MANAGE THE MEDIA AND FAKE NEWS

A free and independent press is essential to democracy and also to limiting the power of high-conflict politicians. In many of the examples in this book, these Wannabe Kings have quickly moved to control and dominate journalists as an essential step toward consolidating their power and eliminating their democracies. Although some Wannabe Kings lock up or kill journalists, others disparage them by calling them “fake news.”

This term first arose during the 2016 US presidential election cycle. Because Facebook advertising paid people for the number of clicks they got on their websites, some people in a small town in Macedonia apparently generated fake news stories to draw in huge numbers of users with totally made up headlines such as these: “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President” and “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide.”²⁷³

Although these fake stories may have been helping Trump’s election prospects, he quickly co-opted the term fake news and turned it against the mainstream American news media. His followers then became even more skeptical of news reports critical of Trump, and his opponents predictably became outraged, disenchanted, or mildly confused—and thus Trump succeeded in creating the 4-way voter split.

Trump’s approach caught the news media off guard. Without knowing how to respond, they initially simply repeated and repeated all the news that came in—including from these questionable sources—because they were getting wide coverage on the Internet. They repeated everything that Trump said, regardless of its credibility, because first he was a presidential candidate and then the president. Eventually, some news outlets began stating that certain news items were suspect or actually false, and some started digging deeper into the issues rather than simply reporting what the politicians said about each other and what voters said they felt about what the politicians had said.

The media did a great deal of hand-wringing over what they had done wrong or should have done instead. It’s understandable that they were confused, because they—along with everyone else in our democracy—thought our nation was a cooperative society. They didn’t realize how severely HCPs attack those on the same team.

My conclusion is that media around the world has gotten seduced into focusing on the emotions that are being driven by the Wannabe Kings and their Negative Advocates, rather than focusing on the actual facts. This has certainly been true of the face and voice news media, including radio, television, and social media. Fortunately, print media has driven fact-finding investigations and reporting.

To really deal with the news media and fake news when it seems to be arising, I believe they (the news media) and we should ask the following ten questions:

TEN QUESTIONS FOR FAKE NEWS ANALYSIS

1. Is this really true? Is this really a crisis?

2. What is the context? Is this a representative or exceptional situation?

3. What are the numbers/statistics on this?

4. Do the experts agree? Why or why not?

5. Is this a credible news source?

6. What do other news sources say about this?

7. Is the person or group being blamed really a villain? Are they even connected in any way to this problem?

8. Is the person speaking about the alleged crisis really a hero?

9. Will the speaker personally benefit by saying what they are saying?

10. How likely is it that this is really a projection of what the speaker is saying or doing themselves?

It would be great if these pointed questions and the resulting answers were the kinds of information we received regularly rather than the high-emotion “breaking” news that simply grabs our amygdala to get our attention. But remember, we actually have a choice. We can reinforce the high-emotion news or stop watching it and seek out informational news. It’s up to us.