Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Neal Gabler — Who’s Really to Blame for Fake News


Worth reading for background on alt right fake news. But it is marred by linking to the Craig Timberg article at the Washington Post.
Consider for a moment the oxymoronic concept of “fake news,” which we have been hearing so much about lately. This isn’t your typical disinformation or misinformation — generated by the government, or foreign adversaries, or corporations — to advance an agenda by confusing the public. It isn’t even the familiar dystopian idea of manipulated fact designed to keep people lobotomized and malleable in some post-human autocracy. Those scenarios assume at least an underlying truth against which nefarious forces can take aim.
Fake news is different. It is an assault on the very principle of truth itself: a way to upend the reference points by which mankind has long operated. You could say, without exaggeration, that fake news is actually an attempt to reverse the Enlightenment. And because a democracy relies on truth — which is why dystopian writers have always described how future oligarchs need to undermine it — fake news is an assault on democracy as well.

What is truly horrifying is that fake news is not the manipulation of an unsuspecting public. Quite the opposite. It is willful belief by the public. In effect, the American people are accessories in their own disinformation campaign.
That is our current situation, and it is no sure thing that either truth or democracy survives....
Bill Moyers & Co.
Who’s Really to Blame for Fake News
Neal Gabler

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Scott Adams' Blog
Scott Adams

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