“My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.” — Paul Horner, fake-news author
It is time to shake off some of the responsibility for Democrats losing on November 8th. There is a real nasty culprit afoot and it may not be who or what you think it is.
Over the past year, we all have had conservative friends hit us with really hateful accusations of Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, Muslims, Immigrants and people of color– always absolutely certain their statements are accurate, yet we can find no evidence of these outrages. The fact checkers have been working overtime, but the sheer quantity of fresh claims has been overwhelming. Sometimes these appear in social media as amateurish cartoons, quotes attributed to founding fathers or links to supporting websites posing as news services. If you are wondering where all of this bad information is coming from, there is a lot of money in producing fake news, and this past election paid off big.
Caitlin Dewey of the Washington Post posted an interview today with one of the better known fake news entrepreneurs on Facebook, Paul Horner. How profitable is this? In his words, “Right now I make like $10,000 per month…” Not bad for a hobby.
Most rational Americans know that conservative news outlets spin facts to fit a narrative, and conservative readers/viewers are conditioned to distrust ‘mainstream’ media. That process has morphed into websites intentionally designed to look like news sources (like WorldNetDaily and our own Gateway Pundit) which manufacture outrage from minimal evidence. From all of this, the truly fake news business was conceived to mock conservative news outlets by concocting and publishing outrageous news stories with fabricated facts. Hundreds of these web sites exist and the majority of outrage-news seen in 2016 on social media came from these spoof sites, many hosted outside of the United States.
Unfortunately, Trump voters couldn’t tell the difference.
Fox News has been gaslighting their audience for 30 years. Talk radio hosts like Limbaugh, Levin and Savage have been abusing their listeners with tall tales of doom for almost as long. The alt-right media on the Internet has found they can drive massive ad sales by creating well crafted conspiracy theories. (Some of these baseless theories have even driven policy decisions of Republican leadership and our President-elect.) When the fake news sites started popping up on social media, indoctrinated Fox News watchers hungrily absorbed the work of these pranksters and gleefully reposted their memes all over the net. A lot of money was made, as professional journalism went further down the tube.
If you were hoping all of this bluster and missing journalistic integrity would be going away now that the election is over, you should know our president-elect may be institutionalizing it. Donald Trump has picked Steve Bannon to serve as chief strategist on his staff. Mr. Bannon is reputed to be a white nationalist and anti-Semitic; which would fit with the tone of the Trump campaign. He is also the chairman and chief executive of Breitbart News, a primary source of alt-right misinformation. Will this become the Trump version of Pravda?
For a preview of a Breitbart take on the popular vote in the last election, click here.
You decide.
This is a dangerous and difficult problem. Some of the fake news authors have clear intent. Others are just mischief makers and trolls. No matter their motivation the damage is serious. It’s good to correct these fakes news stories whenever and wherever possible and to do so by citing legitimate news sources. It is also important to use and cite good sources when we ourselves make claims or oppose issues or policies. This is tough. Retractions or corrections never get the attention that the original falsehood receives. What’s the saying? A lie can travel twice around the world before the truth gets out of bed.
I agree Michael, and all of this is protected by the 1st Amendment. The traditional media has been vilified by the right, and perhaps have been tainted by the commercial draw of the twisted-news market. I think we have no other alternative but to be better educated and more skeptical of our news sources.