Don't Fear Change

The tumultuous 2016 election and the improbable result has left many political elites and mainstream media outlets firing out many scapegoats for the wackiness.  One of the more hotly debated topics is that of so-called “fake-news”.  Many small outlets do thrive on a strategic plan of disseminating content with inflammatory titles to get attention, but eventually proven totally baseless and false.  These sites are limited in scope and even more limited in the audience which regards them as gospel.  The far bigger piece of the pie consists of factual news reporting and opinion pieces or satire.  These opinion pieces are threatened the most by this new onslaught of the desire to censor.

From a single fact, there are countless ways to interpret or present it.  The crusade against “fake news” is in danger of tearing down a wall between the free speech which has been present on the internet since the beginning and governments desire to suppress it.  In the near future, communications professionals should do their best to resist the urge that they know how to choose truth from fiction for the rest of their fellow citizens.  Speech exists not in a vacuum, but a marketplace of ideas, where competing narratives battle for popularity among the masses.  There is not preferential treatment given to one idea by a small body of people, but instead it is scrutinized by society.  As the social media giants have taken a stance that this is a problem that they need to fix, they have telegraphed their intentions.  They are not always in the interest of the people and sometimes may give more respect to their investors and employees than serving the needs of the people.  Communications professionals should take this, not as a limitation of social media, but an opportunity.  Not every company is impervious to competition and when the value to the customer declines, new entrepreneurs and start-up companies can take the forgotten markets and become tomorrow’s social networks.