The “Fake News” appellation has been applied to just about every outlet that presents itself as something on the order of a news outlet, manned (yes–the word) by what are christened as journalists. The ill-use of the “J-Word” provides enough tidings for an essay a yard and a half long, but that is another write for another day (Charly Reese is missed).
A good choice is One America News for television. It also serves as a morning newspaper since the old paper print (many loved getting up in the morning with coffee and the newspaper once-upon-a-time) has suffered from the overwhelming competition of the electronic world. OAN does seems to focus on news items and minimizes the guest spot with all the chatter and concomitant opinions.
Opinions in the morning are fine (and there is no point in even criticizing the usual media suspects—MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS– frontal lobe surgery would not help or hurt) but the one channel that states a desire to be fair (and balanced) has enough stumbling blocks to damage but not eliminate it from some measure of information. Its weakness is in its efforts to provide current news drawing from historical “facts.” However, its historians never have met a primary source they like, or put in context. Something like a Rush Limbaugh/Victor Davis Hanson throw-together.
A case in point is the morning “Fox and Friends,” with it’s trio of voices cultivating the present fields of neoconservatism’s breeding ground of pseudo historians. One of the three, Brian Kilmeade who notions himself a student of antiquity, though his literary work indicates otherwise hosted an interview with some fellow named Brandon Tatum regarding a former basketball player, Kareem Abdul Jabbar who’s claim to fame is he could play million-dollar basketball (such irony that he got a degree in history).
Jabbar flaps about the slaves being forced to sing happy songs for the masters, while Tatum picks up the flapping with note that slaves probably would have been beaten to death had they kneeled for the song (good grief), and then in an authoritative delivery Kilmeade states that “this” country was built largely by blacks, but mostly in the South. Thanks for the historical gibberish, Brian, and try to put away in your little lockbox of historical knowledge that every slave ship from “this” country was of Northern registry and sailed from a Northern port. And upon reaching their destination they purchased black slaves from black slavers, not themselves thrashing about the interior; though their mission was wrong and wrongly conceived in any event.
But theirs’ and most other contemporary historical blather is given to political presentism and leaves what’s left of public and private (excepting some home schooling) education to the refuse heap it so rightly deserves. Certainly, they could never understand why I would never stand for The National Anthem, though always would for The Star-Spangled Banner. God forbid explaining that (socialist derived) Pledge of Allegiance thing to them.
Donald Trump may not have coined the phrase “Fake News” but he has certainly brought it, in his own inimical way, to the detriment of the above-mentioned lobotomy candidates. If only he could get some support from some experienced and clued-up historians and usher in an assault on “Fake” history.
The only problem would be that the neocons would have to slink away from their misnomer-ed Republican ilk and crawl back to the Democrat sewer to beg for their wars, their bureaus, their empire.
