Beware the lies and manipulations of online media

With the advent of the computer age journalism has changed. Many people get their “news” on the web. The term blog is a combination of the words “web” and “log.” There are 600 million of them, with no way of rating the quality of the “blogger” posting material. There are many social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, etc. — and all of them are vying for your attention. There is an around-the-clock demand for news-quality stories.

People are not waiting for their morning or evening newspapers, or the news before or after work on television and radio, but are now now connected around the clock. Add to the pressure constantly having to produce “new, breaking news,” the fact that professional bloggers make money based on how many times their page is viewed. Advertisers pay a small fee for every time a blogger’s writing is clicked online. The problem for the blogger is that there are so many of them competing for attention.

Getting attention is the name of the game. For social media, it’s all in the headline. What sells? What motivates a person to click a link on Facebook or other website? Titillating stories of humiliation, conspiracy theories, anger, passion, humor, and tribalism work better than describing reality dispassionately. Reality is complex and takes effort to understand.

The blogger knows that emotionally charged pieces work better. Make the story passionate and short. Most people clicking on a link are not looking to really understand, but for an emotional charge proving themselves that they are right.

The social media sphere is set up for manipulators. Bloggers depend on getting people to click their link. Online, accuracy and truth take time, effort, and expense. Being first, being loud, and stoking an emotional response make money. If a blogger is successful in getting clicks and shares, the message can go viral. Traditional news organizations used to have the money and time to research a story and verify their sources. With the news cycle sped up, and news organizations being scrapped for ad money, the old virtue of accuracy in reporting has suffered.

Now, influential blogs often get their messages accepted by major media because it is in finished publishing form. The article can be plugged in with little or no effort or expense.

What do we end up with? We get affluent organizations capable of flooding social media with targeted messages that can create an alternative reality. We get cable channels labelling themselves as news channels peddling opinion dressed up as factual reporting. We end up with news organizations creating news instead of reporting news. An example is the silly story of “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory that leading Democrats were running a child sex ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant in Washington D.C. This story so incensed Edgar Madison Welch that he grabbed his guns and broke into the pizza restaurant to save the children. He found workers making pizzas in a building with no basement. Edgar served time in a halfway house. Believing in the social media version of reality can be dangerous.

If one sees a message that states “lots of people are saying…,” “an undisclosed source said…,” “according to media sources…,” “to quote a media pundit…,” or any other “join the bandwagon” endorsement, it is most likely “fake news” dreamed up by an anonymous blogger. If it contains overgeneralized memes such as “deep state,” “leftists,” “immigrant army,” and so on, stop and think. The government is made up of people like us, leftists are people like us, evangelicals are people like us, and immigrants are people like us. It is simpler to think of those we don’t know as enemies and evil. Reality is more complex and boring than that.

Spreading fear and hatred of others is the meat and potatoes of social media manipulators. Getting us to click their links is their profession, and continuing to click their links is the key to their success. It is not, however, the key to a well-informed media consuming public. The key is to find reputable, and independent news gathering sources that do the hard work of investigating their stories, and sources (like The Record Review).

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