Fake News Defined

When then candidate Trump (DJT) coined the phrase “fake news”, it created a catchy moniker for the media bias that exists in the current environment.  The media responded that some of what was called fake news was factually correct.  They’ve completely miss the point.  The fake news term is a catch-all to describe mainstream media bias and deliberately misleading headlines and stories used to support or espouse a certain point of view.  Examples would include publishing certain stories that make isolated incidents seem like the norm and highlighting the negative even when the overall situation on balance is positive.  On the flip side, ignoring the overall negative altogether if it doesn’t fit an agenda.  Just look at the so-called press conferences in Russia where the reporters asks questions of Vladimir Putin such as how he stays in such great shape or works so hard for the common people while asking little or no questions about the Russian army invading and annexing territories in the Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia.

The truth is, fake news has existed since newspapers started printing the news.  One need only look up the term “yellow journalism” from history.  The term was coined in the mid-1890s to characterize the sensational journalism that used some yellow ink in the circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer‘s New York World and William Randolph Hearst‘s New York Journal.  Both papers were accused by critics of sensationalizing the news in order to drive up circulation.  We’ve all seen the tabloid papers in the past and present with the crazy headlines designed to grab attention and sell papers.

Below:  Some classic tabloid headlines.

Not satisfied with simply sensationalizing, there is now an unmistakable bias within the mainstream media that is palpable for anyone who has watched the various news media outlets over the years in the US.  There is clearly an ever increasing extremely pro-left, pro-Democrat and anti-conservative bent to the coverage.  This bias emerges in the form of both the topics covered and the tone of coverage.  The media no longer reports the news but has become cheerleaders for a certain worldview, a manufacturer and enabler of left-wing, anti-American viewpoints.  Something went terribly wrong within the journalism circles over the past several decades and journalists are now taught that it is their job to create opinion, sway the uneducated public to certain viewpoints that is “correct” because the media knows better.  Going beyond being simply an independent gatherer and reporter of facts, mainstream media deliberately works to create stories and headlines out of peripheral incidents, taking isolated events and breathlessly making them into headlines thus generating viewership and interest and thus revenues.

Below:  CNN anchors lead an on-air protest related to specific incidents of deaths of several black men in police incidents while ignoring the statistical facts of crime and law enforcement.

Media bias and fake news is undeniably prevalent.  All the media outlets and television pundits proclaimed Hillary Clinton the hands-down, without a doubt winner by a landslide of the 2016 election.  So strong was their desire to see Hillary win that they completely ignored the failed science of their pollsters and polling techniques.  Even today, the media still point to the same unreliable polling techniques and results as evidence of how unpopular President Trump is.  When the Brexit vote occurred in the UK, the media outlets there used the same flawed polling methodologies to declare the failure of the Brexit initiative.  The media coverage was overwhelmingly pro-EU with an endless trail of on air expert after expert declaring that should the Brexit initiative would pass, the economy would immediately go into a depression followed by civil unrest and riots in the streets.  Obviously none of that happened.

The media has been historically referred to as the fourth estate.  Its role should be to serve as an independent voice to counter against sole government control over a single narrative or message.  Instead, today’s mainstream media has become the mouthpiece of one political party of the government in a drive to sway the American people to their specific worldview and thus no longer trustworthy with providing unbiased facts.  One mitigating factor that threatens the grip of mainstream media is that their hold on the messaging is no longer absolute with the advent of the internet and the ability of average citizens to get their viewpoints heard.  However, this threat to the news and opinion manufacturers has not yet reached a critical point though it is foreseeable that point is not far away, perhaps another year or two.

Below:  The editorial board of the Huffington Post posted this picture to illustrate the “diversity” of their editorial board with which they labeled themselves.