USA Today on Fake News: Libs See Country as ‘Divided Between Smarts and Stupids’

December 12th, 2016 5:24 PM

According to a columnist at USA Today on Monday, the battle over fake news shows that liberals think the electorate is divided between smarts and stupids.” Michael Wolff offered a look at how both sides view the phenomena of deliberately false stories. After noting that Buzzfeed argued that “conservatives were more receptive to fake news than liberals,” he explained, “This, of course, largely confirmed the basic liberal view that the electorate is divided between smarts and stupids.” 

Offering balance, Wolf retorted, “Of course, while liberals believe conservatives are especially receptive to fake news, many conservatives and Trump supporters believe there is no bigger faker than Hillary Clinton and no bigger chumps than the liberals who are blind to what they see as her quarter-century of obvious public perfidy.” 

He said of the problem of fake news: 

For conservatives it might be Hillary Clinton fantasies, for liberals, an Oliver Stone movie—conspiracy with higher production values, but conspiracy theory nevertheless. (Stone’s movie about the JFK assassination takes as truth the investigation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison discredited by virtually everyone as entirely fraudulent.)        

In some sense, fake news is the liberal retort to the conservative charge of media bias. In this, each side  uses media for its own political agenda, a belief that, on both sides, is widespread enough to support the notions of both rampant fakery and rampant bias. Of course, the right does not believe in fakery, and the left does not believe in bias.

Speaking of fake news, the Media Research Center’s Rich Noyes highlighted a famous Washington Post fraudulant story on a supposed eight-year-old heroin addict. 

[Hat tip to Dain Gainor.]