Why is the news fake?

Yeah yeah, the President is a totalitarian ogre who thrives on de-legitimatizing the authority of the press and the very possibility of objective facts.  And, yeah yeah, that's not exactly a new part of the right wing playbook with copious examples accumulated over the course of the past century.    Yeah yeah, David Brock created a bunch of Upworthy style propaganda websites that took advantage of Facebook algorithms in order to promote the Clinton campaign. There's a lot of bad political info out there.

But if you really want to know why "fake news" has traction as an epithet, it's because a lot of the news is, in fact, fake.

Interviews with more than two dozen marketers, journalists, and others familiar with similar pay-for-play offers revealed a dubious corner of online publishing in which publicists, ranging from individuals like Satyam to medium-sized “digital marketing firms” that blur traditional lines between advertising and public relations, quietly pay off journalists to promote their clients in articles that make no mention of the financial arrangement.People involved with the payoffs are extremely reluctant to discuss them, but four contributing writers to prominent publications including Mashable, Inc, Business Insider, and Entrepreneur told me they have personally accepted payments in exchange for weaving promotional references to brands into their work on those sites. Two of the writers acknowledged they have taken part in the scheme for years, on behalf of many brands

Maybe the "traditional lines between advertising and PR" would be less blurry if media companies were invested in keeping them un-blurred.  One good way to do that would be to pay writers. Instead, they offer "opportunities" to freelancers looking to build a "personal brand."  

The Fast Company writer also defended the practice by arguing that it’s enabled by editors who are hungry for cheap or unpaid blog content. Many high-volume sites, including the Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, and Forbes, maintain networks of unpaid contributors who publish large amounts of material. Forbes, for instance, marks articles by contributors with a small disclaimer, but the Columbia Journalism Review has pointed out that those dubiously sourced articles are often cited as though they were normal stories written by Forbes staff. In reality, the editorial process that leads to those articles being published is opaque — a Forbes spokesperson declined to answer questions about how many contributors the site has, whether they’re ever paid, or whether an editor reviews their work before publication. One former Forbes contributor, Josh Steimle, has even offered a “masterclass” on how to get published on the site, an accomplishment he described as “rewarding for both my personal brand and my digital marketing agency.”

For writers willing to accept payments in exchange for coverage, that’s an opportunity.

So everybody climbs all over each other in a competition for piecework or even unpaid piecework in the hope that can be monetized somehow. And it turns out the way to monetize a "personal brand" is to sell out one's.. person..  to advertisers. It's a practice that debases not only the exploited labor but also the "brands" of the capitalist media companies who enable and profit by it.  Eventually nobody believes the news is real anymore. Why would they?

But that's the gig economy.  Our hyper-individualized society forces us to "brand" our private selves, our hobbies, our free time, and, yes, homes, into saleable (the euphemism is shareable) products. Sometimes these opportunities converge. Such as when an STR marketer sends an automated pitch to your blog based on keywords.

Hi Jeffrey,

I hope this message finds you well.

While researching about travel, my team noticed the Airbnb mention you have on Library Chronicles. My name is Andrea and I’m part of the Creative Team at AllTheRooms, a vacation rental search engine. Our aim is to make travelers’ lives easier.

You are welcome to link www.alltherooms.com to your page as well. AllTheRooms shows results from every major booking site on the Internet, including Airbnb, Couchsurfing, Hostelworld, Expedia, Booking.com, and any other major booking site on the Internet. We believe it would be a great addition to your article.

If you have any questions about AllTheRooms, we would be happy to answer them.

Thank you,

Andrea & the Creative Team

They didn't offer one million dollars so I never got back to them.