Doreen Tipton: Now here’s a true story. . .

For many, but not all, it was a bit of a surprise when Trump won. The reaction from various Democrats, vested interest groups, liberal elites, Hollywood luvvies and certain sections of the media ranged from shock, to blind panic, fevered and sometimes deranged protests, death threats, and constant attempts to reverse the decision by whatever legal and illegal means possible. Sound familiar? Yes – the Trump vote was the USA’s Brexit moment.

All of this led to a surge in ‘Fake News’. You know the sort of thing – “Trump found in bed with Putin at All-Night Vote-Rigging Romp.” “Donald Trump Murdered My Cat With His Teeth” claims unhinged former employee bribed by Hillary Clinton. “Racist Trump Refused to Eat Black Pudding at Buffet” says Democrat bartender who wasn’t there.

Anyway – often Fake News is easy to spot. Sometimes it isn’t. So you’d think that an attempt to clamp down on it would be a good thing. I’m not so sure.

In recent months, the Government, Facebook, Twitter and the BBC (the four pillars of truth in our society) have all made loud noises about clamping down on Fake News. Their plan is to make sure that, in future, only their Fake News is allowed through, and everybody else’s is banned (especially if it’s true). Call me an old cynic, but I think that’s a tad worrying. It’s a big step towards Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, so beautifully brought to the screen by North Korean TV.

The billion dollar question is, who decides what’s fake and what isn’t?

It’d be a piece of cake if it was just about facts and figures. We could employ a load of boring accountants to do it. “Trump Creates 2.5 million New Jobs” would go off to the fact-checkers and come back as: “Trump Creates 2.43 million New Jobs.” Yippee. And two million of those jobs were for the accountants.

But not all Fake News is about facts and fiction. It’s about emphasis. I read an incredibly boring report from the Governor of the Bank of England the other day. I think it was in Hello Magazine, or some other leading financial journal. Yes, I have to do some very tedious things for my column research, when I’d much rather be doing proper financial stuff, like scratchcards. The Bank of England Governor, by the way, is Canadian, because apparently nobody in England is clever enough to do his job – it’s a bit like fruit picking I suppose. He was one of many who predicted that, if we vote for Brexit, the world would end immediately. He’s now revised his forecast to say that it won’t, it’ll do pretty much the opposite, although he somehow forgot to add the words: “I was completely wrong, so pay no attention whatsoever to me next time I pontificate.”

Anyway, after reading the article, I tried to play at being a news editor, and I picked out a possible headline based on what he’d actually said. It was: “Bank of England Governor says UK is ‘well-prepared’ for no-deal Brexit.” He said that, so I thought it was fair, and sounded quite newsy. Then I heard the BBC headline on radio two: “Governor warns of the dangers of crashing out of Europe without a deal”. There you go – same article but different emphasis, thanks to the choice of words (klaxons at the ready): “WARNS!” “CRASHING!” “EUROPE!” (not EU).

Fake or not, here’s the truth of it. The BBC is biased (they get big hand-outs from the EU coffers); the Government is biased; Twitter is biased; I’m biased; you’re biased. We’re all biased. And the system we have at the moment is that we all seek out the opinions we trust, for a thousand complex reasons, and we reject those opinions we don’t trust, based on our life experience. It’s not perfect, but at least it’s not corrupt. It doesn’t pretend that there’s one truth that we all must obey.

I actually don’t believe that Donald Trump did murder anyone’s cat with his teeth, especially as I just made the headline up.

But should a Trump hater find themselves as editor in chief at the newly-formed Ministry of Truth, I wonder how hard they’d work to check and suppress that story? Or would they just slap the word ‘allegedly’ on it and hit the publish button with a pantomimic evil laugh? As long as just one person alleges it – even if they own a pet vampire bat, their neck swivels 360 degrees and they like howling at the moon, or indeed if they’re the editor – then it’s okay to state it as a fact if you add the word allegedly.

Fake News is a good thing. For a start, it’s much more fun than facts. And it’s a sign that we don’t (yet) have full state censorship, which is the scariest thing of all. How long before they’d start censoring satirical news clips? Oops, silly me – I forgot. They already have. Those pesky algorithms again. Anybody’d think they were programmed by a biased human.

Incidentally – everything I’ve written here today is completely true. Except possibly that last sentence.

Tarra a bit x