Can We Trust the News? (Baudrillard) - 8-Bit Philosophy

In light of recent events concerning newscasters
being lost in the fog of … memory—it may

be pertinent to ask: can we trust the news
media?

For proclaimed “priest of postmodernism,”
Jean Baudrillard, it isn’t lack of access

to information that renders the news meaningless,
it’s the proliferation of images that makes

it so untrustworthy.

Depending on where you get your news, you’ll
see “evidence” that climate change is

a myth, or a serious problem. Enough searching
reveals that Paul McCartney is really dead,

Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing and
9-11 was an inside job.

If you look hard enough you can find the contrapositive,
underside, or opposite of any event. These

multiple interpretations don’t make the
world more accessible—the explosion of information,

of events, makes the ability to understand
the world nearly impossible.

The camera lens makes every image suspect.
War is reduced to theatre, disease into telethon,

hunger into magazine covers. It makes the
most atrocious events questionable—every

image is possibly staged, recreated, simulated
for a political end or to push a product.

There are hundreds of news channels all competing
for viewers, followers, and hashtaggers. Media

and advertising operate on the same wavelength
and as a result, the line between reality,

marketing, and news is nearly impossible to
discern. Media outlets and advertisers compete

to keep people glued to their couches, perpetually
titillated by the explosion of content on

the screen.

It’s the selling of a lifestyle, a promise
of access to the truth, as something to produce

meaning—it’s why reporters appear at the
scene of crimes, embed themselves with military

units during war, and stand on the banks of
oceans during hurricanes—the signs of disasters

are images to be consumed.

While our lives may be utterly boring and
meaningless—the nightly news reports that

there are in fact places where things take
place. It sells the promise that meaningful

things do happen.

They broadcast stories of actual events—but
far from giving viewers access to the world—the

media creates a copy of an event—they create
non-events… Xerox copies of reality that

are easily ingested by a society that has
been trained to accept advertising, suggestion,

and disinformation.

For Baudrillard, we’re complicit in this
disinformation campaign. People willingly

choose deception—the masses want to be tricked,
fooled, and distracted from the reality of

their lives.

Simply put: we prefer the copy of reality.

In the world of social media, we are no longer
passive spectators. We interact, create, and

dictate news—we are the screen, the editor,
reporter, and subscriber all at once.

So dearest viewer, if Sylvester Stallone is
in the Boxing hall of fame as Rocky Balboa,

and if people still believe the lie that wrestling
is real how are we ever supposed to find out

if Paul McCartney is alive?