There is a difference between Fake News, on the one hand, and fake journalists, on the other.<\/p>\n
Fake New refers to the end product.\u00a0 What make a fake journalist a fake <\/em>journalist are the motives that drive the latter.\u00a0 Ultimately, in practice, the two are inseparable. Conceptually, however, the ideas of \u201cFake News\u201d and \u201cfake journalists\u201d are distinct.<\/p>\n A fake journalist is someone whose reporting is undertaken for the sake of, not<\/em> truth, fairness, or informing the public but, rather, his or her own political partisanship, profits, and\/or fame and recognition.<\/p>\n Immanuel Kant was one of the Western world\u2019s greatest philosophers. Kant distinguished \u201cacting for the sake<\/em> of duty\u201d from merely<\/em> \u201cacting in accordance<\/em> with duty.\u201d\u00a0 Kant\u2019s moral philosophy was vastly more nuanced than this brief allusion would have the reader think, but his point was that if people fulfill their moral duties just because they are their duties\u2014if they do their duties for the sake of their duties\u2014then they deserve moral credit for doing so. If, on the other hand, they fulfill their moral duties from ulterior motives, then their acts are not right and they deserve no praise.<\/p>\n In other words, whether an act is morally right, whether it is authentically moral, depends upon the motive or intention of the actor.<\/p>\n In many contexts, Kant\u2019s thesis resonates profoundly at an intuitive level.\u00a0 Take the following scenario as an example.<\/p>\n Suppose that I witnessed a murder, say, that of a little old lady who was killed for her bingo money.\u00a0 I had all of the information that the authorities needed in order to apprehend the killer. The only problem is that I am unwilling to come forward. Perhaps I am fearful that if I disclose my knowledge of the crime I will then make myself and my family vulnerable to reprisals by the murderer and his associates.\u00a0 Or maybe I am unwilling to fulfill my moral duty because I know that I will then become part of a long, drawn out trial, and I don\u2019t want to be inconvenienced.\u00a0 Perhaps I have long known the killer and his family and I don\u2019t want for them to have to suffer the pain that they will undoubtedly suffer in the event that he goes to jail for the remainder of his natural existence. Or possibly I just don\u2019t feel like getting involved.<\/p>\n So, I have a duty to help, I know I have a duty to help, but I\u2019m disinclined to do so.<\/p>\n But then<\/em> it is brought to my attention that the family of the slain woman, the authorities, and other concerned members of the public are offering a handsome reward for anyone that can help them resolve this murder.\u00a0 Without missing a beat, and obviously with an eye to collecting money, I go to the police station and reveal all that I know.<\/p>\n In this case, I would have indeed fulfilled my duty to help the police resolve a murder. But what was my motive?\u00a0 Did I fulfill my duty for the sake of doing so? In other words, did I do the right thing simply and solely because it was the right thing? Or was I motivated by something other than respect for the duty itself?<\/p>\n The answer is obvious. I acted \u201cin accordance with duty,\u201d but certainly not for the sake of duty.<\/p>\n Few people would commend me for coming forward\u2014as long as they knew my reason for doing so.<\/p>\n From Kant we can learn much regarding the difference between real journalists and fake journalists.\u00a0 In a self-governing Republic, it is a good and necessary thing that the media have at least an adversarial-like relationship with politicians. Thus, in and of itself, that the President and many in the media mutually detest one another is far preferable to the love affair that transpired for the last eight years between President Obama and the very same media that is now hostile to President Trump.<\/p>\n But it is precisely the love-fest between Obama and the media that reveals that much of this journalism that we see on display is indeed fake journalism.\u00a0 Fake journalists at CNN, MSNBC, and elsewhere fulfill their duty insofar as they assume a skeptical or distrustful stance toward Trump and his party. Yet they deserve no moral credit, for while they act in accordance with duty, they surely are not fulfilling their duty for duty\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n That this is so is borne out by the fact that the overwhelming majority of Trump\u2019s media critics are Democrats.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n As such, they are driven by a desire to delegitimize Trump and the GOP, but the President especially.\u00a0 And they are willing to pursue this goal at all costs, namely, the cost of telling lies\u2014whether these are lies of commission, like the lie that Trump and his associates \u201ccolluded\u201d with Russians, or lies of omission, like their unwillingness to talk about the President\u2019s achievements.<\/p>\n Conversely, Obama was a fellow partisan, the first black president in American history. The very same people who are invested in bringing down Trump were equally invested in seeing to it that Obama succeeded.\u00a0 Today, this pro-Obama sentiment continues to animate them as they seek to preserve 44\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n Any Democrats and leftists who doubt what I\u2019m saying should ask themselves a simple question.\u00a0 If there was a large and influential media organization whose self-styled \u201cjournalists\u201d were Steve Bannon, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Savage, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Franklin Graham, and whole lot of others who are known to be Republican, Christian, conservative, and, let\u2019s say, Southern, would you trust that they could also be \u201cobjective\u201d in their reporting?<\/p>\n Of course, no one really needs for left-wing Democrats to engage in a hypothetical thought experiment over this topic.\u00a0 We already know how they have long reacted to the one and only network that wasn\u2019t dominated by Democrats and that self-described as \u201cfair and balanced.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a difference between Fake News, on the one hand, and fake journalists, on the other. Fake New refers to the end product.\u00a0 What make a fake journalist a fake journalist are the motives that drive the latter.\u00a0 Ultimately, in practice, the two are inseparable. Conceptually, however, the ideas of \u201cFake News\u201d and \u201cfake…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n