Responding to criticism from others in the industry that the segment was itself fake news intended to deceive viewers, Trump tweeted that "The Fake News Networks, those that knowingly have a sick and biased AGENDA, are worried about the competition and quality of Sinclair Broadcast." In April 2018, more than 170 television stations owned by conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group were ordered to use local anchors to produce a scripted "must-run" commentary decrying fake news. Trump's inaugural "Fake News Awards," published on the Republican National Committee's website in January 2018, included several cases where news outlets had corrected themselves and apologized, actions that would not fit the traditional definition of fake news. The phrase has become so ubiquitous that Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan has argued that it should be discarded because its original meaning-"fabricated stories intended to fool you"-has been distorted beyond recognition. A poll conducted by Monmouth University reported that three out of four Americans believe that the media routinely report fake news, while a Gallup/Knight Foundation study found that 42 percent of Republicans consider any news stories that cast a political group or politician in a negative light to be fake news. During his candidacy and since his election, he has applied the label of fake news to virtually any media-the "failing" New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, among others-he disagrees with or doesn't like. So, no, Trump didn't invent what he called "one of the greatest of all terms I've come up with." But he has been one of the prolific users of it. ![]() As one example, the left-leaning Center for Democracy & Technology's PR Watch has been "reporting on spin and disinformation since 1993" with its "Stop Fake News!" campaign. But other groups across the political spectrum have used the term as well. Perhaps the most notorious use of the equivalent term, " Lügenpresse" or "lying press," was invoked by the Nazis in the 1930s and revived by far-right anti-immigration activists in Germany in 2014 and by Trump supporters during the 2016 campaign to undermine public confidence in the mainstream media. Politicians and their supporters accuse those in the mainstream media of peddling "fake news," a term President Donald Trump claimed, in an October 2017 interview with Trinity Broadcasting Network, he invented. There were no easy answers to these questions then, and 25 years later, we confront them again, not only in Europe, but in the United States and around the world. ![]() But as Pontius Pilate asked, "What is truth?" Who decides what is true? And who should compel the press to "tell the truth"? "Fake News": Trump Didn't Invent the Term If you had lived in a society where all media were controlled by the Ceaușescu dictatorship and published only authorized propaganda, much of it false, it made sense to think that the opposite should prevail in the newly independent Romania. It struck me then that the question was naïve, if understandable. During one of the presentations, a trade union representative stood up and asked, "How do we make the press tell the truth?" ![]() As part of that effort, in 1993, I traveled to Bucharest, Romania, to speak at a conference for nongovernmental organizations and other civil society groups. ![]() After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, emerging democracies in Eastern and Central Europe began revising their constitutions and statutory laws to guarantee the rights of a free press.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |