There’s a Difference: Fake News and Junk News

Media junkies on the tragic path to extinction believe the junk news, non-junkies see through the manipulation.
The mainstream media continues peddling its “fake news” narrative like a desperate pusher whose junkies are dying from his toxic dope. It’s slowly dawning on the media-consuming public that the MSM is the primary purveyor of “fake news”– self-referential narratives that support a blatantly slanted agenda with unsupported accusations and suitably anonymous sources. Many of these Fake News Narratives are laughably, painfully bogus: that President Trump is a Russian tool, to take a current example. (That President Obama was a tool of the neocon Deep State–no mention of that. According to the MSM, America doesn’t even have a Deep State–har-har…the joke’s on you if you are credulous enough to swallow this risible absurdity.) But the real danger isn’t fake news–it’s junk news. Junk News (the title of a 2009 book by an Emmy Award – winning journalist– Junk News: The Failure of the Media in the 21st Century) —is related to Junk Science and Junk Food. Junk science is presented as “science” but cherry-picks data to support a specific but unstated agenda–an agenda that requires downplaying or overlooking conflicting data.

This post was published at Charles Hugh Smith on SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2017.