George Rebane

Since I took some considerable issue with the LWV’s attempt to illuminate the nation’s travails with fake news (here), the definition of which never quite emerged from that conclave, I thought it proper to make my own contribution to the same.  I believe that most people graced with critical thinking skills will more or less agree with the sequel.  In any event, when I subsequently refer to ‘fake news’, it is in this light.

First, fake news falls into two broad categories – Insignificant and Misleading.  News stories about topics that are totally irrelevant to a medium’s consumers, and placed there out of lack of editorial attention or to please some other desire to fill ‘space’ or fulfill an innocent obligation, even if completely true in fact and form (e.g. fluff pieces), falls into fake news simply because it is not the kind of news which the outlet purports to deliver and fulfill the expectations of its consumers.

Second, news stories which mislead, either intentionally or through poor journalism/editing (endemic these days), are also fake news.  Purposive misleading by a seemingly legitimate news item can be accomplished in the several ways that satisfy the definition lying, how lies can be told, and therefore fully conform to that semantic taxonomy.  I covered these variations some years back in ‘Lies and Lying’, and these are worth a revisit by anyone attempting to understand the present dissertation.

It is important to peel off certain types of communication which many people thoughtlessly group with fake news.  Propaganda per se is not fake news if it hews to a truthful attempt to promote some agenda or conclusion.  We recall that propaganda is “information, ideas, OR rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.”  I have emphasized the ‘or’ to point out that this kind of purposive communication can also be totally legitimate, containing no false information or ideas, or even rumors that later turn out to be true.  Propaganda only becomes fake news when it subsumes the nature and purpose of lying – to deceive and/or mislead.

We can equally eliminate the factual and opinionated denigration or celebration of individuals, organizations, or causes from the fake news category.  Editorials and commentaries that are factually correct and unabashedly make their purpose clear to their consumer, are by any means neither fake nor news.  (Satire is in its own category, and its absorption as fake news depends on the acumen of it consumer, and the known type of its source.)

In summary, when a previously consumed media piece, ostensibly presented as news, is known or subsequently discovered as having been ‘designed to deceive in the sense of being counterfeit or not real’, then we can reliably ascribe it to be fake news and communicate that conclusion to others.  Else the more detailed considerations given above should come into play.