The Reality of the Fake News Hysteria
Since the 2016 election, “fake news” has become a stunningly popular topic among politicians in America and around the world. As of November 2017, the term’s usage had increased by 365 percent since 2016. Donald Trump played a major role in its popularization, with his attacks on the media often laced with the term “fake news.” His “Fake News Awards,” for example, were just the latest installment in a long running feud between him and the mainstream media. However, the obsession over “fake news” is not limited to the Trumpian right; it also extends to the Clintonian left.
After her surprise loss to Trump in the 2016 election, Hillary was quick to dodge and distract when it came to the blame game. Even in an interview when she appeared to take ownership of her failings, she qualified that ownership by saying that her actions were not the real reason she lost. Among the phenomena Clinton and her supporters most frequently blame for her loss is “fake news.” Thus, it should be unsurprising that Democrats now want to curtail the spread of “fake news.”
Democrats’ anger, quite differently from Trump’s, is directed at non-mainstream “fake news.” They see fake stories on social media as a major threat to American democracy, a threat that they believe likely had a significant impact on the 2016 election. The reality of “fake news” on social media, however, tells a different story. To start, few Americans blindly trust the news they get from social media. According to a June 2017 IPSOS poll, only 22 percent of Democrats and 18 percent of Republicans trust the news they get from social media “all” or “most of the time.” In addition, a January 2018 study found that articles from sites accused of spreading “fake news” reached only a quarter of Americans between October 7th and November 14th of 2016, and that even those most prone to reading “fake news” read far more real news.
Democrats’ concern about “fake news” often focuses more specifically on alleged Russian propaganda circulated on social media. However, both the reach and the amount of this kind of “fake news” are abysmally small. On Twitter, based on a “deliberately broad” review, only 0.74 percent of election-related content was Russian-linked. On Google, there was $4,700 in “Russia-linked ad spending” during the 2016 general election. On Facebook, the most often targeted source of “fake news,” Russian-linked accounts spent over $100,000 on 3,000 ads that reached 10 million users. Adding in free content, Russian propaganda supposedly reached 126 million users, though it is unknown how many of the users actually engaged with or believed the content. By comparison, one Clinton Super PAC, Correct the Record, spent $1 million on bots for Facebook and Reddit, and the Clinton and Trump campaigns spent a combined $81 million on Facebook ads, undoubtedly reaching far more users many more times than any Russian propaganda, even taking into account the extra traffic elicited by the polarizing nature of the Russian posts.
Despite the miniscule amount of “fake news” in social media, Democrats have continued their fight against its spread. Just recently, Russia hawks Adam Schiff and Dianne Feinstein penned a letter to social media companies asking for their cooperation in the fight against Russian-manufactured “fake news.” Last year, then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid defended his call for Facebook and Twitter to crack down on “fake news,” saying, “Maybe it’s a slippery slope, but let’s start going down the slope.”
As a result of urgent calls for action, social media platforms have begun reforms. Facebook, which already has a team of 10,000 security personnel, 7,500 of whom “assess potentially violating content,” will more than double that force by the end of 2018. The company announced on January 11th, after months of experimenting with a system of flagging fake stories, that it would be changing its news feed algorithm to prioritize stories from more reliable, meaning more mainstream, news sources. Most worrying, though, is that Facebook has now begun to remove accounts at the request of the U.S. and Israeli governments. Expectedly, the accounts being removed are of people the U.S. and Israeli governments deem opponents, including many Palestinian activists.
Google and Twitter have taken similarly troubling actions, which have included unjustified, partisan bans on Twitter and changes to the Google algorithm that have effectively de-ranked many non-mainstream outlets. Blacklists have also appeared on the internet, one of which labeled around 200 American news outlets as Russian propaganda sites. Between blacklists and bans, it is clear that the attack on “fake news” is not really, or even primarily, an attack on fabricated news stories; it is an attack on dissenting voices.
[pullquote]Between blacklists and bans, it is clear that the attack on “fake news” is not really, or even primarily, an attack on fabricated news stories; it is an attack on dissenting voices.[/pullquote]
Actions by Democrats which have spurred these changes to the internet have also sparked legislative and governmental reforms. The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act included a provision that gives the government greater authority to counter propaganda in order to promote a pro-U.S. narrative. Additionally, RT America, which is known for its left wing stances and criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, was recently forced to register as a “foreign agent” by the U.S. Department of Justice. The move to designate it as a “foreign agent” would be tantamount to Russia forcing CNN or Fox News to register as “foreign agents” in Russia. After all, mainstream American news outlets are as guilty when it comes to bowing to state power as any state media apparatus. The role of The New York Times, one of the more respected mainstream news outlets, in pushing the false narrative that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq provides just one example.
This leads to an important point. As Ron Paul said in an interview with Ed Schultz on RT America, “The fake news comes from our own government.” The American government, along with the mainstream media, is guilty of spreading false narratives to an extent that a Russian propagandist on Facebook could only dream of. So, in a sense, Trump is actually pointing out a truth when he labels the media as “fake news.” Of course, he is far too broad in his labeling and often dismisses stories that are credible as “fake news” simply because he does not want to talk about them. But the sentiment he evokes in his statements about “fake news” is attractive because it is often true.
As many have noticed, most notably Glenn Greenwald, “fake news” has become something of a propaganda term, much like “terrorism,” where there is not a clear definition and those making attacks on it tend to do so from an extremely hypocritical standpoint. Whether it is Trump branding the attacks from the media as “fake news,” or the Democrats whining about the non-existent pervasiveness of “fake news” on social media, these attacks are highly dangerous. There is a clear and simple way to stop the spread of “fake news,” and that certainly does not include censorship. To steal and re-apply a famous line by Noam Chomsky about terrorism to the current predicament of “fake news”: There is an easy way to stop the spread of “fake news”; stop engaging in it. To those who cite the bullet fired by a North Carolina man into a D.C. restaurant as the danger of social media “fake news,” I cite over 100,000 civilians killed in the Iraq War as the danger of mainstream media “fake news.” If mainstream media outlets are serious about stopping the spread of “fake news,” they need to stop pushing false narratives, including the one they are pushing now about Russian interference in the 2016 election, a topic on which they have made and spread countless claims that have turned out to be patently false. A recent example occurred in December when CNN broke the bombshell news that the Trump campaign had received early access from Wikileaks to the DNC leaks only to have to retract their claims later the same day.
[pullquote]There is an easy way to stop the spread of “fake news”; stop engaging in it.[/pullquote]
Missing the bigger picture and calling for censorship of “fake news” on social media sets a dangerous precedent. Endorsement of censorship opens the door for the government and private corporations to curtail civil liberties, which will ultimately lead not just to the suppression of supposed factual inaccuracies, but also to the curtailment of free speech for the fringes of society, limiting any debate to the respectable window allowed by the country’s elites. Opposition voices on both the left and the right will be drowned out with the mainstream opinion being deemed the only one worth airing. Even if one president will not use “fake news” legislation to do great harm, it is inevitable that someone who comes along will. Does this not seem like a far graver danger than having occasional, or even frequent, unsubstantiated rumors circulated on the internet?
[pullquote]The American government, along with the mainstream media, is guilty of spreading false narratives to an extent that a Russian propagandist on Facebook could only dream of.[/pullquote]
Those who are most likely to believe “fake news” stories are people who already have crazy beliefs. Most people who are even the slightest bit skeptical probably will not believe that Hillary was running a child sex ring out of a pizza shop in D.C. The idea that banning “fake news” will somehow make these people less likely to hold crazy beliefs and act in crazy ways is itself crazy. However, the idea that banning “fake news” will lead to government censorship of dissenting opinions is not; it is gravely serious. One need look no further than not too distant American history, to the time of the House Un-American Activities Committee, to see where a new era of censorship, based largely off of a neo-McCarthyite, Russophobic movement, may lead us.
Conor Smyth ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at c.smyth@wustl.edu.