Against fake news

A very intelligent and well read friend of mine argued over dinner that it is a good thing that anyone can publish now anything online. He thought this is great because public opinion can be shaped freely, and the big tv channels and newspapers don't have too much influence on the view of people.

I heartily disagree with this. I have seen so far very few good and interesting free sources online which really pointed out anything substantial and interesting that one could not find in professional publications.
At the same time there are tens of thousands of blogs, pages, youtube channels, etc. which push conteo, horrible fake news, racism, white supremacy, scapegoating of different public figures, and so on, and so on. A lot of these people take the very simplicistic view that the government always lies and is against them, and that scientist are hacks. This is disastrous.
Most fake news propagators tread on the lack of knowledge of the average person about credible sources. Most people don't read a wide range of newspapers. They just parrot a few idiots who talk about 'the media'. As if all opinions would be the same. Anyone who reads the financial times, the nyt, the washington post, the japan times, al jazira, the russian times, RT, the times, the guardian, the süddeutche, xinghua agency releases, etc. will see very quickly that there are many-many different views and positions on almost any issue. Professional newspapers even publish confronting opinions of experts, exactly for the purposes to be fair. There is no media conspiracy, and there is no single message 'the media' is trying to get across.

Furthermore, average people imagine that what a scientist or a journalist does is just to think about something for a few minutes and then write it down. This is not how things work. Scientists do experiments, measurements, make observations, consult the work of others, double check everything. They don't question 'everything'. That's something that silly people do. Philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, political analysts, physicists, biologists, etc. don't question everything: they have cooperative, big projects to which many-many well trained and honest people who make a genuine effort contribute to. Anything that gets pubished is scrutinized by a lot of other people.

There are also many confusions about professional newspapers. Proper journalists don't just write down their opinions, and they don't simply consult other newspapers. They go and talk with experts, listen to politians, read documents published by the government, institutions, judges, the army, independent researchers, universities, and so on. They interview several people who know what they are talking about. Non of the internet pundits do anything like this. Most of them don't even have an idea about what they are writing on. This is causing horrible damage. People who are spreading fake news about rising radiation levels in Fukushima, the peacefulness of Russia, the brilliance of Erdogan, the harm of vaccines, the evil nature of feminism, and so on are doing great harm to our communities. They are not spreading opinions, they are spreading base and vile falsehoods.

The Istvan Lovas scandal - should they eat shit?

Good ol' Hungary is at it again. Or at least Istvan Lovas is, one of the Brussels correspondents of the daily paper Magyar Nemzet (translating into Hungarian Nation), which is heavily leaning towards the current Fidesz-KDNP Government.

The story in a nutshell: Lovas wrote an e-mail to the journalists responsible for covering Hungarian events on international level, complaining that whereas they vividly depict the 'supposed' wrongdoings of the governing party, they don't inform the rest of the EU about any of the scandals the former governing party MSZP gets involved in. He ends his short rant by recommending the aforementioned media workers to eat shit.

You can see a Hungarian article on the scandal here:

http://atlatszo.blog.hu/2013/10/29/egyetek_szart_seggfejek_lovas_istvan_a_kulfoldi_tudositoknak

The page also contains Lovas's e-mail in English.

Truth be told: Lovas is right that the MSZP's affairs don't get much publicity nowadays aboard. But I think he is wrong about the reasons for this. Lovas implies that the Hungarian correspondents prefer MSZP and other parties in contrast to Fidesz-KDNP. That's bollocks. When MSZP was the ruling party international media was quick to deliver news about their wrongdoings. This happened both when the police reacted in a brutal way to some of the anti-government protests that sprung up after the 1956 ceremonies. Same thing applies to the case of ex-president Gyurcsany when someone got a recording of him beginning a speech addressed to his fellow MSZP members at a party meeting beginning thus: "We fucked up. We were lying in the morning, at noon, and in the evening."

There are two reasons why no one writes about MSZP but there is some coverage of the work of Fidesz-KDNP. First, Hungary is a small, quite insignificant country. Not too many care about news about the shady activities and mistakes of one of the opposition parties. Second, whereas MSZP's activity mainly harms Hungarians, the current Fidesz-KDNP government openly engages in anti-EU populist propaganda, took on board a very risky economic strategy to ease the debt situation of the country (we still don't see whether it will work or not), and they introduced modifications in the constitution and media law which can be used to the advantages of the governing party. These four things both go against much of mainstream EU thinking and values, and also openly engage with many of the EU's leading thinkers and politicians in a hostile way. Thus, they are more interesting as news material, more controversial and get more attention.

Lovas's character has often come under attack during the last few years. I think he is one of those people who openly engage in party rhetoric and do not even take the trouble of trying to appear balanced or impartial. In fact, this attitude gains him much popularity among far-right readers and the xenophobes. I think what makes his case really bad is that he knows the rules of the game very well, but pretends not to, pretends to be honest.

People like him are no use for Hungary, and not even for his party. He is a great example of those who - instead of trying to work at developing the country, gaining new opportunities, opening up and winning over territories in economic fields - are just satisfied with barking as loud as they can around the quarters of their masters, securing whatever personal gain they can, not caring for the consequences.