Today, elite journalism sometimes feels like the morrow of the Reformation. Something great and terrible — the Catholic Church, the media establishment, and oligopolies that controlled the content and distribution of news — has been smashed, and we fear the terrible, supernatural forces that have been unleashed as a result.
For if it is the case that there is more fake news around than before, and that people are more susceptible to conspiracy theories than before — and that is a big if, especially when stories on the pernicious effect of fake news are long on anecdote and short on data — it only begs the question of why people have become so susceptible to fake news in the first place.
Maybe blame Facebook? Or maybe blame the fact that, I dunno, journalists haven’t been doing their jobs.
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