This is a chapter from my 2018 book Ideas Afoot (Bromley Street Press).

Seven 

The sinister styles of news fakery

Throughout Donald Trump's campaign, slurs, misinformation, and Democrat talking points were hurled at him from the cover of computer-stuffed press offices, cable news chatter panels, and milling pool swarms. Inky careerists jettisoned propriety to stalk with drippy maws Trump's voting booth downfall.

The words of Fox News host Sean Hannity and 1940s moving picture "The Wizard of Oz" were blended into press criticism: Journalism was not just merely dead, but really, quite sincerely dead.

When the candidate assailed the mainstream news media's unrelenting and falsity-freighted crusade against him, his sprawling base roared its understanding.

That wariness endured after Trump's victory. An October 18, 2017 Detroit Free Press report was headlined "Donald Trump's 'fake news' claims are real, say 46% of voters in [Morning Consult / Politico] poll."

And the Knight Foundation Trust, Media, and Democracy initiative published on January15, 2018 a poll Knight had conducted in conjunction with Gallup. A release on that poll, which had included some 19,000 respondents, summarized its findings: 

[M]ost Americans believe it is now harder to be well-informed and to determine which news is accurate. They increasingly perceive the media as biased and struggle to identify objective news sources. They believe the media continue to have a critical role in our democracy, but are not very positive about how the media are fulfilling that role.

Despite Trump's specifying "fake" reporting, commentators typically mischaracterized his remarks as referencing the entire journalistic enterprise.

That only underscored his point. By refusing to acknowledge the pivotal distinction, journalists essentially threw arms about Fake News's shoulders, claimed it as a legitimate component of a free press, and declared that to call out the improper former is to necessarily threaten the proper latter.

There was, too, a fundamental flaw in arguments that by castigating shoddy journalism, Trump evinced hostility to the public interest. Who, after all, is truly an enemy of the public: a mainstream press that dissembles, or the man who points that out?

When journalists face off against officials at news conferences, they theoretically represent the public and ask questions on our behalf. Citizens need full, honest answers to effectively direct democratic government.

Contemporary media partisans portray themselves as fierce truth-tellers in the tradition of revered muckrakers. They stoutly hail theirs as a critical endeavor without whose hawk-eyed watchfulness and insightful analyses the public would fall prey to bureaucratic and commercial manipulations.

But during Trump's electoral barnstorming, mainstream media's supposed public interest-loyalty was nowhere to be located. Print and electronic venues like the Washington Post, New York Times, NBC, and CNN daily reproached the popular movement to wrest control of America from status quo interests who desired its recreation as an effete component of globalist skullduggery.

Assaults on the bold candidate and his average-citizen base were effected in manners sometimes insidious, at other turns jarringly bold. Regardless of visibility or volume, the subtext was that the desires of elites alone should determine our shared future. 

The wishes of common men were far less important to media poobahs and bylined perpetrators than were the ideological fancies of upper-crust popinjays in antiseptic demenses.

The regular American was held at arm's length by media-perched scolds who reeked of prejudice. Like President Trump, we were falsely dismissed by them as racists, sexists, xenophobes, or whatever other lurid sobriquet might be handy.

A peccant gadget for press dirtiness was crafted during Trump's electoral endeavor and the concomitant populist uprise, And it sometimes seemed smear-intending commentators shoehorned the deceptive device into every third sputtered utterance.

When a targeted speaker simply does not explicitly voice actual offensive ideas or terminology, critical observers intent nonetheless on defamation pounce with the tricky amusement in hand. The speaker, they then proclaim, did not truly say what he had truly said. He had sounded a 'dog whistle,' communicating to select ears something entirely other.

The underhanded operative then gushes a damning critique of remarks never made.

Pope Francis, in his Jan. 24, 2018 World Communications Day message, addressed the larger topic of routine media disingenuousness. And he stressed that social media users amplify counterfeit constructions:

The term 'fake news' has been the object of great discussion and debate. In general, it refers to the spreading of information online or in the traditional media. It has to do with false information based on nonexistent or distorted data meant to deceive or manipulate the reader. Spreading fake news can serve to advance specific goals, influence political decisions, and serve economic interests.

The effectiveness of fake news is primarily its ability to mimic real news, to seem plausible. Secondly, this false but believable news is 'captious,' inasmuch as it grasps people's attention by appealing to stereotypes and common social prejudices and exploiting instantaneous emotions like anxiety, contempt, anger, and frustration. The ability to spread such fake news often relies on a manipulative use of the social networks and the way they function. Untrue stories can spread so quickly that even authoritative denials fail to contain the damage.

The difficulty of unmasking and eliminating fake news is due also to the fact that many people interact in homogeneous digital environments impervious to differing perspectives and opinions. Disinformation thus thrives on the absence of healthy confrontation with other sources of information that could effectively challenge prejudices and generate constructive dialogue; instead, it risks turning people into unwilling accomplices in spreading biased and baseless ideas. The tragedy of disinformation is that it discredits others, presenting them as enemies, to the point of demonizing them and fomenting conflict. Fake news is a sign of intolerant and hypersensitive attitudes, and leads only to the spread of arrogance and hatred. That is the end result of untruth.

It was only correct of the president to tweet on February 17, 2017 that "The FAKE NEWS media (failing New York Times @NBCNews @ABC @CBS @CNN is not my enemy. It is the enemy of the American people!" 

Truer words were never typed.

(Sections of this chapter also appeared in the author's 2017 book That a Man Can Again Stand Up, issued by Bromley Press)