hi i'm bob sullivan
and you're looking at a picture of one
of my favorite
metaphors the golden spike
even if you don't remember this image
it's probably lodged somewhere deep
inside
your consciousness at least if you
attended primary school here in the u.s
this is a picture of the installation of
the last
railroad tie that connected the first
transcontinental railroad across
the united states the moment that east
and west
coast were connected sort of
it's also a metaphor for projects as in
hey
are you done with that last copy edit
that's the golden spike right i can
press publish now
but this moment this image is
not what it appears to be if you had a
good history teacher you probably know
that too
so why am i showing it how to talk about
fake news
well some people argue that this
photograph was in fact
the very first occurrence of fake news
the modern kind anyway one can argue
that the thing which finally
unified america set the stage for
tearing it apart
let me explain
when americans now complain about the
proliferation of
fake news i believe they mean a lot of
different things
the way it was initially used during the
2016 election cycle was to identify
bloggers who were making big money by
writing obvious falsehoods as clickbait
such as pope francis endorses donald
trump
push a headline like that out on the
world trick hundreds of people into
sharing it
and earn thousands in ad dollars all
from a basement in
macedonia great business
today the phrase is often shorthand for
news stories that you just disagree with
and it's a dead end road a phrase that
i'd love to burn from our lexicon
particularly because i think it might be
the single most powerful
phrase in the realm of digital
propaganda this
single two-word expression turns off the
minds of otherwise thinking people
across the planet now so i think it's
worth talking a bit about its deeper
origins
talking about how we made the wrong turn
that led to this dangerous dead end
in fact the street that led to this dead
end was lined with what could be called
pseudo events 60 odd years ago historian
daniel borstein coined the term
pseudo event in a book called the image
it lamented modernity's turn away from
authentic experiences like traveling
which were being replaced by tv programs
about
traveling in a way borstein was the
first to cry
fake news in journalism a pseudo
event is pretty easily recognized a
press conference is a pseudo event
most of the time nothing actually
happens at a press conference people
just
talk in front of cameras an event
a real news event is a traveler being
detained at an airport or a person being
laid off a pseudo event is a person
a spokesperson talking about a travel
ban or a commentator talking about
unemployment
or a pseudo event could be a russian
typing facebook comments from moscow
smart people marketing types of
companies political handlers
propagandists
figured this out and began to master the
pseudo event
the dog and pony show call a bunch of
folks into a room
promise a big announcement hold up a
chart or a sad child or a puppy
and you can dominate the headlines for a
day
the real news isn't a press conference
about legislation it's the backroom
bargain
that pushes a proposal past 50 votes in
the u.s senate
it's not a ceo promising to reform a
company's misbehaving ways
it's the secret memo from legal which
instructs customer service agents
how to continue misleading customers
sudo events aren't necessarily nefarious
they're often the product of mechanics
the golden spike in utah was just such
an event why
taking a photograph in 1869 was hardly a
trivial
affair it had to be staged
of course as you'll recall perhaps from
high school history
that photograph suspiciously omits many
chinese workers who did
most of the hard work of laying rail
over the rocky mountains
sudo events therefore are easy to
manipulate
anything that's staged is easy to
manipulate
these necessary mechanics make sudo
events
very very easy to manipulate it should
be obvious that sudo events
rose in power and influence right along
with the rise of visual media
there's a perfectly reasonable
explanation for this
perhaps you've considered it like making
photographs in 1869 making television
is very hard getting cameras set up
checking audio levels ensuring clean
clean transmissions i'm just making up a
guess here but
i think it's fair to say that making tv
is often 90
mechanics and just 10 journalism this is
why when you watch cable news
you see almost the same thing day after
day person speaking at podium
person speaking at desk other people
talking about
all of this talking that's the easiest
and cheapest way to make tv talking
about the unemployment report was easy
going to scranton pennsylvania to talk
to someone who was just laid off
is hard and it's expensive
naturally that means plenty of news
doesn't get covered on television
instead tv is dominated by pseudo events
and the
easy visuals they provide this plays
into the hands of folks who are good at
manipulating
easy visuals i'll let you decide for
yourself who those people are
but if you call what you're watching on
tv fake news
i'd like to offer you an alternative
name pseudo events
they're easy to spot as you watch or
read simply ask
what actually happened if it's just a
person speaking
probably nothing has happened or
whatever it is
already happened the back room bargain
was already struck
the victim was already injured one
politician calling another politician
a nasty name that's not news that's the
ultimate
pseudo event and of course the ultimate
distraction
but upping the ante on this problem was
the birth of 24 hour news
first on cable and then on the internet
always on news creates a voracious
appetite for pseudo events
there's a massive void in time which
needs to be filled
into this void steps power hungry people
who know how to make things sound like
news who know how to mass produce
pseudo events think of pseudo events as
the bug in the software
and politicians or propagandists as the
virus
which exploits this bug this
vulnerability
a friend of mine lisa napoli recently
wrote a great book called up all night
about the birth of cnn
she was there at the time and it's a
great primer on the problem of
hour news when you feel like
all the news you see on tv is commentary
this is why
you're seeing a string of pseudo events
don't get mad don't get distracted by
the emotional content of this discussion
distill for yourself what has actually
happened change the channel or
read something with actual news in it
just a quick example of how things could
be different when i started out as a cub
reporter
covering city hall and school boards in
new jersey i made a decision early on
that cost me a few headlines
but i think maybe a better journalist
city council members
love pulling reporters aside and
insulting members of the other party
a 30-minute interview might sound a
30-minute interview might include 29
minutes of insults and one mention of a
new road project
initially i did what all young
journalists do and
all teenagers at house parties do i
breathlessly ran to the opposition and
said
did you hear what he said about you how
do you respond
and so the cat fight was on my
ink my paper and my words hijacked by
the manipulators
as i grew up and grew into the
profession i learned
to ignore the 29 minutes and get back to
discussion of the road project
i was literally no fun some politicians
just stopped talking to me but in the
end i think i serve the readers better
and i've tried to take this lesson with
me for the past 25 years or so
insulting someone is just a pseudo event
building a road
or building a wall well that's news
these days i think a lot about the
impact of technology and
what it's the impact it's having on
journalism and on democracy in a larger
sense
i'm a visiting scholar at duke
university examining this topic from
many angles
among the most obvious whatever i'm
telling you now about journalism and
pseudo-events
about the role that tv and then 24-hour
news played in fueling studio events
about how easily they're exploited well
that's all exponentially more true
about social media facebook's currency
is pseudo events and fake news the more
fake the more
pseudo the more algorithmic juice
you all know this you feel it you've
seen how
years of work by groups like this by
people like hari hirsty to secure
elections and election technology
is being used right now by others who
simply want to
undermine confidence in elections and in
democracy
fake news hurts the most when it's close
to home
pseudo events as borstein feared have
replaced
real life for some people there aren't
great easy or obvious solutions to this
problem
but i do believe talking about pseudo
events can at least
put a seed of doubt in the minds of
people that when what they see on tv
and online not only is it possibly
propaganda
it's almost by definition propaganda by
definition
it's not real a pseudo event if we can
get people to stop watching tv programs
about travel
and start traveling that would be a
great start maybe they can go see that
golden spike in utah for themselves
if we can get people to stop tweeting
and posting and start engaging with the
real world over real problems
like roads and immigration and housing
and voting
well that would be even better thank you