Fake and facts
A clever and well-written book about news stories which replicates some of the problems it identifies.
rather than uplifting stuff due to negativity bias. Then there is positivity bias. If I am told “Stuart Kelly is a fine critic”, I am inclined to believe it. If I am told “So-andso said you are a disgrace to reviewing”, I will rationalise that the stupid non-entity I slated is wrong. The news is also too quick, and Brotherton, as he does frequently, dredges a bit of cultural history to frame his argument.
The best chapter is about “echo chambers”. This is a topic which many hands have wrung over, to no perceptible gain. The marrow of this book is that the echo chamber is the echo chamber. Those who write or worry about the idea of the echo chamber are those most susceptible to such thinking. Of course, as Miss Jean Brodie said, “For those who like this sort of thing… that is the sort of thing they like”. But it is peculiar to be reviewing a book, in a newspaper, as part of the media, which insists (I would say rightly) that the real story is that few are reading the stories.
The book will give many dinner-party bores their “But did you know?” moment. But sometimes scrutiny is good. Again and again I doubted the methodology behind the flourished “facts”. Sixty per cent of people think they were misreported?
Over what? What they said, on record, or a misspelling of a second cousin’s name, or that their chipper tie went unmentioned? If you go looking for grievance, there are plenty of strident voices. If you look for humility and caution, you don’t get a headline.
Let us take an example. Brotherton is keen on fact-checking, and rightly so. But on page 273 he writes about the “Moses effect” – people are asked if Moses took animals onto the Ark, and because he’s a bit Old Testament, they tend to agree. Brotherton then says – big reveal – it was “Noah, who built the ark and welcomed aboard two of each animal”. FAKE NEWS! FAKE NEWS! Noah was not shaking hooves with any of the crew. Nowhere does it say that he “welcomed them”, so that’s an emotive casting of the data. Moreover, Noah takes two of every unclean animal
and seven of the pure. There is much to admire and more to ponder in this book, even if much of the research has already been pre-packaged for the market. The use of “fake news” in the title is itself a little fake, in that the work does not analyse what is “fake” about “fake news”. Did Hitler believe his vile ideas about Jewish people in the same way as Trump denounces valid questions as lies and falsehoods? It’s easy, as my Mum says, ‘to cast nasturtiums’, but far harder to create a vaccine for them. by a time before her innocence was lost. Each woman serves to supply the counterbalance to the other and temper more painful memories.
Anna may have failed to make a living as a poet, but flashes of verse pepper her thoughts, sometimes profound and beautiful, sometimes comic.
A similarly reflective, contemplative voice is used by all the characters and that there could perhaps be more to distinguish them, but then Edinburgh is a poetic place and, in A Day Like Any Other, the spirit of the city is powerfully evoked.