It Is Not New At All - Fake News
Jul. 31st, 2018 08:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveWe're hearing a great deal about this term these days and I think what disturbs me most is the current thought that this is something new.
No so.
From Pope Julius II to the War of the League of Cambrai, via that genius of propaganda, Martin Luther (it is perhaps no accident that the term, 'propaganda' is an invention of the Roman Catholic church) and on into the 17th century and the news journals of such journalistic geniuses as Marchamont Nedham during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, my own period of study, we have had 'fake news'.
The two world wars were full of it although I suppose that states facing an existential threat may at least have a modicum of an excuse.
What is perhaps new, is the way that 'fake news' is now disseminated largely via the web, but what is the web if not the 'new technology' of our own day as print was of the 16th and 17th centuries, telegraph of the 19th and radio and television of the 20th?
As a society divides into two opposing camps, perhaps what we are losing is the ability to spot fake news? There will be a tendency to see everything produced by the 'other side' as fake news whether it is or it isn't.
Historians are often guilty of assuming that people in the past swallowed stories about 'dog headed children' or the 'papal ass' whole. Surely we must give them enough agency to assume that many would have seen through such stories for what they were as many today will see through them for what they are?
Our own government is now getting into a terrible wax about 'fake news' and what I fear is that politicians may end up taking the view that China has had it right all along.
And that way, my friends, perdition genuinely does lie!
{Originally posted by cmcmck}
No so.
From Pope Julius II to the War of the League of Cambrai, via that genius of propaganda, Martin Luther (it is perhaps no accident that the term, 'propaganda' is an invention of the Roman Catholic church) and on into the 17th century and the news journals of such journalistic geniuses as Marchamont Nedham during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, my own period of study, we have had 'fake news'.
The two world wars were full of it although I suppose that states facing an existential threat may at least have a modicum of an excuse.
What is perhaps new, is the way that 'fake news' is now disseminated largely via the web, but what is the web if not the 'new technology' of our own day as print was of the 16th and 17th centuries, telegraph of the 19th and radio and television of the 20th?
As a society divides into two opposing camps, perhaps what we are losing is the ability to spot fake news? There will be a tendency to see everything produced by the 'other side' as fake news whether it is or it isn't.
Historians are often guilty of assuming that people in the past swallowed stories about 'dog headed children' or the 'papal ass' whole. Surely we must give them enough agency to assume that many would have seen through such stories for what they were as many today will see through them for what they are?
Our own government is now getting into a terrible wax about 'fake news' and what I fear is that politicians may end up taking the view that China has had it right all along.
And that way, my friends, perdition genuinely does lie!
{Originally posted by cmcmck}
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