Media Culpa? Don’t hold your breath. Creating Fake News is the Business Model

The news media certainly love conflict; political conflict, class conflict, war, sport, gender, town and country, corporate takeovers, it doesn’t matter much what it is as long as there’s conflict there’s a story. The old adage, ‘if it bleeds it leads’ still holds true, but for non-violent news the closest thing to blood is violent disagreement.

In public debates the news media has traditionally championed its role as a referee of public squabbling, or side-line commentator, promoting its neutrality or objectivity as a credential. But with online communication and the emergence of the active audience, social media, and the increased speed at which conflict can be reported the media is taking its role in another direction. Rather than explaining and exposing conflict the news media has increasingly taken on the role of cheerleader, choosing sides, and rallying and amplifying support for one side or the other. But this is not harmless entertainment. It often amounts to unwarranted and irresponsible disruption of public debates.

Of course, such partisanship on the part of the news media is not new, the problem is now the scale of media partisanship, its amplification through permanent connectivity to online and mobile technology and its normalisation in the practice of journalism. Rather than reporting on conflict, the media creates conflict or deliberately makes it worse by exaggerating, misrepresenting or falsifying information (i.e. lying).
Read the rest of this entry »