I intended to title this op-ed “How to tell fake news,” but then, I said a picture is worth a thousand words. Imagine these pictures:
- Paul Pelosi helped onto a stretcher and rushed to the hospital with a cracked skull.
- Sheet music whose “tune” is “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” Note: The “tune” is redundant. It’s the same “song” the insurrectionists – the Proud Boys, QAnon, and the Oath Keepers “sang” as they attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
- The hammer in David DePape’s’ hand and the zip-ties found in his pockets. Note: Remember the insurrectionists who came supplied with zip-ties (bear spray, etc.).
- A guy named DePape believes the song and is led away by the police.
Now, take a breath. Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, tweets: “There is a tiny possibility there may be more to this story than meets the eye.” Musk has 112 million followers and recently paid $44 Million for Twitter. With his first Tweet, Musk carefully planted a seed of doubt. Musk’s source: the Santa Monica Observer, a website known for producing false stories for years.
According to NewsGuard, California is pummeled daily with fake news from fake look-a-like news sites and papers. The Santa Monica Observer gets a red rating and a warning: “Proceed with caution: This website fails to adhere to several basic journalistic standards.”
People like reading local news, and these untrustworthy news sites often masquerade as local news specialists, but each has a plan. NewsGuard ranks almost 40% of California’s news entities as “partisan operations with undisclosed, politically motivated funding sources, serious conflicts of interest, and highly slanted coverage.” Read more here.
Musk is an intelligent man. If he had built Tesla with the “carelessness” he treats accuracy in the news, the Tesla would still be on the drawing board.
But wait, maybe Musk isn’t careless. He has cozied up with Putin and declared Trump’s fake news welcome on Twitter. Would he spend $44 Million to use Twitter as a plaything? We think not, so better to ask, “What’s Musk’s agenda?”
It will take time to understand Musk’s real plan, but for now, let’s arm ourselves with “tools” we can use to test what we read for truth, accuracy, or falsehoods. The following are only some of the ways. A truthful news story will pass multiple kinds of tests, e.g.,
- FactCheck.org reminds us that fake news, untruths, and twisted facts in the news have been around for a long time. What’s different today is that the “fakes” spread faster because of the Internet and also television.
- Kaspersky defines fake news as “false or misleading information masquerading as legitimate news.” Generally, there are two kinds: (1) deliberately inaccurate, and (2) stories that have some truth but the truth gets twisted, e.g.,
- An easy example of this last category – is people are legitimately concerned about gas prices, but they identify the rising prices as “inflation” when they mean record-breaking profits.
- The six largest publicly traded oil companies made more than $70 billion in profits in 90 days.
- Those 70 billion dollars are record-breaking corporate profits, a perfect example of price-gouging.
There is propaganda, and there is sloppy journalism. Propaganda uses deliberate lies with a political agenda, e.g., how often did we hear Trump say the big tax cut he pushed through was good for the middle class? And now, we see the tax bill requires middle and low-income people’s taxes to be raised in three of the following four cycles.
Generally, responsible media publicly corrects mistakes as the mistakes are found. Sloppy journalism usually happens when a rushed journalist types too fast or doesn’t fact-check. These mistakes sometimes fall into misinformation (not deliberate but still wrong) and are corrected by responsible journalists.
Imposter content is ugly, totally made-up, and has an agenda, usually a bad agenda intended to enflame people’s anger, sometimes about racism or war-making. See Putin’s speeches for propaganda and Imposter content – perfect examples of how saying a lie often enough can make it feel like the truth to the listener.
Both imposter content and propaganda are disinformation. Right-wing news rushed to blame the attack on a nationwide crime wave related to the tragic attack on Paul Pelosi. But studies specializing in counting crimes say there is no national crime wave. In this case, the right-wing used disinformation to justify their deliberate effort to blame Democrats for something that isn’t happening.
The Pelosi attack is an example of the violence that bad politics incites. Lawmakers report a rise in disturbing physical altercations. We see these situations at school board meetings – people upset about books that have been in libraries for decades, e.g., “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Or remember, Rep. Steve Scalise — shot at a baseball game, and Rep. Gabby Gifford — shot at a neighborhood Meet & Greet. See, Trump continue to egg on his rally attendees, making it too dangerous for journalists to be among the crowd; one even had to be rescued by Secret Service.
We heard it a few weeks ago when House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said, “I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it.” (MSNBC, 8/1/2022)
This escalation – both verbal and physical, of the danger in politics is the real crime wave of our nation. It must stop.