FAKE QUEUES!

TRUMPISM’S UNAPOLOGETIC DISREGARD FOR THE FACTS HAS EVEN REACHED THE CHECK OUT LINE OF OUR LOCAL CAFE

‘EXCUSE me,” said a sharp voice behind me in the cafe queue, “I think you should get to the back. I saw you push in.”

I turned to face my accuser, a middle-aged woman in a bobble hat. At first I thought she was joking, a bit of friendly banter while we all waited for our jacket potatoes and chilli and rice. But she was deadly serious.

I told her I had been in the queue for some time.

“No you haven’t. You pushed right in.”

I explained that perhaps she had seen my husband join me and had mistakenly thought we had both jumped the line but she was adamant, her voice getting louder.

“It’s a disgrace pushing in like that. Who do you think you are?”

Salvation came in the form of another customer who informed the woman I had indeed been in the same place in the queue all along. He had been standing behind me. She didn’t blink.

“I think you owe me an apology,” I told her.

There was a moment’s pause while the rest of the cafe queue looked on. “No.”

Later, once I had managed to pick my jaw up off the floor, the incident set me thinking – had I just seen the results of living in a fake news society?

‘Fake news’. It’s a funny expression and one which only a few years ago nobody had even heard of.

Now, in 2019 and thanks largely to Donald Trump, it’s become a kind of conversational shorthand for something which cannot – or should not – be believed.

Which is all well and good. I’m a journalist. I’m trained to be cynical. Questioning the norm is what we should all do.

But it’s gone too far. For some ‘fake news’ applies to anything on social media. For others it’s a broad brush stroke description for the media in general.

And for too, too many it’s a handy way to shout down a debate you don’t like or are losing; a one-size fits all accusation which can instantly elevate your position and cast shade onto others. We’ve seen it at its worst in the political arena in America and it appears to be thriving these days in Westminster.

We’ve seen it on social platforms – doctored videos, false ‘wonder drug’ claims – and now, it appears, it’s entered real life – the belief that as long as you say something is so, then it is.

All of which means when you find a trusted source of news – like the newspaper you’re reading now – then it’s more crucial to cling on to it. And to speak up for what you know is right when challenged.

Because when truth starts to become a matter of opinion, we’ve entered very dangerous waters indeed.