There ain’t no such thing as fake news.
All news is good news; as long as we can afford the legal fees
The old adage was ‘No news is good news’. Then came the tabloids and newspaper editors crying for ‘News, news, shock me. Give me a f — -ing good headline’.
Recently, we have had a number of headlines shocking us. Two further mass shootings in Kenya and New Zealand death toll closing on a 100. A two Boeing 737 Max 8 crashing killing everyone on board, death toll exceeds 300. Boeing, it seemed, sought to hide its culpability with white noise as they wanted to block the growing body of evidence showing they were responsible for the deaths of all these people. The equation seems to read:-
Obfuscation + diffusion = keep making money
Kenyans chased an elegant response to the latest in a series of atrocities. The empty rhetoric only highlighting the lack of engagement on the underlying issues as media wanted the sensational rather than emphasize the long-term grind required to address the equation:-
guns + extremist = mayhem
Meanwhile, New Zealand’s Government refused to give media oxygen to the senseless killing of 50 people by a self-publicist seeking to propagate negativity.
Sitting on an aircraft, Ethiopian Airlines Nairobi to Addis Ababa using a Boeing 737–800 series, the young gentleman next to me became agitated as we took off.
‘I am nervous of the bumps because of what happened’
‘What happened?’ I asked knowing full well he was talking of the recent crash and death of the 160 souls on board Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max.
He replied ‘the crash……’
‘This is an 800 series, one of the most proven aircraft flying. Safer here than when you were driving to the airport this morning with the Nairobi traffic roaring around you. More chance of dying from the pollution from all those diesel fumes than from this aircraft not working properly.
Said with the right tonality, confidence reinforced with steady eyes above a white beard, the gentleman fell asleep; safe in the knowledge he would land and be ok. Or he could poke me in the chest on Judgement Day and say you were wrong. The typing continues to appear, you are not reading via a séance, the former is true.
On the flight, the butter was a very famous brand of Danish butter — Lurpak. Now, with a bit of invention inspired by joking or malice, we can say Ethiopia needs Danish butter because the cows in Ethiopia are the wrong type to create butter. How much does it take for such a statement, to be picked up then used by someone? Whether intended as a joke, a piece of misinformation against Ethiopian cows or some piece of marketing, these things do appear on a regular basis.
Ask anyone reading the stream of rubbish, no other word for it, being fed in to social media by those talking the UK’s exit from the EU.
Who would be this someone? I am not this gullible or stupid — we all say it — and yet how many of understand how we consciously and unconsciously process information? Nope, I am not so gullible, I know these are facts and that is fake news; Don’t I. Do I?
On the same flight, across the single aisle one row in front, a lady plays a video game on her mobile phone, she is in-charge of a project using just the odd couple of million Euros of taxpayer’s money. Nothing wrong with playing video games? But playing a game where it is only the thumb of the right hand moving, changing rail tracks, jumping over oncoming vehicles, banging in to energy cells and avoiding the blocks to kill you? Playing such a game for an hour and forty minutes? Mind numbing and reflective of how we have become addicted to games and the superficiality of social media. If a child were to do this, the parent would, far sooner, have told the child to stop! Do something to improve your mind or challenge yourself to entertainment far, far, better.
Is it no wonder people can so easily be lulled into believing almost anything? Mind numbing games, flick the thumb, read a social media by-line. Flick the thumb…….
Is it no wonder we become alarmed by headlines with no real substance and people have changed the parts of their brains where they will process any further information?
It is no wonder we are fodder for politicians to graze on with their protestations of ‘fake news’. There is no fake news, it is all news. Whether it is lies is another thing.
People are offering opinion with enough conviction for it to seem like facts. Repeating something often enough and through enough different channels does not change opinion into fact; it just reinforces the need for us to call opinion — opinion. Points and arguments are points and arguments until they are triangulated from different bone fide sources.
As for fake news? Let us drop this very misleading term; they are lies lies and damn headlines to generate readership, create dissension and misguide people from looking at the realities. Realities of power as people divert attention and deliberately cause people to take entrenched positions they will not change.
This sound familiar? Of course, we are seeing it time and again as we witness manipulation of news flows around any number of extremist agendas.
And when people are so wrapped in social media and the mind numbing flicking of a thumb, not even thumbs let alone digits, then we are in trouble as communities, societies and the anthropocene age.
There is, of course, much to be positive about. Europe has stirred and is pushing back against the social media oligarchs seeking to control now they dominate. People in Europe, once we take away the nationalist and small-minded selfishness, are waking to challenge the hijacking of meritocratic technocracy by the few grandees and their echelons in the European Commission. Social democrats have realised Jefferson’s and Curran’sEternal Vigilance is the Price of Libertydoes not just apply to declared war. We are battling for the very values our parents and grandparents made sacrifices and then worked hard to build. We are not battling anywhere near hard enough to counter our own complacency built out of the comfort created on the back of other people’s endeavours.
If we are to make continued gains, the next moves must be to look at our social architecture. How we live and work, communicate and engage with each other.
How we challenge the way we are being inducted rather than educated — liberty requires eternal learning to foster the questioning capability.
Open minds to teach ourselves and never, never, give up on others; even if it is only their right thumb moving now
– There is life and the rest of the society must be re-invigorated, re-invented, while there are signs of life.
Footnotes from the UK’s The Independent and The Economist
Nefarious political advertisers on social media have plenty of targets coming up. Over half a billion voters will cast ballots this May in the European Parliament, Indian and Australian elections. That’s why Twitter will today roll out new policies to combat those who spread politically charged disinformation to voters in these three jurisdictions. The rules will require political advertisers to verify their identities and locations, which then become publicly available. Twitter, along with Facebook, implemented similar checks in America before the mid-term elections last November. Still, cracks in enforcement remain. Oversight is difficult, and troll accounts can spread lies and provocations without advertising, by purporting to be ordinary Twitter users. According to American intelligence, China, Iran and Russia all conducted influence campaigns aimed at American voters in 2018. European and Indian officials remain dissatisfied with social giants’ efforts to combat foreign meddling, leaving open the possibility of heavier regulation.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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