Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator

by Ryan Holiday

iterative journalism, process journalism, beta journalism. Whatever name you use, it’s stupid and dangerous.* It calls for bloggers to publish first and then verify what they wrote after they’ve posted it. Publishers actually believe that their writers need to do every part of the news-making process, from discovery to fact-checking to writing and editing in real time. It should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it for two seconds why that is a bad thing—but they buy the lie that iterative journalism improves the news.

At its best, iterative journalism is what TechCrunch does: rile up the crowd by repeating sensational allegations and then pretend that they are waiting for the facts to come in. They see no absurdity in publishing a post with the headline PAYPAL SHREDS OSTENSIBLY RARE VIOLIN BECAUSE IT CARES and then opening the article with “Now a lot of this story isn’t out yet and I have a line in to Paypal [sic] about this, so before we get out the pitchforks lets [sic] discuss what happened.”

Iterative journalists, whether writing for a newspaper a few centuries ago or a blog today, follow blindly wherever the wisps of the speculation may take them, do the absolute minimum amount of research or corroboration, and then post this suspect information immediately, as it is known, in a continuous stream. As Jeff Jarvis put it: “Online, we often publish first and edit later. Newspaper people see their articles as finished products of their work. Bloggers see their posts as part of the process of learning.” Or as Gawker’s former “media reporter” said: “Gawker believes that publicly airing rumors out is usually the quickest way to get to the truth. . . . Let’s acknowledge that we can’t vouch for the veracity or truth of the rumors we’ll be sharing here—but maybe you can.”

Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, put it more bluntly: “Getting it right is expensive, getting it first is cheap.”* And by extension, since it doesn’t cost him anything to be wrong, he presumably doesn’t bother trying to avoid it. It’s not just less costly; it makes more money, because every time a blog has to correct itself, it gets another post out of it—more pageviews.*

Only the slightest twitch is needed for a journalist to get a story live. As a result, stories claiming massive implications, like takeover talks, lawsuits, potential legislation, pending announcements, and criminal allegations, are often posted despite having minuscule origins. A tweet, a comment on a blog, or an e-mail tip might be enough to do the trick. Bloggers don’t fabricate news, but they do suspend their disbelief, common sense, and responsibility in order to get to big stories first. The pressure to “get something up” is inherently at odds with the desire to “get things right.”

The link economy encourages bloggers to repeat what “other people are saying” and link to it instead of doing their own reporting and standing behind it. This changes the news from what has happened into what someone said the news is. Needless to say, these are not close to the same thing.

while the internet allows content to be written iteratively, the audience does not read or consume it iteratively. Each member usually sees what he or she sees a single time—a snapshot of the process—and draws his or her conclusions from that. An iterative approach fails because, as a form of knowledge, the news exists in what psychologists refer to as the “specious present.” As sociologist Robert E. Park wrote, “News remains news only until it has reached the persons for whom it has ‘news interest.’ Once published and its significance recognized, what was news becomes history.” Journalism can never truly be iterative, because as soon as it is read it becomes fact—in this case, poor and often inaccurate fact.

Iterative journalism puts companies and people in an impossible position: Speaking out only validates the original story—however incorrect it is—while staying silent and leaving the story as it was written means that the news isn’t actually iterative. But acknowledging this paradox would undermine the premise of this very profitable and gratifying practice. I can’t decide if it is more ironic or sad that the justification for iterative journalism needs its own correction.

To be called a douche or a bro or any such label is to be branded with all the characteristics of what society has decided to hate but can’t define. It’s a way to dismiss someone entirely without doing any of the work or providing any of the reasons. It says, “You are a fool, and everyone thinks so.” It is the ultimate insult, because it deprives the recipient of the credentials of being taken seriously.

the people who thrive under snark are exactly those who we wish would go away, and the people we value most as cultural contributors lurk in the back of the room, hoping not to get noticed and hurt.

This is what happens when the dominant cultural medium—the medium that feeds our other mediums—is so easily corrupted by people like me. When the news is decided not by what is important but by what readers are clicking; when the cycle is so fast that the news cannot be anything else but consistently and regularly incomplete; when dubious scandals pressure politicians to resign and scuttle election bids or knock millions from the market caps of publicly traded companies; when the news frequently covers itself in stories about “how the story unfolded”—unreality is the only word for it.

When blogs can openly proclaim that getting it first is better than getting it right; when a deliberately edited (fake) video can reach, and within hours require action by, the president of the United States; when the perception of a major city can be shaped by what photographs spread best in an online slideshow; and when someone like me can generate actual outrage over advertisements that don’t actually exist—the unreal becomes impossible to separate from the real.

The problem with unreality and pseudo-events is not simply that they are unreal; it is that they don’t stay unreal. While they may themselves exist in some netherworld between real and fake, the domain in which they are consumed and acted on is undoubtedly real. In being reported, these counterfeit events are laundered and passed to the public as clean bills—to buy real things. The anxiety of the media becomes the anxiety of the world, and it becomes the weakness by which the powerful are able to control and direct us. The news might be fake, but the decisions we make from it are not. As Walter Lippmann wrote, the news constitutes a sort of pseudo-environment, but our responses to that environment are not pseudo but actual behavior.

When you see a blog begin with “According to a tipster . . . ,” know that the tipster was someone like me tricking the blogger into writing what I wanted.

When you see “We’re hearing reports,” know that “reports” could mean anything from random mentions on Twitter to message-board posts, or worse.

When you see someone call themselves a “bestselling author,” know that they probably mean their self-published book was number one in a tiny category on Amazon for five minutes, and the same goes for every “top-ranked” podcast and “award-winning” website.

When you see “According to a report by,” know that the writer summarizing this report from another outlet has but the most basic ability in reading comprehension, little time to spend doing it, and every incentive to simplify and exaggerate.

When you see “We’ve reached out to so-and-so for comment,” know that the blogger sent an e-mail two minutes before hitting “publish” at 4:00 A.M., long after they’d written the story and closed their mind, making absolutely no effort to get to the truth before passing it off to you as the news.

When you see “which means” or “meaning that” or “will result in” or any other kind of interpretation or analysis, know that the blogger who did it likely has absolutely zero training or expertise in the field they are opining about. Nor did they have the time or motivation to learn. Nor do they mind being wildly, wildly off the mark, because there aren’t any consequences.

a link looks like a citation, yet it is not—to headlines that bait our clicks.

Our knowledge and understanding is the final empty, hollow shell. What we think we know turns out to be based on nothing, or worse than nothing—misdirection and embellishment. Our facts aren’t facts; they are opinions dressed up like facts. Our opinions aren’t opinions; they are emotions that feel like opinions. Our information isn’t information; it’s just hastily assembled symbols.

Readers hold equally exhausting assumptions of their own. The current system of delegated trust and deferred responsibility exists because readers have tacitly accepted the burden that blogs have abdicated. We’ve assumed it was our duty to sort through the muck and garbage to find the occasional gem, to do their fact-checking for them, to correct their mistakes and call ourselves contributors, when actually we’re cogs. We never asked the critical question: If we have to do all the work, what are we paying you guys for?

My decision to spend less time online is not a selfish one, though it did make my life better. It’s voting with my wallet. If more people do the same, it will have impact.

well. You cannot have your news reduced to 140 characters or less without losing large parts of it. You cannot manipulate the news but not expect it to be manipulated against you. You cannot have your news for free; you can only obscure the costs. If, as a culture, we can learn this lesson, and if we can learn to love the hard work, we will save ourselves much trouble and collateral damage. We must remember: There is no easy way.

in the media these days it doesn’t much matter if you are right. It matters if you can persuade people you are right. This is kind of a fascinating feature of our time. You have to become a celebrity before people start to listen. I wish this weren’t so but it is.

Charles C Johnson