A Grain of Salt: 2017 and the Reign of Fake News
In truth, it began with the tweets. Obsession over certain emails, critiques of the Obama administration, and upturned noses at the ’Rocket Man’ above the 38th Parallel are just a sampling of the diversionary crop of catchpenny content coming out of the USA’s highest office. That which attention was steered from - Russia, racism, wealth and walls - was deemed ‘fake news’. The sensational and sensationalist spread of the term, aptly named word of the year by Collins Dictionary, arguably took the world by storm as ferociously as any of last year’s hurricanes - and we had even less than measly paper towels with which to deal with it. For in truth - truth being a matter of circumstance these days - what can one say about the state of the press last year?
We live in a post-truth world after all, in which one is constantly walking on eggshells - and snowflakes - or otherwise using every precious breath of our slowly toxifying planet to spew vitriol on Facebook and wait for angry reacts. If one happens to be doing neither, they’ve just picked up takeout and returned home to a world on fire. We didn’t start it, as I’m sure Billy Joel would agree - but we sure kept the fuel up, and helped obscure the resurrecting ghosts of the Cold War he wrote so much about. Since last year, anything and everything can be written off, because fact can become fiction with the snap of a finger or the push of a ‘tweet’ button. In the eloquent words of #45: “Sad!” (Source: @realDonaldTrump)(if you’ll believe it). Thanks to social media acting as carrier for the contagion, and coming in with tips on fact checking a mite too tardily – I’m looking at you, Facebook – we now have a mob mentality where the mob isn’t in sync at all; the only thing one can be sure of is that the next person is probably lying. The world has evolved into a case of “this is your truth, should you choose to accept it.” So what do we do about it in this new year?
We can only control our responses to this phenomenon, and hope the tide will follow us. I trust that university students have the critical capacity to look twice at what they read; still, a reminder isn’t remiss. It’s all too easy for partisanship to slip through, reframing and misrepresenting an event. Take careful note of sensationalist word choice – they’re going for your gut, eking out emotions. The grammar will likely be substandard; caps and exclamation marks may cry a conspiracy from the title. Further, it can only ever be a benefit to read multiple sources, which hardly has to be a lengthy or difficult endeavour. If the BBC, Al Jazeera, New York Times, Le Monde, El País, and Channel News Asia are all saying one thing, and Fox News, The Daily Mail, and Breitbart are saying another, cross-checking quotes is quite intuitive. Keeping abreast of networks, authors, and their biases, however small, one can better assess the content. Also – however hard it may be – do please fact check those easily shareable memes.
The state of the press in 2018 will be interesting to observe. Oceans are rising, empires are falling. I intend to sit back with a cup of premium Nambian covfefe and read it with a critical eye. I hope you will too.
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