More Civil Societies: Fake News
This week, Donald Trump dodged questions about Russian intervention in last year’s election by claiming that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was supported more by “fake news” than his own campaign.
In this episode of More Civil Societies, Julie Macken says the phrase gets thrown around a lot that you can tell if a politician isn’t being straight with voters and the media when they start using the phrase. However, she argues that there are some upsides to fake news reports – one being that it has forced people to be more critical of news stories.
“If readers, listeners and viewers are now much more aware about who made their news, who decided who gets to speak and who decides what actually constitutes news,” she says, “then this is a good thing because making news always involves these realities.”
