Journalism has always had those who play fast and loose with the facts and even make up reports of one kind or another. Some have been notorious, like The Washington Post’s Janet Cooke, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her story about an 8-year-old drug addict before admitting the tale had been fabricated, returning her prize and resigning.

Then there are others like the assistant managing editor I worked with who got furious when a city official threatening to jump to his death from a water tower changed his mind. After ordering a hold on the production of the front page, the editor announced to the rest of the city room, only half in jest, “This guy (the reporter) doesn’t even know how to make up a story!”

Stories made up in jest for the amusement of the staff or to spoof or kid a friend now and again have slipped outside the confines of newsrooms, causing great consternation and even firings. And though incidents of real damage have been infrequent, the Post isn’t the only giant of the craft that has fallen victim to carelessness and unguarded enthusiasm for a story that appeared too good to be true and was.

In the world of broadcast journalism, there have been episodes when wishful thinking resulted in editors and producers, who should have been more prudent, failing to thoroughly check the facts. These cases were based on bad information and fake documents. Two relatively recent examples include the false reports on President George W. Bush’s record in the National Guard and the alleged use of nerve gas by American forces. The news teams and broadcasters who produced them faced serious consequences.

Even highly regarded political reporters have engaged in the subterfuge of flying into a city, making a phone call or two, and writing a datelined report from there before heading for another destination without ever exiting the airport. Most of the information could have been gathered without leaving their desks. But then being there, whether they really were or not, sounds so much more authentic.

Is this evidence that fake news has always been a major factor in the free press we don’t admire but realize is a necessity in our open democratic society?

In the old days of so-called personal journalism, powerful publishers misused their news columns to achieve political ends. They frequently employed unscrupulous political reporters who spun their stories to suit the boss’s agenda. I worked for at least one paper where that was the case.

But professional disapproval and the changing of the generational guard ended such practices and relegated opinion to where it belongs: the editorial pages. This is true, despite what political party activists — who paint anything that doesn’t flatter their candidate or follow their point of view as evidence of news media bias — may have you think.

So then, what has lifted fake news from a rare occurrence to one that is a far-ranging danger to our democratic underpinnings? Well, it’s of course the same thing that has changed not only our society but the world: the magical internet, where disaster lurks around every gigabyte and the forces of truth and freedom fight with endless posts on social networks.

If that sounds a bit hysterical, consider the case of a story published in late September that alleged Hillary Clinton supporters had stolen ballot boxes in Ohio, a state where Donald Trump had been telling crowds the election would be rigged.

Turns out, just as my grandmother used to say, it was made up out of whole cloth and was an almost perfect example of the insidiousness that Facebook and others seem nearly impotent to prevent, try as they might. The alleged misappropriated ballot boxes were the design of a recent graduate of distinguished Davidson College in North Carolina who not only wrote the sensational story but adorned it with lies including a doctored picture of the made-up thief with the bogus containers, according to the New York Times, which found and interviewed the fiction writer.

Before it was over, Cameron Harris had made several thousands of dollars from advertising around his $5 website and, more shockingly, had reached 6 million people, the kind of numbers that mark the stark difference between today’s journalism and yesterday’s and portend bad things for our liberties and free press.


By Dan K. Thomasson

Dan Thomasson is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service and a former vice president of Scripps Howard Newspapers. –Ed. 

(Tribune Content Agency)