I agree that we have now a problem of Fake News that can be dangerous. But I have a slightly different take on this problem.
The volume and sweep of news is hugely expanded via technology. In the pre-social media era, the bulk of the news passed through editorial review, sometimes including unacknowledged censorship or manipulative selectivity. Egregious reporting was often the result of vocabulary chosen to sensationalize and stretch the truth for the purpose of gaining a wider audience, an unavoidable downside of for-profit news. This hasn't changed as far as commercial news sources are concerned. The alternative of State sponsored news is potentially worse.
What has changed then? It's this. In the "tweet age", "news" can originate anywhere and by-pass editorial review. We must be our own editors asking what is reasonable, what isn't; what makes sense, what doesn't. This places greater responsibility on we the readers and we the listeners to sort fact from fiction; unintentional misinformation from intentional disinformation.
In addition, and this has always been necessary, we must remain on constant guard against our natural inclination to read something other than what is written, or hear something other than what is said. If we allow ourselves to, we will read or hear something that was neither written nor said, but rather something that better comports with our unreliable preconceptions. It's a battle we can not defer from and still be an informed participant. It's a battle that some of us are clearly losing.
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
Ann Coulter@AnnCoulter
