Because of social media, the Russo-Ukrainian war is becoming more concrete than ever: screen-skimming text messages, impactful images and live broadcasts of the war, as if everyone is on the battlefield and the real battlefield is elsewhere.
Weibo hot search, WeChat circle of friends, news push, short video platform, pictures on ins... News of the number of explosions flying around every day makes it unclear which claim to believe.
Chen Lidan, a responsible professor of journalism at Chinese Min University, believes that now is the era of the most news, and it is also the era of the worst news. Anyone can publish news, but the truth is difficult to discern.
What makes people feel the urge to create rumors, fake news, or even fake news? Why are these constructed stories so easy to spread? How exactly do you identify what is fake news?
01
News, rumors and rumors
Not all news involves such a significant or directly related event. Even before the publication of the first weekly newspapers of the 17th century, those who were willing to spend money had access to a great deal of news, even just for the sake of conversation with the listing square. For Defoe, this abundance is a great miracle of modern society. Others, on the other hand, were deeply disturbed.
In such a large vortex of information, how can a person extract the information that really matters? How can one discern the truth from noise?
Those who follow the news have to invent their own methods of constructing a reasonable version of the truth amid a multitude of rumors, exaggerations, and secrets to be shared with bated breath.
First, they would exclude information that was purely personal and purely local. Our predecessors were no doubt happy to hear stories of ambition, intrigue and misfortune among our families, neighbors and friends. Whoever is going to marry whom, which merchant or craftsman faces bankruptcy, whose reputation is tarnished by his fornication with servants or apprentices. In 1561, a citizen from the city of Memmingen in southern Germany unwisely decided to investigate thoroughly who had spread rumors that his daughter had left the country to conceal an unexpected pregnancy, and fifty citizens were able to recall very clearly how they had heard this interesting rumor in the first place.
However, no matter how eagerly people share and spread such rumors, they generally do not consider such gossip to be news. When asking a friend, business partner or neighbor, "What's the news?" They are referring to big events, such as progress in the courtroom, wars, battles, plagues, or the downfall of big men. That's the news they would share in their communications or conversations, and it was that kind of news that fueled the earliest commercial market for current affairs.
Occasionally, we can learn from diaries or family chronicles how early news readers weighed and evaluated these news stories. One of them was Hermann Weinsberg, who lived in the large German city of Cologne in the late 16th century and was arguably an eccentric man. It was not until after his death that his family was shocked to discover that he had made a very comprehensive record of their lives and times, including all their activities. Weinsberg lived comfortably, living off the rent of inherited property, and had a close concern for the events of his contemporaries. Since he did not belong to the elite circles of the city, he had to rely on friends or get information from the pamphlets he bought. Fortunately, news centers like Cologne are full of information, but not all sources have credibility.
Weinsberg's skill was to weigh conflicting reports and identify "general opinions" or consensus, a process that coincided with the way the city's archons and European royal families handled information. Sometimes, however, it is not possible to accurately identify the true state of a transaction. In 1585, the frontier town of the western German city of Neuss was occupied by force by the Protestant Archbishop Gerhard von Trukzes, and Weinsberg heard no less than twelve different reports that the Archbishop's soldiers had sneaked into the city without being noticed. He interviewed eyewitnesses who recounted their observations. The city council kept sending messengers to investigate what was going on, but they were all shut out of the city. Weinsberg eventually concluded that the real facts may never be known: "No one can say or know more than he saw and heard on the ground at the time." But if he had heard it from someone else, the story might have been false; he could not have really known. ”
The exponential growth in news coverage hasn't necessarily made things easier; many people feel that things have gotten worse. In fact, for the traditional insider, the industrialization of journalism and the birth of journalism (trading journalism for profit) herald the shaking of the entire process of journalism being verified in the traditional sense, in which the credibility of the report is closely linked to the credibility of the narrator. In the rapidly expanding mass market, this crucial link in the integrity of the personality of news communicators has been broken.
The question of how much trust should be given to news reports is naturally as old as news itself.
The rulers of medieval society based all their calculations on this basis, weighing the value of the limited and incomplete sources of information they possessed. But at least in earlier generations, these questions have been relatively clearly defined: how much credibility does a messenger have? Is he a stakeholder? What percentage of rumors are there? It is necessary to reconsider the credit of the messenger before the news recipient confirms his or her information, which may be a trustworthy subordinate, a well-informed source who has provided valuable information, or an impartial correspondent who guarantees the fairness of the transaction. Journalism is based on trust and honor, which in principle underpin all relationships between people of a certain social status.
The birth of the commercial news market has severely undermined this relatively intimate news exchange circle. The news market spreads beyond those who need information because of their profession, including new, more naïve and inexperienced consumers. The proliferation of pamphlet publications and first-generation newspapers coincided with a complex series of international conflicts that produced large and dispersed audiences eager for the latest intelligence. Inevitably, this new craving for journalism and the commercial pressure to satisfy the craving has led to many unverified reports and even outright fictional events. In 1624, the young playwright James Shirley sharply satirized the trade of those who had never been on the battlefield to make up war stories: "They can write you a battle that broke out anywhere in Europe in an hour, and in fact never leave the tavern a step." Shirley hinted that newspapers would publish these things as long as they could make money.
His assessment is not entirely fair. Shirley's observations were made at the height of the Thirty Years' War, a critical but difficult time for journalism. People across Europe are in desperate need of up-to-date intelligence. However, as we have seen, the devastation caused by the war has seriously damaged the channels of information. The expectations and fears of different factions make the information even more distorted. The new generation of serials that emerged during the English Civil War faced a similar problem in domestic coverage, as William Collins, editor of the Kingdom Weekly Intelligence Officer in England in 1644, admitted impatiently: "There have never been more people pretending to have the truth than in this era, and there have never been fewer people who have really obtained it than in this era." ”
As the examples above illustrate, journalists are well aware of the difficulties they face in finding real stories. Thomas Gainesford is one of them, urging readers in his column to be more patient: If there is no news, it cannot be published. Journalists don't want to be forced to publish information that proves to be false, largely because their livelihoods depend on a reliable reputation. In 1631, after the Battle of Breitenfeld, William Watts reported the death of the Catholic general Tilly, who was completely panicked and insisted on this statement even when there were reports of the opposite. However, we can feel that his reasoning does reflect his cautious attempts to balance contradictory information. It's just that he guessed wrong on this news:
Neutral readers, we promised you (on the front of the last briefing) the death or imprisonment of His Excellency Tilly, and now we have fulfilled it: although the latest news circulating in Antwerp is the exact opposite, you can weigh the two and believe on this basis. Let us ask only one question to all the disobedients, please tell us where Tilly and the powerful army he has raised are, so that we are all willing to be Catholic.
In fact, few journalists risk unsubstantiated rumors (and there is no evidence that Watts has made good on his promise to become a Catholic). In general, 17th-century newspapers were more cautious than risky. Many journalists take pains to point out foreign news when it has not yet been confirmed. Gainesford's prudential principles can speak for many: "I would rather write true news only as hearsay without complete certainty than to write true news that later proves to be false." ”
This professionalism is rarely praised by those who criticize journalists. It must be said that much of the criticism of newspapers comes from privileged members of existing news exchange circles, such as James Shirley, and operators of hand-copied news services, emphasizing that the advantages of their own news sources help bring them more financial benefits. The ridicule of newspapers and their readers also reflects society's disdain for these emerging consumers. This is most evident on the theatre stage in London, where playwrights often use newspapers as a laughing stock. Because its name inevitably features a pun, the unfortunate Nathaniel Barthes received the most ridicule. In A Game of Chess, Thomas Middleton makes the most of Bart, presumably because he knows that for his audience, Bart represents the public image of the news. Abraham Holland summed up a more comprehensive attack on journalists with a memorable set of dialogues:
Being able to see butter every week (Bart)
Painted on the doors of every post office and church!
Much of the ridicule of journalists came from Ben Johnson, who was the first to make the newspaper press the subject of his play Staple News. He slammed targets both journalists and credulous news consumers, like the country woman Jonson imagined, breaking into press offices to get "any, even a little bit of news." Jonson hinted that such a fool could easily be manipulated. His criticism is likely to be grossly wrong. Although in principle, a single-issue news series is completely affordable for many people with very limited incomes, these people are not typical consumers of news serials. Journalists targeted their products at the subscription market, and subscribers to news services were probably wealthier (a shilling a month is a small expense) and more sophisticated readers — such readers could understand the obscure, intermittent reporting style of newspapers of the time.
We should also remember that these skeptical newspaper critics often have other purposes, and London playwrights are no exception. Newspapers somehow threatened the theater's role in news commentary at the time. Ben Johnson is a representative of established media, privileged people with access to information and private gossip. He has mastered the theatre's ridicule of contemporary news events to satisfy well-informed clients. He also disagreed with the newspaper's editorial line: he did not support the policy of intervening in the Thirty Years' War. He was dissatisfied with the political role of the newspaper because it put pressure on the reluctant king to intervene by raising awareness of the plight of Protestants abroad.
As a result, Johnson, like many representatives of established media outlets, is unlikely to give newspapers a fair chance to appeal. Even so, his criticism did reflect a broader dissatisfaction with the serial form itself at the time, and that dissatisfaction was well founded. Until then, pamphlets had been the standard printed form of news dissemination. Although news brochures and serials have many similarities (serials are modeled on pamphlets in form), their relationship with potential readers is quite different. Non-serialized brochures are a very advantageous channel for disseminating information. Because they only appear when there is a major event that needs to be publicized, there is no need to deal with uncertain or unresolved problems: they are published after the event. Overall, pamphlets have more pages (the average text is four times the size of earlier newspapers) to cover a single issue than a frenzied hodgepodge like newspapers. Because non-serial booklets are disposable publications, they do not assume that the reader has prior knowledge, but take the time to explain the background and consequences of the event. News events recorded in pamphlets tend to keep the reader interested for a period of time. Many pamphlets are not published or reprinted until long after the events. They do not need to be produced in a hurry, but leave time for thinking and judging.
Serial news publications are always more hectic. They describe events that are still evolving and not yet fully understood. They were forced to report a lot of information that at the time seemed ominous and foreshadowing, which now seems completely insignificant. Journalists' main editorial task is to pick out the news threads to be printed from a large pile of information, but they are not particularly qualified to make such judgments. This is usually just one of many tasks in a busy printing plant. As soon as a journal was released, the correspondents began collecting manuscripts for the next issue. Serial publications leave little room for reflection and interpretation, and even though the style adopted by the newspaper (inherited from the handwritten newsletter) allows for this, it has not been realized.
News brochures can take a very different approach. Most pamphlets will only be published at the end of a siege or campaign, when the outcome of the war is already known (a luxury not available in weekly magazines). In a booklet, the facts can be combed through to move towards this known result. For those who want to understand the chaotic world, this seems to be a more logical form of news reporting. The brochure also provides more opportunities for erudite and beautiful writing, commitment, and advocacy essays.
Therefore, in addition to professional competition, many people see newspapers as a fad of fashion and news publishing, and there is good reason. But when Ben Johnson targets naïve readers, he needs to worry, because these people are hardly the target audience: these emerging consumers are more likely to buy a pamphlet that gives them a complete understanding of a topic. Reading a single issue of a newspaper is always like walking into a room where the conversation is halfway through, it is difficult to take over, and the concise factual style of the newspaper is not very helpful. This is not the way people want to read or gather information: most newspaper publications are safely handed over to more sophisticated readers who regularly follow news events.