Fake News

Scott Hardie | November 28, 2020
With outlets like Newsmax and OANN still not acknowledging that Biden defeated Trump, and people increasingly preferring fantasy over reality in their news (this meme captures the state of things right now), I wonder: How long could a news network get away with outright fabrication?

Right now, these outlets are spinning actual facts, saying things like Trump could still win the election as long as he has pending lawsuits, and repeating nonsense heard online like "massive fraud" without citing actual evidence of it, or citing debunked evidence. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about full-on fantasy news. Show footage of Trump being inaugurated in 2021. Show footage of him governing, meeting with world leaders and hosting events at the White House. Manufacture this with old footage but show it as if it's happening now. And of course, say the entire time that the other news outlets are participating in a massive lie about a "President Biden" that isn't true.

Could they go this far? And how long could they get away with it? And how bad could it get? As to the latter, I can imagine it devolving quickly into hero worship: North Korean state media reports fantastical things like Kim Jong-un controlling the weather at will and causing large harvests by force of personality and so on, and I could imagine an outlet manufacturing a pretend second Trump administration portraying him doing physically impossible things. Heck, he might even continue to rule the country on that fake channel after the real Trump is dead.

Samir Mehta | November 29, 2020
[hidden by request]