Facebook, Fake News, and Playboy
Over the past few months we’ve seen a war on journalism and the legacy news media. The term “fake news” has entered the public conscious and is making people increasingly more suspicious about the integrity of the information that they consume. And this sentiment will only increase in the future as CGI and AI make hoaxes and fake news more convincing. Meanwhile today we're seeing the legacy media implode while the New Media booms. In fact the New Media has become so popular that now over half of American adults get their news from social media. All of these factors have combined in such a way that Facebook is in a position to disrupt the news industry. So far they have blown their opportunity, but, as I’ll outline below, they can truly make a meaningful impact on journalism if they take a leaf out of Playboy’s playbook.
The term “fake news” saw a resurgence in popularity following the 2016 presidential election. And once “fake news” solidified itself in the public conscious, increasingly more people began to question the integrity of their news media. In response to this sentiment Facebook debuted their solution to the problem: an initiative called the Facebook Journalism Project. This initiative had the intention of curbing “fake news” by using third-party fact-checkers to determine whether a story was disingenuous or not. While some championed the approach as a step in the right direction, others questioned the potential for abuse of power from special interests. Personally I believe that this approach only treats the symptoms and not the true cause of the “fake news” problem.
This is because the underlying cause of the “fake news” problem is a consumer base that’s easily manipulated. News agencies have been around for so long that the business has become segmented. Every profitable news company has their own niche demographic of consumers and, as a result, they tailor the facts that they report in order to maintain their audience. This usually means highlighting certain facts and downplaying others or completely omitting important information from a story in order to preserve a specific narrative for their audience. While it’s not outright false reporting, it does mean that the audience rarely gets the complete story. But this kind of reporting is to be expected because people are inherently biased. Not only does this mean it's impossible for journalists to report a story without some sort of slant, but consumers also prefer to seek out information that agrees with their existing beliefs. As a result, consumers are rarely educated on the true beliefs held by an opposing view. Instead they get sold on a more caricaturized version of an opposing view because it aligns well with their preconceived biases. And it’s this that makes consumers more susceptible to “fake news”. If the “fake news” aligns with their preconceived biases there’s a good chance it’ll be accepted as truth.
This is why it’s clear that Facebook’s solution to the “fake news” problem will fail. It doesn’t address the real issue: a consumer’s readiness to believe a story that indulges their biases. I believe the only way to really address this problem is to empower consumers. They must be exposed to the true beliefs of the opposing view. It’s only when people are knowledgeable about a person or opinion they oppose that they are able to see through any “fake news” surrounding them. Or at least they’ll be more inclined to question a “fake news” story instead of taking it as fact. And this is the approach I think Facebook needs to take. If Facebook really wants to make a meaningful impact on journalism, Mark Zuckerberg must start emulating Hugh Hefner instead of Big Brother. Facebook needs to bring back the long-form interview.
Long-form interviews are the best remedy for “fake news” because they take out all biases and agendas. The readers get to learn exactly what the interviewee thinks—their beliefs, their goals, and their personality are all unedited and unfiltered. It’s as close to the truth as we can reasonably get. And Playboy pioneered this style of interview to great success in the 1960s when they featured rising controversial activists like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Fidel Castro. Though readers didn’t always agree with what the interviewees said, they applauded the platform for allowing such unfiltered insight. Instead of having media pundits tell them what their opinions should be, these interviews allowed readers to create their own informed opinions about various subjects and figures. I believe Facebook is in the perfect position to capitalize on the same format of interviews. They already have the brand recognition and audience needed to attract worthwhile interview subjects and they have a platform that can take the format further than Playboy was able to do. In addition to posting the long-form interviews online, they could experiment with livestreaming interviews and allowing a few Facebook users to ask interview questions in real time. They could also encourage users to comment on the interviews and stimulate a healthy debate. Because Facebook ties a name to a face, debates would likely be a lot more civil than typical anonymous online arguments. And it’s the combination of all these factors—unfiltered interviews, livestreaming questions, and debating—that will lead to an informed and engaged consumer of news. A consumer who will hopefully see right through the “fake news” stories.
Facebook acknowledged that they have an opportunity to impact journalism when they announced their Facebook Journalism Project, but so far this has fallen flat. It seeks to remedy “fake news” by addressing the symptoms of the problem and not the source. However if they follow in the footsteps of Playboy and reinvent the long-form interview for the social media age, they can seriously make an impact on the world of journalism. It remains to be seen if Facebook will push for a more engaged and informed news consumer or if they will continue down the path of curating news instead. Either way, all signs point to a market that is hungry for unfiltered long-form interviews so if Facebook passes I’m sure another media company will seize the opportunity.