Say you’re a person of average intelligence (or higher) who likes to keep abreast of the news and who therefore follows several sources of it. Lately you’ve seen a number of people, not least among them the president of the United States, screaming about Fake News. You may well be wondering how, in the current fractured media landscape, you’re supposed to discern who is telling the truth, who is lying—and who is telling the truth or lying about who is telling the truth. What is to be done?
Here’s one thing that is emphatically not to be done: Emulate Malaysia, which has just outlawed “fake news” and authorized prison terms of up to six years for so-called offenders. If there’s anything worse than having giant news corporations, social-media censors, and search-engine algorithms decide what you can and cannot see, it’s having the government make that decision.
Besides: Teasing out the true from the false is really not so hard. A. Barton Hinkle offers a few tips.
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