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The term ‘fake news’ is used almost daily by prominent government officials and politicians. It is often used to deflect criticism, whether justified or not, and to attempt to add credence to their claim that only their point of view is the correct one (or the actual truth). The reality is that the world is gray. As the rhetoric heats up in the US, real dangers are present. Biden’s administration accused conservative news outlets and viewpoints as being fake news and made attempts to censor and belittle them. Trump’s administration has done the same, but from the opposite end of the political spectrum. Some definitions are in order.
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Definitions
Fake news – according to Oxford Languages, ‘fake news’ is defined as “false information that is broadcast or published as news for fraudulent or politically motivated purposes.”
Inherent Bias – “When it comes to partisan fact-checking about complex issues—which describes much of the fact-checking that takes place in the context of political news—the truth as stated is often the subjective opinion of people with shared political views.”1
Bias is Omnipresent
Every human has inherent bias. Because of this, any activity involving human thought will have bias. Despite monikers such as ‘fact checking,’ ‘official,’ etc, any written or verbal speech will have some form of bias as its object. There are two forms of bias in play that are often present. The first type is opinion. If a politician states a military strike was the best in history, that is purely opinion. The rigor required to analytically compare that military operation to every other military operation in recorded history is nearly impossible. The second type of bias is when the speaker or reporting entity chooses what stories it will publish. This is laughably easy to illustrate.
If one looks for several days at CNN and MSNBC’s news websites, you will see almost always stories that are at either neutral (sports) or leaning politically left. Their stories generally show positive stories regarding Democrats and negative stories regarding Republicans. Similarly, when one looks at Newsmax and Fox News for several days, you will see a similar selection of articles. Articles will generally be of neutral topics or will be almost always negative towards Democrats and positive towards Republicans.
Unless a news story has accidental or intentional errors in its facts, the bias is not ‘fake news.’ It is merely the political bias of the news organization reporting the stories that they think follows their political viewpoint and is what the leadership wants its viewers to see (or not see). The stories are factual, but are often cherry-picked as if framing an argument to sway public opinion.
No such thing as ‘fake news’
Thus, there is no such thing as fake news. There is news with errors (accidental or intentional). However, this is only a minority of news stories. Most mainstream outlets suffer from the bias in the selection of topics and news articles that the organization chooses for the public to see. CNN and MSNBC will rarely cover Democrat mistakes and scandals or bad Democrat economic news. Similarly, Fox News and Newsmax will rarely cover Republican scandals or bad GOP economic news.
Toxic division hurts America
America is extremely polarized and divided politically. Far too many in America consume a steady diet of mainstream news, social media stories, memes, books, articles, and other means of communication and influencing that only aligns with their beliefs. News becomes a confirmational, not an educational, experience.
Politicians should be challenged whenever they try to censor or in any way inhibit news outlets that report stories that they don’t find favorable to their political cause. The left seems to favor the term ‘disinformation’ as justification to censor. The right seems to favor the term ‘fake news’ as their justification to censor and remove news outlets from public view. Either way, politicians are demanding news that conforms to their narrow political views which is just outright propaganda. This what fascist, communist, and other authoritarian regimes do.
The solution to the problem is remarkably simple. Responsible Americans of any political view should balance their information gathering by viewing each news article from the lens of news organizations of more than one political bias. All too often, the truth lies somewhere in the middle and it enables responsible voters to cut through the spoon fed rhetoric spouted by politicians of both sides and find something closer to the truth. If you lean right and you see a story on Newsmax that seems too good to be true, investigate the same story on CNN and MSNBC. The left should do the same. All too often the reader will find that that news article is loaded with facts to make their political side look good and the other side look bad.
Both political parties are hurting America ideologically, economically, militarily, fiscally, and almost any other way possible. The damage will not end until the public seeks balanced information and begins to question a single party’s version of the facts (ie propaganda). Further, the voting masses should call out any politician who hides behind the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘misinformation’ to obscure failings in their governance. Make the politician prove their accusation that a news story is ‘misinformation’ or ‘fake news.’
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-psychology-of-fact-checking1/
