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Old Media Had Its Biases, but They Did Not Promote Disinformation Like Social Media Does

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Old Media Had Its Biases, but They Did Not Promote Disinformation Like Social Media Does TOUCH OF FAKE NEWS Old Media had its Biases, but they did not promote Disinformation like Social Media Does REED TURCOTTE BOUNDARY CREEK PRINTING & PUBLISHING Also, by Reed Turcotte ▪ Reed All About It – Memoirs of a Controversial Publisher ▪ Gold, Indians & War (Rock Creek & Fort Colville 1859 – 1861) ▪ Greenwood – The Early Years of Canada’s Smallest City ▪ When Canadian Newspaper Publishers Were King – Rise & Fall of the- 4th Estate ▪ Three Down Football (history of football in Canada) ▪ Canada’s Beautiful Game (history of soccer in Canada) ▪ Retire – Reset & Reload Touch of Fake News By Reed Turcotte Newspaper & Magazine Publisher, Author & Emphatic Storyteller E-Edition PUBLISHED BY: BCP Publishing Division of Boundary Creek Printing & Publishing Co. Ltd. (est.1896) Copyright 2021 Thank you for downloading this book. Although this is an e-edition, it remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non- commercial use without permission from the author. Quotes used in reviews are the exception. No alteration of content is allowed. If you enjoyed this book, then encourage your friends to download their own copy. Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated. Pictures and logos used in this book are from Google, unless otherwise stated. Website: www.touchoffakenews.ca “The words that affect us most are the ones that inspire mankind to think for themseves” Reed Turcotte (1991) Contents Acknowledgements Prologue Introduction: News has been dying for a long time 9 Chapter 1: The truth on ‘fake News’ 18 Chapter 2: Even the ‘big boys’ use ‘fake’ news 30 Chapter 3: Time for this author to confess 39 Chapter 4: What is ‘fake news’ anyways? 45 Chapter 5: Are they the king of ‘fake news’? 55 Chapter 6: Death of the editorial page 65 Chapter 7: Covid-19 leads the disinformation parade 75 Chapter 8: Normalization of hate 93 Chapter 9: A provocative newspaper publisher 120 Chapter 10: Generations and the spread of baloney 126 Chapter 11: Who are the bad guys? 135 Chapter 12: Is old media dead in the water 142 Chapter 13: Real journalism has ethics, ‘fake news’ not so much 156 Chapter 14: Trump had Fox – Trudeau has the CBC 164 Chapter 15: The big three and coronavirus 174 Chapter 16: Should free speech be put to bed? 199 Chapter 17: Can newspapers save us from ‘fake news’? 209 Chapter 18: QAnon, Canada and Russia spread disinformation 218 Chapter Nineteen: Polls are the new ‘fake news’ 238 Musings and Thoughts 243 Epilogue 249 The last word Acknowledgements A singular genuine shout-out goes to my immediate family for being my sounding board all these many decades. It has been a privilege to work in the newspaper and book business over the last forty-three years and able to be part of the prodigious print industry. It is an honor to publish this book in homage of all of you. As I have done in the past, an acknowledgement here would not be complete without a special ‘thank-you’ to all journalists, authors, academics, friends (and enemies) that I have quoted in this and past books, newspapers and magazines. Real journalism you see has not yet totally deceased but rather, in many cases it is just taking a rest, letting the farcical abnormalities, denunciation and rants of exploiting social media sink into the mud. At least, let us all hope quality journalism is just taking a breather, and all of us will see it rise from its death bed - for at least one more go-around. Prologue What is Fake News Anyways? Fake news, also known as junk news, pseudo-news, alternative facts or hoax news, is a form of news consisting of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional news media (print and broadcast) or online social media. Digital news has brought back and increased the usage of fake news, or yellow journalism. The news is then often reverberated as misinformation in social media but occasionally finds its way to the mainstream media as well. Fake news is written and published usually with the intent to mislead in order to damage an agency, entity, or person, and/or gain financially or politically, often using sensationalist, dishonest, or outright fabricated headlines to increase readership. Similarly, clickbait stories and headlines earn advertising revenue from this activity. The relevance of fake news has increased in post-truth politics. For media outlets, the ability to attract viewers to their websites is necessary to generate online advertising revenue. Publishing a story with false content that attracts user benefits advertisers and improves ratings. Easy access to online advertisement revenue, increased political polarization and the popularity of social media, primarily the Facebook News Feed, have all been implicated in the spread of fake news, which competes with legitimate news stories. Hostile government actors have also been implicated in generating and propagating fake news, particularly during elections. Confirmation bias and social media algorithms like those used on Facebook and Twitter further advance the spread of fake news. Modern impact is felt for example in vaccine hesitancy. Fake news undermines serious media coverage and makes it more difficult for journalists to cover significant news stories. An analysis by BuzzFeed found that the top twenty fake news stories about the 2016 U.S. presidential election received more engagement on Facebook than the top twenty election stories from nineteen major media outlets. Anonymously-hosted fake news websites lacking known publishers have also been criticized, because they make it difficult to prosecute sources of fake news for libel. The term "lying press" is at times used to cast doubt upon legitimate news from an opposing political standpoint. During and after his 2016 presidential campaign and election (and again in 2020), President Donald Trump popularized the term "fake news" in this sense, regardless of the truthfulness of the news, when he used it to describe the negative press coverage of himself. In part, as a result of Trump's misuse, the term has come under increasing criticism, and in October 2018 the British government decided that it will no longer use the term because it is "a poorly- defined and misleading term that conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign interference in democratic processes." The sphere of ‘fake news’ is much more than simply putting out false news stories. Some of these stories may have a tidbit of truth, but they may lack factual details, they may not include any confirmable facts or sources. Certain accounts may include basic verifiable facts but are written - using language that is deliberately inflammatory, leaves out pertinent details or only presents one viewpoint. ‘Fake news’ exists within a larger ecosystem of mis- and disinformation. Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is mistakenly or inadvertently created or spread - the intent is not to deceive. Disinformation is false information that is deliberately created and spread "in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth". Claire Wardle of FirstDraftNews.com has created a visual image to help one think about the ecosystem of mis- and disinformation. And as she points out, "it's complicated." How misinformation and disinformation is produced directly, relates to who the author(s) is and the different reasons why it is created. Who are the authors? They may be: Someone wanting to make money, regardless of the content of the article (for example, Macedonian teenagers), satirists who want to either make a point or entertain you, or both. They could be poor or untrained journalists - the pressure of the twenty-four hour news cycle as well as the explosion of news sites may contribute to shoddy writing that doesn't follow professional journalistic standards or ethics. Partisans who want to influence political beliefs and policy makers. The technological ease of copy, paste, click and sharing content online has helped these types of articles to proliferate. In some cases, the articles are designed to provoke an emotional response and they are placed on certain sites ("seeded) to entice readers into sharing these stories world-wide. In other cases, "fake news" articles may be generated and disseminated by "bots" - computer algorithms that are designed to act like people sharing information but can do so quickly and automatically. What is more, human average attention spans have declined precipitously in the last thirteen years and are now shorter than that of a goldfish. The average attention span for the notoriously ill-focused goldfish is nine seconds, but according to a recent study from Microsoft Corporation, people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds. Finally, diagnoses of narcissistic personality disorder have risen sharply over the last decade and research suggests social media use may be a contributing factor. The average British user nowadays spends more than two hours a day on various social media and checks their smartphone every twelve minutes. How should educators approach these substantial changes in our learning environment and the context within which learning takes place? As a professor at a leading European business school, I often ask myself this question. How do we help students cut through the noise, develop the acumen and judgment to identify fake news, and maintain a perspective grounded in reality? While these are complex, far- reaching questions deserving of equally deep
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