Your News is Fake: The Political Risk of Democratizing the Public Sphere

If you think the news you watch or read is true, well, someone out there is waiting to tell you it’s actually “fake.”

But what is this fake news after all? Where does it come from? The answer is not what you’d expect.

Ultimately, it is derived from the democratization of the public sphere and the increasing isolation people have from opinions differing from their own, and if handled improperly could increase political risk in the U.S.

The Road to Fake News is Paved with Copper Cable

Although the furor over fake news can be traced back to the 2016 election, this isn’t the beginning of the issue. In fact, it all starts with the 1984 Cable Act, which deregulated the cable television industry and led to the cable industry’s $15 billion wiring of America between 1984 and 1992.

Prior to the expansion of cable and the subsequent development of cable news, Americans had overwhelmingly gotten their news from print media and broadcast television stations that were almost indistinguishable. Then competition from CNN (1979), Fox News and MSNBC (1996) brought about a substantial decline in the broadcast news’ audience (down from 50 million in 1980 to just over 20 million in 2010).

The new channels, however, were not subject to the FCC’s fairness doctrine that had been established in 1949 and abolished in 1987. The repeal of the fairness doctrine created the conditions for radio and television stations to share more partisan opinions—that would appeal to a very select audience.

By the mid-1990s, the Internet had entered the picture. And from the 2000 to 2016 the proportion of the population using the Internet grew from 43.1% to 88.5%. We see an exponential growth curve in the number of websites after 2000.  

The explosion in the number of online media outlets resulted in a further expansion of voices and overwhelming choices for the consumers--even those of political information.  In the mid-1990s, John Keane, Professor of Politics, had been optimistic about the Internet, imagining it as a public sphere that deterritorialized public life. And he may have been right, since the Internet has provided broad access to news, blogs, and social media, through which multi-directional communication reaches around the world.

The Great Divide

With print and electronic media (online, cable and satellite), people were bombarded with so much information that they needed to whittle down the choices, and as such, tended to choose those that best matched their own political beliefs.

At the same time, people have begun to receive more and more of their news through social media, leading often to a further narrowing of voices they are exposed to--since we tend to associate with others similar to ourselves. 

Surveys conducted over a number of years provide evidence for how the increase in news outlets has influenced the widening gap between the two parties.  Looking at the polarization in Presidential approval, the average difference between the Presidents’ approval ratings by members of the two parties in the years 1960 to 1979 was 32.8%, whereas the average difference from 1980 to 2014 was 53.6%.

In terms of ideology, Republicans and Democrats have grown increasingly divided since 2004. Even our lack of trust for members of the other parties has increased over the years.

But even worse, we also fear each other, “More than half of Democrats (55%) say the Republican Party makes them “afraid,” while 49% of Republicans say the same about the Democratic Party. Among those highly engaged in politics – those who say they vote regularly and either volunteer for or donate to campaigns – fully 70% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans say they are afraid of the other party.”

Where Have All the Good Facts Gone?

After the GOP convention Newt Gingrich famously said, “The current view is that the liberals have a whole set of statistics, which theoretically may be right….As a political candidate I will go with how people feel, and I’ll let you go with the theoreticians.” Late night television shows reveled in the statement, pointing to its apparent irrationality.

But later it became clear Gingrich was anything but unusual. Rather the United States had entered the post-truth era—a time in which “borders blur between truth and lies, honesty and dishonesty, fiction and nonfiction.”

“Fake news” became an integral part of our post-truth society.

Originally, fake news entered our lexicon through discussions of Facebook’s inefficiency to weed out hoaxes and satirical articles algorithmically. The topic took on a new partisan dimension when media outlets and pundits began attributing Donald Trump’s presidential win—at least partially—to the power of fake news. 

Overwhelmingly, the focus was on the power of marginal right wing news outlets like Breitbart, associating them closely with the problem of fake news.

But then President Trump appropriated the term to describe CNN and Buzzfeed for news about Donald Trump’s and Barack Obama’s being presented an intelligence report about a dossier with compromising financial and personal information. Later the term expanded to include the New York Times and NBC, resulting in the infamous “enemy of the American people” Tweet.

But we have to ask again: where does fake news come from? Is it just horrible greedy people/companies taking over? If so, which side? Very rarely does a person say their own preferred news is fake, but rather that  of their opponents is.

This fact may give us a hint to where the fake news and post-truth politics have come from. And I’m sorry to say that WE are not guiltless. Fake news is an outgrowth of the increase in voices, the FCC’s repeal of the “fairness principle,” our desire for news that agrees with our pre-established opinions, narratives and ideologies, as well as the decentering of Truth by post-modernist criticism.

Political Risk

Risk arises not from the news itself. The broad range of disagreeing voices is good for a working democracy. Rather the risk comes from how Americans decide to cope with the issue.

It is possible to label news outlets we disagree with the “enemy of the people,” we can ban certain news outlets from our social media platforms, and we can remain distrustful of the intentions of those with opposing views.  Authoritarian leaders and societies tend to reach for these types of solutions.  But such solutions do not lessen risk; rather they foment anger and increase the chance for violent resistance.

Instead, there are other—better--options.

Americans should understand the history and context of the current situation and recognize their own role in the problem. The American media is based on market economics, and economics is the method of changing the presentation of the news. If we feel the other side’s news is too biased, we should recognize that ours is too. We need to demand that the news outlets provide the full context and more than just a pundits rendering of a straw-man argument for opposing sides. We should stop watching or listening to outlets that do not provide hard evidence for claims, while still recognizing that background sources are still possible to maintain a source’s safety.

And if we really like the excitement of a good opinionated talk radio or news show, we need to make sure we watch a similar show put out by the opposition outlet and question both of them. Moreover, we should always follow up with non-partisan fact checking sites.

The alternative narratives provided by post-modernist criticism have given us the ability to have a broader range of voices in the public sphere, but it has also weakened the foundation for our assessing of truth. We need to understand that narratives and interpretations may be debatable, but some questions actually have been resolved, and we can trust the scientific evidence.  But we as a society need to define which questions those are.

We need to ensure that critical analysis and critical thinking are an integral part of our education system. As the number of voices increases, our populace needs the skills to weed through information and find the facts, and then weigh the evidence for both sides’ arguments.

But most importantly, we need to seek to understand the logic and trust the intentions of our opponents. We shouldn’t begin with the idea that they are seeking to destroy the country, our freedoms or our way of life. We can let them explain why they are seeking this or that law.