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Bad news
The idea that facts are relative, that the truth is a matter of perception, is as old as Methuselah. From religion to law to the early days of scientific inquiry, human beings have always been prone to believe what makes most sense to us, even after that belief has been wholly debunked.
Through the ages, humans have declared we are posttheory and completely enlightened. This year one may exclaim, “It’s 2016!” as if that means we’re past certain attitudes and misunderstandings. Similar exclamations must have been uttered since we began counting time.
We are, after all, human, and those behaviours that have defined our social species for tens of thousands of years won’t suddenly fall away with a few circuits around the sun.
(That is, if you believe we are living on a rocky orb that spins around a burning mass of plasma millions of times our size. If not, the rhetoric is pointless.)
It may come as a shock (or disappointment) that with the advent of social media outlets like Facebook—a massive online surrogate for social interaction—this this is where many folks now get their news.
These are outlets that pretend to allow each individual the freedom to curate their own online experience by deciding who and what appears on their news feed. But the ultimate tool for self-distraction is guided by bots that tailor content based on comments and likes. Programs that may block photographs of mothers nursing their infants but have no problem with images or videos of violent acts live, as they occur to real people.
And while you can link all sorts of articles to social media, many ‘fake’ news stories bounce around the echo chambers of friendly lists of those who think alike.
In some cases, the fake stories are intentional satire. Or they come from independent news outlets with no editorial oversight or fact checkers, blindly perpetuating false reports. Or they’re from conspiracy theorists with a knack for digital design, whose websites seem legitimate, despite lacking fact. Or they’re written by people hired by foreign governments to be professional trolls, blatantly making things up to stir the pot.
We can blame social media for the distraction, but that would be all too human of us. Instead, let’s own our errors. Somewhere along the way we either got too distracted or too cheap or both.
But let’s change that: lets get back to reading real news. Let’s do our best to support an understanding of the truth.
But don’t listen to me. Listen to John Oliver, a late-night comedian whose in-depth reports and millions of social media views and shares have made him a much more popular new source, despite his own insistence he is not a journalist, nor is his show, Last Week Tonight, journalism.
In his post-election show, Oliver pointed out that the legitimate news outlets needed public support to continue to investigate and report on government.
I think it’s a swell idea. But I’m biased. Decide for yourself.
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