“Recent political events – notably the controversially close Brexit referendum in the U.K. and narrow win of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 – have led to a wave of interest in the phenomenon of “fake news“, which is widely believed to have played a significant role in shaping the outcome of both political contests.”[1]

If we want to understand the distinctive aspects of the recent onslaught of fabricated and misleading information that passes itself off as news, we must first understand some of the core epistemic functions of news. The emphasis has been on their reliability as a source of factual information for the consumer. Consumers of news media are the recipients of a specialized form of testimony, and it is understood that consumers of news also incur epistemic obligations. It is assumed that competent readers can distinguish between factual reports and opinion pieces, and will use the same basic screening methods (e.g., for errors and inconsistencies) they would be using when evaluating the testimony of a trusted and competent interlocutor. Naively accepting reports without further analysis comes dangerously, trust in putative epistemic authorities is by necessity provisional, and basic critical questions – concerning the credibility of the source, its reliability, motives, interests, consistency and track record – should never be entirely suppressed.

News media – serving as the source of much of what we take ourselves to know. Without reliance on curated news reports we would know precious little about what goes on in other countries, about the world of politics, or even about what the latest sports results are. Of course, communicating reliable information is not their only social function because even consumers do not always turn to the news for knowledge and information only, but also for entertainment and diversion. The most important epistemic function of the news is to furnish us with reliable factual information.

“In addition to acquiring specific beliefs by accepting the corresponding news reports, we also rely on the news media for overall coverage. If our environment’s epistemic coverage is deficient, we will no longer be reliably apprised of significant changes in the world around us, and whatever knowledge may have been acquired at the initial point of belief formation will gradually erode. “[2] To this way the news provides us with epistemic coverage, which in turn safeguards existing knowledge by keeping us abreast of changes in the world.

Traditionally, the news has been presented in a fixed and, aggregate form, as a news bulletin of a certain duration, or a newspaper edition with a certain number of pages. This necessitates not only tough editorial choices regarding what to include, and what to leave out, but also presupposes the knowledge of the target audience – since, for obvious commercial reasons, the selection of topics must have a sufficiently broad appeal. The consumer, in turn, can infer from the selection of articles of news segments what other people in their community tend to be interested in. As the journalist Stefan Schulz puts it, “Newspapers inform people about what information other people seek out when they wish to learn about world.”[3]

Historically, the newspaper industry has been no stranger to bias, distortion, manipulation and outright fabrication. As Robert Love puts it, “In the early days of American journalism, newspapers trafficked in intentional, entertaining hoaxes.” “More recently, CNN and The NEW York Times were used by the U.S. military as unwriting co-conspirators in spreading false information, a tactic known as psychological operations”“, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The faking of news stories has been around for a long time, and every iteration of technological advancement, has unleashed new possibilities of deception and fabrication. “[4]  „Fakers”“ usually used a reputable member of the community such as a doctor, dentist, architect, or other professional or businessperson man, who, for money, would corroborate the story to any reporter that the local paper might send to investigate in bona fides. “„Fake news” then involved deception, not only of the consumer but also of the middle-man: the editor of the local paper, who “ now constantly on the alert for fake stories, is often deceived, and sends on of the reporters of his own paper to investigate the matter”, only for the local reporter to encounter the planted report. As the art historian Mark Jones puts it, with some hyperbole: “Each society, each generation, fakes the thing it covets most. ”Fake news typically mimic the “look and feel” of mainstream sources to garner credibility and for some consumers, fake news appears to swamp traditional news sources, even subverting the latter’s claim to authoritativeness. This seems to be the overt goal every time Donald Trump uses his Twitter account to denounce a critical news story as, in his trademark all-caps, “„FAKE NEWS”“, which he did a total of 73 times between 10 December 2016 and 24 July 2017 alone. Most of the time, the label is applied not to specific, but indiscriminately to news organizations such as CNN, MSNBC, or The New York Times.

The view that fake news could be an effective tool for promoting media literacy, no longer is it reserved for sophisticated-and ultimately self-critical media formats that aim to educate their viewers. Instead, it has come to be associated with sources that spread falsehoods by manipulating their consumer’s emotions and tapping into deeply held partisan beliefs.

References: 

1. Gelfert, A., Fake News: A Definition. URL accessed on 23 March 2021, https://www.academia.edu/36258758/Fake_News_A_Definition
2. Godler Y, Reich Z, Miller B. Social epistemology as a new paradigm for journalism and media studies. New Media & Society. 2020;22(2):213-229. doi:10.1177/1461444819856922
3. Allcott, Hunt and Matthew Gentzkow. 2017. Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives 31(2): 211-236.
4. Bakir, Vian and Andrew McStay. 2017. Fake news and the economy of emotions: problems, causes, solutions. Digital Journalism (DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2017.1345645).
5. Berger, Jonah. 2011. Arousal increases social transmission of information. Psychological Science 22(7): 891-893.
6. Braucher, David. 2016. Fake news: Why we fall for it. URL accessed on 25 March 2021: <https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/contemporarypsychoanalysis-in action/201612/fake-news-why-we-fall-it>
7. Dentith, Matthew R. X. 2017. The problem of fake news. Public Reason 8(1-2): 65-79.
8. Fake News Challenge. 2017. URL accessed on 25 March 2017: <http://www.fakenewschallenge.org/>
9. Fallis, Don. 2015. What is disinformation? Library Trends 63(3): 401-426.