There’s nothing new about fake news.
THIS IS NOT A SATIRE.
Former school superintendent Gary Knox in this morning’s Yuma Sun manages 815 words of moot rant concerning the possibility of using computer generation (CG) to produce a “make-believe production of a terrorist or anarchical group” with the ability to influence Americans.
Knox’s strongest argument is how far society has advanced in creating realistic CG, and how far it is inevitably destined, but it completely ignores what we’ve observed recently in the wake of the Reuters “fauxtography” and Rathergate scandals. Along with advances in CG and the Internet have come advances in the ability of individuals to personally investigate truth versus fiction. The Internet is already full of conspiracy theories ranging from various 9/11 conspiracies to the faking of the Apollo Moon Landings. Such falsehoods are not solely the result of the information age; they are the result of freedom of speech. Likewise, so is the general public’s outright rejection of such ideas.
What we learned (or perhaps more properly, that of which we were reminded) from the Reuters “fauxtography” scandal is that fake news doesn’t require CG, but rather only takes a biased reporter. The infamous Photoshopped smoke spirals photograph of Adnan Hajj wasn’t the only development of note from Israel’s bombing of Lebanon; it also resulted in serious investigation of photographs that were clearly “set-up” not through software, but by the photographers’ very own physical and/or verbal manipulation of the scene. Ultimately, it was the development of cyberspace that allowed individuals to start disputing the coverage that led to the conclusion of many careers.
The Killian documents scandal is an easy case to cite to show that bad news is not beyond television nowadays, but I hate to think that this is the only example involving video. The “visual tricks” that Knox cites are not some golden limit, but are rather a small step ahead from where we already are with respect to the bias of the news media. At least within conservative / libertarian circles, the media are biased towards the left. The far left says the media is far right. Basically, we all agree that somebody is wrong.
Knox’s second to last sentence calls for us to “increase our vigilance and maintain a very healthy skepticism for what we hear and see.” Regardless for the increased apparency that such vigilance is necessary, it is only that – an increased apparency, not an increased need. I fail to see the particular grave danger that Knox sees; rather, I see an inevitable increase in skepticism in the wake of need that has already persisted for some time.
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