Fake News
Advent 4 2016
If it’s in the paper (or on the internet) it has to be true, right? Well,
really not so much. Every network in every medium is howling about the
amount of fake news and claiming that there really is no such thing as a
fact anymore. Everything depends on context and interpretation. And
before we label this phenomenon as yet another example of the coming
apocalypse, this idea of fake news, a lie presented as truth for someone’s
personal gain or advancement of a program, is not new according to the
journal published by the Columbia School of Journalism, which
certainly should know.
1835. The Great Moon Hoax. As described in the journal, “A series of
articles began appearing in the New York Sun on August 25, the latesummer brainchild of its ambitious publisher, Benjamin Day. Day
wanted to move papers, like every publisher, and came up with a novel
method. He began publishing a series of articles, allegedly reprinted
from an actually nonexistent scientific journal, about Sir John Herschel,
an eminent British astronomer on his way to the Cape of Good Hope to
test a powerful new microscope. As reported in the paper, what
Herschel saw on the moon was…life! Not just flora and fauna but living
men- hairy, yellow-faced guys, four feet tall with enormous wings that
‘possessed great expansion and were similar in structure to those of the
bat’. The Sun’s circulation hit a new high.”
1844. Edgar Allan Poe writes for the paper that the Atlantic Ocean was
crossed by balloon in three days, a feat that actually did happen, but not
until sixty years later.
1874. “Escaped animals roam streets of Manhattan”, the headlines
blared. “Twenty-seven people are killed, two hundred injured in terrible
scenes of mutilation. State militiamen are being called in to control the
situation and sensible New Yorkers have barricaded themselves in their
homes”. All not true but it did sell newspapers.
1897. In possibly the most famous example of the power of the press to
modulate the truth and manipulate public opinion, William Randolph
Hearst parlays the explosion of the USS Maine into a war with Spain
that garnered us a free Cuba, three new territories and the end of Spain’s
influence in the Western Hemisphere.
In later years we discover that photographs can be doctored and are we
really sure that our astronauts really landed on the moon?
And now, hey, hey hey- have you heard the news? Pope Francis has
come out in support of Hillary Clinton in the election. Really, he didyou can read it for yourself right here on the internet. The article says:
Vatican City- News outlets around the world are reporting on the news
that Pope Francis has made the unprecedented decision to endorse a US
presidential candidate. His statement in support of Hillary Clinton was
released from the Vatican this evening:... “I have been hesitant to offer
any kind of support for either candidate in the US Presidential election
but I now feel that to not voice my concern would be a dereliction of my
duty as the Holy See. A strong and free America is vitally important in
maintaining a strong and free world and in that sense what happens in
American elections affects us all. With that at the forefront of my mind I
must express my strong reservations about Mr Donald Trump. His
demeanor and temperament should preclude him from becoming
President. I fear he may be disastrous to the security, stability, and
prosperity of the United States and to the world. I believe that Secretary
Clinton would be a better, more stable choice.
Though I don’t agree with Secretary Clinton on some issues I am
asking, not as the Holy Father, but as a concerned citizen of the world
that Americans vote for Hillary Clinton for President of the United
States. Stay tuned to KYPO 6 News for more on this breaking news.
This was all over the internet during the election and I expect that a lot
of people read it and believed it. Probably about the same number of
people who read and believed the story that said Pope Francis was
breaking tradition and endorsing Donald Trump in an article that read
almost word for word. There also was a third, virtually identical news
report in which the Holy Father endorsed Bernie Sanders. The originator
of all of these stories was WTOE 5 News, “with news outlets around the
world”. This certainly sounds like a real news source, at least as real as
the Doylestown Intelligencer, but as it happens, they are a hoax, a fake
news site that masquerades as a local television news outlet but is
actually what is now called a fantasy news website. Not fantasy football,
which I’m all for, but fantasy news which is dangerous.
So what is different now, when did fake news shed its skin of innocence
and become downright scary? When this can happen: On November 22,
the New York Times published an article describing how “days before
the presidential election, James Alefantis, owner of a local pizza
restaurant called Comet Ping Pong, noticed an unusual spike in the
number of his Instagram followers. Within hours, menacing messages
like “we’re on to you” began appearing in his Instagram feed. In the
ensuing days, hundreds of death threats — one read “I will kill you
personally” — started arriving by text, Facebook and Twitter. All of
them alleged … that Comet Ping Pong was the home base of a child
abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief, John D.
Podesta. When Mr. Alefantis discovered that his employees were also
getting abusive messages, he looked online to unravel the accusations.
He found dozens of made-up articles about Mrs. Clinton kidnapping,
molesting and trafficking children in his restaurant’s back rooms.
The articles appeared on Facebook and on websites such as The New
Nationalist and The Vigilant Citizen. And none of it was true. While Mr.
Alefantis has some prominent Democratic friends in Washington and
was a supporter of Mrs. Clinton, he has never met her, does not sell or
abuse children, and is not being investigated by law enforcement for any
of these claims. He and his 40 employees had unwittingly become real
people caught in the middle of a storm of fake news. This would be a
sordid little story on a back page except for what happened next. A
North Carolina man, Edgar Welch, was arrested December 5 after he
walked into Comet Ping Pong carrying an assault rifle. The man told
police later that he had come to the restaurant to “self-investigate” that
fake news story. Mr Welch walked in the front door, fired a couple of
shots and pointed a firearm in the direction of a restaurant employee.
Luckily, no one was hurt and the would-be shooter arrested, but this
could have so easily gone so much worse.
I repeat my question. What is different now? Now, everything moves at
the speed of light. In the past news travelled slowly, even with daily
newspapers you would read an article and have to wait until the next
edition to get an update on the story. Now? Our whole concept of what
“fast” means is different. Just in the course of writing this, I’ve probably
checked my email 427 times because I asked someone a question and
why do I not have the answer yet? It feels like we spend our existences
in hyperdrive, rushing headlong towards whatever comes next, focused
on whatever hasn’t even happened yet. I am the poster child for this and
I need a quick zap on my training collar to make me stop. And guys, this
isn’t going to get any better. Over the next few years we are going to
have to run to stay in the same place, we are going to have to develop
discerning hearts and minds and constantly have our antennae circling to
separate fact from fiction, truth from fantasy. But oh, thank heaven for
the season of Advent. Now more than ever, this year more than I ever I,
you, we all need to sit in silence and let the clockwork in our brains run
down. I, you, we all need to clear out the boxes and lumber from our
brain-attic, as Sherlock Holmes called it, and make room for a miracle to
enter. We need to make room for hope.
We aren’t getting much of that from the newspaper. We certainly don’t
get any from the apocalyptic fake news that pops up like a virus on
Facebook. And honestly we haven’t been getting a lot from some of the
readings we’ve heard the past few weeks, today’s gospel excepted. Now
more than ever, this year more than ever, the season calls us to be
present. To be quiet. To expect the best, for a change. Fake news is all
around us. And in the real world, there’s bad news, worse news,
challenging news, news that will demand our attention and our action
and it’ll still be there waiting for us. But let’s just try to let it wait for a
minute. For a week. For the star-lit delivery of the real news, the good
news. Advent calls us to be present and to at least try to put our own
agendas on the back burner. Part of an intercession I just saw reads:” It's
cold here. And the news is terrible. And people we love are sick and
hurting. And it is Advent so we're waiting. But it feels like it's been
Advent forever”. I know. It’s hard to wait. We have become a people
unused to waiting. Where we used to be a people of the book, we are
now a people of the internet, living in the instant, living surrounded by
our stuff: our fears, our regrets, our plans. Advent gives us the gift of
time, if we are willing to accept it. A friend of the author Ann LaMott
tells her what the promise of Advent is to him. He says that it’s that God
has set up a tent among us and will help us work together on our stuff.
And this will only happen over time. For you and for me; together with
God, over time, blessed time. And that’s the news. Amen.