What Really IS "Fake News"

I had the news on in the background last Thursday while I was working (and waiting for the baseball playoffs to start), and again there was an afternoon press conference at the White House.  The press was in a somewhat more sedate mood, I guess, although every one seemed to say "I have two questions ...", whereupon Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, would answer one of them and then turn to another reporter to try to give everyone a chance.

That didn't stop most of them from trying to shout their second question out after Mrs. Sanders said she was going to another reporter to give everyone a chance -- the CNN guy was particularly obnoxious about it.  But she was diligent about answering one question each, and got questions from a large number of the assembled troops.

So one fellow asked a question about something in the news, a report from NBC that the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, had referred to the President Trump in a defamatory way.  (The Secretary actually had answered a press question on that a day earlier, saying that he wouldn't dignify the notion with a comment, and that he was staying in his role as long as the president wanted him to.  "I don't come from [Washington]", Tillerson said, meaning that in his career he had never wasted a moment on petty crap like that.)  The president had then referred to the NBC report as "Fake News", meaning that NBC had pretty much made it up, and that it would be appropriate for the press to be subject to investigation when they abuse their First Amendment privileges.

But it was a subsequent question that got me thinking, because I wanted to answer it myself.  That reporter asked if the president thought there to be any difference between fake news as practiced by the American media and the "other" fake news, that is, promulgated by Russia in an attempt to create chaos in the USA, as we are coming to discover.

Mrs. Sanders answered the question, but really without a specific answer -- the press secretary typically comes armed with pre-written statements in regard to certain topics that might come up.  I've no problem with that, of course.  The purpose of the press conferences is to convey the opinions of the White House, and since the press secretary is answering questions about what the president believes, they always find it useful to come armed with statements about what he does believe.

So I was immediately, on hearing the question, conjuring up the answer I would have liked to have heard.  That would have been something like this:

"Thank you for that question.  You raise an interesting point about fake news spread by Russia and fake news spread by the American mainstream media.  The president believes that there is actually very little difference between the two.

"The Russian purpose is quite obvious to all of us.  They want to foment division in our country, as a way to portray the American way of life as somehow not a suitable aspiration for other nations.  They are not particularly interested in who actually wins elections here, as much as they are trying to make the elections themselves contentious.  They want the contention and the divisions, and elections are an ideal target for them.

"How is that any different from NBC, CBS or CNN or ABC putting out false, unsourced or unvalidated reports, knowing that there is no journalistic rationale for doing so, or there is inadequate sourcing?  We know that their reporting is well above 90% biased against this president, so we know that their motivation is divisiveness, the same as the Russians -- except that they are trying to foment division against this Administration, where the Russians really don't care which side wins as long as there is division.

"Fake news to exacerbate divisions is fake news.  The Russians don't have the First Amendment protection that the mainstream media do, so it is simply an act of adversarial aggression on their part to try to spread fake stories.  The American mainstream media are protected, yet they have a responsibility to maintain some level of journalistic integrity because they are protected.

"So perhaps not only is American fake news comparable to the Russians' actions, it is worse because it is protected.  Certainly the motivation is far, far more similar than it is different."

No, I don't want to be press secretary.  But I'll be happy to write this stuff for the White House.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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