This weekend, with one troubling event arriving after another, my plans to write about fake news and what to do about it have changed. Let me convey my sense of the immediacy with an episode I had Friday
A coworker mid morning volunteered how impressed she was with the Breitbart website. I mentioned last time how indiscreet I am getting at work with politics. She must have felt confident enough and approached me to recommend this news source as the only one that presented facts. She moved on to talk about how all news has a bias and then listed every major news outlet, CNN, network news, and the New York Times, as all clearly having a left wing slant, not to be trusted for 'facts.' I found the statement so preposterous I was quite certain she was teasing me. "You are kidding me, right?" She returned my question with serious silence. For her, the reality was Breitbart, everything else was stage craft. She disturbed me further adding that many, many people use Breitbart as their news source.
A long silence from me now. Was it possible 62 million believed this stuff? Not really.1 But, think of the landscape after 20 years of Fox News and 15 years of internet based news. These outlets are now on every desk top and smart phone.
Facts was her word though. So, I challenged her with an open ended question about what she may define is a 'fact.' She did not have any answer for me. If as it seemed she even took this as patronizing, I had to switch gears to a narrow question. I asked about what Breitbart was offering for coverage of healthcare reform. Surely the Ryan premium support plan is being discussed on Breitbart. She is a physician's assistant with every reason to know this stuff well. She shook her head and had not heard about the replacement of Obamacare and the restructuring of Medicare. It turns out, Breitbart has covered this.2 The parts of report she reads though did not cover any of the upcoming healthcare debate. Instead, she assured me Obamacare is failing, needs to go away, and they would not end it without a replacement.
I shook my head, "They have no replacement," Of course there is a plan that is called a replacement but it does nothing about access and affordability. I asked if she understood we are heading toward a big conflict. No answers.
I could go into more details but it degenerated from there. My fault. I should have dropped it but pushed on instead. I confess I was simmering.
I cited the infamous confederate flag article that was displayed two weeks after Dylan Roof massacred nine in 2015, but I was assured that could not be racist. I brought up Donald Trump's bragging about sexual assault; that was just getting caught on an open mike. Pizzagate, well she had no idea what that was. When I mention that this was on multiple outlets. I recalled the page above from CNN. Oh, there was nothing believable on CNN I was told. Is anything on Breitbart connected to the real world? I asked her to look more critically at Breitbart. I requested she test herself when reading--drop whether the content was left or right wing--instead ask whether the information there was able to solve problems--was I being patronizing then? I ended it with an apology for being so heated.
You get the picture. This was a soul-crushing conversation for me. Here was the human weakness for propaganda letting Fake News defeat Facts. It is the despair I felt on November 8. What might my impact be in a struggle against the millions who pick and choose what to believe. What rough waters are we heading into?
Well, hours later I was given an answer to this last question at least. Mr. Trump crashed into facts on Friday. The Russians hacked the election. We all know this even if he denies this right now. If we never confirm they wanted him to be the winner, we know they hacked the DNC. (When was it known they hacked the RNC?3)
96 hours on now and the rolling ugliness continues:
For reasons he keeps to himself, Mr. Trump was at it right away denying the hacking of the DNC, denying the legitimacy of the source. Then he denied need for in an investigation. Where does he get the courage to be on the wrong side of history, wrong side of such an important security issue? What use is a thousand mile wall Mr Trump, if you let Putin in through the internet? After one look at Breitbart, you can deduce he has an army of believers in his stance. In that reality all this is a left wing sham or a battle with the deep state.
So what is our duty in this new assault on facts?
I am sure we can win over Trump voters one by one by appealing to values they believe. In the case of hacking the election we have security and sovereignty as a common concern. They don’t think we even like America. You patriotic concerns will be welcomed. Look at how successful senator Sanders was one on one Monday night. Look how Joe Walsh, the volcanic former representative from Illinois speaks of these issues—for once I agree with something he says. Mr Trump is not representing anyone but himself when in the midst of 72 hours of molten bipartisan criticism of a chummy relationship with a foreign strongman he chooses that foreign autocrat’s chum as his highest cabinet official.4
I will continue to speak to friends and co-workers with the courage of my convictions. Frankly, I may give my co-worker I spoke about above a few days but frankly I will have another conversation. The quote from Socrates “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” is always on my mind. I take it to mean the best mechanism for successful persuasion is to not try to persuade at all. It is about respecting those who you disagree with. Look at Trevor Noah.
Originally, for this diary, I wanted to showcase the family of related concepts of memes, myths, fake news, propaganda and lies. I was hoping to use Anatol Rapoport’s technique of good argumentation which comes to me through Daniel Dennett’s book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking pp 33-34:
1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
What good are quotes from critical thinkers like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Carl Sagan. Sagan’s ”Baloney detection kit" is useless when the problem is that many millions believe the baloney already. This is baloney on an industrial scale. Now with the ear of the president this is weaponized baloney. We need to meet this threat with an equally powerful weapon. Just think not one report in the last 72 hours on CNN, NBC, ABC or the New York Times addressing the Breitbart headlines above. It is fake news so prove it to everyone.
I need to shift gears for a moment. Remember, fake news is a real threat. Last week we had a gunman travel to Washington DC motivated by a particularly elaborate urban legend. Worse yet members of the nascent administration promoted this myth as truth, a 'fact,' in order to counter the video of the President elect bragging about sexually exploiting beauty contestants.
Dennett’s list above is all well and good for close, personal interactions but we need to apply pressure on the media industry. We need to insist the press do their part to take seriously the impact of Breitbart and other questionable news sites. Dennett’s list above is all well and good for close, personal interactions but we need to apply pressure on the media industry. This is a call to us to get letters to the editor of our favorite paper. But this is also a call to action for powerful, responsible media sources to penetrate that bubble around those 8 million in an effort to counter the multitude of claims pouring forth. Look at how ridiculous this spokesperson appears. She needs to be addressed where she lives. Where is NBC or CNN to call her out for seeing party or person over nation or people? Don't let Fake News defeat Facts.
1eighteen million is one estimate, but Breitbart appears to be inflating its numbers What a firewall at Alexa?
2in two weeks I’ll review the health care proposals and Ill try not to forget Trump’s proposals
3two days ago?
4Tillerson is bad enough. Tonight Bolton was picked for number two at State. Let’s hope Cenk Uygur is wrong about the pick of Bolton equaling war
Next time self dealing is intolerable. . .
Friday, Dec 16, 2016 · 3:14:09 AM +00:00
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Knute Heimdall
Since posting my diary earlier this week I have discovered that BuzzFeed News's Craig Silverman has been working at these questions for some time. He broke the now famous story of the multitude of fake news reports originating from the industrious, profit-minded teenagers from a single town in Macedonia, Veles. If you think Fake News needs a consensus definition you are right. Try this is: If you make it up its fake.
They all said that when it came down to it, the fake stuff performed better on Facebook. And if you weren't doing some stuff that was misleading or fake, you were going to get beat by people who were.
Craig has written extensively and discusses the challenge of Facebook in being the major media source for news and political merely by the scale of its membership, over one billion users. Today Facebook announced its mechanism to call out Fake News articles. For a long time any reader could post a complaint about inappropriate content. There is now a separate category available to make the coordinators at Facebook aware of content that you may feel is fake news. Of course someone will need to make a judgment call about your choice. For that Facebook has turned to a consortium of fact checkers at The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) through the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. This is certainly an improvement over the free run of specious articles and content that we have seen in recent months.
Already, there is blow-back from conservative outlets that Facebook is censoring content. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes has already appeared---"Who will guard the guards themselves?" Well, why not other guards? We will soon hear how George Soros is behind any bias -- he funds Poynter--or how these are all liberal entities that sign onto the pact. Or police state. and so on. blah, blah, blah. If its not fake it will hold after some scrutiny.
I also wish to mention the major news outlets are hardening some of their criticisms. Since January 2016, The Huffington Post has appended an editors’ note to every story about Trump that begins: “Note to our readers: Donald Trump is a serial liar.” The New York times has stopped using the term misrepresentation and just uses lies. CNN is annotating the president elects tweets with critical content.
I hope that you agree that this diary and the last have illustrated how difficult it will be to fight intolerance and indifference on a one-to-one basis. This will be a long project negotiating a divided media environment with divided values. My coworker and I were personifying last Friday a common pitfall which was the phenomenon of the 'backfire effect.' we all dig in our heels when our convictions are challenged. Things spin out of control.
The first comment that you see below expressed a discouraging sentiment that I do not want anyone to use as an excuse for inaction. I am sorry that many of the comments have such a defeated attitude now. I agree that propaganda won this time around. However, have faith that better handing of news content on both small and large scales will succeed when it counts.