A real and present danger to democracy

[Soph0571]

President Agent Orange continues to lead the campaign against ‘’fake’’ news. Populists across the West have embraced the ‘’fake’’ news narrative and the rejection of expertise as a way to make fact-based decisions in governance.

BBC bad. Fox good. A news outlet that sued to be allowed to lie to its viewers is deemed to be a more accurate news organisation that one that has impartiality built into the heart of its charter to operate. (Personally, I think he is scared of all the big words BBC journalists use). One cannot read a paper or listen to a press conference right now without hearing multiple and very very repetitive accusations of "fake news" being causally lobbed around. Word hand grenades of fakery pitted into the heart of democracy and causing a damage that, in real terms, is creating a democratic crisis across the West.

Remember the days when the press was respected as the "Fourth Estate"? We need those days back. A free and independent mainstream media is very definitely a part of the bedrock of a civilised society and a fundamental and integral element of the democratic operation. After all, I am sure you would all agree that being part of a properly working democracy includes ensuring we have access to reasonably accurate, reasonably fair and reasonably comprehensive information about the world in which we live. How can we expect for people to sort the wheat from the chaff?

Today we have a situation where the right and far right spend an inordinate amount of time accusing the mainstream media of fibbing and hawking ‘’fake news’’, all the while an overabundance of social media and alternative online news sites are popping up and pitching in with their (often extremely partisan and somewhat fact free) sentiments. Russian Bot 101 in many cases. There are some profoundly worrying issues here. Newspapers are in steep decline and in trying to play catch up they are moving more and more towards offering opinions on the news rather than factual presentation of the news. Opinion not fact seems to be the new name of the game. Did you know that over 44% of Americans get their news from Facebook? Good grief. The Internet is taking over as the main source of news for many and I can only see that number rise. Of course, in the wild west of the interwebs world the news we are presented with is largely unmediated and unchecked. In 2019 ‘’news’’ belongs to the Everyman. Some suggest that this is liberating and offers us a new healthy profusion of views and opportunities for vigorous debate.

Maybe, or maybe not. Maybe it is anarchy?

A cacophony of unsubstantiated assertion and subjective noise, those shouting the loudest and being the most outrageous getting all the attention. You may wish to shrug your shoulders and say so what but should we all not be concerned at the current threats we see to the democratic ideals of objectivity, fairness and truth when presenting the news?

Traditionally we have expected objectivity and fairness from our journalists. Yes, it has got more partisan over the last couple of decades however if we are not careful the principles of good journalism risk being scrapped and replaced by a pernicious digital haze of instantaneous discussion and judgement, fabrications and rumour, misanthropy and outright falsehoods. Some will argue that this is just entertaining political theatre, and to be fair in some ways they are not wrong. Click bait headlines can be terribly amusing after all. However, if Everyman is going to use an unmediated and unchecked interwebs as their only source of news, when the oranged face leader of the free world attacks the free press while giving press passes to racist hate peddling, fact free websites, there is a real and present danger to democracy.

[Karadeniz]

1. Spot on! I read about a teacher whose students learned to differentiate real from fake

news. The students learned to research sources and take pride in not being scammed. Every school should follow suit. and maybe some of the parents would get the message!