THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
The American essayist Mark Twain noted: “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Someone else said that tell people something often enough and they begin to believe it.
In this age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and so-called ‘citizen journalists’, social media falsehoods are everywhere. They are exaggerations — more often a matter of putting up only part of the truth, usually the most attractive sides of our lives. Think ‘food selfies’, smartphone filters too.
However, when we dip into the muddied waters of politics, we cross the Rubicon.
Quotes that seem believable from famous people – think Trump – are not always the truth. Think Bertie and the mystery bank account, Boris and the lockdown parties, and Bill “I did not have sex with that woman” Clinton.
It’s too soon to say whether Google and Facebook attempts to clamp down on fake news, in light of Europe’s directive last August, will have any significant impact. Fabricated stories posing as serious journalism are not likely to go away anytime soon because they have become a means to make money (click-bait) and to influence public opinion and create greater divisiveness – in America at a worrying rate. Europe too. Even in Ireland the alt-right has greater presence on social media than their mere numbers (0.3 per cent) would dictate.
A survey by the Pew Research Centre suggests 23 per cent of adults have shared fake news, knowingly or unknowingly, with others. ‘Fake news’ can mean different things, depending on context. News satire is often called fake news, as are parodies such as America’s Saturday Night Live or our own Callan’s Kicks. For Donald Trump everything that goes against the grain of feeding his narcissism is fake news. The news – or is it all just another conspiracy theory and aliens are on their way, with the Second Coming of Jesus not far behind? – that Tyler Robinson, the alleged shooter of Charlie Kirk, comes from a conservative Republican family is fake news, according to Trump and FoxNews.
Here, the once unsuccessful presidential candidate Gemma O’Doherty and sidekick John Waters have stood accused of disseminating fake news about immigrants, Covid vaccines and other contentious criteria.
Scholars are still trying to understand the whole fake news viral grip on so many, and why some people believe it and actively seek it out.
When sharing news, people seldom stop to think about whether the report could be fake and such news is shared to millions in the instantaneous touch of a button. Younger people rely totally on social media to get their daily newsfeed, rather than traditional sources whose readerships have plummeted. And therein lies the danger – the speed at which alt-news spreads leads to ill-informed thinking, that, if it says it on my smartphone, then it must be true. (Oh, the audacious algorithms of AI!). Traditional outlets in their rush to be breaking news fall short on fact almost daily. Bring back copy editors!
Although the Oxford English Dictionary only added the term ‘fake news’ to the lexicon in 2019, the use of the term has increased in the years since Trump’s first election by some 365 per cent, according to the Guardian.
According to a poll conducted across EU countries, including Ireland, (only) 38 per cent of people said they trusted most news, most of the time – and less than half trusted the news outlets they used themselves.
“Even before the coronavirus crisis hit, more than half of the global sample said they were concerned about what was true or false on the internet when it comes to news,” says the report from the Reuters Institute For Journalism, based at Oxford University.
Digital sources have become an important part of our news diets, with social media playing a pivotal role, particularly for younger adults. Facebook and YouTube outpace all other sites as places where one in three people regularly get their news. Younger people turn to Tic-Tok and Instagram.
Back in the Eighties when I worked on the Irish Independent, when the first edition went to bed I’d go down out the alley for a smoke. And, as I inhaled that first drag and clapped myself for a job well done, I would think: I am one of the privileged who knows what’s going on in the world eight hours before the country wakes in the morning to that day’s news.
These days, it’s all there in the palm of your hand. Breaking news, the good, the bad, and the fake…
