I ran across a Facebook post by a friend-of-a-friend (which appeared on my feed because my friend had commented on it), sharing a post from a right-wing blog with the screaming headline, “DEAR CNN: Circulation Of FALSE Information To SABOTAGE A Presidency Is A FELONY”. The thrust of the article is that the eminently objective and wholly unbiased Media Research Center did a study of CNN’s coverage of the Trump presidency, and found that it — get ready for a shocker — “tilted Anti-Trump and Left.”
I know, it’s staggering.
Now, the article goes on to suggest that CNN might be guilty of a federal crime if the information it is conveying has “no basis in reality.” The article cites 18 U.S.C. § 1038, “False Information and Hoaxes,” the gist of which we’ll get to shortly.
Anyhoo, this friend-of-a-friend shared this paragon of honest, objective and unbiased journalism to Facebook, insisting in comments inter alia that CNN is [paraphrasing] “knowingly spreading fake news,” “accusing the President of crimes against the United States” which accusations they know are false, and is therefore “guilty of a felony.”
Normally I wouldn’t do this, but I’m not that busy this morning, so I decided to check out the statute cited by the article to see what it really says. You can see where this is going.
Normally I wouldn’t do this either, but I responded to the post by first quoting the First Amendment...
"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." U.S. Const. amend. I.
...then quoting 18 U.S.C. § 1038(a)(1) with annotations to its internal references:
"...and where such information indicates that an activity has taken, is taking, or will take place that would constitute a violation of chapter 2 [crimes involving aircraft or motor vehicles], 10 [biological weapons], 11B [chemical weapons], 39 [explosives &c.], 40 [import, manufacture &c. of explosives], 44 [firearms], 111 [shipping], or 113B [terrorism] of this title, section 236 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2284) [sabotage of nuclear facilities or fuel], or section 46502 [aircraft piracy], the second sentence of section 46504 [assault on aircraft crew], section 46505(b)(3) or (c) [carrying weapon or explosive on aircraft], section 46506 [certain crimes on aircraft] if homicide or attempted homicide is involved..." 18 U.S.C. § 1038(a)(1).
The original poster responded to this with a lengthy and blistering tirade, railing against “armchair lawyers* who have no what they’re talking about” and how everyone is so willing to believe whatever bullshit their political orientation requires them to believe and is so wrong about everything and credulous of people and outlets who tell them things they want to hear and how pathetic that is and so on and so forth. “For those paying attention,” he said, “18 U.S.C. 2 has nothing to do with aircraft or motor vehicles. It merely says, ‘Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.’ I don’t see anything about aircraft or motor vehicles. So keep lying and believing the bullshit if you want…” etc., etc., etc. It was quite an impressive diatribe.
Unfortunately, our friend was referring to and quoting section 2 of Title 18, not chapter 2, which I helpfully pointed out by providing a link to 18 U.S. Code Chapter 2 - AIRCRAFT AND MOTOR VEHICLES, and quoting again 18 U.S.C. § 1038(a)(1), to wit: “...that would constitute a violation of chapter 2...of this title...”
Note that I did not provide any additional response or commentary of my own, apart from the aforementioned annotations, at any point in this conversation. Only the statutory language and links to primary sources.
A minute or two later, the miracle happened.
Our friend posted a comment saying, “This is fake news,” referring to the article he had credulously shared. He acknowledged that he had mistaken chapter 2 for section 2, and that unless Trump was being accused of hijacking a plane or manufacturing explosives or somesuch, the statute cited in the article “does not apply to anything relevant.”
A few minutes after that, he deleted the aforementioned tirade. It was gone by the time I started this diary.
For now, I will accept the acknowledgment of error as progress and leave it at that. There was, of course, no apology for the tirade, only the deletion thereof.
What I also didn’t see, and am more concerned about although I don’t intend to raise it with this person whom I don’t really know, is an acknowledgment or examination of his own credulousness, i.e., that (and why) he was so willing and eager to believe and accept what this blog post was telling him without examining, without even considering an examination of, whether it was true, accurate or valid. It took me all of two minutes to look up the statute, read it, find what its internal citations referred to, and debunk the article. There was no acknowledgment of that, let alone of the hypocrisy of wildly, blindly accusing everyone else of precisely what he had just done, let alone any contrition for the foregoing behavior.
About a year and a half ago I had a friend make a false claim on Facebook about health-insurance coverage rates under the ACA, posting a graph of statistics that were four years out-of-date and still proved the opposite of what he claimed. (I wrote about it in this diary.) To date I’m still waiting for an acknowledgment, never mind an explanation. On those rare occasions when I comment on mutual friends’ political posts, he never responds to me directly even if he participates elsewhere and engages with others. Maybe he knows better. But he is constantly accusing everyone else of the kind of selective credulity and confirmation bias of which he himself is obviously engaged. The hypocrisy is so clear, so obvious, so naked, that it’s embarrassing.
Nevertheless, getting back to the story of the day, getting this friend-of-a-friend to acknowledge that he was spreading fake news (or, at least, that the article he’d credulously read and shared was fake news) was, I think, a big step, bordering on miraculous, something I honestly and truly didn’t expect. Whether he will look in the mirror and ask himself why he fell for it, whether he is conscious of his own credulousness or hypocrisy, is anyone’s guess; that will probably have to come later. Whether he will think twice before sharing such things and before responding to a challenge thereto with another lengthy tirade of insults and smug self-righteousness, also remains to be seen. We can always hope. But I have a little more hope today than I did yesterday.
[ * — For the record, the chair at my desk in my law office does have arms.]