‘Fake news’ talk is cheap. Don’t fall for it.

The term ‘fake news’ covers up a broken contract between you and those who distribute information. We need to design a new contract.

Every morning, a contract was delivered to your doorstep. It arrived at your home, rain or shine. No, I’m not talking about the mail. I’m talking about the daily newspaper.

(Source)

You may still, like me, receive a newspaper. It may only come on Sundays though, and it’s not quite the same. The contract isn’t there like it used to be, and for many people it’s not there at all.

The old contract

The old contract went something like this: It was agreed that the recipient of the newspaper would pay a monthly or annual fee to receive the paper every day and gain access to the information inside. It was also agreed that the information inside would be, to the best of human capability, accurate and easy to understand. The writers would not get too fancy with their words, and they would not publish content that was offensive or lewd. That way Grandma and Junior could stumble upon the newspaper and not have (or feign to have) their innocence corrupted.

Most importantly, this point rested at the agreement’s heart: the newspaper contained facts and opinions based on facts. The newspaper was not, under any circumstances, a source of fiction.

If you wanted fiction, you could go to the fiction section in your local library. Now, there were (and still are) tabloids, of course. They’d boldly display “evidence” of an “alien invasion” here or a celebrity alien birth there (they’re still really into aliens). Few people took them seriously, though.

The newspaper contained facts and opinions based on facts. The newspaper was not, under any circumstances, a source of fiction.

The newspaper was different. It was a contract between you and the publisher, and both parties knew the rules:

• You, the consumer, will pay us, the newspaper company, money.
• We will deliver facts and fact-based opinions to your door each morning.
• There will be classifieds and personals listings among other advertisements in the newspaper and on which we will also make money.
• If we fail in our duty, you may call us at the number provided or send letters to the address provided. We will do our best to respond to all requests and comments in a timely fashion.

Sometimes news companies might fall short, but that was, more or less, the contract. It was ironclad.

Or so we thought…

The new contract

We’ll give up a lot to feel good, especially when it doesn’t immediately tap our wallets.

It turns out that, with the arrival of the internet, the contract became no more resilient than the daily paper it was printed on. The first tear happened when news organizations took to the Web as an experiment rather than a rewriting of the contract with the people who bought their product. By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late. A new contract had been written, this time by social media and search companies.

This new contract reads as follows:

1. We will provide you with an all but irresistible experience that includes access to news and information.
2. For that experience, you will give us valuable information about you.
3. We will take that information and use it to generate targeted advertising on which we will make money. In some cases, we will just sell the information outright.
4. We will use that money to keep providing you with more feel good experiences.

The agreement that a customer will pay money directly for news and information is gone. (News organizations are trying to claw it back.) This means there’s no requirement that the feel-good experience include facts. Actually, it turns out that, thanks to the way our brains are wired, the experience feels better when there are some facts used to support a fiction we like.

So, we’re getting a lot of fiction, because that’s what feels good. We’ll give up a lot to feel good, especially when it doesn’t immediately tap our wallets.

Oh, and here’s a small add-on: If content from an old news organization makes you feel good, you can still have it. If it doesn’t, here’s a link to a site that looks a bit like it belongs to a news site but will only tell you what you want to believe is true. Oh, and don’t worry about paying a subscription fee. It’s free!* You’re welcome.

(*See contract item number three above.)

‘This is an experiment … We’re not in it to make money.’

In news organizations’ defense, they didn’t know how to get people to pay for news online in the early days of the web, nor were they particularly concerned with that challenge. They were more interested in the technological challenge of delivering content over the nascent internet.

The early days of online news were experimental; everything was new and different. News executives weren’t alone in not being sure the home computer would become popular, not to mention ubiquitous and palm-sized. Many of them couldn’t imagine today’s paradigm, so they thought the old contract would hold: people will pay us to deliver information to their doorstep.

They were wrong.

In all fairness, the challenge of online payments was a significant one. It was both technological and cultural. Even today, some people are afraid to purchase goods and services online.

Today’s tech giants, including Amazon, worked hard to figure out online purchasing and payments. Amazon has been particularly successful in e-commerce. They’ve been so successful, in fact, their founder is now personally the owner of one of the world’s leading newspapers (and my former employer), The Washington Post.

Rather than subscribers and direct payments, news organizations turned to online advertising for revenue. That left them beholden to social media platforms and search engines to direct traffic (your attention) towards their content, and the rest is history. That history shapes our reality, one in which the contract between us and the purveyors of information does not require that we be delivered facts, just a good time.

Individual news organizations may insist that they still have a contract with their customers and work diligently to uphold it and deliver facts and not fiction. That’s increasingly meaningless to people in the face of a complex and well-orchestrated appeal to manipulate our very brain chemistry.

We, the customers, can’t be fully blamed either. We’re having our brains hacked, first of all. We’re also left to wonder: why pay for news online that has been offered to use for free? If it’s free, was it ever really worth paying for in the first place?

We’re right to question, but it’s a dangerous question to leave lingering. It has been lingering for years, and it’s time to put it to rest. It’s time for a new contract. First, though, let’s put this so-called “fake news” nonsense to bed.

Why ‘Fake news’ talk is a cheap.

“The fictions and fabrications that comprise fake news are but a subset of the larger bad news phenomenon, which also encompasses many forms of shoddy, unresearched, error-filled, and deliberately misleading reporting that do a disservice to everyone.” — Snopes.com Founder David Mikkelson

The term “fake news” is being thrown around like confetti at the Times Square New Years Eve celebration. When a term is being tossed around that much it’s probably holding on to too many things at once. As Snopes’s Mikkelson notes, it’s not fake news that’s the problem. Fake news is merely a subset of bad news, which is a very large problem that has been going on for some time.

I’d go a step further to say that “fake news” is a cheap shortcut around a history of missed opportunities, well-intentioned inventions and toxic social norms.

It distracts from the fact that far too many of us are deluged with information and addicted to platforms that satisfy our desire to feel good about our held opinions.

It skips over the absence of accountability among those who share information online (yes, that includes me writing this right here).

It slides past the fact that people (like me) can write pieces (like this) and publish them without editorial oversight.

It slinks under the myriad tools and methods used to make information more attractive but not necessarily more substantive. (Yes, again, I realize I am wide open to critique here. But I’m hoping that, by writing this, I am doing more good than harm.)

That said, this piece is not meant to be a comprehensive history of media and the early days of the digital transformation. (Pew Research Center has a very well-written history of the influence of the Web on journalism from 2008.) Instead, this piece is an appeal to be proactive and insist on a new contract between yourself and information publishers and platform operators. That’s right, the contract is yours to design.

Here’s my design:

Subscribe to a newspaper if you can afford it— one local and one national. Contact reporters with tips (they use them), and send them letters (yes, they read their mail). Be constructive with your feedback. Hate the facts, the writing and the ideas, but love the shared humanity of the reporter.

This deserves some reiteration: If you can’t say it to a reporter’s face on the record, don’t write it in a comment, e-mail message or a snail mail missive. Challenge yourself not to sink into the false security of anonymity or view the work of reporting the news as a favor being done for you. It’s a job like any other — an exhausting and stressful one at that. By all means, hold reporters accountable, but do so with civility.

Hate the facts, the writing and the ideas, but love the shared humanity of the reporter.

Now, does that mean you need to buy a subscription to a long-standing news publication? Nope. But do some due diligence and subscribe to organizations that spell out their contract with you. Here are some things I look for:

• They have a masthead (the list of people who are accountable for what is published), and they make it easy to find.
• They have bylines with contact information atop each and every piece written, so I can see who is writing what.
• They disclose conflicts of interest when they arise.
• They disclose where their money comes from.
• They invite me to hold them accountable by asking me to pay directly for what they produce either through a subscription fee or soliciting for donations.
• They show me their sourcing (and keep anonymous sources to a minimum).
• They are present in my community.

That last one is a big one that isn’t often emphasized. The stronger local news organizations are, the stronger national news overall becomes. So, it’s a great place to invest if you’re worried about whether the future will be dominated by fiction or facts. FactCheck.org also has a how-to on spotting falsehoods and online fiction.

What is your new information contract?

Here we are. We now know that we once had a contract that has since been broken. Fault lies on all sides, and many of the reasons it broke were due to well-intentioned experimentation and innovation. We know that “fake news” isn’t the problem; bad news is. Talk of “fake news” avoids talking about the real problem of overall bad news. We also know more about how we can invest in good news and spot falsehoods that litter bad news sites.

So, what does your new information contract look like? It will take shape based on what you choose to click on every day, how you use the applications on your phone and whether your raise your voice and your wallet (if you’re able)— regardless where you stand politically — to call for more facts. It will look like however you choose to design it. You’re in charge.

The fact is, for better or for worse, you always have been.

I run a consultancy at the crossroads of human-centered design (also known as design thinking), media, policy and professional development. I recently gave a TEDx talk on the need for a marriage of design and unconscious bias in professional development and media training. In the interest of full disclosure, I have worked for two of the organizations mentioned in this piece: The Washington Post and FactCheck.org. If you’re interested in learning and reading more about these and other topics, sign up for the newsletter companion to this publication, ‘E is for everything’.