Tag: Cable News

 

News narratives stimulate fake news. The fact that news agencies formulate a narrative designed to guide public opinion, including political news, is general knowledge. Accordingly, news stories are selected or rejected to promote or reinforce the “narrative. Conversely, stories that do not support the “narrative are eliminated or buried in the back of the publication, or buried at the end of a report behind other irrelevant information.

The issue is not new. The narrative of the news media concerning the Viet Nam War was changed after the North Viet Nam Army and Viet Con Communist forces launched the Tet Offensive.

In February 1968,  in the wake of the Tet Offensive, the respected TV journalist Walter Cronkite, who had been a moderate and balanced observer of the war’s progress, announced that it seemed ‘more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.'”

Walter Cronkite down played the fact that the Tet Offensive was repelled by United States and South Vietnamese forces suffering one tenth the casualties of the attackers. Although South Vietnamese forces proved quite capable during the counter offensive and communist forces were severely weakened, the Tet Offensive was characterized as a defeat. To me, this misrepresentation of facts constituted fake news. The news changed the perception of the war and drastically increased anti-war sentiment in the United States. Decades later North Vietnamese generals admitted that they were defeated but understood that they only had to delay long enough for the anti-war sentiment in the United States to end the war politically giving them victory.

In my opinion, Walter Cronkite should have ended his nightly news program saying, That’s the way we choose to portray it month, day, year, instead of saying, That’s the way it was month, day, year. The same is true for most news today.

Fake news has been in the news lately as well. Once a news narrative is posited, fake news is often started on Internet social media sites like Facebook,  Twitter, or other Internet News outlets. Unfortunately, traditional standards of Journalism such as source vetting and multiple source conformation, do not apply at many of these sources. Some of these Fake News stories originate with unfriendly foreign governments, like Russia or North Korea, intent on manipulating public opinion in our political process, foreign affairs, socio-economic system, and culture. Fake News has been treated as legitimate news by traditional print and mainstream broadcast news agencies without proper vetting when the fraud fits the Narrative.

Legitimate pols can become fake news, or least a misrepresentation of public opinion, when specific responses fitting the narrative are emphasized because the answers fit the narrative. Pols can also be manipulated by the order and nature of the questions leading respondents to the desired headline opinion that fits the narrative of the news agency involved. In this situation, the headline and first section of the story, or news, reinforces the narrative. Opinions that mitigate or modify the narrative are buried later in the story or left out hoping the public does not go to the complete pols for a more realistic view of the opinions of the entire pol creating  fake news through omission.

The 24/7 “news” cycle that evolved with cable television introduced an abundance of editorial style expert analysis, opinion programs, and opinion segments as part of hard news programs. Internet news outlets are also heavily involved in editorial and opinion writing. Some influential bloggers also get involved in news dissemination, analysis, and opinion. These outlets often blur the distinction between news, editorials, and opinion. When the editorial opinion writing and punditry matches the narrative, opinion and expert analysis often turns into headlines and lead stories. This is especially true when the editorials and opinions concern the outcome of elections, the future of the economy, a corporation, how healthcare will change, or what the tax plan will contain, etc. This news is often just hours and pages of viral speculation. In many situations the punditry from one outlet is subsequently debated on another outlet. When opinion is reported as fact, the result is, in reality, fake news.

In my opinion, the majority of news outlets in the United States and the world are dominated by progressives and disseminate news based on the progressive narrative. This narrative opposes Biblical Christianity, the Biblical traditional family, reduction or elimination of  influence of Christianity on our culture, personal responsibility and morality, and favors progressive culture, economic principles, and centralized government over Biblical Christianity, capitalistic economic concepts, and limited government.

Join the fray. All of the America’s Crossroad Posts are listed by categories in the  BLOG CONTENTS tab.  If you decide to read a few, please leave comments about your “Patriot Visions,” start or join the conversation, and share the Posts with friends and political frienimies.