The Business of Fake News
Source: Winner of CNNs Journalist of the Year Award Admits He Faked Stories
A story like this should be on the front pages of all of the news outlets worldwide. Instead, it has been tucked away in the back pages among announcements of black Friday sales. To some, it may not rise to the level of the fraud of Lance Armstrong winning races with the aid of equine medication, or labelling regular yogurt as non fat.
But in fact, it’s much worse. For some reason, journalists residually have the respect of many people because of their notional role of reporting the truth. These days, that notion is as quaint as separately gendered washrooms. The precipitous decline of respect for those in the ‘journalism’ racket has been like the action of the Dow Jones this December. For almost a decade on this site, we’ve pointed out some of the fanciful stories that circulate in the news sphere attempting to be passed off as truth. The Global Warming charade still has legs even as more and more objective scientists have backed away from the very premise and the associated predictions.
But you can get away with propagating untruths if the claims are vague and difficult to disprove, much like the tenets of religions. Now however, they are so bold as to try casting doubt on immutable facts. For instance the very basic notion that males and females are biologically determined is countered by the premise that gender is in fact individually determined in our heads. Apparently, we’ve gotten it wrong since Eve said to Adam, “Hey take a bit of this.” Intelligent, sane people past the age of 10 can readily scoff at the idea of feelings based gender identity, but those impressionable children under the age of 10 are susceptible to believe the looney tripe if they are thus told by their teachers.
Taking this same dynamic to the adult world, if ‘respectable’ news sources repeatedly push a narrative upon people, those who don’t make the effort to critically assess the narrative are drawn into the circle of delusion. It’s the modern equivalent of the phenomeon of the 1960’s where if it was on TV, it must be true. Perhaps people were more easily fooled then because of the lack of alternate sources of information. Such is not the case today of course. Intelligent people can access many different sources to corroborate what they observe with their own lyin’ eyes. It will be clear if someone is an unhinged idiot. Fill in the name of MSNBC personality here.
Over the past 2 years, the most conspicuous target of fake news is anything and everything to do with Donald Trump. It’s as if a massive virus of delusion infected the majority of those in the media business. From the amount of sprinkles on his dessert to frolicking with Russian hookers, no aspect of Trump’s life was too picayune for fake and snarky reporting. Very highly respected reporter Sharyl Atkinson, herself the target of spying from the Obama administration, even compiled a list of Trump fake news in the Trump era.
The fact that this ‘celebrated’ journalist, Claas Relotius, has admitted fabricating stories for years should be a huge wake up call for the naïve masses. After all, if this celebrated guy is spinning stuff out of whole cloth, what about the other run of the mill reporters, journalists and pundits? Naturally the outlet that awarded Claas Relotius the distinguished honor, CNN, is itself the font of the fake news business, so it barely budges the needle on the shock meter for informed people. Unfortunately, the influence of fake news percolates into public policy as politicians milk public sentiment. So even if you were aware of the truth behind absurd policies, you’d still be subject to the insanity of them.
There will always be Al Gore types that will run with fake narratives to enrich themselves. There will be wars that don’t need to be fought, enemies that aren’t real and truths that are buried. Fake news is not just harmless story telling. Fake news is a profitable business and we are all its unwitting customers.