Hoaxed (2019)

Hoaxed is a movie about the fake news, mainly told by fringe figures of the media landscape.  Alex Jones, Mike Cernovich, Scott Adams, Jordan Peterson, James O'Keefe, Tim Pool, and other online personalities provide their perspectives.  Having read two of Scott Adams' books, Jordan Peterson's book, and being a regular viewer of Tim Pool's YouTube channel, I was familiar with most of the complaints leveled.  Of course, the leftist slant of the media is covered, which was old news to me.  However, there were some surprises.

 

Cassie Jaye, an actress turned documentary director, had some success with feminist films.  She decided to tackle the men's rights movement in her next film.  Though she expected to uncover bigotry and misogyny, her interviews and research led her to different conclusions.  To her surprise, she was attacked by former allies for creating a pro-male film and abandoning feminism.  Though I have not seen the film, I did watch her Ted Talk.  She diverged from the party line and was attacked.

 

Multiple personalities noted that the media highlights conflict because it leads to more viewers on TV or more clicks on the internet.  If it bleeds, it leads.  That's hardly a surprise.  However, a Black Lives Matter activist was interviewed.  While in Washington DC with his group, he had seen some All Lives Matter folks and things looked tense.  But he was invited to speak and the two groups found common ground.  He was cheered by the crowd.  Here was the feel-good story of the day and somehow it didn't make it into the news.  The BLM activist was asked if he had heard of Dylan Roof storming into a black church in South Carolina.  Of course.  How about Emanuel Samson (a black man) storming into a church and shooting white people in Tennessee?  No, had not heard that story.  Nor had I.  One fits the America is racist narrative and the other doesn't.

 

The big surprise was that the media hypes conflict.  Conflict generates viewers and viewers generate money.  A war provides a 24/7 news cycle and high ratings.  Does the media provide fake news to lead to war?  The Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened.  The media floated the government line and Vietnam escalated dramatically.  Was the media more circumspect the next time government pushed for war?  Well, it has since been proven that the babies being yanked from incubators story that turned opinion for the first Gulf War (1991) was false.  Never happened.  Again, the media was fooled.  Or were they?  CNN had awesome ratings throughout the Gulf War.  Was Saddam really trying to build nukes as George W Bush said?  Judith Miller was eventually dumped by the New York Times because her stories about weapons of mass destruction proved inaccurate.  Oh, but the ratings were fabulous.  This is a really dark view of the media.

 

This only scratches the surface of topics from the two-hour movie.  It is an exploration of what the media has become.  The media has become an echo chamber - best exemplified by Twitter - and it thrives on conflict.  Rather than providing news, it sows division.  At least, that is what is argued here.  Check it out.