Remember: the very people finger-wagging you about “misinformation” and “fake news” are the same people who’ve been steadily lying to you for the last seven years. Of course, they’ve been at it for far longer than that, but the mask really came off in 2016 — and got thrown to the winds in 2020.
But fake news is by no means restricted to completely-made-up stories. In fact, some of the worst fake news is the stuff that misleads by telling the kinda-sorta truth in a very mendacious manner. “A truth that’s told with bad intent,” as William Blake wisely observed, “Beats all the lies you can invent.”
Case in point, this Newshub headline:
US midterms: Newshub US correspondent Mitch McCann says Donald Trump supporters at rally surprisingly friendly to NZ media.
What’s misleading or fake news about that, you ask?
Consider its unspoken premise: that we should expect Trump supporters to be hostile to NZ media.
Speaking with AM Newshub US correspondent Mitch McCann said Trump supporters at Monday’s rally were surprisingly friendly to New Zealand media.
“The Trump rally was incredible…I was really surprised actually how nice and courteous people were to us and how much they wanted to talk about New Zealand after we told them we were from New Zealand. I think if we told them we were American media the reception might have been a little different,” McCann revealed.
Because, of course, Trump supporters are all drooling brownshirts who hates them goldurned furriners.
The feigned “surprise” reminds me of the Huffington Post correspondent who joined a “group of far-right moms”, and was shocked to discover that they were pleasant, friendly, with no overt extremism in sight. (No doubt Kate Hannah would patiently explain to her how this means that they were really a bunch of slavering neo-Nazis.)
He went on to describe the recent Trump rally as an “AMP show on steroids”.
“It was in a rural setting, there was music all afternoon, there were food trucks, everyone was having a great time… and then when Trump arrived later in the afternoon it was almost like Jesus had risen again and arrived in a 747 with his name on the side. Everyone went absolutely nuts…there was one woman there who had been to 93 Trump rallies,” he said.
In other words, good, old-fashioned, grass-roots stump politics.
Anyone who went to the Freedom Village in Wellington, or attended any of the hundreds of Freedom rallies across the world, will recognise the subtle lies at work, here. Not to mention the utter, stark disparity between what we’re told about “White Supremacists”, “far-right” and “extremists”, and the reality on the ground.
Sure, tell us more about “dangerous misinformation”, bought-and-paid-for media.
As an aside, there’s an ominous message for Jacinda Ardern buried in Newshub’s piece: no matter how much a leader has the media in their pocket, no matter how much they rant and rave that their opponents are “extremists”, the hard reality for voters always comes down to bread-and-butter stuff.
Momentum has shifted toward the Republicans in recent weeks as voters’ concerns about inflation and crime have outweighed those about abortion after the Supreme Court ended the nationwide right to abortion in June. Democrats’ early lead in several Senate races, including in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada, have shrunk or evaporated.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel voiced confidence on Sunday that her party will win both houses of Congress as she hammered home the inflation message.
“It’s rent. It’s groceries. It’s can I buy a new car because interest rates are so high? People are really, really struggling right now,” she told CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
Newshub
The media and the political class can wag their heads and tut about the sorts of things which exercise the feeble imaginations of Communications Studies and Women’s Studies graduates, but for voters living an increasingly hardscrabble existence in the real world, ‘kitchen table’ issues are most on their minds as the next election draws ever nearer.