Guest essay by Charles G. Battig
Like mesmerized butterflies in a field of flowers, the internet-based media flits from hot-topic to hot-topic. Carefully crafted news items are released as powerful behavioral pheromones onto the information super-highway with the intention of shaping public opinion without the target audience’s awareness of the source of their new-found opinion. Think of that unfortunate frog being incrementally heated in a pan of cold water as it is raised to the boiling point.
No better example of “false news” is that of the scientific wasteland now known as “climate change.” A creation of the United Nations in1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted the “false news” that the viability of the earth and human existence was threatened by a minor trace gas, CO2, itself essential to plant and mammalian life processes.
“False news” has become the hot button issue of the moment…the meme of the moment. If there is “false news” does that imply countervailing “true news”? Are some statements so blatantly false that they are obviously false? Or is falsity a characteristic of ones memes…a characteristic of cultural indoctrination rather than of traditional scientific experiment and falsification reasoning? Truths of the physical world are more likely to be resolved in this manner than those of the emotionally based social justice world. The progressive media is expert in exploiting the public in this gray area of feel-good news casting.
News chatter does not deal with such deep philosophical conundrums. It deals at the “he said, she said” level of claiming what is true or not in the media. It deals with rumor, un-identified news sources, and unquestioning reportage as the basis for claims of falsehood. Beyond this simplistic level of mere right-or-wrong shouting matches, there is the cultural indoctrination game-plan of establishing right-or-wrong, falsity-or-truthfulness by edict. “Is true because the ruling class says it is so.” Progressive ideology assumes an intellectually gifted elite ruling class, the technocrats, who alone are equipped to make such determinations. Europeans have the unelected bureaucrats huddled in Brussels at the European Union to do their difficult thinking for them. Americans have recently learned of how the ruling class categorizes them as “despicables.”
There is nothing new in all of this. The current meme is just the latest version of “It is so because I say it is,” “It is so because I want it to be so,” or the most direct “It’s good to be king.”
In 1999, economist Julian Simon’s last book was published. “Hoodwinking the Nation” was Julian’s effort to document how the media selectively slants reported news events. He covered such topics as the “vanishing farmland” scam of the 1970’s, and natural climate change being reported as an environmental disaster in the making. In his terminology, these were examples of “false bad news.” Humans seem to have a predisposition to believe bad news over good news. The enduring ability of Paul Ehrlich and Paul Krugman to continue to make a living by promoting fears of population explosions and natural resource exhaustion in spite of being perpetually on the wrong side of history is a testament to that truth.
Is there any help for the public to make independent value judgements as to “false news” legitimacy? Progressive educational goals set in motion by John Dewey in the 1930’s have successfully produced generations of citizens with diminished ability or desire to reason rationally from first principles. They now occupy posts at all levels of education, government bureaucracies, and span all fields of endeavor. They will not concede the “swamp” of D.C. willingly.
For the internet-mesmerized public, there is hope for resolution of “false news” quandaries. Mother Google has recognized the need. In reference to “false news” items making it onto Google, Andrea Faville, a Google spokeswoman, is quoted: “In this case, we clearly didn’t get it right, but we are continually working to improve our algorithms.” Yes, truth is now just whatever a team at an all-knowing internet behemoth says it is via its latest algorithm. Social media will know it is true because Google says so.
Nothing new there either; remember President Ronald Reagan’s quip: “I am from the Government we’re here to help”? God help us all.
“Progressive educational goals set in motion by John Dewey in the 1930’s have successfully produced generations of citizens with diminished ability or desire to reason rationally from first principles. They now occupy posts at all levels of education, government bureaucracies, and span all fields of endeavor. They will not concede the “swamp” of D.C. willingly”
The last paragraph is the most important of them all.
Read Jan Kozak’s book: ” and not a shot is fired” .https://www.amazon.com/Not-Shot-Fired-Jan-Kozak/dp/189264701X
After reading you will realize this has been building up for a long, long time.
Really, really really hope “Fake News” is on the list of words for 2016 that should never be uttered again.
Really, really, really tired of hearing it.
My guess is you are going to be hearing “fake news” for a lot longer. Trump has taken to ending some of his tweets having to do with news reports, with “Fake News”. And he is correct and should keep pointing the fake news out as fake news. Fake news coming out of the MSM will be the death of the United States. We need to take it on headon and defeat it, if we value our freedoms.
Still waiting for the MSM to be outraged over the Dan Rather fake news.
NBC Fake Newsman Brian Williams is now on a crusade against fake news. No, he’s not referring to himself, although he should be.
Ironic, isn’t it.
The “fake news” that is the hot button topic right now is – as Nick Stokes mentions above – a euphemism for social media posts. This nicely focuses the attention on social media and away from the traditional media, who have been doing the same thing for many years. You can argue all you like about who said what about whom, but making up bad stuff about your opponents has been going on for a lot longer than the internet – it is only now that the establishment media have lost control over the news (fake or real) agenda that there is this fake horror (yes, pun intended).
However, this begs the question of why people would rather believe a piece of information from a social media posting than from the established media? I mean come on, anyone can write anything on Twitter, Instagram, Faceboook or whatever – surely no-one in their right mind would believe it, right? Well, as someone who doesn’t actually use any social media (I read and make the very odd comment on a few we sites, but I am not sure that counts) I suspect that this is the impression quite a few people have of the whole media – establishment and social – it is all just made up. And why would people actually think that? Because there have been too many cases where that is exactly what has happened – completely made-up stories have appeared in every newspaper and on every news channel.
And if you have lost all trust in what you read or watch or hear from established news organisations, why not turn to something else? Yeah, that guy who writes stuff on that facebook page I link to, or the Twitter stream I follow – maybe he/she knows something I don’t? Oh wow, that’s interesting, I’ll re-post this to my site and see if anyone else thinks it is interesting….
Trust is a fragile thing – and once lost is very hard to recover. The media have quite clearly lost the trust of large parts of the population and quite a few have been looking around for other sources of information.. But there weren’t 60 million people in the US reading Trump’s Twitter feed, or Facebook pages or whatever. None of these stories gained any real traction (and had barely a few thousand hits each until they got picked up in the fake outrage by the “real” media) and had nothing to do with deciding the election.
It is about time the real losers took a long hard look at themselves in the mirror. I don’t mean the Democratic party here, that just happens to be perhaps the biggest percentage of the losing group. No, the real losers are the established media organisations who have lost control of the medium and therefore cannot control the message any longer. And for that, these organisations only have themselves to blame.
“But there weren’t 60 million people in the US reading Trump’s Twitter feed”
Well, 17 million.
“None of these stories gained any real traction”
There were plenty of them. Ted Cruz’ dad and Oswald, for example.
“No, the real losers are the established media organisations who have lost control of the medium and therefore cannot control the message any longer.”
The real losers are all of us, in a post-truth world. The media operated in the light. Their stories could be contested. There was competition. Truth could eventually be determined. Dan Rather was mentioned. That all got sorted out. This netherworld is something else.
“The real losers are all of us, in a post-truth world. The media operated in the light. Their stories could be contested. There was competition. Truth could eventually be determined. Dan Rather was mentioned. That all got sorted out. This netherworld is something else.”
This netherworld is just people waking up to just how dishonest and partisan the Leftwing Media really is. It’s only “netherworld” and “post-truth” to those who don’t like the status quo being shaken up.
The only way the Left can stay in business is to lie successfully but now they are starting to have a very hard time fooling people, and they are in panic mode talking about “post-truth” and bs like that.
Trump’s deliberate, successful actions are constrasted against the sheer madness of the Left, and the Left is not winning this argument.
As long as Trump succeeds, and the Left continues to act like maniacs and imbeciles, the Left will continue to lose political power and influence.
Trump is doing us so much good by destroying the Left’s hold on power.
You didn’t mention Faux News.
How typical of the left, to denigrate the only news network that doesn’t blindly parrot the DNC line.
How typical of MarkW to support the only news network that exclusively cheer leads for the RNC.
Except they do not. They are the only one that does NOT cheerlead for the DNC. But Megyn Kelly was not fawning over DJT. But I guess you missed that soap opera.
No, Cruz dad and Oswald were merely dirty politics. Just like the democrats did. There was insinuation (false) just as there was with Bernie from Hillary. I do not like it, but apparently the politicians do.
Fake stories are when CNN reported Trump called for RACIAL profiling and the quote did not contain the word racial. That is a fake story. Fake story is when the MSM told us Trump was making fun of a reported with a disability, and had to use a freeze frame to try it. That is fake, and that is the MSM. Fake stories are the ones telling us that Comey cleared Hillary. None of those are true as the exact opposite was stated and it took the alternate media to point out the fake stories of the MSM.
Rob is correct. You did it to yourselves. No one person did it. But the MSM has been caught in so many lies, and the DNC and Podesta emails clearly showed they were willing to do ANYTHING to get Hillary elected, that most of the nation no longer believes them.
They did it to themselves. Just as you did it to yourself.
Actually, Nick, if you have a group of editors controlling the message across the entire media complex it’s very hard to get through ANY narrative they construct. The post-truth world didn’t start with Obama, but it has gone into overdrive.
And the Dan Rather thing? “Sorted out”. Garbage. The reporter that fed him the fraudulent story is still working, has been lionized. RATHER was given his walking papers at the very tail end of his career. This ‘netherworld’ you speak of is points of light shining through the tapestry created by those that have had the monopoly on controlling the message.
And by the way, ‘provable’ and ‘factual’ are not necessarily the same thing. And despite popular opinion, circumstantial evidence is usually the most damning – ask any detective.
Excellent post Rob. I will only add that it is the sources of some of the so called “fake news” today that actually exposed the lies and fraud of the MSM. LGF for Dan Rather, Breitbart for CNN and their changing quotes! After a half dozen episodes like that, why should people go to the MSM when they have no faith in their honesty or integrity?
“I pledged in advance to accept what I would discover, no matter what my personal opinions were, after all, I am Catholic”
A child amongst paedophiles.
People used to have a saying; “going postal”, which meant going violently nuts (at work, especially), basically. It was based on intense news coverage of a few incidents over a few months time when post office employees got violent . . I saw a study conducted several years later, that showed post office workers went “postal” at rates below average, by occupation.
“News” coverage can magnify (or minimize) things in our minds.
About a decade ago, there was a horrific shark attack that killed a young child at the start of the summer beach going season. After that, every shark attack got national attention.
Polls showed that people were afraid to go to the beach for fear of being attacked by sharks.
Other polls showed that people believed there had been a huge jump in the number of shark attacks.
At the end of the year, real world data showed that the total number of shark attacks for the year, was actually down from previous years and well below average.
It was the constant media attention that drove the perception, not reality.
There are many characteristics of Irving Janis’s groupthink model that are evident in western society’s reaction to this slo-mo disaster in the making called global warming or climate change. One characteristic is the suppression of dissenting ideas and alternate explanations. Janis compared his “groupthink” to Orwell’s “doublethink” in the classic “1984”, but I like William Whyte’s definition from his 1952 Fortune Magazine article as well –
“Groupthink being a coinage – and, admittedly, a loaded one – a working definition is in order. We are not talking about mere instinctive conformity – it is, after all, a perennial failing of mankind. What we are talking about is a rationalized conformity – an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as well.”
The only thing I would add to that final line is “and the embodiment of truth and justice.”
Sure, earth’s climate is changing and does so over the course of millennia in poorly understood ways. The land I live on was covered by a thick sheet of ice until it melted a few thousand years ago. And it wasn’t the first time, either and won’t be the last. So, when I try to encompass the “big and very public picture” of global warming, I see aspects of the groupthink model that Janis described and suspect that there some very clever manipulators working the crowd out there.
Earth’s climate changes from researched and well understood ways…
Quite right Griff, it’s well understood that the dinosaurs went extinct because of irresponsible t-rexs in SUVs. They were warned by the Algoreosaurs and Dicapriosaurs but paid no heed and paid the price.
Even the scientists involved admit that there is much they don’t know.
LOL! OMG! That is the best joke I have read in days!
Charles asks: “Is there any help for the public to make independent value judgements as to “false news” legitimacy?”
Charles, there’s always hope but not a lot. The problem you mention was caused by a generational attack, the corruption of children by an effort to do exactly that. During the 80’s and 90’s we went to work and we put too much trust in the people watching our kids. It’ll be another 3 generations before the followers of Harry Potter’s grandchildren re-attach to reality, and I think that’s a long shot.
I’ll be satisfied if we can hold the little bastards at bay for another 20 years.
If you don’t keep your Sponsor/Advertiser/shareholder happy, then you can kiss the money/funding/shares goodbye.
Fake news has been around for a long time, even Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was not the first to have to correct the media. “It has been reported that I was seriously ill–it was another man; dying–it was another man; dead–the other man again…As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported, except that I have become a foreigner. When you hear it, don’t you believe it. And don’t take the trouble to deny it. Merely just raise the American flag on our house in Hartford and let it talk.” “The report of my illness grew out of his illness, the report of my death was an exaggeration.” Mark Twain.
The Guardian newspaper has a number of climate stories every day. These cover a range of topics. Today includes an article claiming that fake news is blaming human caused warming on El Nino, extreme rain will increase by 400% and natural disasters are worsening. There are many more along similar lines.
It seems that the Guardian has a number of climate change activists who churn this stuff out on a regular basis. There are lots of comments from true believers who express their hatred of deniers. To be fair, there are some dissenting views too and lots of comments removed by moderators.
I’m not commenting on whether any of these stories are true or fake because I’ve not read them. I can only say that a number of the titles are contrary to my understanding.
It is common knowledge that this newspaper is favoured by teachers, academics, those with left wing liberal views and above all, it is said to be used as a policy guide by the BBC.
Fake news, a meme that plagues Facebook is annoying but mostly harmless. Easily recognized by lead-ins that clam “…but what till you see what happens next!” or similar. Click bait, don’t bother. More sinister is diabolical news which comes from MSM sites and which contains pure indoctrination. These are the sites that rewrite “could if” to “will”. Climate alarmists are clever enough to not make hard claims. They prefer weasel words to disrepresent their message so that it appears to be fact, not fraud and let MSM sites run with it in predictable degrees of emphasis delivered with first person, imperious tone. So they might say models predict we will reach a tipping point blah blah blah and the fraudsters spin that to declare emphatically that the science leads us to believe blah blah blah. Do not misrepresent weasel worded disrepresented claims, which are truly diabolical, as fake news which is largely harmless for those with a brain. MSM diabolical news is far more dangerous than fake news – don’t dumb it down.
“Fake news, a meme that plagues Facebook is annoying but mostly harmless”
Not if you were Jo Cox or work in a Washington pizza bar.
“About a decade ago, there was a horrific shark attack that killed a young child at the start of the summer beach going season. After that, every shark attack got national attention.
Polls showed that people were afraid to go to the beach for fear of being attacked by sharks.
Other polls showed that people believed there had been a huge jump in the number of shark attacks.
At the end of the year, real world data showed that the total number of shark attacks for the year, was actually down from previous years and well below average.
It was the constant media attention that drove the perception, not reality.”
Substitute Muslim for Shark and you have Trump’s strategy down to a T.
Sharks do not walk on land and into your homes.
philjourdan
“Sharks do not walk on land and into your homes”
Sniff out Loan Sharks – Beware of the Man in the Grey Suit.
https://fincheck.co.za/blog/post/sniff-out-loan-sharks-beware-of-the-man-in-the-grey-suit
Touché
Yeah, such are the facts one gets from the MSM. – !
“powerful behavioral pheromones onto the information super-highway with the intention of shaping public opinion without the target audience’s awareness of the source of their new-found opinion.”