Your Fake News is My Gospel Truth
and why this could get much worse, before it could ever get any better ..
In the late summer of 2018, when travelling between cities was done without even batting an eyelid and the only face coverings you ever saw were the ones worn by traffic policeman, I travelled to another city to speak at a toastmasters event.
I had over the years developed a keen interest in following IT trends since my years in college when the internet was just in-bloom. Sites like cnet.com, wired.com were where I used to get the cutting edge IT stuff from. Those were days where you could grab a physical copy of the famous Dr. Dobbs journal (now discontinued) that was loaded with articles on Java with the odd CD attached to the end of the magazine — which no one ever really used. Over time though, research houses like Gartner's and Forrester's proved to be more credible sources.
It was one of those free Gartner reports I was skimming through, Gartner Top Strategic Predictions for 2018 and Beyond when my eye caught the 4th prediction made. Here it is, in all its glory: —
By 2022, the majority of individuals in mature economies will consume more false information than true information. — Gartner 2018
Back then we were just waking up to this phenomenon? Fake News as a phrase was the strongest weapon in Donald Trump’s arsenal against any kind of allegations (true or untrue) which were levied against him. The phrase “fake-news” even made it into common parlance and tickled many a rib on talk shows.
However, it was the pandemic that really pushed this phrase to the front page. The onset of covid along with the demonization of medical professionals gave rise to exalted quacks who were advocating herd immunity as an approach to tackle the pandemic. This was certainly music to the ears of those who wanted to rip the masks of anyone they saw. Almost every-time I turned on CNN or BBC, anchors were cornering Donald Trump on every word he uttered under his breath and writing columns about his frequent visits to Mar-a-lago.
“You’re listening to the mainstream media”, a friend of mine told me. “I’m listening to the mainstream media. Duuh !! Isn’t that what most of the educated world listens too??!!”, was my retort, or so I thought ..
Then came the inflexion point in May 25th 2020. The George Floyd killing in cold blood and the outpouring of grief that followed brought out Black Lives Matter(B.L.M.) protesters onto the streets in large numbers angered by the endemic racism that they (blacks) have had to endure across generations. Days went by even as cities across most of the states went up in flames while vandals boldly strutted out off smashed up outlets with branded goods they could never afford.
This time though, even as I turned on to watch the mainstream media, all I could hear were rehashed talking points from different newscasters all highlighting the gross injustice done towards the victim (George Floyd), while the rioters and their carnage seemed in some vague sense to be justifiable. Fox News on the other hand were more concerned with portraying the B.L.M. protesters as Antifa extremists zooming in on burning buildings, having little or nothing to say about the racial killing. Whatever happened to just reporting the news.
Of course it didn’t end there. But it never began at this point either. We had after all, over time gotten so used to tuning into our own radio stations for the news, the weather and were suckered into the accompanying political satire which always leaned in some particular direction. So much so, that right wing politicians frequently refer to the mainstream media as the “liberal media”.
So what do you think happens when people stop trusting the source that was supposed to deliver the news to them in the first place sans discoloration? They go to the other more infamous sources — whatsapp groups, youtube influencers, chatrooms and even quacks who moonlight as experts. What we end up with is an anti-vaxxers movement that gathers morsels of disbelief scattered across social media platforms of like-minded believers who propagate the belief that the deck has been heavily stacked against them.
This is alarming given the fact that leading medical journals and government bodies have time and again stressed that vaccinated people are less likely to contract or even transmit the disease.
When Dr. Fauci appeared on “mainstream media” and spoke about the importance of vaccination— he was labelled a quack. In fact a newscaster on the right went so far as to say that Dr. Fauci created the virus himself !! The conservative media seems content to cede the high ground on science to the liberals while the they move deeper into a self created oblivion.
Donald Trump even sensed this a few weeks ago when he spoke to a crowd in Alabama and tried to convince them to take the vaccine even as they booed him.
Hey, isn‘t this the same guy who told us that the mainstream news was fake? The Stop the Steal guy? Our Cancel Culture Prophet? So why’s he lapping up this vaccination stuff now??
The anti-vaxxers and their ilk have dug themselves into a corner and now need to dig themselves out even as hospitals report rising covid cases in what is now being called the pandemic of the unvaccinated.
The bigger pandemic however is fake news, and somehow things will never be the same.
