Fake News! Everybody thinks they know what it is. Today, August 3 2017 we call any reporting that doesn't match our core beliefs on political, economic and social issues Fake!
The term itself has become a political issue that divers people: How to define it?
Please there are certain things that everyone can actually agree about "Fake News".:
1- it's nothing new
2- it reached its heyday in the 19th Century
3- it moved people to populate the with exaggerated stories of gold prospecting.
4- it contributed to the Civil War by creating hysteria on both sides of the issue.
It lead us to the first war of the 20th century: The Spanish American War, which started in 1898 but didn't officially end until 1902.
Back then it was called the "yellow a Press". William Randolph Hearst was a genius at generating advertising dollars from large corporations by taking a story that contained actual facts and then completely embellishing it to plant emotional reactions in the American public.
To date the best Example of this was the way the sinking of the American battleship Main in Havana Harbor in 1898 provoked a war with Spain.
Fact: a civil War in Cuba was increasingly bloody and American lives and investments on the island were at risk.
Fact the US sent a large battleship (the main) to Havana Harbor to ensure American citizens could be easily and quickly evacuated if the need arose.
Fact on the night of Feb 15, 1898 the ship mysteriously exploded killing 2/3 of its crew, nearly 300 American soldiers and starting a war between the United States and Spain that the US won and received Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam and Samoa and the Mariana Islands.
Fake News: Even before a Naval Inquiry could issue its report, popular opinion in the U.S., fanned by inflammatory articles printed in the "yellow press" by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, blamed Spain.
The phrase, "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!", became a rallying cry for action, and day after day the yellow press printed pictures of the badly burned and maimed American solders, and of arrogant Spanish well dressed citizens sitting at the port enjoying cocktails and meals as the limp burned bodies of US naval personnel were carried in stretchers before them. The Us public went wild with hysteria and rage demanding President Mckingley take revenge. black cocktail party wears with lace
Of course United Fruit Company and other interested American corporations paid for street mobs to riot and protest in the Us until the war started.
Well now we are very close to aConstitutional Crisis. The Russian intervention is a serious threat to us and our democracy, but we are divided rather than United and two sides on the political spectrum are dangerously approaching disengagement wit our alliance to the nation and substituting it with alliance to our leaders or our party.
Today Facebuck started its new fact finding Department which will employ over 600 staff to follow New-stories posted on Facebook with suspicious origins and or unverifiable credentials. Although trying to balance freedom of speech with separating out Fake News from professional journalism is very difficult Mark Zuckerman announced he would star the project to be joined by google and others to find a way to segregate fake news from professional journalism.
We now know that 60% of fake new stories with phony respectable credentials were posted and reposted over 20 million times on Facebook during the campaign. 90% originated from 40'young hackers in Macedonia and their Russian supervisors. Almost all were anti Hillary Clinton stories that people wanted to believe.
We have seen to want nearly criminal extremes Fox News went to promote the conspiracy theory of Seth Rich's murder as a hit by Hillary Clinton to stop him from giving information that would steer the public and Medias attention toward Hilary and free them of anymore Russian reporting.
This saga continues and this is proving to be bigger than expected!