The decision to defer to the supposed authority of mainstream media “fact checkers” indicates an even wider agenda. The old mainstream “legacy media” is trying to use the hysteria over fake news as an opportunity to reconstitute its old role as the gatekeeper that controlled what news you saw, heard, and read—and collected a lucrative toll along the way.
It’s important to remember how a lot of these “fact check” sites came into existence. They were a kind of marketing gimmick by the old “legacy media”—the big newspapers and the big three broadcast networks—in an attempt to reassert their fading influence. As more people started getting news and commentary from talk radio, from cable television, and then from blogs and upstart websites, the legacy media began to lose their role of gatekeeper. That’s when they set up “fact check” sites where they put themselves forward as the final arbiter of everybody else’s claims.
But this was just a palliative. It made them feel better, which is to say that it made them feel superior, but it didn’t bring back the audience, or the ad revenues.
Now the legacy media sees its chance to get revenge on digital media, and more to the point, to harness digital media as their new servants.
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