FAKE News. Or Fake Nooze as dear old President Trump says it.
It is certainly the topic du jour.
The plethora of news providers combined with the online ease to access news as well as readers’ ability to connect and share it via social media means that it doesn’t take much for content to go “viral”.
And while that might once have been cute videos of kittens (I’ve a friend in recruitment who is obsessed with them) and photos of cats that look like Hitler (damn, Sean Spicer and Ken Livingstone told me not to mention him), there has been a rise in obscure websites promoting wild and untrue stories in a bid to get “hits” to boost online advertising revenues.
For someone who has spent his career in the media, that is a negative trend we could do without.
And so is Donald Trump’s accusation of Fake Nooze to denounce any story he doesn’t agree with.
But some are creating fake news with the much darker objective of trying to smear political opponents and high profile individuals.
There are signs that the outcry over fake news is finally going to bring the big online carriers of news and information to account.
But for corporations such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, policing their communities with hundreds of millions of users is going to be challenging.
In the meantime there is another worrying trend I have seen that is helping contribute to the issues over fake news.
These days most people consume their daily news online, not from a newspaper or even, these days, television.
Some might head to a reputable news provider like the BBC to look at its website, others might go to a newspaper’s website. Although increasingly many newspapers are carrying “clickbait” stories and links enticing readers to click them.
The particular one I’ve resisted clicking on so far is a photo of a pulchritudinous young lady, amply filling a swimsuit and running along a beach.
The caption under the picture says: “You’ll never believe what happens next…”
I’ve not been tempted to click it so far, but I do think I deserve an Easter treat.
Anyway, back to the subject in hand.
The trend that concerns me is the way many people only read a headline or the first couple of paragraphs of a story.
Consumed with faux outrage, they then share the story and post their views on social media.
Take the recent news regarding United Airlines.
No, not this weeks’ headlines about a passenger being dragged off an overbooked flight.
But there was another one a couple of weeks ago about two teenage girls being turned back from boarding a flight because they were wearing leggings.
A fellow passenger Tweeted: “A @united gate agent isn’t letting girls in leggings get on flight from Denver to Minneapolis because spandex is not allowed?”
She went on to ask the question: “Since when does @united police women’s clothing?”
The story went viral and was covered by news outlets worldwide.
Social commentators and women’s rights campaigners queued up to denounce such sexist behaviour, particularly when it was reported that a man in shorts was let on the flight.
What wasn’t widely reported until later was that the girls were travelling on tickets from a United employee provided for friends and family of staff.
Those “buddy passes” as they call them in America, carried strict rules on dress, including not allowing those travelling on the tickets to wear sports clothing.
United don’t impose a dress code on other passengers.
But most people didn’t want to know this additional information as it got in the way of their outrage.
And news providers were complicit in not sharing all the facts, because they got in the way of a better story.
Although, I bet United Airlines looks back to this furore with fondness after this week’s shocking reports of a passenger being dragged off one of its planes.
The Sunday flight was loaded and preparing to leave Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport when the man was dragged off. Videos shot by passengers showing the man’s bloodied face went viral on social media, prompting a storm of protest.
While United CEO Oscar Munoz initially tried to brazen the incident out by claiming the man, a Chinese-born US-based doctor called David Dao, was “disruptive and belligerent”, he later performed a volte-face and apologised for the incident.
It seems United needed to get four members of its staff on the overbooked flight from Chicago to Louisville and offered passengers compensation of first $400 and then upped it to $800, but no passengers volunteered to get another flight.
Rather than opting to let capitalism take its course and continuing to up the cash offer to travellers, United decided to select four passengers at random.
Mr Dao didn’t agree and was forcibly removed from the aircraft by United security staff.
But this is where social media really came into its own and the photos and videos posted by fellow passengers soon saw the incident reported across the world.
United has a serious PR job to do to repair the damage this has done.
Although, for a country that portrays itself as free and fair, I’ve always been surprised by the rigidity you can encounter there when you come face-to-face with authority.
Plenty of British travellers have rued making a witty or sarcastic comment when going through immigration into the USA.
I know of a chap who, when asked whether he was visiting the country for business or pleasure, replied: “A bit of both”, with a wink at the immigration officer.
He was promptly hauled off for two hours of questioning before being sent on his way with a ticking off.
You only have to queue the wrong way at Disney World to incur the ire of Mickey’s rictus grinning employees.
Have a nice day. As long as you do it our way.
:::
I’M thinking about developing a new app game called Celebrity Chef Sightings Bingo.
The simple premise of the game is that you get 10 points every time you spot a celebrity chef within 50 yards of one of their restaurants.
Along with Jamie’s Italian and Gino D’Acampo’s My Restaurant on Park Row in Leeds and Aldo Zilli partnering with nearby San Carlo, you can now throw Leeds-born Marco-Pierre White into the mix with the opening of an eaterie bearing his name in the Merrion Centre.
Mind you, I don’t think my game will prove as popular as Candy Crush. I think you’ll be lucky to get to 20 points this year.
I’ll buy the first person that does a cup of the weak coffee I was served after a lunch in Gino’s this week.
Have a great Easter weekend.