Fake News VS Media Hegemony

You can't hold a beach-ball underwater forever

“Fake news,” to many, has always meant more than those mock news sites pumping out completely fabricated headlines. I'm confident that many bitter barside jokes were told at CNN's expense long before Trump started wielding “fake news” as a cudgel. Of course, blunt weaponry, such as it is, leaves little room for finesse or nuance, but when your opposition enjoys a cultural hegemony, from news media to entertainment, it seems understandable to think that some people would advocate for its delegitimization. This isn't to say that this agenda is necessarily a good one, or even justified, but it is expected on some level. Oppose The Man, man! Furthermore, a justification for this behavior grows from the fact that the aforementioned hegemony is being used to control the narrative which, to be fair, is just one of the things that media and entertainment do, but in such a manner as to attempt to monopolize a particular political bent while villianizing large swaths of the political and philosophical opposition. This is their right of course, but the existence of weighty blow-back really shouldn't be that shocking.

Don't mistake me for a Trump supporter. I am just trying to make sense of the madness

It's notable that terms like 'Democrat' and 'Republican' have been becoming increasingly hazy and amorphous since Trump's rise, and to be frank, they weren't particularly precise terms to begin with; like painting with a broad brush, now frayed. Case-in-point, the rhetoric leveled at Trump by much of the media is so abysmally bad that basically, from it, the only conclusion that one could draw about an individual who doesn't completely fear and revile Trump's tenure in the oval office is that they're deluded in some way. They must be naive country redneck bumpkins, or alt-right bigots, or Evangelical Christians just to name a few. Furthermore, most seem to be significant strawmen when alleged, and are perceived by the recipients to be inaccurate by a margin so significant that disregarding these narratives as “fake news” is ethically on par with the diminutive generalizations otherwise offered by them.

Republicans are barely religious, and Democrats are advocating for States' Rights...

Now, as an issue largely regarding speech, I believe it's important to note that the right to free speech does not include the right to a platform. One may not silence others' speech without consent, but neither is anyone obligated to hand over a megaphone or provide an auditorium. Eventually, however, people will try to acquire these things for themselves for many reasons, including some overlap with those reasons why “fake news” is alleged as often as it is; to undermine what is perceived to be a hostile cultural hegemony. People want their voices represented, and as insults do little to convince the insulted of their wrongness, something like an unstoppable force (hegemonic narrative) meeting an immovable object (“fake news”) occurs. Although, it would probably be more accurately stated as an inadequate force meeting a miscalculated object. Communication across this divide may be difficult, but wouldn't an Information Age, much like the one we find ourselves in, be a promising backdrop for solving a communications problem? Seems like it to me. In the meantime?

Don't Panic and carry a towel