The topic of fake news is highly relevant and it is not without warrant but what is surprising is that it is not a new concept. The mid-term elections recently concluded, and many are now coming to a realization that a yes on one bill actually meant something very different than originally conceived. Both sides of a given bill proposition are purposely vague or misleading. In the 2018 mid-term elections, proponents and opponents of Proposition 10 in California, a rent control bill, spent $32 million on social media, mail and television ads (Hart, 2018). Communication is a way of using rhetoric to lead people towards one direction or another, and is deeply rooted in the early forms of communication.
The term fake news is a new term coined by President Trump, but fabrication and inaccuracy began as early as 1836 (Tucher, 1994; Vedantam, 2018). According to a NPR radio report during a segment called “Hidden Brain”, newspaper publications up until 1836 reported only the facts and saw their readers as citizens and not consumers. It was not until this time that a new newspaper, the Penny Paper, decided to print unverified claims in order to gain more readers (Vedantam, 2018). This was the beginning of the movement of the news organizations towards giving the audiences what they wanted to read rather than necessarily the truth (Vedantam, 2018).
The only difference now is that the Trump Administration throws around the term fake news towards journalist organizations that are not fake. Yet fake news organization state that the other is fake. We, the public are the only ones who can insist for news organizations to be transparent, hidden motivations and we must be willing to acknowledge when news stories are formulated with consumerism in mind and not citizens.
References
Hart, A. (2018, October 8). Both sides mislead on California rent control initiative. Sacramento Bee. Retrieved from https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article219455000.html
Tucher, A. (1994). Froth & scum : truth, beauty, goodness, and the ax murder in America’s first mass medium. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press; 1994.
Vedantam, S. (2018, June 25). Fake news: An origin story. NPR. Hidden Brain. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=623231337