Una Mullally: Mainstream media invented fake news

During this time of post-truth (aka, lies), and fake news, it’s been interesting to watch traditional journalism examine this phenomenon as if it’s some curious new discovery. Journalism has been faking things since it began. And not “faking” things in a conspiratorial-tinfoil-hat-lizardmen kind of way, but merely out of desperation and insolence. As a deadline-driven sport with massive financial constraints, commercial pressures, public demands and frequently the subject of vicious criticism, it is an industry overly populated by misanthropes who are both insecure and egotistical, as well as plenty of very good and well-meaning people indeed who work hard to expose truth and hold power to account. There are two “mainstream medias” really; the good stuff, and the dodgy stuff. There are the outlets that actually stick to what’s real and true, and there are those who spend far too much time pushing those boundaries into sticky, unstable landscapes where far too many liberties are taken.

There is nothing more frustrating for a decent journalist than to see massive lapses in standards or rubbish stories or colleagues in various outlets being suspect with the truth, taking things out of context, or simply making things up. The thing is, when a decent journalism outlet gets things really wrong, it faces brutal punishment. Libel and defamation laws and payouts, public horror, boycotts and rage. But we also have to admit to ourselves that there are plenty of outlets so dodgy that we don’t even make a scene when something fabricated appears pretending to be real.

To trace the origins of this contemporary wave of fake news, we should examine the (relatively modern) version of the history of fake news through the lenses of yellow journalism (populist, sensational “news”, that was often wildly inaccurate, overly focused on human interest, and obsessed with scandal) in America, and tabloid journalism in Britain. In the States, the roots of this style of America-targeted “fake news” can probably be traced to the circulation wars between Joseph Pulitzer and William R. Hearst in the closing years of the 19th century. While today Pulitzer’s name is synonymous with the highest standards of American journalism, this element of his impact on the industry, although less salubrious, is incredibly significant. Pulitzer turned the fortunes of The New York World around by focussing on sensationalism, and also by populating the newspaper with illustrations. In turn, Pulitzer himself was also the victim of sensationalism, this time of a kind that has reemerged in contemporary “fake news” - anti-semitism. Pulitzer’s other popular achievements - crowdfunding the pedestal for the Statue Of Liberty, his role in the Democratic Party, founding the Columbia School of Journalism and his endowment which became the Pulitzer Prizes, his fights in the name of freedom of the press - tend to overshadow his less tasteful contribution to American journalism, but in perfecting his own brand of tabloidism, he gifted American journalism a trend that would be reinvented time and time again.

Meanwhile, Alfred Harmsworth, was technically an Irishman born in Chapelizod, although his title of “1st Viscount Northcliffe” doesn’t exactly mark him out as a Dub. In the late 1890s, Harmsworth stated to publish the Daily Mail, and in 1903 birthed The Daily Mirror. His influence over tabloid journalism was vast, steering titles that both responded to and shaped popular opinion.

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Bill Sloan tracks this history of American tabloids in I Watched A While Hog Eat My Baby!, and certainly for years, American supermarket tabloids were the shorthand for fake news. The strange tacit agreement between reader and publication that their stories were made up - even though they were presented as truth - at some point lost its self-awareness. Now, ridiculous “stories” are presented as truth in terms of their format and language, yet clearly many readers no longer engage in this tacit understanding, and instead, take lies as truth. It’s this evolution that makes today’s “fake news” so dangerous. But fake news was spearheaded by traditional media outlets. Let’s not pretend the internet, teenagers in eastern Europe, rabid Trump supporters, or white supremacists invented it. Anyone who has watched a TV report on “Africanised bees” or thinks they actually know what’s going on in a prince’s life, is a consumer of fake news. And none of that was started by TruthfulAmericanReporting4ThePeople.com.

One of the main drivers of fake news in mainstream media has been the preference of narrative over facts. Now an essential part of celebrity “journalism”, imposing narratives around people’s lives so that magazines and newspapers can sell episodes of that narrative masquerading as reporting, was a commercial winner for celebrity “reporting”, yet ultimately declares that facts don’t matter. The construction of narratives (most obviously seen in the twenty-year-long fake soap opera magazines built around Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie’s lives and interactions), coincided with a new era of reality television that eventually gave way to scripted reality - “reality” that is constructed and invented, and therefore not real at all. There is a big difference between the “how is this news?” school of thought - which is condemning unimportant trivialities - and “this is not news”, as in things that are made up. We consume celebrity lives like soap operas completely divorced from actual reality. And it’s this strong desire for narrative that colours much of the “fake news” today, especially that which demonised Hillary Clinton and depicted her as a heinous criminal. Anyone who knows a famous person knows the amount of rubbish that gets written about them with no basis in reality is almost stunning. It is now, and has been for some time, also a given.

Journalists themselves are the first people to trash a story they know to be rubbish or pushed to the limits of a tenuous truth. We know which Sunday newspaper splash or poll is absolute tosh, which outlet lifts stories from others, which columnist just goes for controversy over genuinely held beliefs, which political reporters generate ropey stories, and so on, yet this information is rarely shared publicly. There is a sort of omertà amongst journalists that rarely sees them publicly admonish each other, which is strange for an industry that thrives on pulling people down, and where it is common for competitors to genuinely hate each other. It is also an absolute no no to question the quality or veracity of someone’s work in one’s own outlet. In criticising other journalists, you set yourself up to be disliked within the industry, viewed as arrogant, seen to be throwing stones in glass houses, or thought to be starting fights in order to generate controversy. Trust me.

So if journalists really want to get a handle on fake news, they would do well to examine the standards in their own existing industry. Online news didn’t invent fakery, they’re just bringing it to another level.