"Fake news." It's our new favorite buzzword. A politician you like got criticized? Fake news! Outlets are printing statistical information that doesn't uphold your narrative? Fake news! Anyone publishes anything you don't like? What is... is fake news? There's a lot of buzz around this concept lately, but it isn't a new one. Not long ago words like "media bias" or "agenda-driven programming" would replace "fake news" in almost every one of those previously uttered sentences. And before that, words like Heresy Blasphemy Balderdash and Poppycock were equivalents. They're just quick phrases constructed to de-legitimize another person's perspective without examining it. Fake news. TV: "We may lose the Vietnam War" Fake news. Duke of Fakenewsington: "Yes, your Royal Highness, the colonies want to revolt!" Fake news. Fake news. Og-funded media So if people have been trying to discredit information they disagree with since the dawn of time, Why is the concept of "fake news" so much more pressing at the present moment? It's been said that we now live in a "post truth" era, and that leads me to ask... When was the era of truth? Did I miss it? At what point did we devolve from a population of Highly-tuned skeptics and into uncritical consumers of faulty information? "Oh my, did you fact-check your newsfeed today?" "Why yes, of course! I fact-check my news feed every day." "As per usual, not a single error from Facefeed." "Yes indeed, and jessicasorganicblog.wordpress.com is impeccable!" [Swoon] "Isn't it always?" Such thinking is fantastical. People have always spread misinformation to promote their own views. Before the 1980s, there were basically only four TV networks where all of your news came from. And since they were all mostly on the same page, we got a lot of the same information. Even if these networks meant well, When they got something wrong, that meant everybody got it wrong. And this was a big problem. But then, with the advent and popularity of the internet, these networks no longer held a monopoly over the public's access to information, and you could get information from anyone with any perspective. There are obvious downsides to this. Folks on the internet have fooled other people into doing all sorts of stupid things, like... microwaving their cell phones and forwardingthisemailtoeveryone on theircontactlistlesttheyreceive7yearsbadluckandnotbekissedbytheircrushthisfriday. Television media, on the other hand, convinced the public that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when there weren't, That the WikiLeaks were unreliable, and that Full House was funny... I'll let you decide which bit of misinformation was worse for society. When the internet allowed organizations like WikiLeaks to provide us with pertinent information that was being withheld from the public, Most of the big players in media did nothing but try to discredit them. Even though they turned out to be right. It's obvious that this kind of information would never have made it to the public made it to the public if we had exclusively trusted old media. So it's good thing we didn't! Is "fake news" new? No way! But the amount of access we have to it is. On the flip side we now have greater access to accurate information we may not have had before. So, how does one operate within this landscape? 1. When you hear an extraordinary claim, demand extraordinary evidence. 2. Check the sources on every article. 3. Keep your guard up and don't be quick to outrage. 4. Be the most skeptical of that which you wish to be true. Most importantly, 5. Don't just write off a story because it's from a website you distrust. Fact check them and examine their arguments. Don't just write them off by calling them fake news. And who knows, you might be surprised. A broken clock is right twice a day. "Fake news."