Distortions, hoaxes and ‘fake news’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/11/2020 (1772 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The term ‘fake news’ has popped up quite a bit over the years and with social media’s expanding influence, it’s kind of hard to verify some stories out there. In one of the journalism courses I’ve taken over the years, I was shocked to hear that 75 per cent of people get their news from Facebook … yikes.

In itself, that was startling news to me.

I flash back now to the Send + Receive festival in Winnipeg in 2005. Mark Hosler of the band Negativland related a story about how his bandmate Richard Lyons had issued a press release in 1988 about how the band wasn’t able to tour that year as 16-year-old David Brom of Rochester, Minn., had killed his family with an axe after an argument with his father over Negativland’s song Christianity is Stupid.

The story was picked up by major news stations everywhere. The band members were contacted but told the media that because of legalities, they weren’t able to speak about it. A few months later, the band came clean and said it was all a hoax.

So how did this story become news that went on for so long?

Well, it seems that one news outlet picked up the story from the press release and copied it verbatim with other outlets doing the same. No one took the time to do any fact checking (except for the Village Voice, a few months later).

Hosler’s story kind of shook my faith in the media. But perhaps the people involved became a little more diligent in verifying stories and sources. I was reminded of the Edgar Allen Poe quote (from the short story The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether, 1845):

“Believe nothing you hear and only one half that you see.”

Although this is a somewhat cynical way of thinking, with some of the stuff you read on social media, it’s actually fairly good advice.

How do we know what news is real and which news is fake? Well for starters, it would be best to go to the source or a reputable news outlet. Hearing it from the horse’s mouth so to speak.

It’s quite amazing how stories can get twisted. I remember playing Telephone as a kid. The idea was to sit in a circle with a group of friends and one person would whisper a story into the next person’s ear and that person would ‘pass it on’ to the next and so on and so on. The last person would say the story out loud and it would often be so far off from the original story that it would have the whole room in fits of laughter.

The Negativland story was a bit twisted in itself and Mark Hosler said he would never do something like that nowadays but it did open his eyes.

Doug Kretchmer is a freelance writer, artist and community correspondent for the Times. Email him at quidamphotography@gmail.com

Twitter: @DougKretchmer