In my blog of November 27th last year I ran a
couple of pieces resulting from an attempt to play creatively with the concept
of ‘fake news’. Influenced by the work
of poets such as Steve Spence, I was looking at what could be done by collaging
‘found text’ from various sources with or without insertions of words that
occurred to me during the process. I’d
started by looking through a UK newspaper and mashing together headlines to
maintain grammatical consistency whilst juxtaposing disconnected content (‘man
accused in birthday suitcase struggle’, ‘sales figures play tricks 40 years on’). I’d then attempted to similarly mash up the
content of the articles from which I’d lifted parts of the headlines to create
a spoof chunk of ‘news’.
In the first of these, ‘cost of living set to a hot samba
rhythm’ I cut in content from Wikipedia and phrases or sentences that simply occurred
to me in the process of putting it together, in the second, ‘college award is
toast’, I took a more austere approach and simply collaged content from the
articles on the page from which I’d lifted the headline words.
My purpose was to see what came out of this
experimentation and whether it gave any bearing or perspective on the media and
particularly around the concept of ‘fake news’ itself. I’m not sure it led to any great revelations
but was aware that the second piece in particular demonstrated how convincing
the language of reportage can seem, even when it is broken apart and re-assembled
into nonsense. There was something about
the tone that continued to make it feel like you were reading ‘news’. This, in itself, I found instructive.
Since then, of course, we’ve had the man who has been
coining the term for all it is worth over the past year announce his ‘Fake News
Awards’ in which it appears that reports (not always actual news articles) were
selected by the president and his team in which there were factual
inaccuracies. It has been subsequently
pointed out that in each case, those inaccuracies were duly acknowledged by
those responsible; apologies and corrections were issued once the errors came
to light. The whole thing was a further
step in a crude strategy of obfuscation, an ongoing attempt to undermine trust
in anyone who voices an opinion critical of the regime. Whether this will work for them in the long
run, I’ve no way of telling.
The difficulty around it all is that there are often good
reasons to distrust the press and media coverage of ‘news’. The very act of transforming information
about events that occur in the world into ‘stories’ implies a series of
manipulations. What is selected, what is
left out, and by what criteria? Whatever
their level of integrity, the purveyors of ‘news’ have to sell their product to
us in order to make a living – so this becomes a factor in its presentation. The level of complexity in human affairs is
such that we may well be incapable of perceiving a true and accurate picture of
what is going on, anyway. It’s no wonder
we prefer the distraction of trivia, and therefore that’s what a large proportion
of our media contains.
Years ago, journalist friends of mine used to joke about
the ultimate UK tabloid headline – if I remember rightly it went something
like: ‘Transvestite Vicar in Last Minute Mercy Dash to Rescue Palace Corgis’. Sounds like one of my mash-ups, doesn’t it? Maybe I should continue this line of
research.
But I recognise that now I’ve made myself a part of all
this. Those of you who read this blog
presumably do so because I provide some level of interest and entertainment –
implying a level of shared taste. The
views I occasionally express may well coincide with yours. Such things propel us into one of those
social media type ‘bubbles’ in which we feed one another only that which we
want to hear. We cherry-pick information
according to our bias. This too brings a
level of fakery into the ‘news’. Is
there any way out of the fog?
Personally I can only go back to one of the reasons I
gave for writing my book ‘Wilful Misunderstandings’ – to promote the idea of
mental flexibility. Neither trust nor
distrust any viewpoint completely. If
you favour a left-wing approach, don’t close your mind to what the right-wing
are saying, and vice versa. Beware of swallowing
any information without cross-examining it, no matter how much it appeals to
your personal bias. Maintain humility,
and a perpetual sense that there is far more that you don’t know than that you
do.
It probably won’t help you win friends and influence
people, mind. I mean, look what it’s
done for me.
