Fake News, Big and Small

 

Paul Klee, "Man is the Mouth of the Lord" (1918)

This month as I write, I am looking out at the slope of Sharp Mountains as its dips down towards South Centre Street in Pottsville. I am happy to be here, relieved that American voters proved themselves to be levelheaded in their choices in recent elections, hopeful that elected officials will follow their lead.

          Before travelling to the States to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family—and I hope readers enjoyed the holiday—I was worried, even afraid. The news from the States was not good—and I’m not talking about the elections. I am thinking of Paul Pelosi, husband of Nancy Pelosi, who has served in the US House of Representatives for 35 years. The October 28^th assault on her husband was brutal and the motives clear: harm Speaker Pelosi. Not finding her in her San Francisco home, David DePape hammered the skull of her 82-year-old husband instead.

          I know readers are familiar with these details and I am repeating “old news.” Yet the distress I felt in the aftermath of that attack has not gone away. Hearing about it was disturbing enough, but the avalanche of innuendo that followed made me sick. Readers, you’ve heard it too. To sum up, some TV journalists and elected officials reduced politically motivated violence to a homosexual tryst that spun out of control.

          In 1347 the Black Death arrived in Europe and devastated the continent, killing at least 40% of the population. No one understood where it came from or how this terrible disease was spread. It was easier to blame the Jews, who were massacred in a desperate attempt, born of ignorance, violence and fear, to eliminate the plague. I give this as an early example, long before social media, of the ravages of “fake news.”

Pieter Bruegel, "The Triumph of Death" c. 1562

 

          More recently, in France in 2003, one year before the beginnings of Facebook, Dominique Baudis, a former mayor of Toulouse and director of the French equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission at that time, was accused of being involved in a sordid prostitution ring. Once again, I’ll spare you the details, but back in those days when the news was the almost exclusive domain of newspapers and TV, the vivid accounts of prostitutes who claimed to know him, the accusations of a rapist-murderer behind bars, filled entire pages in the national press and were amply covered on the evening news.

          To defend his honor, Dominique Baudis went on national TV. Understandably nervous, he perspired and the beads of sweat pearling on his forehead were perceived as the visible sign of his guilt.

Eventually, it became obvious the entire affair was a setup. The prostitutes had been paid to witness; the motives of the rapist-murderer were exposed. But the damage was done. To this day, despite his service to the French nation, the name of Dominique Baudis, who died in 2014, remains associated with a vile affair where the man was an innocent pawn.

Today, hardly a week goes by without a new scandal of this type. Last month, I wrote about Rachel Keke, elected in June to become a new member of the French National Assembly. Another deputy, Alexis Corbière, reelected in the same June 2022 elections, almost lost his seat to fake news, a patchwork of lies picked up by “Le Point,” a weekly news magazine. Corbière and his wife were accused of cruelly exploiting an illegal immigrant working in their home. Again, a woman stepped forward with her story, apparently paid by a former deputy of an opposing party hoping to oust Corbière. The woman was convincing. A journalist believed her. The damage was done.

A crushed skull, a permanently bruised reputation, or the horrors manufactured by Alex Jones of Infowars, who accused parents having lost a child in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook of inventing their children and then inventing their deaths: fake news, big or small, can destroy lives. And be it an “innocent” rumor or an incitement to violence, all fake news shares the same raw material: words, one of the most powerful tools ever placed in human hands. Released into the atmosphere, they can build new and better worlds, or set off a holocaust. 

"Fake news," 1980's style, from Weekly World News

Recently I too became a victim of fake news. Compared to the examples I’ve just given, the damage has been pretty mild. But there has been damage, pain and self-doubt. It’s the power of words, once again. If people are saying such bad things about me, might they not be true?

Faithful readers know I moved earlier this year. My most recent abode is an old manor house right next-door to the forest primeval, and it’s been a voyage back to France’s Ancien Régime. Our little chateau has a chatelaine. Her apartment is regally grand, the biggest in the place, and she lords it over our community of ten apartments, deciding who is accepted and who is not.

I think you can guess what she decided about me. Soon after arriving, I noticed some structural problems with the building, insisted the condominium board should look into them, and soon learned that, well, the “condominium board” was none other than la chatelaine herself. And as she had the most shares in the place, the lion’s share of the costs would fall on her. I should have kept my mouth shut!

From then on in, my American directness was no match for the subtle cunning of this French aristocrat. Using lies and innuendo, bent on protecting her interests, she managed to turn nearly everyone in the building against me. Quite a feat, and I’ve suffered. I’ve also made friends with the neighbors who know how to think for themselves.

          I know I’m small fry in the maelstrom of fake news. I also know that fake news is never going to go away. Certainly, social media allows rumor to spread like wildfire, but gossip, rumor and downright lies presented as truth have been with us since Adam lied to the Lord.

          The American poet Emily Dickinson wrote, “A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.” Words are our “children,” they grow up, they outlive us. When we use them well, they make us proud. If we abuse them, you can be sure they’ll come back to haunt us some day.