Villens United by Chris Haskell

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

Do you really know what’s going on in the world today? Well, that depends on where you get your news.

This past year our society has been under siege by fake news. The CIA, NSA, and FBI have now concluded that Russia interfered with our presidential elections and one of their methods of interference was to flood our internet with false news.

Many of these bogus news stories tried to paint Hillary Clinton as a secret homosexual, cold blooded murderer, and a child molester (to name just a few). Similar stories about Clinton were shared by Trump supporters and accepted as fact while the awful truths about Trump were excused by these same people.

So how do you know if the news you are receiving is fact or fiction? How did we even get to this point?

Years ago, everyone got their news from the same sources. Radio, newspapers, and the few different news channels were all held to high standards of journalistic integrity and reported the news unbiased and without opinion. That all changed in the 90s when Republican Media Consultant Roger Ailes took over as CEO of Fox “News.”

Reporting the facts to the public took a backseat to the importance of ratings while Ailes was head of Fox (Ailes was ousted as Fox News CEO after numerous sexual misconduct incidents). Over the years the network reported false or distorted news stories and made it their mission to smear liberals and further the conservative agenda.

Fox “News” also incited fear and anger in their viewers in order to manipulate them by furthering ridiculous conspiracies about president Obama. After all, this is the same network that let Trump push his conspiracy about Obama’s birth certificate being a fraud and kept shining a spotlight on that ridiculous lie.

If you’re a conservative sitting down to watch Fox News and angry pundits put a figure up on the screen that $70 million was lost to welfare fraud in America in 2016 then you’re likely to get upset with our welfare system. One problem though; that $70 million welfare fraud figure was completely false and made up. Fact checkers noticed this recent deception and called out Fox, asking them for the source of their information, but they couldn’t name a source. In fact, the only place a similar figure could be found is on the leading alt-right news site Breitbart.com, also known for sharing false news. For those not in the loop, alt-right is a kind way of saying white supremacist. This is just one of many examples of Fox creating their own truths and news.

Our news media, which was once used to educate and inform the public, has now become a political tool in which news producers use to influence their viewers to their own political agenda. During the 2016 presidential election, many “alt-right” news sites took advantage of the political fervor and published many false stories to discredit anything that wasn’t reflective of their values and agenda.

Some of these internet news sites don’t even report any actual news, believe it or not. Tomi Lahren of The Blaze just shouts, complains, and insults whatever grinds her gears that day. Alex Jones of Info Wars, just shouts complete insane nonsense; such as Hillary Clinton and Obama are demons and he knows this because they smell like sulfur. Pretty scary that there are people who get their news from that guy. Even scarier, President-elect Trump is very fond of Alex Jones and Info Wars and has even appeared on his show and regurgitated false statements made by Jones during his campaign. It may also explain why Trump is so poorly informed on many topics if he’s getting his news from InfoWars.

News isn’t news anymore. One news segment this year pretty much summed up everything wrong with our news media in America. The Fox News program The O’Reilly Factor aired a segment titled “Watter’s World: Chinatown” where the reporter was asked to interview Asians in Chinatown about Donald Trump’s negative opinions on China. This segment painted a strong narrative and purposefully tried to portray these people as stupid and uninformed. Most interviewed were elderly and could barely speak English, but they aired their silence nonetheless and even cut in movie scenes with someone yelling “Speak damn you! Speak!” This along with the song Kung-Fu Fighting playing throughout the segment turned this O’Reilly segment into an absolute racist joke. Ironically, no actual news was ever conveyed in that segment.

While there are many Liberal fake news stories that got shared this year, in truth right wing fake news far outweighs the left and the smear campaigns are far worse. Liberals didn’t need to lie about Trump this election because the truth about the man was awful enough and even the facts couldn’t sway the blind loyalty of his supporters.

Regardless of where your political allegiances lie, you should care about getting the facts in your daily news, and sadly many don’t really care. A culture has risen in this country where we as a people are divided over inarguable truths and facts. Our own president-elect and his cabinet nominees have shared several of the false news stories mentioned in this article as truth. Trump still won’t admit Russia interfered in our election. Many of his supporters don’t see a big deal over whether Russia hacked us or not because Trump himself is dismissing it.

Unfortunately, these days it’s likely that your political beliefs dictate the quality of your news, and therefore how knowledgeable and well informed you are. I myself began my adventure into journalism about a year ago because of fake news and lack of journalistic integrity in a local newspaper. I took up a mission to make people aware of the disregard for facts in many news outlets.

The moment a man shot up a pizza parlor because he truly believed Hilary Clinton was hiding a child sex ring there made it clear to me just how damaging these fake news stories can be. If we can’t even agree on what’s true or not, then how are we going to come together to fix the problems in our nation and heal the divide created by this election?

I challenge you. If you get the majority of your news from the same sources that lean towards your political beliefs, then I challenge you to make a change for a week or two. If you’re a Fox “News” viewer, watch MSNBC for a week. If you’re a MSNBC liberal, then switch to Fox. If you watch The Blaze or InfoWars … seriously just watch anything else. You’ll get more information from just staring at the wall. If you take up the news challenge I’m sure you’ll start to notice the differences. Also, keep in mind that we live in the digital age, and ANY news story can be fact checked with a simple internet search. So do your homework. My advice, if your news source has a bunch of angry people shouting their opinions at others, you can easily find another news source where people of differing opinions can discuss the topics at hand in a civil conversation.

Later ‘Villens … The more factual information you get from your news, the smarter you are.