Fake news is the hottest topic in politics and media these days. Hardly a day goes by without seeing some sort of hot take about why fake news is dangerous or why we should take actions to prevent it from spreading.
Somewhat ironically, many legitimate news outlets devote a lot of coverage to fake news stories despite saying that they are harmful.
The narrative around fake news, from almost all political viewpoints, is that it is wrong and deadly to our Republic. Yet as more news breaks, both sides are quick to label stories as fake if the content hurts their agenda.
Clearly there is no actual consensus on what is fake or not. The only thing that seems to be factual is that we cannot agree on what is factual.
Fake news is entirely a product of free speech and human nature. Everything from science to religion to news are entirely subjective to our understandings and willingness to engage with new ideas.
As no human can exit their own consciousness, our entire reality is based off our perspective.
Journalism aims to be objective, free of political or economic influences on coverage. Many publications get close to objective, but they can never reach it. All news outlets have a bias stemming from the perspective of their writers. Moving forward, news companies ought be honest about their slants.
Some people may claim we live in a post-truth society where this is just the new norm. They might be right, but this disagreement on what is factual goes way back. People have always lied or bent the truth to an unsuspecting audience. The Onion was cited by real news sources before people knew it was satire, and people believed “War of the Worlds” to be a real broadcast. It would be hard to argue that ignorance of facts only faces our modern Western society.
This disagreement on facts can be useful — it is the reason we can have debate. But saying one political ideology has a monopoly on truth is harmful. If a government is allowed to become the ultimate authority on what is true, that power would be too great for any single entity to possess. This is why encouraging the government or even large corporations to combat fake news is potentially dangerous.
