Blaming social networking site Facebook for spawning “fake” news during the 2016 campaign, the mainstream media seized on the chance to disavow any blame for colluding with the campaign of Democratic nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Pointing to fake stories about Hillary paying rabble-rousers at Trump rallies, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberge responded to the charge of “misinformation” originating on Facebook. “Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook post. “We’ve been working on this problems of a long time and we take this responsibility seriously. We’ve made significant progress, but there is more work to be done,” referring to the growing problems of fake news posts that went viral during the 2016 campaign.
Fake Facebook news writer Paul Horner admitted his fake news site earns him about $10,000 a month in ad revenue. “I think Trump is in the White House because of me,” Horner told the Washington Post, one of the nation’s most rapidly anti-Trump publications. “His followers don’t fact-check anything—they post everything, believe anything,” said Horner exposing his grandiosity. Most readers on Facebook or mainstream news sites don’t fact-check much. Trump’s supporters would have voted for Trump regardless of Horner’s fake stories. Believing he won Trump the election with fake new stories sounds grandiose, maybe delusional. No social network site sharing information should be taken seriously, especially if the site has no credibility. Even mainstream news site like the Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune publish questionable news.
Zuckerberg talks of dealing with “misinformation” but says nothing about “disinformation,” the deliberate planting of stories to advance a certain political agenda. Mainstream sites published stories about President-Elect Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, without any proof or facts. Hillary had no problem exploiting Gold Star family Khizr Khan to set Trump up for disrespecting military families. No one in the mainstream press questioned whether or not Khan was Hillary’s paid political operative. Yet the mainstream press hyped the story of Khizr, without questioning his political motives. Mainstream news outlets published numerous front page stories about Trump questioning the fairness of Indiana Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel because of his Mexican heritage in the Trump University fraud case. Mainstream press published numerous stories highlighting Trump’s alleged racism.
Whatever fake bloggers did to influence the 2016 election, it paled in comparison to the mainstream press, using front page stories to advance Hillary’s campaign narrative. Hillary campaign Chairman John D. Podesta was convinced they scored points painting Trump as a racist, misogynist and sexist. Unlike Facebook, whose fake writes stuck to certain concocted stories, the mainstream media took Hillary’s disinformation and ran with it on front-page stories. Major broadcast and print networks routinely focused on Hillary campaign talking points as if they were news. Story after story appeared in mainstream print and broadcast outlets accusing Trump sexual assault, without offering any proof or facts. In the last month of the campaign, 12 women alleged various stories of Trump groping. Not one story could be corroborated, despite the stories dominating the mainstream press headlines.
Looking into con artists like Paris Wade or Ben Goldstein running the “yellow journalism” Web site Liberty Writers News makes sense but Zuckerberg has no intent of screening Facebook content. Wanting Facebook to crackdown on phony news, Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan suggested Zuckerberg hire and “executive editor” to screen for fake news stories. Zuckerberg resists the idea believing Facebook lets its readers evaluate accuracy without screening. “Zuckerberg may not want to call this person an editor, since he has been insistent that Facebook isn’t a media company,” said Sullivan, not admitting that the Washington Post often ran with stories directly fed to the paper by the Hillary campaign. Letting mainstream journals collude with political campaign compromises the First Amendment more that mercenary bloggers looking for as fast buck.
Distinguishing between “misinformation” and “disinformation,” the mainstream media, excuses itself while condemning social media platforms for publishing fabricated news stories. Far more dangerous than made up news, the mainstream press picks-and-chooses what goes on the front page based on what it’s fed by political campaigns. Writing stories to corroborate Trump’s alleged ties with Kremlin or his alleged sexual improprieties show the same kind twisted information as anything outright fabricated. “Fake new stores sow confusion,” said CNN’s media critic Brian Stelter. “People in power, all around the world, benefit from confusion . . . So users should outsmart them. Refuse to be confused,” not admitting the egregious disinformation coming from major news outlets, like his own boss, CNN. Zuckerberg must do his part to stop fake news but so must the mainstream press.
