Spring Breakdown: (PDF, 3 pages, about 2000 words - at least partly fabricated) This one is about the CPAC event of 1997 (there were some scenes in the movie Shattered Glass about this story). Interestingly enough, I'm vaguely aware of that event today - I believe eyelashes guy attended CPAC this year. Anyways, as for the article, it has a very story-like quality to it. Glass was a good writer, I'll give him that. I would say that his writing style is measured but vivid, for better or worse. I wonder how people would describe my writing style from reading this blog. I also think I'm going to try to keep any eye out for anything I read in the future by other people to see if they have a similar writing style to his - I'm pretty sure there have to be some other (ideally, true) articles written with a similar style/tone. I do see how this article could be considered to play to negative stereotypes of the Republican Party (although, especially in light of current events, it's quite hard to feel bad for having negative stereotypes about conservatives).
This isn't a story written by Glass, but I thought it would fit nicely if the theme here is fabrications. A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine published a story that was later retracted for not being entirely true. You can read the original story although it has been removed from the Rolling Stone website. It was about a rape at the University of Virginia, and as I read it, I was actually somewhat reminded of the story above, Spring Breakdown. Both portrayed unsavory behavior by certain groups of people that painted said groups in a bad light. Although this story is also partially untrue (I haven't looked up what parts specifically were false), the writing style/voice is a bit different than how Glass wrote in his stories. I don't think it has the quite same measured-ness as the Glass articles. It's a bit less.. poetic, or something.
Taxis and the Meaning of Work: This one is actually still on the New Republic website, which is kind of interesting - I don't think I had come across any on that website before looking at the Wikepedia links. I wonder if they still have any of his other stories up?? Anyways, this article deals with, in part, an issue that's still relevant today, 21 years later: immigrants in the workforce. The focus of this story is the taxi business in DC, as of the mid 90s. I'm curious as to how it compares now to what was portrayed (made up?) in the article. In reading his work, I keep thinking that he was good at writing, despite the fact that he made things up which led to his downfall. Things could have turned out differently for him - he had/has a talent for writing; if only it had all been true (or published as fiction).
Monica Sells: This article was written 3 months after Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky came to light and Wikipedia links to a PDF of a syllabus that some English professor put together with reading materials (of which this article was one) and associated assignments. I perused the assignments and some of them resembled things I've had to write in past English classes, but one did not. One of the assignments was to review the film Shattered Glass with a set of criteria for what should be in the resulting essay. That would've been an interesting assignment for me to do in light of my current interests. This article is just under 1000 words and isn't markedly different in writing style to the other articles. There are also a few scenes in the movie regarding this article.
Fake news, now and then
I woke up this morning (Wednesday) to a) having dreamed about being a political prisoner in communist China, and b) this tweet: "@realdonaldtrump The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!" which was accompanied by "The failing @nytimes writes false story after false story about me. They don't even call to verify the facts of a story. A Fake News Joke!", and "So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!" among others. So I think this post deserves a bit of discussion about the concept of fake news, as we know it today and in relation to the stories I'm commenting on here.
Wikipedia says about fake news (an aside: some extreme conservatives consider Wikipedia to be liberal propaganda, which I read in a Wired article last night) "Fake news is a type of yellow journalism that consists of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media.[1] Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically, often with sensationalist, exaggerated, or patently false headlines that grab attention.[2][3] Intentionally misleading and deceptive fake news is different from obvious satire or parody. Fake news often employs eye-catching headlines or entirely fabricated news stories to increase readership, online sharing and Internet click revenue." One could consider the Glass articles to be fake news, as they were partly/entirely untrue. However I think there's a distinction to be made, seen with #7 of the following list.
Later in the Wikipedia article, there are 7 different types of fake news mentioned:
- satire or parody ("no intention to cause harm but has potential to fool")
- false connection ("when headlines, visuals of captions don't support the content")
- misleading content ("misleading use of information to frame an issue or an individual")
- false content ("when genuine content is shared with false contextual information")
- imposter content ("when genuine sources are impersonated" with false, made-up sources)
- manipulated content ("when genuine information or imagery is manipulated to deceive", as with a"doctored" photo)
- fabricated content ("new content is 100% false, designed to deceive and do harm")
I'll give a few examples of things I think fit under the various categories. The (now defunct, alas) Colbert Report, as well as other shows like it, would be satirical news. Although as far as I'm aware it was more Stephen using actual facts to mock various figures in the news, not making things up. The Onion would also fit under "satire or parody." #3 and 4 I would say are elements of what you'd consider modern day (as in the last couple of years) fake news. #5 is what Stephen Glass did, and you could say #7 counts as well, but I don't think his main intention was "to deceive and do harm" so although it was fabricated, the motivation wasn't the same as the one mentioned here, which I do think applies to today's fake news.
Although, if you think about it (and this is depressing), really anything can be considered fake news depending on your political inclinations: the "liberal elites" consider, say, Breitbart (as well as Donald Trump's own lies) to be a source of fake news, but Trump supporters consider the New York Times (taking a lead from Trump himself) to be fake news. To Donald Trump, news he disagrees with is fake news. The state of news has become a game of "Choose the (alternative) facts you agree with" - and the Ministry of Truth will gladly provide options. It's the news version of going to different doctors until one tells you what you want to hear. Alas.
While freedom of the press is important, which allows fake news to be produced and spread (and hard to combat, in a way), it seems that some (many) people are unable to understand what truly is real vs fake news. Of course, those people could level the same criticism at me but I stand by my convictions that the New York Times and Washington Post are real news. If only everyone else could see that as well. I don't think it's particularly healthy for the nation as a whole to have these vastly different ideas about what is real news and what is not. This however begs the semi-rhetorical question: in the interest of being more open minded (which is probably a good thing), is one obligated to give credence to fake news? I'm looking at this from a liberal perspective, rather than from a Trump supporter perspective which would mean they would be considering reading, say, the New York Times (which they very well would probably write off as "fake news").
To keep this from getting any longer, I'll end this part of my post with this article, which has some good points in it. One of the quotes is sort of relevant to myself: '“Don’t shut out the smart, thoughtful Republicans from your life, from your news diet, just because you don’t agree with them,” he said." I may be doing more than some people by at least paying some attention and consideration to eyelashes guy, a tolerable conservative. Of course, the eyelashes probably help even if sometimes he says stupid things. I think eyelashes guy is enough open mindedness for me.
As another aside, I think to be a 'real writer' (of any type - a journalist could be a writer in this sense, or a poet, or a book author, etc) it means that you have a sizeable audience and that you get paid for doing it, neither of which are true for my writing here. Alas.
TO BE CONTINUED - more commentary on other articles to be added as I read them/have the energy to update this post.
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