My view on “Fake News”

“FAKE NEWS” is a term we have heard a lot about in 2017. But just what does it mean??

On the face of it, you would think that it means the news story it refers to is not true. But sadly that seems to be far from the case.

This year (2017) the term “FAKE NEWS” has become synonymous with the new US President. And we need to clearly understand that the Trump’s use of the terms “Fake News” does not have the same definition that you would initially rush to, that the news is untrue.

If we look at Trump’s use of the term “Fake News”, it quickly becomes clear that when he uses the term “Fake News”, in reference to any news that does not fit to his “belief of the moment”. It doesn’t mean that the news is untrue. It just means it is not what he wants to believe at that particular moment in time. A day, a week or a year later that belief might change, and what was “Fake News” yesterday is no longer “Fake”.

So when Trump (and now many others who have jumped on the same bandwagon) claims something as “Fake News”, we should not presume that news to be untrue but rather understand that Trump (or whoever) just doesn’t believe it’s true (for whatever distorted or un-informed reason)!!

Sadly the mainstream media globally seems to have failed to grasp this simple reality. Its time that they fought back and stopped bring world-class journalism into disrepute because the reality does not fit what one man wants to believe.

Now, of course, the global media are no angels themselves, and they often publish irresponsible and disgracefully misleading “news”. Which may not be entirely “fake” but certainly is being “spun” to meet the agenda of the moment.

The term “spin” is a great term, which describes to a T what many media organisations do when presenting the news. But Trump has taken “spin” and replaced it with “FAKE”, which is deceitful if nothing else.

Someone of stature needs to take the US President to task for this nonsense use of the term “FAKE NEWS”.