Apple CEO Tim Cook says fake news is “killing our minds.” As such, he is launching a campaign to cut down or even eliminate the spreading of agenda-based fallacies which came to a head around the 2016 elections. If effective, it could mean much more careful reporting tactics in 2020.
Cook is likely to get Donald Trump’s support on this, as much of that fake news allegedly drew a lot of support away from him in support of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. It’s difficult to know just what was proven and what wasn’t, since the media often caters to the public interest, twisting words to promote their own agenda. Few Presidential candidates have been a victim of this as much as Trump, whose words were said to be taken out of context in favor of “proof” to call him a racist, misogynist, and every other “ist” commonly used to take people down.
Early on in Trump’s campaign, he’d made a statement about Mexicans which included a blurb about how they aren’t all bad. Many trusted news outlets ignored that part, with resulting reports painting him early on as “the next Hitler.” Further statements about “roughing up” a Black Lives Matter protester, and the recent “Muslim ban” executive order have only added fuel to the proverbial fire.
The truth has mostly come out in each case. Either Donald Trump was allegedly joking to defend himself, or he was attempting to enact “extreme vetting” to reduce the existence of ISIS extremists on U.S. soil. Some, like the late Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki , had already proven that such vetting might not work back in 2011, as he’d joined the group and committed war crimes before moving to Sacramento to settle down.
“Pizzagate” was another possible effect of fake news, where a Chevy Chase-owned pizzeria chain was linked to the Trump Administration with accusations of child sex trafficking and Satanic rituals.
Probably the most recent and popular fake news generator was the news of Russians hacking various targets on U.S. soil, including the disproven electrical grid scare . That came down to code found on a laptop with a few suggestive lines, and the laptop was not connected to the system.
Hillary Clinton was also a victim of the fake news which Apple CEO Tim Cook is attempting to fight. She had been in possession of numerous classified emails on a private server, which she allegedly didn’t know was a crime. The media took that fact and labeled her a criminal, even leading Trump to batter her with the nickname “Crooked Hillary” on Twitter.
Republicans took their blows as Hillary was accused of supplying weapons to terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS and deleting emails containing classified information. Said purge made her look more guilty, but little of anything incriminating was found in files on a laptop belonging to one of her contacts.
Tim Cook wants to put an end to all of it, according to an interview with The Telegraph .
“It has to be ingrained in the schools, it has to be ingrained in the public. There has to be a massive campaign. We have to think through every demographic. We need the modern version of a public-service announcement campaign. It can be done quickly if there is a will. We are going through this period of time right here where unfortunately some of the people that are winning are the people that spend their time trying to get the most clicks, not tell the most truth. It’s killing people’s minds in a way.”
In the wake of the election of President Donald Trump, it’s likely that Trump himself would most like to see such erroneous reports come to an end.
[Featured Image by Laura Hutton/Shutterstock]
