THE TRUTH ABOUT FAKE NEWS

Sometimes people behave badly just because it’s so easy to do and there are no real consequences for doing it. Donald Trump’s attacks on the news media and his calling any news he doesn’t like “fake news” is a perfect example.

Journalism began to lose its reputation as a responsible and respected profession in the 1980s as broadcast media (radio and television) turned their news departments, which they had previously operated as a public service, into profit centers. Reporting the news, as practiced by famed television journalists like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, was gradually replaced with an entertainment product, a product not unlike professional wrestling and reality TV.

In the “good old days” the news was what it was – informative, objective, factual and straight forward. Journalists just told you what had happened. They did occasionally offer opinions about events, but those were clearly labeled as editorials. Those days are long gone. Today, you won’t see, hear or read a news story without a half dozen self-proclaimed experts (pundits) sharing an opinion about, attempting to interpret or otherwise spinning the story to make it more pleasing or palatable to a specific audience. You no longer need to expose yourself to the news that is. You can choose the news you want. As Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan predicted it would be in 1964, “The medium is the message’’.

It was only a short step from choosing the news you want to claiming the news you don’t want is not the real news, or “fake news.” Donald Trump, knowing something about entertainment, reality TV and, by association, news as an entertainment product recognized this lack of confidence in the news media as an opportunity, seized that opportunity and has been exploiting it for his own purposes ever since.

Donald Trump has been called a lot of things, none of them flattering. But there are two things he is not. He is not stupid and he is not crazy. He is ignorant about many things and he is evil, in the sense that he derives pleasure from causing other people pain and suffering, but they are not the same as stupid and crazy. In fact, what he demonstrated throughout his campaign and continues to demonstrate since he took office is his absolute mastery of the news media as an entertainment product. And he is using that mastery to retain the support of the 30% of American voters, who are as ignorant and evil as he is and who see him as their voice and as the champion of their beliefs, by ensuring that, whatever anyone else might do or say, they hear or see the news he wants them to hear or see. He knows he only needs that 30% to hold the Republican Party hostage because without that 30% the Republicans will lose all the power they now hold. He also knows, as does the Republican Party, that Mike Pence can’t hold that 30% (he's too straight-laced and not arrogant enough), which is why the Republicans won’t do anything to remove Mr. Trump from office, at least not until after the mid-term elections.

I believe Donald Trump sees his presidency as a business venture. As long as he remains President he can continue to change the laws to benefit his businesses (and those of his Robber Baron friends) and funnel tax dollars into his (and their) pockets; and all he needs to do to remain President is retain the support of the that 30%.....but I digress.

Donald Trump totally controls the news media in this country and by doing so he ensures that his supporters get the news he wants them to have. Shame on the journalists who abandoned the integrity of their profession to satisfy their employers’ greed and made it so easy for him to do so.  

THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE

I don’t know if it is unique to us here in the United States or a worldwide phenomenon, but when we have a behavior problem here in this country, we definitely have a strong tendency to characterize that problem by its symptoms and focus all our energies on trying to eliminate those symptoms; instead of focusing on the cause of the problem. 

When people use illegal drugs, like methamphetamine and heroin, we say we have a drug problem and declare war on drugs to try to reduce the availability of the drugs.  When Muslim Jihadists terrorize western cities we say we have a terrorist problem and declare war on terror to try to eliminate the terrorists. And when people kill other people with guns we say we have a gun violence problem and scream “Make it harder for people to buy guns.” None of these responses address why people do these things. Dealing with the symptom of a problem instead of dealing with the cause of the problem is as uselss as "putting the cart before the horse".

If you’ve been following this blog, you may remember I pointed out in my very first post (HOW BAD IS BAD – June 20. 2017) that bad behavior is willful. People choose to behave badly and they do so for a reason, usually because it meets a need. I also pointed out in a subsequent post (THE CATCH IN THE CONSEQUENCE – July 5, 2017) that if people are behaving badly because it meets a need, we are not going to stop that bad behavior until we figure out what that need is and address it.

Don’t get me wrong. I am NOT against regulation. In a civilized society, anything that is potentially dangerous to the public needs to be regulated; and most things are (i.e. driving a car, flying a plane, performing surgery, prescribing medicine, operating a restaurant, selling alcohol or cigarettes, building a house, etc.). Dangerous drugs need to be controlled, people associated with known terrorist organizations need to be kept off airplanes and it’s probably fair to say there need to be some restrictions on who can own guns and what kinds of guns they can own. I am just trying to point out that eliminating the symptom of a problem doesn’t solve the problem.  When we slowed the flow of cocaine coming into the U.S. from Latin America, the people who were using cocaine didn’t stop using drugs. They switched to using methamphetamine, which they could make themselves in a cabin in the woods. When we required passengers boarding an airplane to go through a metal detector, people who wanted to cause havoc on airplanes switched from carrying a box cutter in their pocket to putting a bomb in their shoe. Making guns harder to buy legally will just mean that people who want guns will have to buy them illegally.

Getting to the root causes of these behavior problems will be difficult. We may very well find that these behaviors, these symptoms, are caused by flaws in some of our basic belief systems, like capitalism and religion, or the failure of some of our essential institutions, like education and health care. In fact, I’m pretty sure that is exactly what we will find and I am also pretty sure we know that’s what we’ll find, which is why we don’t want to go there - don’t even want to look. It’s a lot easier to just go after the symptoms and tell ourselves we’re doing the best we can. It’s just that eliminating the symptoms of a problem won’t solve the problem. Our problems will just get worse until we deal with what’s causing them.

In 2002, a year to the date after 9/11, I attended the Youth Employment Summit in Alexandria, Egypt as part of a delegation from the National Youth Employment Coalition. Youth practitioners from more than 160 countries came to the conference looking for ways to deal with the fact that a billion young people worldwide would be entering the workforce over the next 10 years while only three hundred million workers would be retiring or otherwise leaving the workforce. Mrs. Hosni Mubarak, the wife of the President of Egypt, was the keynote speaker. She set the tone for the conference by calling attention to these statistics and pointing out that “If we, the nations of the world, do not find ways to provide these young people with gainful employment they will most assuredly disrupt our communities and destabilize our societies”. Apparently, her husband, President Mubarak, didn’t listen to his wife’s speech because nine years later, in 2011, he was thrown out of office and put in prison (where he remained for six years) during the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, which was led by young Egyptians who couldn’t find jobs because not enough new jobs had been created. 

Obviously, there is a moral to this story - Always listen to your wife.

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Here we go again. More really bad behavior. Another mass murder followed by the same old questions. How did he get all those guns into the hotel? Where was hotel security? How did he get all those guns in the first place? Why don’t we have stricter gun control? And the same thing is going to happen as happened after previous mass murders. Nothing!

There are three elements to murder – means, opportunity and motive (MOM); and all we ever talk about are means and opportunity – stricter gun control and tighter security. That is unfortunate because stricter gun control and tighter security are not going to solve the problem. The problem is motive. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Until we address why people behave this way, we aren’t going to stop this kind of horrific behavior.

The single most common reason people act violently is anger and the single most common reason people get angry is pain. They’ve been hurt and they lash out, usually at the people who hurt them, but if they can’t get to those people, at someone or something they associate with those people. Sometimes they just lash out at whoever happens to be close by. The only way to stop this kind of violent response to anger is to stop the pain that caused the anger in the first place. Eliminate motive and we don’t have to worry about means and opportunity. Eliminate the pain and we don’t have to worry about guns and security.

Violence is not the problem. It’s a symptom of the problem. This isn’t about access to guns. It’s about the lack of access to mental health care. This isn’t about inadequate security. It’s about insufficient concern and compassion for the needs of our fellow human beings. Mass murderers, like international terrorists, aren’t going to stop killing people until we find a way to stop their pain.  

UNDER SEIGE

I have never had a problem with commerce. It is an essential component of civilization. It helps spread the workload around and distribute the wealth. Finding a need for a product or service, meeting that need at a reasonable price and walking away with a profit works just fine. Letting people know what you have to offer and where you can be found - advertising - is a necessary and appropriate part of commerce. But, that doesn’t seem to be what is happening these days. Businesses aren’t meeting people’s needs; they are creating them.

If my home is my castle, I feel like I’m under siege. People trying to sell me stuff are on my phone, in my e-mail, all over my Facebook account and stuffed into my mail box every single day trying to take my money. I am not talking about Nigerian Prince scams. I am talking about so called legitimate businesses – phone companies, cable and internet providers, banks, credit card companies, utility companies, drug companies, insurance companies, hospitals, airlines, the processed food industry, the entertainment industry, the fashion industry, even local retailers. They come at you with very sophisticated messages and elaborate strategies developed by top notch psychologists designed to manipulate you, trick you, trap you, intimidate you, or embarrass you into giving them your money for something you didn’t want and don’t need. Once they have you hooked, they reel you in with a lot of double-speak, so you don’t have a chance to read the fine print, and then they suck you dry with all sorts of fees that nobody can explain or understand, more tricks and traps, outright lies and a customer service strategy that runs you in circles until you get so frustrated you forget what you were complaining about in the first place. And then there is all the behind the scenes stuff they do to weaken anti-trust laws, eliminate regulations that protect consumers, reduce their liability and block competition.

When the Nazis introduced these techniques during the Third Reich it was called propaganda. When the Communists refined these same techniques during the Cold War it was called brain washing. Madison Avenue calls it marketing, but it’s all the same thing – people getting into your head to try to get you to give them something they haven’t earned – usually it’s your money, but it could be your power, your allegiance, your vote, everything but your first born child, and maybe that, too, if they thought they could get away with it.

Is it just me or are you feeling like you are under siege, too? If I am not alone, maybe we should do what singer/songwriter David Bromberg does at his live shows. He doesn’t like people telling him what to play. That’s understandable. It’s his show. So if someone in the audiences asks for a song, he absolutely won’t play it, even if he planned to. It works pretty well for him. Once he explains what he is doing, the audience shuts up and lets him play what he wants to play. At the very least, we should start recognizing marketing for what it is, not good business, but a deceitful and destructive hustle that enables businesses to prey on people rather than serve their needs.