Have I Got (Fake) News For You
The rise of Fake News and how we all believe it.
Any true snippet of information is likely to have a falsified counterpart, one that has been glamourised to elicit fear, disgust or intrigue; fear mongering’s best friend.
From stories about rumoured love children and the existence of global warming, there are very little topics left that have not been contaminated by the likes of Fake News, but what exactly does that mean?
Named as Collins Dictionary’s word of the year, ‘Fake News’ is false and usually sensationalised information which is disseminated under the pretence of news reporting. Due to the vast amounts of ‘buzz words’ included in these articles, they accumulate large views, predominately online, which then causes this widespread mania to sweep across the pages of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and even the main newspapers. This then causes readers to perhaps be anxious or angry which then creates further gossiping and sharing of this Fake News. It is very much like a game of Chinese Whispers. Someone begins with a word — or in this case a fact. This fact is then shared with a few people and gradually starts to be changed; little bits of the fact are not whispered, or perhaps someone misheard and in turn, the next person will add their own information to fill in the blanks. This accumulation of hearsay and misunderstandings causes an entirely new story to be produced, thus resulting in the birth of Fake News.
Despite Fake News evidently existing before Trump’s Candidacy, this sensationalised sensation has reached its peak in 2017 with Trump himself even claiming to have made up the word ‘fake’ and ‘Fake news’. It wouldn’t be surprising if he tried to patent that pairing of words to add to his already disgusting wealth. Trump’s popularisation of the term was first used as a bid to help slander opposing candidates, Fake News stories such as Hillary Clinton’s old Blackberry turning up in a Goodwill and a rumoured romp with Yoko Ono in the 70s, both appeared next to true news articles online and in papers. Since then, many Trump voters have come forward to admit that these fictitious stories did influence their vote. The rest are just disillusioned, bigoted, extremists that ponder after an old, jaundiced man.
This yellowing man takes to describing any form of news that he disagrees with as, you guessed it, Fake News. He particularly has a strong hatred for American news channel, CNN. The channel frequently shares news stories on President Trump, a particularly vile story being that the Russians had a sex tape of Trump fraternising with prostitutes in a hotel in Moscow. Whilst this has not been proven nor disproven, Trump refused to answer a question from CNN anchor, Jim Acosta, with Trump saying “Not you. Your organisation is terrible.” When Acosta tried asking a second question, he was shut down by Trump saying, “You are Fake News.” However, that is not the only thing Trump has labelled as Fake News this year. He also castigated The Times after they released an article about his daily routine, saying “Another false story, this time in the Failing @nytimes, that I watch 4–8 hours of television a day — Wrong!” he then proceeded to say “Also, I seldom, if ever, watch CNN or MSNBC, both of which I consider Fake News.”
A few days later, the stories of the many women levelling sexual-harassment charges against Trump fuelled another angry ‘disagreement’, with him tweeting “Democrats have been unable to show any collusion with Russia — so now they are moving on to the false accusations and fabricated stories of women who I don’t know and/or have never met, FAKE NEWS!” It is nice to know that such allegations against The President only elicit a slightly more offended, hurt and disgusted tone than allegations of him watching television for more than 4 hours a day.
So regardless of whether you believe it or not, Fake News does exist and isn’t always about POTUS, although a lot of the time he is the most popular for pointing the finger when it comes to addressing both real and Fake News.
