Fake news

I have long struggled to understand the term ‘fake news’. I know it is a term much favoured by Mr Trump and his assistants and supporters, and politicians from the UK and others have taken it in, but what does it mean.

For Mr Trump it means something he doesn’t like, something that casts him in a bad light, inconvenient stuff. Son Donald Junior met with senior Russian officials… fake news.

Most people, I assume, take it to mean ‘lies’. Mr Trump, of course, does not believe that words have meaning. He is happy to just say anything. His use of English is approximate. A telephone call from the President of Mexico is really a brief chat that they had at a summit some months ago, but, to most Americans, it is still acceptable as a statement even though it was a total lie. President Obama personally wire tapping Trump Tower is really someone vaguely associated with the Obama government may at some point have done some surveillance on someone in Trump Tower. The words mean nothing.

To me, fake news can indeed mean lies, but it can mean something else. Again, we have ambiguity with the words. Fake news can mean actually factually correct but not newsworthy. I had coffee for breakfast today – true but fake news.

It’s very easy to dismiss anything you don’t like as fake news. It’s too easy.

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