Fake News: When the Oxymoron becomes a Business Model

Do newsrooms need ethicists, orists and IT engineers? Is re a growing call for better domain kwledge among editors and reporters on subjects such as environment, medicine and urban planning? ecomist John Kennet Galbraith once wrote that if people h to pick between changing ir mind or proving re was need to, most would be busy looking for proof. It is too early to tell if re is a natural pushback against fake news, but something is happening. 

This piece dresses how fake news reporting is an example of finding proof to prove a prejudice also called an nda in journalese. I try to frame it in context of media ethics including editorial and business practices and governance issues.

News is an asset to be handled with integrity. B reporting and even lies have been around since dawn of reporting. Governments, civil society, corporate houses even editors, plant stories on unsuspecting reporters. Exaggerated company returns, false data including fake medical analysis is stuff of high profile media manment where mand and manrs mingle mindlessly. w, challenged by speed and funding priorities, fake political news is new yellow, high on speed and often low on accuracy. Fact checks, independent research and reing are considered old school, t fast eugh to keep pace with techlogy and -bait revenue models. 

Why would anyone believe inaccurate information, you may ask? Human beings move in groups. Beyond reing and listening y need to belong to larger and more widely lauded versions of truth and accuracy. Ethicists, philosophers and even propagandists study this echo-chamber phemen. In context of newsrooms it sits bly on legacy business models that have functioned along two main divisions – editorial and vertising. Internet with its speed and access has changed that, installing in its place a caste system of information flow as most editors continue to grapple with news even as ground from under ir feet slips. 

“For a long time, through Internet’s first and second generations, people naturally assumed that faster must be better; slowness was a vestige of a bygone era, a techlogical hurdle to overcome. What y missed is that human institutions and intermediaries often impose slowness on purpose. Slowness is a social techlogy in its own right, one that protects humans from mselves,” writes Jonathan Rauch in Atlantic.

Editors – anyone re? 

That protective human interface should ideally have come from editors. But, as new platforms like Google and Facebook me inros into newsrooms causing revenues to dip, ir (editors’) failure to see this and come up with ar business model meant eir y were complicit or igrant. Many transformed mselves into Editor and CEO dangerously blurring firewalls between two mutually exclusive disciplines – journalism and business. Conflict of interest was rarely declared. 

Was a CEO editor a businessperson or a journalist?  If both, when did reporter become businessperson? situation in India where family owned media houses are common, this reality dams journalism. Ethics is t a conversation – it is a lived and felt requirement that must be publicly endorsed by a team and hered to daily. re are few examples that hold promise, but most don’t pass scrutiny. Techlogy cant be blamed for poor journalism. Judgement, especially that of editors needs dressing as well. Few understand deontology. News, opinions, vocacy have been rolled into one hash tag masquering as report including silly guidance like two minute res, 10 minute res, long res etc. 

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Doles are fake news’ business cousin

Journalism is a public good. Unfortunately, most media is longer trusted because media doesn’t trust itself, having turned itself into a victim.  For lack of a better term, I’m using highly derogatory word “coolie” which is used for computer programmers around world. This term is indispensable to tre but t worthy of respect unless of course you are privileged and wear many masks. Status quo loves “coolies,” and vances in techlogy are anama to m.

Techlogy companies that refuse to say wher y are media platforms or vertising conglomerates have destroyed news in two ways. First, by occupying vacated by editors and second by handing out little grants to keep “news” pipeline healthy, but t healthy eugh to be free. “coolie” concept loves status quo. 

demands of se mini-news rooms sitting on massive platforms is uniform – focus on community stories, make news hyper-local, do t look beyond your neighbourhood i.e. do t be more ambitious than funders want you to be. Patronising is fake news’ business cousin. elephant in room is vertising market and funding of fake busters. past few years have seen a burgeoning of fact-checking news sites that are part of -bait circuit. fake news circuit is typically 24-hours long and correct itself in some cases by wilfully propelled backlash time eugh to secure s. 

Understanding Internet and its methods is an acquired skill

re is ideal world or on Internet, but re are some key requirements of free speech. “se are privacy and security, openness, digital inclusion, web literacy and decentralisation,” said Jairus Khan ethical hacker and communications expert of Mozilla Foundation speaking at CyFy 2019, a meeting on Techlogy, Invation and Society organised by Observer Research Foundation (ORF) at Tangiers, Morocco.  Apparently an Internet illiterate person requires 53 skills to handle beast and se skills are t necessarily intuitive. Pressure cooker newsrooms are fertile grounds for fake news reports including deep fakes as reporters lack domain kwledge and training.   

Experts say some eight American and Chinese companies dominate digital world with layers of information stored back to back – a sort of carpet occupation of mind that first targets newsrooms. Google and Facebook control 84 per cent of vertising market, Facebook with over two billion users has 98 per cent of revenues ($55 billion) from vertisements – question must be asked – are y an vertising company?

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Helines are bottom lines competing for in unhealthy ways behind fig leaf of fake news. In this market-driven battle, operative word is control: states, companies, human beings – all want to control and mitigate information irrespective of its relevance.  Status quo also loves control and it can be me to roll and rile depending on nda. 

What is your fake quotient? 

truth of ethics, media and investments was brought home to me when a group I am mentoring on media and techlogy told me ir funders asked which part of ir news site dressed fake news. When y said y were IT engineers wishing to strengn good journalism with new tools and algorithms, funders lost interest.  Empowering kwledge is a tricky business when intent and interests pull in opposite directions. Young people are learning this today. y are also learning that verifiers of fake news are part of a closed and undeclared applauding unit across political spectrums with membership only entry.  Fake news typically works in a 24-hour cycle (international timelines), self propels and is eir corrected or self corrects but visibility ensures revenue. 

I am trying to imagine a newsroom whose only work is to bust fake news because revenue is tied to s. A hashtag is t journalism. 

Olga Stern, Co-Founder of Genews.io is a Swedish software engineer who has developed a unique programme. She helps newspapers flatten bias in ir content. She analysed 16 newspapers and “…found that only 13 per cent of articles were about women,” she told me at Tangiers. She has w created a complete service for newspapers resulting in a national discussion on equality reporting and plans to take her invation to English media soon. 

Designed to set kwledge free, Internet regulators around world are w trying to curtail it.  Media is first port of call. Censorship is a global concern and cut and paste attempts are ate efforts to censor are called “splinter net”, carrying rules and regulations according to government models, cultures and value systems. In last five years at least 50 countries have tried to regulate this . United States (US), European Union (EU), China and more recently India are all having a go at leing it conversations to about return of Nanny state with one big difference – or than a total ban, how do you regulate internet? Each country has its own axe to grind – China, for example has restricted Facebook and or western tech giants since 2009, EU has its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which is serving as a model for or countries but here is sting. We are t even scratching surface of deep fakes (which have existed for deces and Artificial Intelligence (AI). 

Techlogy will t make human beings honest, more than it will make journalists ethical. Fake news is an oxymoron, and a business model that bullies use to gang toger while throwing a few morsels at small news organisations. se groups include senior media people as well as, all fast and furious to break stories without basic checks. 

An overhaul is in making. re are new entrants in media field – doctors and philosophers, ethicists, lawyers, engineers and lay people who are taking up careers in media. y are motivated by one thing – desire to bring back magic of responsible reporting and storytelling. It matters.

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( views and opinions expressed within this article are personal opinions of author. facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in article do t reflect views of Republic TV/ Republic World/ ARG Outlier Media Pvt. Ltd.)