Part of the reason why the Left was drawn so rapidly to the “fake news” meme was because it offered the hope of striking back at a freewheeling new anti-establishment media that was rapidly supplanting them.
In the age of the internet, the public has any number of independent commentators to choose from, and their soaring popularity is a testament to the media’s failure to hang on to their audience. There’s Steven Crowder, once a FOX News contributor, who now enjoys far more freedom in his widely-watched YouTube show Louder with Crowder. There’s Stefan Molyneux, whose piercing insight into the issues of the day is far more exciting and intellectually stimulating than anything Keith Olbermann or Sally Kohn has to offer. There’s Joe Rogan of the wildly successful podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, whose monthly download numbers—11 million in a single month in 2014—should terrify mainstream media.125 And there’s also Gavin McInnes, one of the only Canadians I like. Uber-straight Gavin and I kissed at a press conference after the Orlando terrorist attack, a symbolic fuck you to radical Islam. It was the conservative version of Madonna kissing Britney at the VMAs.
The real crisis of mainstream credibility can be seen in the rise of the “alt-media,” people who were previously considered crackpots and fringe loons. The InfoWars commentators, Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson, now rack up hundreds of thousands, even millions of views with every YouTube broadcast they release. What does it say about the mainstream media’s credibility when a man known to accuse the federal government of “turning the freaking frogs gay” is on the rise, while they’re on the decline?
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are also symbols of the mainstream media’s declining power. Once upon a time, a leaker or a whistleblower would have to go to a newspaper or a broadcaster in order to get their story out. When the media is biased, this can be a problem. Remember, Newsweek passed on the story of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky: it was Matt Drudge who ended up leaking the story online.126 Now, the map has changed: WikiLeaks will dump virtually any leaks from governments and political parties on the web, virtually uncensored. Sure, the media could just ignore them, but if they don’t spread the news, social media users will.
Now aware of the existential threat posed to his world order, even outgoing president Barack Obama got involved. According to The New Yorker, just a few days after the election, Obama was talking “obsessively” about a BuzzFeed article attacking pro-Trump fake news sites.127 In his public statements, Obama also blamed “fake news” for the public’s lack of belief in man-made climate change.
Obama said, “The capacity to disseminate misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, to paint the opposition in wildly negative light without any rebuttal—that has accelerated in ways that much more sharply polarize the electorate.”128 You could be forgiven for thinking he was talking about CNN.
Just how polarizing and negative are these fake news sites? Are they writing inflammatory stories about their political opponents with headlines like “This Is How Fascism Comes To America”? Oh wait no, that was The Washington Post, in an article about Donald Trump. Are they suggesting their opponents will commit genocide if elected? No, that was an op-ed in The New York Times, also about Donald Trump.
“Just say it: Trump sounds more and more like Hitler” was, again, not published on any of the sites on the left-wing “fake news” list, but on Slate, a once-respected magazine that published Christopher Hitchens.
And what about the unverified dossier claiming that the Russian government is blackmailing Donald Trump with evidence of him engaging in “perverted sexual acts” that were monitored by Russian intelligence? It was published on BuzzFeed and reported on by CNN.
Obama is right, there is a problem with hysterics and misinformation in the press—but it’s a problem of the mainstream press, not the alternative media. It’s a bit fucking rich for journalists who got absolutely everything wrong about this election, and who published biased polls assuring the public of Hillary’s victory, to start complaining after the fact about “fake news” because they lost the election.
One of the Fake News Media’s most common targets has been me. I partly forgive them for this—my daily skincare regime is more complex and at least as interesting as national events. But I don’t forgive the lies. Just Google “Milo Yiannopoulos” and the terms “alt-right” and “white supremacist” or “white nationalist” and count the number of times I’ve falsely been called these things. You’ll find articles from CNN, CBS, NBC News, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. Almost all of them issued groveling retractions, and in some cases apologies, after my team got in touch, and it became clear I was not the sort of person to let their smears stand without a fight.129 But by that point, most people have read the story and formed their opinion. The damage is done.
A supposedly respectable publication, NPR, called me a “self-proclaimed leader of the alt-right.” Britain’s Daily Telegraph (I used to write a column for them—they’ve clearly gone downhill since I left), and Bloomberg Businessweek both called me “the face” of the alt-right, although the latter did it in so inadvertently gracious a manner that I couldn’t help but be flattered. (“The pretty, monstrous face of the alt-right,” they said). Less flattering but no less false, CNN wrote an article including me in a list of “white nationalists” and accused me of “speaking disparagingly about Jews.”