Fake news does not appeal to me.  Not the term and not the thing.  Too often it's just part of the sneering drowning out rational public policy debate even more than usual nowadays.  But here's a piece of it that has me seeing red… triangles.

On June 18 the New York Times headlined a story "Facebook Removes Trump Ads Displaying Symbol Used by Nazis".  Boo.  Down with Trump.  He's a Nazi.  OK, not exactly.  The "deck" said "Nazis used a red triangle to classify political prisoners during World War II.  The Trump campaign said the red triangle in its Facebook ads was associated with antifa, a claim experts rejected."

There's a lot that's alarming in this story.  First, the fact that the big social media giants are increasingly openly taking sides in debate and in the "culture wars".  It's not "censorship".  They are private organizations and can in my view say what they like and associate with whom they like.  But this condescending exclusion of the "deplorables" further polarizes public debate, fuels paranoia and undermines trust.  Not in my view a sound business model, and not good for the community.

Second, that increasingly problematic "experts say" trope in news stories and especially headlines.  I'm all for expertise within its proper boundaries.  If someone with gardening experience can tell me how to keep the vegetables I've started growing alive long enough for the squirrels to eat them I'm all ears (of corn).  But when "experts say" in a news story a reporter is hoodwinking you, they are putting forward their own opinion as news and finding someone among the thousands and thousands of credentialed people readily available online who thinks the same way they do.  Which again undermines trust.

Newspapers, like Facebook, are private organizations entitled to hold and express their own point of view.  But when they surreptitiously package opinion as news it's a problem.  And when you see "experts say" in a headline it's at least 10:1 that it's used to counterfeit a consensus among serious smart informed people that only fools and deplorables doubt the left-wing view.  Or worse.

Here it's worse, because the third and most appalling thing about that story is that it's a flat-out lie.

As readers know, I'm not a Trump fan, and one reason why is that he too lies a lot.  Or, worse, says whatever feels good and scratches the itches of his base without even bothering to figure out if it's a lie.  (Linking Ted Cruz's father to the Kennedy assassination was the final straw for me but there's a big bale out there you can choose from.)  Trump and his followers call "fake news" on lots of things they just don't like, while saying lots of things that aren't true.

So when I read the Times story, I didn't immediately have an opinion on who was mistaken, or lying, or whether both were, despite the two red flags described above.  But I did think "Who's an expert on whether the red triangle is associated with Antifa"?  To which you might say sociologists of hate movements.  Or of social justice movements.  Or something along those lines.  But here I think the expert is the informed citizen.

Let me once again quote William Pitt the Elder speaking in the Upper House of Britain's Parliament a quarter of a millennium ago.  "There is one plain maxim, to which I have invariably adhered through life: that in every question in which my liberty or my property were concerned, I should consult and be determined by the dictates of common sense.  I confess, my Lords, that I am apt to distrust the refinements of learning, because I have seen the ablest and the most learned men equally liable to deceive themselves and to mislead others.  The condition of human nature would be lamentable indeed, if nothing less than the greatest learning and talents, which fall to the share of so small a number of men, were sufficient to direct our judgment and our conduct.  But Providence has taken better care of our happiness, and given us, in the simplicity of common sense, a rule for our direction, by which we can never be misled."

Never is too strong a word.  We humans can be misled by common sense, expertise, ignorance or anything else.  But the odds are definitely better if you check for yourself than if you just get talked down to into silence.  Which is why faced with the Times' claim about Facebook's claim about Trump's claim, I did something the reporter apparently did not.  I checked.

It wasn't even hard because, speaking of social media giants, I simply Googled "red triangle Antifa".  And in less than a second, without having to stand up or anything, I got a host of links including (wait for the "Rebel Sell" with h/t to Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter) links to sites peddling Antifa merch with the red triangle prominently displayed.

No really.  Try it yourself.  You'll get mostly links to the Trump ad kerfuffle.  But you'll also get links to the merch.

So here's the truly scandalous part.  If the reporter didn't know, or weren't sure, whether Facebook was right about Trump, it would have taken literally five minutes to settle, less time than finding those "experts who say" and interviewing them.  A few seconds for the search then a few minutes clicking the links.  Which also include books on the phenomenon and why Antifa adopted the symbol.  The idea was to turn a badge of shame into one of pride and say "Hey, all you fascists, I'm one of those progressives you hate" which is not in itself unreasonable or deplorable.  But not checking is.

BTW I then tried to post one of the links as a comment on the Times story.  But I don't think they allowed it; at any rate I never got a notification that my comment was published.  I did however retweet three of the links to red triangle Antifa march, two of which is now broken but this one's not.  As I said on Twitter, "Experts indeed.  Journalism at its finest".  The red triangle may not be Antifa's most prominent symbol.  But it is an Antifa symbol and they're proud of it.

Which means the Times story was fake news.  Flat out fake news.  Lies wrapped in lies.  The real false deal.