David Harsanyi writes: No one ever loses an election in America anymore. It’s always some nefarious, shrouded force that’s destabilizing democracy that’s at fault. Now that Democrats have sort of moved on from blaming the Electoral College and James Comey and the Russians, they’re absolutely convinced that “fake news” turned the election against Hillary Clinton (although it’s still a mystery why they lost more than 1,000 other seats since Obamacare was passed).

Of course the Internet is teeming with bogus news. That’s nothing new. Even the smartest people fall for fake stories sometimes. It’s a problem. And of course thinking about how social media affects our democratic institutions is legitimate. But considering how often voters use news — fake or real — to reinforce their pre-existing worldviews, I’m skeptical anyone can quantify how much misinformation matters, or if it matters at all.

That study supposedly showing “Fake News Beat Real News” in the last months of 2016 election–it shows no such thing https://t.co/nxFcFbpMDU

— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) November 17, 2016

Moreover, there’s no effective way curate news content in a democratic environment like the Internet or social media. Nor should we try. While the Left is always keen on controlling the flow of news—overturning Citizens United or passing a Fairness Doctrine or handing control of the Internet to the government — we don’t need gatekeepers. Sorry, I don’t trust that people who defended “fake but accurate” stories or put quotations marks around “religious freedom” should be dictating what’s worth talking about or what’s fake.

It’s not simply that many people have cause to distrust most of the media because coverage can be biased and unreliable, but it’s that professional factcheckers and journalists regularly attempt to negate authentic stories by treating them as fake news, from Planned Parenthood’s selling of body parts to Clinton’s email scandal…(read more)

Source: thefederalist.com