[LINK] Fake News

[David Lochrin]

The Saturday Paper has a lead article this week (ending today) on fake news which I recommend, and it's available at https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2016/11/26/how-fake-news-online-skewed-the-us-election/14800788004023

It begins thus:

QUOTE
Somewhere in the middle of 2002, when the Bush administration was making its case for the Iraq war, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind had an illuminating conversation with a senior adviser to the president on the subject of truth and reality.

Suskind recounted it in a piece for The New York Times Magazine in October 2004, headed "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush": "The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community', which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality'.  I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism.  He cut me off.  'That’s not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued.  'We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.'"

Suskind wrote that he did not at first realise the full significance of what the adviser said; that it wasn’t just about the Iraq war, but about its whole approach to governing and maintaining power.
UNQUOTE

...and much more; the article is mostly about the possibly decisive role of fake news during the Trump campaign and how it was done.  If political administrations feel they can now ignore the real world then I think we're in for a torrid time.

David L.