couple years) including the Daily Mail discover there are volcanoes in Germany, Italy, Iceland, France. They write fearmongering pieces that are flat out wrong. That’s fake news.
- Farmers Almanac weather “prediction” stories. Very popular in the US, taken as gospel by many media outlets. The almanac is about as accurate as a coin toss. Fake news. I’ve seen it lead the 5:30pm local news.
- Almost everyone fell for the “yoga mats in Subway’s bread” story. Y’all shoulda listened to chemists, who said it was bullshit. Fake news. (Yes, Subway removed that chemical. Still fake news. Almost anything Vani Hari, aka The Food Babe says is a lie—she doesn’t even know the chemical atmospheric makeup of our atmosphere -— more fake news.)
- Yellowstone is not going to erupt. Every innocuous study on the volcanic complex is reported as if it will tomorrow. This leads to ---you got it---fake news. Every 6 months I’ve got to push back at this.
- Dr. Roger Bilham got to experience this “fake news” phenomenon first hand.
- Any time I read a science story that basically is just the university press release---and it’s obvious the press office didn’t actually ask the researchers what they did---leads to fake news. SO frustrating!
- Pseudoscience—FAKE NEWS.
- Your memes? Everyone loves memes. They’re often fake news.
- almost everything on the History Channel. The rest of the Discovery Channel family of stations aren’t far behind.
- “Fake News” contributed to some of the spread of ebola in West Africa. I ranted about it here (and yeah, I was mad when I wrote it. I’m mad now.)
- Why did I write this snarky diary in 2012? Fake bloody news, that’s why (the diarist who sparked it no longer writes here, thankfully).
Do you trust mainstream media? I sure don’t. They’ve become lazy, and frankly, media consolidation and contraction in this country at least has made journalism suffer. My city’s newspaper? There are some really great people there. They also reprint AP newswire stories---even for things that happen locally. This is a severe problem. Peoples’ distrust of mainstream media leads them to “alternative sources” who are even lazier. That leads to , yep, fake news. I might not trust mainstream media but it’s very likely I’ll trust your alternative source even less (ProPublica, though, for example, is one of the very few I do trust. I can count on them not to give me fake ass news bullshit.)
The fake news problem is more than just sharing things that are flat out wrong on Facebook. It’s every time I find something wrong and incorrect in an article—and it’s every time the newspaper or media organization does not correct that article. It’s most of the History Channel, and increasingly, the Science Channel and the National Geographic Channel, and the Discovery Channel.
There is a reason I prefer to be as precise as I can. I’m not going to contribute to fake news.
I certainly could keep going and I’m certainly happy everyone’s decided this is a problem, but I’m quite frustrated, and a little bit angry, it took this bloody long and at this cost. We’re not going to get out of this fake news problem until we learn a little skepticism, and media decides they want to be accurate. I’m not holding a lot of hope on this.