The great fake news factory

The qibla was located southeast in the Kasserine mosque, in the center of the city which lays close to the Algerian border. There were few worshippers. The Dhuhr prayer was over. The few people who remained inside the mosque for extra prayer didn’t even notice the presence of a Westerner, of a “bothering” journalist. Everything was quiet all day long during my stay there. According to a BBC report that was broadcasted a few days before, a troupe of the British broadcasting company was pushed to retire from the mosque’s surroundings because they felt in danger. It was late spring of 2013 in Tunisia. During my long stay in North Africa, Middle East and SE Asia I realized, month after month, that the official narrative mirrored by the main international media was full of mistakes. Shortly after, those mistakes took the shape of fake news, then of filtered narrative and frame. It was intended and it was mixed among several other inaccurate reports. I started to rethink the entire story about journalism and independent information.

History tells us that “spin doctors” (strategists of communication employed to give a favorable interpretation of events to the media, especially on behalf of a political party; typically they make up reality through the news to bend it to specific interests) and public opinion manipulators have existed since the early 20th century. The names on the record were Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, who inspired even Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Information. He was a master of public relations and propaganda that left a lasting sign on the information environment. Bernays was called the father of “spin” because he inherited his uncle’s psychology theories to manipulate the instincts of masses. His book Propaganda (1928) is a handbook for persuaders from all over the world. Or Ivy Lee, who helped John D. Rockfeller, after the Ludlow massacre, to reshape reality and responsibilities in front of U.S. media; during the company (Colorado Fuel and Iron) militia raid against strikers, 20 protesters were killed - among them 11 children and two women. Now he is known as the founder of modern public relations.

Governments and lobbies remote controlling people’s needs and behaviors has a long story, but it started to become complex in the 21st century. However, something has been changing lately, because the center of power has taken another shape, less close to politics and flags and more sensitive to financial/economic interests without borders. And motivations have become less transparent, losing any ethical attitude.

Let’s make it simple. Modern democracies are an extremely complex environment to manage. Political institutions are a very weak power to determine public opinion because of their dependence from votes and because they are usually bent to economic interests. If you need to manage big issues like, for instance, changing the eating habits of people, because of the great incidence of cancer in beef eaters that will bankrupt state healthcare in few years, how can you manage it? Politicians alone cannot deal with people’s habits and meat producers’ interest simultaneously. Maybe the “mad cow” virus (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) can help, and the emphasis in media about this health danger can back government action by law. This is just an assumption, of course, but it helps to understand what we talking about.

Another example, that is not an assumption, is about a Western iconic habit: to project the smoking of cigarettes as an act of female emancipation. It happened in Chicago in 1929, to counter bad press against the tobacco industry. Chesterfield tobacco company engaged Bernays (yes, him). He branded smoking as feminist, promoting the so-called “Torches of Freedom.” Beautiful women were hired to march during a parade, smoking cigarettes described as a symbol of equality with men. This conception is still maintained today. After the liberation of the Syrian city of Manbij from Daesh (2016), local women were photographed by an Arab24’s reporter while chanting, waving their niqabs and smoking to celebrate the new freedom. The Western emancipation model imposed even on Muslim countries clearly shows the limits of the globalist path to a new world. It will fail. But let’s get back to the main issue: the factory of fake news.

The concept of framing is related to the agenda-setting tradition, when it’s the media and not mere events that set the news. It is a sign of non-independent journalism. It is the way governments exert a shadow control over the media. Often, even a single journalist or a head service cannot realize that they are being manipulated. Some government source gives a cut about an issue, saying “Pyongyang’s missile capacity is a threat;” something that is very difficult to check, unless you are an expert. Then a few opinion leaders write an article stressing the North Korea danger. All other outlets worldwide are going to follow this news trend. So a little dictator becomes a useful idiot for international politics’ needs.

Again, Edward Bernays explicitly tells us why we have to take care about this issue: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” Not everybody agrees with this cynical view of modern democracy.

Jurgen Habermas, a German sociologist and philosopher, explains why “the truth” is so important in a democracy. “Empirical evidence there is for the assumption that political deliberation develops a truth-tracking potential (…) mediated political communication in the public sphere can facilitate deliberative legitimation processes in complex societies only if a self-regulating media system gains independence from its social environments and if anonymous audiences grant a feedback between an informed elite discourse and a responsive civil society.” Today we can state that Habermas’s conditions happened only in few cases.

The Serbia war of 1998-2000 tells us how even non-violent revolutions can be supported by NGOs who basically implement PsyOp (psychological operations) activity. Otpor!, a student movement, which was founded by the young Srdia Popovic and inspired by Gene Sharp’s idea, toppled Slobodan Milosevic’s regime. It was an event that gained a fascinating narrative by the international media. It could not have been achieved without some help from abroad. In fact, former U.S. Army Colonel Robert L. Helvey, working for the International Republican Institute, an American NGO, gathered some members of the Otpor! organization in the summer of 1999 at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest for a stage about non-violent revolt techniques.

Now this Orwellian type of control over the news has been getting weak. Why? First of all, the failing of the large globalist project driven by the U.S. This project lost the White House seat: President Trump is fighting back against this vision. Then the financial pollution on economy and trade dynamics – with the overwhelming power of banks - that ignite social discontent in the U.S. and in Europe. Finance that was called to save globalism in mid-2000 washed it up eventually. Finally, the circulation of web information has been facilitating the rise of a new source of news, alternative to mainstream media, which is being perceived as no longer trustworthy. The system works if it controls the main sources of news directly or indirectly. Now, a greatly number of people have realized, thanks to alternative outlets, that the big factory of “fake news” is the official one and that they hate to be manipulated by mainstream media and by the establishment. This is one of the reasons why populists and sovereigntists in the U.S. and EU were born and have been gaining ground. The “fake news” attention is likely one last endeavor of the establishment to cap and thwart free information on the web – full of “trash news” – but the only way to be informed actually is through independent journalists. The struggle for power is set.