Welcome to the Unoriginal History of "Fake News"

There was a time in my life where I wanted to be a journalist. Well, more specifically I wanted to be an investigative journalist. I loved the movie "His Girl Friday" and read as many books in the "Cat Who" series as I could find. Both prominently featured journalists who sought to discover the truth and inform their readers. I thought that reporters often worked with the police, not only to get the latest scoop, but also to help catch the villain in these stories.

Even Disney had a made-for-TV movie that falls in this genre

I used to watch the news all the time as a kid. It was hard not to when so much of the national news took place right in my backyard (that being Washington D.C.). I tried to stay as informed as possible.

As I got older, I began to understand there were types of journalism that were less "Get a Clue" and more "Harriet the Spy". Though journalists can't print anything they want, libel laws don't stop hidden agendas, gossip, and bias from seeping into the stories journalists report on. There have been some graphics of how informative and biased certain news organizations are floating around the internet as of late. I didn't post any graphics here as I wasn't sure about the original source for them.

An interesting take on the pitfalls of spying on your friends and classmates

Needless to say, after doing several research papers on the subject and even studying journalism for a bit in high school, I lost interest. When I went back re-watch "His Girl Friday" and it's predecessor "The Front Page", I also noticed more of the nasty and sometimes unethical things the journalists portrayed would do to get their story. One journalist (and head of his news paper) sort of kidnapped someone so his chance at the big scoop wouldn't be ruined.

(I wrote another blog post on seeing the play "The Front Page" about a year and a half ago. You can click here to read it.)

In high school we learned about yellow journalism (journalism that is based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration). It was a term coined in the 1890s and was tossed around into early 1900s to describe news papers with misleading headlines, scare tactic stories, and sensational pictures or illustrations of events. Basically what we call click-bait and "fake news" stories today. These tactics could be used to sway the public on different topics and mobilize them into action.

To say that "fake news" and click-bait are new problems for the world of journalists is to disregard that the history of the journalism industry is littered with first person narratives that were meant to incite extreme reactions from readers. The purpose of all stories is to cause an emotional reaction with the reader, even in non-fiction pieces found in new reports.

I've heard some people lament that idea that journalist standards have sunk to a new low in recent years, but I disagree.

Journalism, like most writing platforms, is currently going through the biggest revolution seen since the introduction of the television. People are no longer limited to getting their news from a few local news papers, television stations, or radio programs. We can share information from anywhere in the world in milliseconds. We are more aware of what is going on in the world than ever before.

That's awesome.

But it also leads to new problems. Fact checking still needs to be done and misinformation continues to be spread faster and faster. There's also the emerging problem of bias confirmation and echo chambers that litter social media and forum websites such as Reddit, Tumblr, and 4chan. We can't only read and share stories that align with their view points and call people names when they post stories with the opposite view. We might miss out on other view points and facts that could help us better understand the situation.

Journalism and the free press are a right of the American people. It's in the very first amendment to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was important to Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. It's a right that should continue to be important now.

And anyone can be a journalist. We all have phones in our pockets. We can take pictures, record events, and share them hundreds upon thousands of times on any social media site. Though, that doesn't mean we can take everything at face value. Under every narrative is a grain of truth.

Even my writing isn't without it's narrative bias.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.