The eReformation: Every Man His Own Editor

The concept of “fake news” is running neck-and-neck with “Putin Did It!” as the leading explanation for the inexplicable (inexplicable to the self-identified elite, anyways). These explanations sometimes overlap, when the Russians are blamed for disseminating fake news, never mind the fact that what the Russians are primarily blamed for (the DNC and Podesta leaks) was anything but fake: it was all too real. Indeed, perhaps the most egregious example of fake news is the mantra that the leaks are fake news. (A new competitor for this dubious honor is the WaPoo’s and NYT’s repetition of the claim that the FBI and the DNI have endorsed the CIA’s claim that the Russians hacked to help Trump, based solely on the (ironically) leaked ipse dixit of the CIA.)

The idea that fake news is somehow, well, new, is farcical. All that has changed is the means of dissemination. I remember vividly poorly printed flyers distributed in Chicago making lurid accusations about Harold Washington. (Ironically, some of the people bewailing fake news now were quite likely involved in some of those old school Chicago antics.) But go back centuries: American political newspapers and pamphlets in the 18th and 19th centuries contained slanderous falsehoods.

But “fake news” has become a thing because Hillary et al are desperate for some excuse for Trump’s triumph. More sinisterly, they are panicking at the realization that they no longer control the flow of information, which once gave them a decided political advantage. They are all about narratives, and when people depended on traditional media channels for news, it was much easier to control the narrative. Now that control is slipping away, they are desperately trying to regain their dominance by enlisting major social media companies in a campaign to crack down on alleged fake stories on their platforms. In the case of Facebook, this involves employing allegedly independent fact checkers, who are in fact made members of the leftist media establishment.

What has obviously happened is that the Internet has disintermediated traditional news media. There are so many channels through which stories (true and false) can flow that the traditional gatekeepers, and the beneficiaries of a more controlled media environment (namely, the political establishment), have lost control. This is inducing hysteria and a panicked effort to regain it.

This reminds me of the Reformation, which disintermediated the incumbent religious hierarchy, and the rulers who relied on the Church to exert social control. Then, the establishment railed at false theology. Today, the establishment rails at false news. Then, the translation of the Bible into the vulgate allowed individuals to make their own theological judgments outside the authority of the institutional church: today, the ability of people to access myriad stories and opinion pieces allows them to make their own political and social judgments without the authority of media or political mandarins. Then, the phrase was “every man his own priest”: today, it could be “every man (or woman) his (or her) own editor.” In the 16th century, the elite–the Church and many secular rulers–reacted to the popularization of religion in by attempting to reassert their religious and social authority over the masses, at times with violence.  In 2016 what passes for an elite is attempting to reassert its ideological and social authority over the masses. As yet, there has been no violence. But it’s early days yet.

The Counter-Reformation ultimately failed because the underlying technological (e.g., printing) and social forces overwhelmed the ability of traditionalists to restore their authority. I expect that the same will be true in the case of the ongoing eReformation. What Facebook and other social media are attempting to do will likely be little more than a futile rearguard action. It is ironic, and somewhat pathetic, that companies which are themselves the product of the technology that disintermediated information are now trying to impose themselves as the new information intermediaries: they certainly like the profits that the technology has showered upon them (well, not Twitter), but are deeply frightened about how the that technology has liberated the reliance of the masses on the elite for their information. They want their cake, and to eat it to.

But this will fail. The contradictions here are so glaring that I am tempted to resort to Marxian language to describe them. I will resist the temptation, and merely conclude by saying that Facebook and Twitter and all of the other would be intermediaries will not be able to surmount these contradictions. And thank God for that.