How America Got Hooked On Fake News
The Internet has spoiled us.
We have an endless buffet of fake news to stuff our brains with. Sloppy journalism, satire, fabrication, and propaganda are everywhere.
We couldn’t consume enough bullshit if we tried. Unless, of course, it contradicted our beliefs. Then fuck that.
When a Macedonian teen realized he could make $10,000 a month posting delicious headlines to Facebook, he did. When asked whether he felt guilty about it he said, “I didn’t force anyone to give me money.”
It’s true.
Last year, a Costa Rica resident started a fake news website as a joke. It garnered more than 1 million page views within two weeks.
A BuzzFeed investigation found that fake news headlines regularly outperformed real news headlines during the election cycle. And an MIT study found that fake news proliferated because “humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.”
In an attempt to attain page views, publishers have used fake news since the beginning of news, and readers have devoured all they could swallow.
Let’s take a look at how one of the most vicious page-view wars in history foreshadowed the fake-news drive-thru we call, social media.
In the mid 19th century, Joseph Pulitzer emigrated from Hungary to Boston and eventually found his way to St. Louis, where he started his career as a reporter for a local newspaper.
He fearlessly exposed corruption and prided his work on accuracy for the next 10 years, and in 1878, he purchased two declining newspapers and combined them to create The St. Louis Dispatch.
Fresh off his success he moved to New York City and purchased The New York World. For the next 10 years, he owned the news world.
He filled pages with bold headlines, color comics, and success stories, and by 1895, The New York World had the largest circulation in the country.
While Pulitzer was turning the world on its head, the son of a millionaire goldmine owner was taking note.
His name was William Randolph Hearst.
Following his graduation from Harvard University, Hearst moved to California and acquired The San Francisco Examiner. His goal was to bring Pulitzer’s style of journalism to the West Coast, and he used his unlimited bank account to attract top talent.
The Examiner became a huge hit, and Hearst set his sights on taking a bite out of the Big Apple and Pulitzer’s success.
Hearst moved to NYC, and in 1895, he purchased a penny paper called The New York Morning Journal. He poached Pulitzer’s staff, doubled Pulitzer’s page count, and sold issues for one penny — half the price of Pulitzer’s New York World.
The page-view wars were on! Fake news was about to take off!
Feeling the pressure, Pulitzer dropped the price of The World down to one penny, but Hearst had a secret weapon…
The most beautiful girl in Cuba.
Her name was Evangelina Cisneros.
Cisneros was an 18-year-old Cuban woman who was captured and held by the Spaniards in Cuba. The details of her ordeal will likely never be known, but Hearst’s stories enthralled America.
She was described as a beautiful, teenage virgin trapped in a dungeon surrounded by evil captors that were dead set on doing unspeakable things to her.
She had to be saved.
The Journal published a Shakespeare-like series of stories about the damsel-in-distress who had been captured and held under brutal conditions.
The stories were filled with sex, brutality, danger, injustice, mystery, virtue, crime, empowerment, passion, bravery, thrill, and escape — and they all took place on a tropical island.
Readers couldn’t get enough.
Hearst’s Cuban correspondent, on the other hand, cabled him saying:
“EVERYTHING QUITE. THERE IS NO TROUBLE HERE. THERE THERE WILL BE NO WAR. WISH TO RETURN.”
Hearst replied:
“ PLEASE REMAIN. YOU FURNISH THE PICTURES AND I’LL FURNISH THE WAR.”
Eventually, Hearst took the fake news one step further and began participating in the news. He coordinated to have one of his reporters break Cisneros out of prison.
Depending on who you ask, the mission either rivaled Escape From Alcatraz, or consisted of a backroom handshake, an envelope, and a bundle of money. The Journal printed the former and basked in the glory.
Whatever happened didn’t matter, the manufactured news became the real news. The Journal had saved Cisneros.
Circulation skyrocketed.
Pulitzer refused to stoop to Hearst’s level, but Hearst wasn’t done.
A few months later, a defining moment in American journalism fell into his lap: The explosion of the USS Maine.
On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded off the coast of Cuba. More than 260 American soldiers died in the incident.
President William McKinley appointed a board of naval members to investigate the explosion and they believed the Maine was destroyed by the explosion of a nearby mine.
Chief naval engineer George W. Melville said the destruction was caused by an internal explosion.
The Navy’s leading ordinance expert, Philip R. Alger, concluded that the internal explosion was likely caused by a fire in the ship’s coal bunker.
Before any of these investigations took place, Hearst’s printing presses were off to the races. He already knew what caused the explosion.
WAR!
Across the country, Americans were chanting:
“Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!”
Americans couldn’t chew it up fast enough to digest it. The country was primed to hate the Spaniards after the Cisneros stories.
Pulitzer eventually caved in and began publishing sensationalist headlines.
It was the only way to match Hearst’s page views, and fake news became a staple of American journalism.
It also helped start the Spanish-American War.
Today, fake news incites equal fervor among the public. Digital tools, social media, and digital gossip are easy excuses for the spread of fake news.
But before we blame Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Snapchat, maybe we need to ask ourselves why we do it.
