Voices

Why we lost: the fake-news bubble

Almost half of Americans now live in the fake-o-sphere, with right-wing media feeding them a diet of lies. And Democrats don’t have a strategy or counternarrative.

Steev Lynn works internationally, currently reporting on the civil war in Myanmar after a military seizure of power from an elected government. He has worked on economic development projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Peace Corps, the European Union, and governments in Africa.


DUMMERSTON-In the wake of our disastrous electoral loss, the postmortems have already begun searching for the reason. Some say the problem was our candidate, others that we focused too much on abortion and not enough on inflation, or that we tacked too far to the center, or not enough to the center.

I'd like to suggest another cause and, unfortunately, it's one we could not have done much about: The growth of the fake-news bubble.

Almost half of Americans now live in the fake-o-sphere, where Fox "News" and allied websites and podcasters feed them a daily diet of lies: Immigrants are eating pets, criminals are pouring over our borders, the economy was great under Trump, Biden withholds hurricane relief and even creates hurricanes, Covid was a hoax, etc.

None of this is true, but people in the bubble hear it every day, and they hear nothing else. The bubble is exclusive; they are told not to listen to anybody else.

This election shows that those fed lies want more lies. It's addictive, even to the point where working people send their limited money to a self-described billionaire.

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If you have a different message, it's just about impossible to penetrate the bubble. Anything you do will get spun to the fake-news purpose. They won't take your ads. The approximately $1 billion spent by Democrats for messaging in this past election bounced off the target.

Most Trump voters will suffer under his policies (again), but they will be given other people to blame, and they will continue their support of him or his successors. Well-trained minds will not be changed.

What this means for the future of democracy doesn't make me optimistic. Clearly, disinformation is harmful to democracy, especially in combination with educational disinvestment. (Oh, and they're told we never had a democracy, just a republic, as if there were a difference, so that the disappearance of democracy won't be noticed.)

Regulating the real harm done by fake news would be problematic, however, given the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment. We're seeing that putting out a counternarrative doesn't work on voters in the fake-news bubble.

Real harm doesn't mean an electoral loss for a political party. It means violence incited by political invective, existential threats to the country like the Jan. 6 insurrection, and the threatened use of troops against protesters, among other fake news symptoms.

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One effective countermeasure has been lawsuits against incitement that brought material harm to the Sandy Hook shooting victims and an electronic voting company slandered by fake news. Right-wing liars have been hit with settlements worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

With enough appointments of slanted judges, however, the courts offer less and less of a solution. Already the U.S. Supreme Court has rendered decisions that put certain high-placed criminals above the law.

Likewise, in the legislative branch, the fake-news industry makes it increasingly unlikely to get a majority in favor of measures to counteract it, even if such measures are defined.

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Democrats should stop their post-electoral circular firing squad to identify scapegoats for our loss. The real reason is something we don't have a strategy against, that has been growing for decades to the point where it now decides power.

If the fake-news bubble cannot be dismantled or penetrated, we are on this path for a while. The emphasis now should be on creative strategies to achieve that, and make measurable, demonstrable reality matter again over concocted narratives that appeal to the basest human fears.

And while we're at it, when an inarticulate, swaggering bully gets more votes than a smart, experienced woman, that's another problem that needs to be addressed head on, without caving to the temptation to ditch female candidates.

Breaking the grip of the fake-news bubble could arguably solve that problem, too.

This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.

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