Not very long ago, spotting the fake news was easy. It came in tabloid form and could be purchased in any grocery store checkout line.
The daily newspapers, the evening tv network news, and radio hourly newsbreaks were pretty reliable for accurate day to day news information. The tabloids were not.
While the Weekly World News was great fun to read, most people knew it wasn't real. It was fake news, intricitely crafted whoppers built on a tiny slice of something that might or might not have happened.
It didn't matter which tabloid you picked up, no matter which sizzling sensational salvo you read or phony photo you ogled, you knew it wasn't real. It was entertainment and there's nothing wrong with that.
But things started blurring in the 80s. Cable became more widespread, bringing 24 hour "news" channels into homes. The thing is, it's expensive to find and deliver news 24 hours a day. By the 90s, 24 hour news channels were broadcasting more hours of ranting and raving and fewer hours of actual news.
And it turned out people could hardly tell the difference.
In truth, nobody really wanted news 24 hours a day. What they wanted was entertainment. Having people tell you what you want to hear beats actual news any day. It's entertaining. While Fox (owned by a man who built an empire on tabloids) is still television's ultimate faux news, there isn't a 24 hour news channel I'd bet my house on.
Twenty four hour news turned politics into 24/7 entertainment. Reality TV turned the truth into anything but.
When the internet brought the information super duper highway into most homes in the mid 90s, the breakdown of our traditionally reliable news sources was ensured. All the information in the world was right there on your desktop and nobody needed a producer or editor to tell us what we need to know.
That's what many of us still think.
But the world wide web quickly became the misinformation super highway. For every reliable news site run by professional journalists, there are 100 "news" sites run by sociopaths living in somebody's basement. Ever hear of Breitbart?
The explosion of social media and the introduction of the smart phone less than ten years ago, encouraged each individual to find their own echo chamber which dependably affirms insecurities and delusions day in and day out.
If someone rattles your obsessive sensibilities, all you have to do is unfriend them. Because most of us would rather swallow false news than question our assumptions.
Those of us who still care about the accuracy of a story, no matter our political leanings, are in a dark time. The supermarket tabloids are right where they always were, but they have also been lurking in our electronic media and well disguised.
I have two guidelines when seeking out my news diet. If it's been shared by someone on Facebook, there's a good chance it's fake. If I'm reading it on a 29.5" by 23.5" piece of newsprint, there's a better chance it's real.
Just like a few short years ago.