How Donald Trump should deal with the barrage of fake news

The single biggest take away from the 2016 US elections is that the complete capitulation of the fourth estate. Those whose job it is to propagate truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth for the benefit of the public, shamelessly got into bed with the Democrat Party and were proud of it.  Despite Trump’s victory that proved their humiliating relegation to irrelevance, very little has changed, the vile witch hunt against Trump continues and will probably continue all through his presidency.

What occurred yesterday was even lower by main stream media standards and plunged the already abysmal standards into the dungeons of darkness.  The perpetrator of lies this time was the notorious BuzzFeed. In a clumsy bid to emulate WikiLeaks, they published a dossier, compiled by an individual who has claimed to be a former British intelligence official, alleging a collusion between Russia and Trump such that his presidency would be compromised, there were also some vicious personal allegations made again Trump. There was a disclaimer that the contents were not verified but that did not stop them from publishing it Soon began to trend on social media, the many anonymous blogs and quite soon everybody was talking about it.

In imitating Wikileaks, Buzzfeed seems to have taken the easy route of leaking information, but they conveniently overlooked the essential activity prior to the leak of conducting a detailed verification. Buzzfeed should have been alarmed by the fact that this dossier has been floating around for months and had been left untouched as its authenticity was in question.

It is well known that BuzzFeed is a despicable little rag that is proud of thriving in the sewer. Therefore it would therefore have been ideal for mainstream news organizations to ignore this story. On the positive side most news organizations stayed away from this story completely or went out of their way to denounce it.  Even some left leaning smear merchants who despise Trump realized that this was taking it too far. And then there was CNN, the vultures who feed on the carcass of truth. While CNN did not cover the specificity of the salaciousness, they did enough for the story to push it into the mainstream. The NYT and WaPo also carried related articles.

The motive here was to manufacture a scandal similar to the Podesta leaks that revealed many Clinton aides and staffers in morally questionable situations. This is what happens with the hate and ideology trumps (no pun intended) integrity. Discipline is dispelled and reporting devolves into wishful thinking. Then an item comes across that the journalist wants to be true that it is reported without any cross checking.

How to deal with leaks has always been a challenge for journalists.  Leaks could be the starting point for a story, it emphatically cannot be a trusted source to carry a story without doing due diligence. A very basic lesson one learns in life is to never form an opinion without verification and without understanding all perspectives related to an event. The same rule must applied to journalism, every news organization carrying the news on the dossier should have withheld the story until such time as authenticity was established.

In the past there have been journalists of seemingly impeccable reputation such as Judith Miller, Dan Rather and Brian Williams being compelled to quit their job for propagating falsehoods. There clearly needs to be similar consequences for those who peddled these life. But I very much doubt there will be in this deluge of mendacities.

So how has Donald Trump dealt with all these falsehoods and this one in particular?

Quite effectively, he used social media to emphatically debunk and denounce the scurrilous attacks. He used the term ‘Fake New’ created by Hillary Clinton and the democrats to undermine his victory and threw it back at them.  

Here Trump punishes CNN by disallowing them to ask a question.

While all this may be effective, there needs to be solutions that are both long term, organized and are part of the system such that they serve as a deterrence for further fake news.

One viable option are the courts where the affected parties can a file defamation case, but court cases take a great deal of time, leading to a defeat in the perception arena as the public has a very short attention span.  Many a times the expense and time is just not worth it.

The only other solution in this post truth era where fake news is peddled at a dazzling regularity without much thought, is oversite and regulation. This is not just essential, it has to be mandatory. 

The Trump administration should setup a team that is part of the press secretary’s team. Their job will be to monitor the press both print and electronic and use social media to methodically and dispassionately debunk the myriad of lies.  The Trump administration should lead an initiative to setup an independent regulatory and oversite committee with an aim to promote and uphold the highest standards of journalism. The job of this committee will be to install preventive controls such as guidelines to minimize the possibility of misreporting, to install corrective controls issuance rules of immediate retraction and prescribing penalties, to install protective controls i.e. shield news organizations from being subjected to political pressure and finally to install detective controls a watchdog that constantly fact checks stories propagated and provides a mechanism for the people can launch complains about erroneous reporting as well. It is important that the body be non-governmental, apolitical and most importantly empowered.

This has be followed by a swift, fair, transparent and independent investigation where both sides of the argument are heard. There must to be penalties when guilt is established. In UK there are bodies such as the Independent Press Standards Organisation or OfCom that perform that very function with independence and effectiveness.

Cynics will argue that this committee may infiltrated by vested interests and ideological zealots and maybe misused to muzzle free speech. That is why it has to comprise of people of eminence from a whole myriad of background with strict guidelines and rules. With time, effort and discipline, the committee can be a great success and we can have a free but fair media that is required reports strictly based on undisputed facts and in the event of error is compelled to apologize and retract. Continued inaction just risks the possibility of another serious case of misreporting that may have such grave consequences that the dithering will as morally inexcusable as the misreporting itself.

All through his campaign Donald Trump drain the swamp and rid corruption from the system. This cleanup operation should not just be restricted to the political establishment, it must be extended to the media as well. Installing a team within the government to counter lies and setting up a regulatory mechanism is the ideal way to keep the press in check. Clearly he has the mandate from the people to do so. Judging by yesterday’s press conference, it is amply clear that Trump is going to aggressively take on these merchants of mendacity.