Of course Vox Political is already merrily pointing out fake information wherever I see it.

Yesterday (Tuesday) alone, This Site discussed Paul Nuttall’s fake claim to have lost a friend in the Hillsborough tragedy; the confusion over the Labour Party’s investigation of its Wallasey constituency organisation; Tory MP Tim Loughton’s misleading tweets about Ken Loach’s BAFTA speech; the Telegraph‘s fake story attacking Commons Speaker John Bercow; whether the United Nations ignored important information about the UK government’s mistreatment of people with long-term sicknesses and disabilities; the claims of now-former US national security advisor Michael Flynn; and the Guardian‘s misleading headline that the invitation to Donald Trump to make a state visit to the UK will remain open in spite of the wishes of nearly two million UK citizens.

Those are the stories I can remember off the top of my head, anyway.

In fact, it is getting very hard to find factual news amid the flurry of fakery, spin, propaganda and outright lies.

Perhaps we should all just set ourselves a challenge: Pick a TV or radio news show, watch or listen to an episode, and see how many stories actually stand up to analysis.

My guess is, the answer would be pitifully few.

This is a depressing time to be a political journalist. Not because there’s a lack of stories – there isn’t. If anything, politics has recently become interesting again after a long period of lacklustre concentration on economics that only succeeded in putting our finer minds off the subject and contributed to the financial collapse we suffered in 2008.

No – it’s depressing because the signal-to-noise ratio is so appallingly bad. It is past time we cut out the noise and promoted the signal.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden just intervened in the fake news debate. And he proposed a solution that most politicians won’t like one bit.

Snowden says that the responsibility to “help each other” lies with citizens and users of media platforms. He asserts:

“We talk and we share. And we point out what is fake. We point out what is true. The answer to bad speech is not censorship. The answer to bad speech is more speech… We have to exercise and spread the idea that critical thinking matters.”

But the informed “critical thinking” Snowden is advocating may not sit well with some politicians. Because people who think critically are unlikely to fall for the spin, propaganda, and lies that politicians often put out themselves.

So although this is very good advice for citizens, it’s unlikely that many politicians will be cheering it on anytime soon.

Source: Edward Snowden just solved the world’s fake news crisis, and politicians won’t like it one bit [VIDEO] | The Canary

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