Fake News

"Just what do you want from me? Permission to be a fake? Stop whining."
--Jane Craig (Broadcast News)

One of the amusing outcomes of progressive hysteria over the election of Donald Trump is the left's rally around the narrative of 'fake news' and how it contributed to Trump's win and/or Hillary Clinton's loss. In this context, fake news is misinformation that is presented in a format that resembles mainstream news sources--particularly web-based sources. Because it looks like news, it is taken by gullible consumers of information to be true even though it is false.

The situation could hardly be more ironic. Mainstream media sources such as the New York Times and the Washington Post--venues whose content was so slanted during the presidential campaign that it could well have pushed voters away from Clinton and toward Trump in the name of procedural fairness--are now accusing alternative outlets of being illegitimate.

It gets even weirder. Mainstream outlets are now crossing the fake news concept with the narrative that Russia was the primary driver of election-related fake news as was able to bamboozle hundreds of websites to serve as propaganda machines for Mother Russia. A couple of the names appearing on such lists, btw, are lewrockwell.com, ronpaulinstitute.org, and, of course, wikileaks.org.

Such absurdity suggests that the noise associated with post election cognitive dissonance may be reaching a crescendo.