Whether the piece is real or not, it exposes a bigger problem. The point of the column is that if you consume information with which you disagree you will become brainwashed and eventually someone you don’t recognize. Better not to take that chance! We joke about safe spaces, but the Guardian took seriously the idea that we need to create a safe space for ourselves where no alternative opinions can enter, lest we find that we are unable to digest unapproved thoughts without becoming a monster.
And that’s what the push against “fake news” is really all about. It’s a way to marginalize all nonliberal voices and blur the lines between viral sites pushing questionable content and reliable outlets with which we may just disagree. Obama wants you to think the one major cable network consistently critical of him is brainwashing the population by beaming its talking points into bargoers’ pints.
An echo chamber like the one pushed in the anonymous Guardian piece is much more of a problem in news consumption than inaccurate information. The more “curated” the media becomes, the less likely we are to hear opposing viewpoints and to have ours challenged. That’s a bug, not a feature.
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