Charlatans succeed by pretending the media always lies

The uproar about fake news hides as much as it reveals. It is not just that propaganda has a history as long as the history of politics. The psychological turn modern thinking has taken with its emphasis on groupthink and confirmation bias lulls us into believing modern societies are up against citizens caught in a kind of madness. And that thought is a little too comforting.

Dismissing your opponents as insane may be psychologically satisfying – perhaps one day researchers will find humans have a cognitive bias to do it. Contemptuous waves of the hands, however, fail to understand how charlatans use rational and moral objections to journalism to lead their supporters to irrational and immoral conclusions.

To state the obvious, journalism is based on choices. A journalist picks one subject rather than another. A newspaper places one story on the front page, downplays another and decides not to run a third.