www.thornwalker.com/ditch/eslm_fake_news.htm
March 5, 2023
Who cares about (fake) news?
By EDNA ST. LOUIS MISSOURI
“SOUTH CAROLINA ATTORNEY Convicted of Murdering Wife and Son” is a lead headline one can find these days in practically every form of “news” media, on line or in print. Kudos, incidentally, to Strakon for not pandering to this national pandemic of fake news by not heading this piece, “MURDAUGH MURDERS MADNESS MANIA MANIPULATES MORONIC MASSES. [Ed.: Jeez, that’s pretty good.] Indeed, the disease (which seems to have emanated from the infected labs of formerly respected New York and Washington “newspapers”) has spread internationally. Anyone care to guess what the lead headline on the BBC was for
Editor’s note: Ms. Missouri, TLD’s True Crimes Correspondent, is currently in the Witness Protection Program, possibly in South Carolina.
Even the sanctimonious (and a tip of the TLD cap to Orange Man for putting that greatly neglected adjective back into circulation) National Public Radio (“Top stories in the U.S. and world news, politics, health, science, business, music, arts and culture. Nonprofit journalism with a mission. This is NPR.”) on
Not so incidentally, on the same page the principal CNN headline for “International” news blares: “Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been asked to leave Frogmore Cottage,” a polite way of saying King Charlie has evicted them and would have thrown them out into the street if they hadn’t already decamped with their $millions to spill their guts to various pandering American media (“Gollee, yore prince and princess-ships. You-all shure were treated badly by yore mean ole brother, mother, father, and hunderds of other spineless so-called royals and such. Gollee.”). More good news about the outré rich and powerful. Possibly this sheds light on what NPR means about being “Nonprofit journalism with a mission.” (BTW, your usually genial reporter unfastens the safety catch on her revolver whenever she hears the former prince and his erstwhile princess mentioned.) The really good news here, we can hope, is that Strakon can rest easy since he is neither rich nor powerful.
Now my question is: “Who gives a rip about a murderous, whacked-out South Carolina attorney?” An acquaintance suggested that this was an East Coast phenomenon that eventually became of concern to flyover-country folks when they were duped (again) into thinking random South Carolina murders were “news.” However, can anyone really argue that New York and DC press mavens (always wanted to work that word “maven” into a piece) even know where South Carolina is, let alone think that anything happening there is news? Not even the legacy media’s penchant for seeing every gun killing as an opportunity to wax indignant about gun control measures, which wouldn’t have impacted the case in hand, and the perverse and uncivilized Second Amendment, seems to be at play here. At least, so far I haven’t seen any press baron venture the idea — “without any evidence,” as they are wont to say about their opponents’ claims — that had their policy nostrums (whoa! another cool word worked in here right under Strakon’s very nose) been adopted this never would have happened. As if Murdaugh didn’t have access to poison, knives, other pointy objects, explosives, garrotes, hammers, pick axes, coal scuttles, baseball bats, cars, boats, trains, planes, or NPR video clips. But I digress.
This kind of story, in my humble opinion, is the real “fake news”: the purveying of items of local or at most regional interest as “Breaking News” of national and even international importance. Political lies we will always have with us, but they shouldn’t be called “fake news.” “Political lies” = just politics as usual. They should not be confused with the massive newsification™ of things that aren’t really news: they are pseudo events, not fake news. Another sign, if we needed it, of how The National Enquirer approach has come to be the mainstream of journalism.
It is also likely a product of the 24-hour news cycle (“All the News, All the Time”). Dem dere 24 hours need to be filled up, and even filling space with specious “polls” in which people are asked what they think of other “polls” isn’t enough. It’s an environment in which even much of what used to be filled with prime-time news is now filled by the likes of Entertainment Tonight (“Entertainment Tonight (ET) is the authoritative source on entertainment and celebrity news with unprecedented access to Hollywood’s biggest stars, upcoming movies, and TV shows.” And by “news” stories such as, the AP’s “Oscar Predictions: Will ‘Everything’ take everything?” (pause for breathless wonder at the prescience of our amazing media gurus). And by sports programs with the latest “story lines” and pretty much pointless speculations about the future (ESPN: “Men’s Bracketology: Who’s in? Who’s out? It’s Champ Week and we’re about to find out.”) And by “opinion” shows featuring the “opinions” of handsome, comely, but completely and repulsively ignorant personalities.
At least in Britain they have the decency and honesty to refer to what we call “news broadcasters” as “news readers.”
However, if we pause to reflect, this is nothing new. What about the fake news of
If it does become a problem, we already have a solution proposed by a Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist who is calling for governments to censor social media because the argument that more free speech is the antidote to misinformation is out of date. “That doesn’t work today,” said she. “Not in the age of exponential lies.” (Fox News, November 30, 2022)
And we have a non-Nobel Prize-winning journalist, CNN’s egregious Don Lemon, who in October 2021 instructed social media:
What is put on your platform, at the very least, should be true. Let’s start there. It should be true ... You can have opinions based in fact. OK? So at the very least it should be true. And it should be based in some sort of fact. Beyond that ... I do think that social media, just like any other media company ... should face some sort of consequences. And they should be regulated. And at the very least, what you put on there should be true, and if it’s not true, then it should be actionable.Bravo, Don Lemon, the “journalist” who uncritically uses Google as fact. “[If] it’s not true, then it should be actionable.” In Lemon’s case, his truly amazing on-air comments about women resulted in this decisive action: his boss said, “I sat down with Don and had a frank and meaningful conversation. He has agreed to participate in formal training, as well as continuing to listen and learn. We take this situation very seriously.” (February 20, 2023) This CNN story, BTW, doesn’t refer to Lemon’s repeated citation of Googling in defense of his remarks. And can anyone fathom why Lemon is even Googling this to start with? Readers with a morbid curiosity can find out more here. Note that the story is, hilariously, in USA Today’s “Entertainment” Section.
Lemon was allowed to return to the air, though the situation is still fluid as, apparently, several CNN staffers have threatened to resign if Lemon is not given the boot. It is entirely likely that he is tiring of his news gig — which requires him to frequently, tediously, and laboriously Google things he doesn’t know anything about, which is pretty much everything — and is getting ready to move on to a much less onerous, cushier position with a progressive think tank or university chair or some such. This would, of course, be beneficial at least to the few people who actually get their news from CNN (about 324,000 at last count, although one can speculate that some of them tune in for the entertainment value of listening to Don Lemon and other CNN comedians).
The unfortunate conclusion to be drawn from all of this is that Lemon — not Strakon — is the model news person for our times. O tempora, o, mores! And now back to stories about obscure and insignificant people and events. Or (dramatic pause), you could take a peek at this AP News feature I recently happened on: “NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week”
1. There are no laws requiring people to pay their taxes;
2. The U.S. is not providing cash to Ukraine; it only supports the country through donated military equipment;
3. A legally binding World Health Organization “pandemic treaty” will give the organization the authority to control U.S. policies during a pandemic, including those on vaccines, lockdowns, school closures and more; and
4. Up to49 percent of the ingredients in COVID-19 vaccines can be changed without the approval of the Federal Drug Administration because they are still manufactured under emergency use authorization.Agree, do you? Check your fallacies and conspiracy theories at the door. Ω
March 5, 2023
Published in 2023 by WTM Enterprises.
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