With a Grain of Salt
Fake news. Biased news. It's what we hear about whenever we pick up or enter a newspaper or watch a news program. It's supposed to be news with such a bias that it makes you believe the opposite of what is true, or what is convenient for a certain group. We hear that Russia has meddled in our newsfeeds, creating news stories that aren't true, or extremely biased, picking over facts which help further a cause they support, such as the election of Trump in the U.S., Brexit in Europe, and the Catalan fiasco in Spain, all in the name of creating instability.
There's nothing new under the sun, as mentioned in a wise book, "The thing that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (For those of you who have a current copy, I prefer the King James version; the language is much more beautiful.) The only new thing about fake news is its title. Biased news has existed since the first journalist reported on an event. Objectivity is supposed to be the base from which all journalists should work, but subjectivity usually becomes the end result. Even if a story is originally written objectively, an editor can make it sing his own notes.
Fake news can be very dangerous. One of the more popular news biases, almost a hundred twenty years ago, led the United States to war. Albeit a short war, almost 2500 soldiers died, most from diseases, such as yellow fever. The United States became an imperial power, gaining the Spanish colonies of the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and major influence over an independent Cuba. Spain lost the last of its once rich empire. And this happened mostly thanks to the power of yellow journalism, the original term for fake news.
In January of 1898, the U.S.S. Maine was sent to Havana harbor to protect American interests on the island in the face of the conflict between the Cubans who wanted independence, and the Spanish who wanted to preserve its hegemony over the island. On the night of February 15th, the Maine exploded and sank. The most obvious cause was later found to be a fire caused by firedamp in the coal that was stored next to the magazine. The fire exploded the ammunition and caused the ship to sink.
But feelings at that time in the United States were running in favor of the Cuban freedom fighters. News of a mine quickly made the rounds. William Hearst's The New York Journal, and Joseph Pulitzer's The New York World, grabbed onto the tail end of sensationalist rumors, and agitated the news that the Spanish had planted the harbor with mines to sink any and all U.S. ships. The catchphrase went out, "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!" President McKinley was practically forced into declaring war on Spain by the more hawkish members of the Senate, Congress, and his Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt.
One might say that the entrance of the Unites States into the colonial conflict was prompted by highly biased news stories that took into account a rumor and obviated facts. Other biased news stories of atrocities committed by Spaniards on the island also helped shape public opinion. To mind come stories from 1990 and the First Gulf War of babies being taken out of incubators and left to die in Kuwaiti hospitals by Iraqi soldiers, which were later shown to be false.
Could yellow journalism create a situation propitious for war these days? The answer is emphatically, yes. In June of this year, Saudi Arabia and the UAE cut off ties with Qatar over a speech in which the ruler of Qatar supposedly made a friendly reference to Iran. From there, it was assumed that Qatar supported terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups, most of them Shi'ite in nature, and natural enemies of Sunni Saudi Arabia. The story was finally seen to be a Russian hack, but reactions might have gone too far before it was exposed.
There are professional journalists out there that write responsibly. The problem comes when their employers are no longer interested in serving the public, but rather the shareholders. Or when the news agency is told what to say by the government that controls it. Everything we read should be taken with a grain of salt. Spain isn't free of the disease, either. A regional newspaper I had always believed to be mostly independent and fair, joined the majority of others that clamored against the Catalan independence movement, automatically taking the Madrid government's side. I went searching for more leftist newspapers on the internet, and tried to find the middle between ones and the others. There, the truth probably lay. But there was no one newspaper that didn't use some form of bias, either for or against, in their choice of words, headlines, or facts.
Now, more than ever, the ability to read between the lines, and think for oneself, is extremely important. We have been sheeple long enough.
There's nothing new under the sun, as mentioned in a wise book, "The thing that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (For those of you who have a current copy, I prefer the King James version; the language is much more beautiful.) The only new thing about fake news is its title. Biased news has existed since the first journalist reported on an event. Objectivity is supposed to be the base from which all journalists should work, but subjectivity usually becomes the end result. Even if a story is originally written objectively, an editor can make it sing his own notes.
Fake news can be very dangerous. One of the more popular news biases, almost a hundred twenty years ago, led the United States to war. Albeit a short war, almost 2500 soldiers died, most from diseases, such as yellow fever. The United States became an imperial power, gaining the Spanish colonies of the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and major influence over an independent Cuba. Spain lost the last of its once rich empire. And this happened mostly thanks to the power of yellow journalism, the original term for fake news.
In January of 1898, the U.S.S. Maine was sent to Havana harbor to protect American interests on the island in the face of the conflict between the Cubans who wanted independence, and the Spanish who wanted to preserve its hegemony over the island. On the night of February 15th, the Maine exploded and sank. The most obvious cause was later found to be a fire caused by firedamp in the coal that was stored next to the magazine. The fire exploded the ammunition and caused the ship to sink.
But feelings at that time in the United States were running in favor of the Cuban freedom fighters. News of a mine quickly made the rounds. William Hearst's The New York Journal, and Joseph Pulitzer's The New York World, grabbed onto the tail end of sensationalist rumors, and agitated the news that the Spanish had planted the harbor with mines to sink any and all U.S. ships. The catchphrase went out, "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!" President McKinley was practically forced into declaring war on Spain by the more hawkish members of the Senate, Congress, and his Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt.
One might say that the entrance of the Unites States into the colonial conflict was prompted by highly biased news stories that took into account a rumor and obviated facts. Other biased news stories of atrocities committed by Spaniards on the island also helped shape public opinion. To mind come stories from 1990 and the First Gulf War of babies being taken out of incubators and left to die in Kuwaiti hospitals by Iraqi soldiers, which were later shown to be false.
Could yellow journalism create a situation propitious for war these days? The answer is emphatically, yes. In June of this year, Saudi Arabia and the UAE cut off ties with Qatar over a speech in which the ruler of Qatar supposedly made a friendly reference to Iran. From there, it was assumed that Qatar supported terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups, most of them Shi'ite in nature, and natural enemies of Sunni Saudi Arabia. The story was finally seen to be a Russian hack, but reactions might have gone too far before it was exposed.
There are professional journalists out there that write responsibly. The problem comes when their employers are no longer interested in serving the public, but rather the shareholders. Or when the news agency is told what to say by the government that controls it. Everything we read should be taken with a grain of salt. Spain isn't free of the disease, either. A regional newspaper I had always believed to be mostly independent and fair, joined the majority of others that clamored against the Catalan independence movement, automatically taking the Madrid government's side. I went searching for more leftist newspapers on the internet, and tried to find the middle between ones and the others. There, the truth probably lay. But there was no one newspaper that didn't use some form of bias, either for or against, in their choice of words, headlines, or facts.
Now, more than ever, the ability to read between the lines, and think for oneself, is extremely important. We have been sheeple long enough.
So sad in its truth
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