It is a common occurrence for some establishment journalist or editor to write an opinion piece or give an interview to express alarm about the degradation of traditional journalism. They'll turn their noses up at amateur reporting and opinion and denounce bloggers for churning up and muddying the waters of discourse, and then just positively wave their hands about the "fake news."
The argument goes something like this: traditional media outlets have a process for collecting, distilling, and distributing information, and they have the resources and the techniques to responsibly handle and transmit that information. Bloggers and amateurs on the other hand lack the resources, infrastructure, and - sometimes implicitly put, and then sometimes explicitly put - the discipline to handle these matters responsibly.
Setting aside the condescension and privilege, some of this is true, which is what makes the position so deceptive. The individual, however brilliant and potent a researcher and analyst that person may be, is far more vulnerable to cognitive biases and limitations to perspectives and resources than a community of individuals, such as that found in a traditional news organization, with its time-tested fact-checking, source verification, peer-reviewing and editing, and all the like. The establishment news professionals, finding themselves in these impressive organizations and watching the processes themselves, can only conclude that the competition is missing something essential.
Of course there have been plenty of effective blogging communities and other types of organizations that have sprung up around processing and producing news, but no one can really keep up with the amount of content, the quality of the reporting, and the breadth of the information that the major outlets can put out. Indeed, it is very typical for the alternative outlets, groups, and individuals to rely heavily on that very content for their own reporting and analysis.
Yet half of the energy spent in our collective discourse (and perhaps more) has to do with airing out frustrations with framings and premises, dissections of misleading statements and arguments, and corrections of flat out falsehoods contained in the manifold circulating news products. Indeed, collective trust in the reliability and legitimacy of establishment media is at a historical low. So what is happening?
First, we have to view the fabrication of news and information as just another process of manufacture. There is an accumulated store of techniques and processes for collecting information, putting it together, and distributing it in a useful form, which these organizations draw upon.
And to the layman, manufacturing, in all its complexity, can appear dazzling and bewildering, and thus, powerful in its own right, giving the manufacturing process the benefit of the doubt right there. The sprawling refining, molding, and logistical infrastructure of the plastics industry is a sight to behold for example, even as it floods the earth, the oceans, and the air with garbage and poison.
Like everything else, manufacturing too is shaped and driven by its own values. As manufacturing is in the end a form of fabrication, there are plenty of ways out there to make something. And there are plenty of choices to make about what to make and why.
One can look upon a manufacturing plant, its infrastructure, its equipment, and its processes, and determine just how much value is placed into the human lives that both labor there and benefit from its product. And one can judge the product output in relation to the greater world and the effects of that output, and thus judge the values behind the manufacturing process as they relate to the world.
This is a little more difficult to do if one derives one's paycheck and/or identity from this process. But neither of those things are the case here, so a quick rundown.
This process of manufacture, with its distinct processes, must also be fed and maintained in the same distinct way, and then it must relate in the same distinct way with all of the other manufacturing processes which support it and which are supported by it.
Yes we get a circulation of useful information to understand and move in the world with. But contained in that same product is an impetus to maintain and spread the views of the powerful and related industries, and then also to continuously pull in the attention of consumers and direct them toward subscription and advertisement.
Further, these news outlets are part of an economic ecosystem in which monopolization is the prevailing mode of organization, and so alternatives vanish or are eaten up, and then other prospective alternatives are beaten back as hostile competition which must be extinguished. So everyone is entered into an awkward relationship in which they depend on organizations they hate which aggressively pursue their dependence.
In the same environment are the "fake news" agencies vigorously pushing their own dubious market strategies, rushing into the vacuums that a shifting economic landscape has opened up, whether through destruction or the creative shifting of new economic and social spaces such as the social media landscape, using an innovative and supercharged approach that bears more than a little resemblance to the approach used by their professional and hand-wringing detractors in the establishment media.
On the other hand if we are to insist doggedly on restricting our focus to a tiny sliver of reality, say a given manufacturing process, without raising greater questions about the nature of that process and its relations to the surrounding world, then sure, we can marvel and proclaim gratitude about that process all day long. We can continue collecting our paycheck and strutting about. Of course there is then the declining trust, the further advancing of collective and planetary destruction, the ongoing monopolization, and the rushing into the vacuums of both scrupulous and unscrupulous political actors to take stock of.
