Fake Photos and the Folks Who Share Them

This is not the U.S. Army football team
kneeling during the National Anthem.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and a picture that gets shared can get exposure at exponential levels. Unfortunately, pictures can be altered in ways that do not depict reality. Sometimes a picture doesn’t even need any alteration. Sometimes, all a skilled photo distributor needs to do is to attach a provocative story related to trending news.

For example, one very hot topic has been protests by NFL players who take a knee during the National Anthem. The photo at the top of this post shows the U.S. Navy football team kneeling in unison for prayer before a game against the University of Tulsa. However, those players certainly didn’t take a knee during the playing of the National Anthem.

Fake News and Propaganda for War and Peace

"The first casualty when war comes is truth." Hiram W Johnson. This quote is also sometimes attributed to the Greek dramatist Aeschylus.

It’s not easy to get Americans to support war. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed journalist George Creel as Chairman of the new Committee for Public Information. In an article for The American Experience, Nicholas Cull wrote, “For two years, he rallied the American public to the cause of war and sold the globe a vision of America and President Wilson’s plans for a world order. He was a controversial figure in wartime Washington, but his efforts changed the ideological landscape at home and abroad, and many of the methods and approaches he pioneered became a standard part of U.S. statecraft.”

Near the beginning of the 21^st century, George W. Bush and his team made the case for war in Iraq based primarily on intelligence reports that the regime in Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. The war was undertaken and Saddam Hussein was captured. However, the evidence of WMDs was not as strong as the pre-war intelligence indicated.

Satire and Fake News

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Abraham Lincoln

According to Wikipedia, satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. 

The United States has had a rich tradition of satire. Some of the country’s most notable satirists have been Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers. The late Art Buchwald and P.J. O’Rourke are two of our more recent satirists. Television shows like Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, and many others present satire as well. Mad Magazine, Cracked, and National Lampoon have all put a great deal of satire into print. The Wittenburg Door, which published some of my satire, billed itself as “The world’s  pretty much only religious satire magazine.”

Fake News International to develop Code of Ethics!

Fake News International (FNI) has announced that the organization will develop a formal code of ethics and standards at its annual conference in Macedonia in February. Jack O'Lanterni, the President of FNI, said, “Fake news provides a valuable service to consumers. Like Jack Nicholson said in that movie, A Few Good Jarheads, although people say they want the truth, the truth is that most people can’t handle the truth. What people truly want is news that confirms their beliefs and biases. That’s what people get with fake news and that's why they love it.”

How to spot fake news.

"There's a sucker born every minute." Most frequently attributed to P.T. Barnum.

“We won’t get fooled again.” Pete Townsend

Most people have been suckers at least once or twice in their lives. For example, before writing this article, I always thought that P.T. Barnum was the originator of the oft-quoted line about suckers.  Alas, it appears that I took too much for granted.

Pizzagate: When fake news and reality collide.

According to news sources, a lone gunman, Edgar Welch, went to the Comet Ping Pong Pizza restaurant in Washington D.C. to personally investigate allegations that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were involved in a child sex ring.

According to a blog called State of the Nation (SOTN), which has posted numerous articles about PIZZAGATE, the scandal involved “ultra-serious criminal activity involving child trafficking, child rape, child torture, child pornography, Satanic ritual child sexual abuse, children snuff films to name but a few.”