Mansplaining Fake News

Estimated read time: 8 minutes

Fake news is all the rage today.  It's the modern day version of yellow journalism during the early days of the printed newspaper over a hundred years ago.  Outrage over yellow journalism led to the creation of journalism ethics, codified by the Society of Professional Journalists.  Perhaps the prevalence of fake news today will lead to a set of ethics for digital journalism tomorrow. 

We all know (or think we know) fake news when we see it, but many struggle with a definition.  Anything coming out of the White House or the Capitol is fake news.  That's a given.  But what about anything coming out of the Daily Wire, an online news source?  (It is a fake news site.)  What about Five Drunk Rednecks?  (It isn't a fake news site.  It's an entertainment site clearly offering opinions, arguably drunk opinions, and not news.)

Kim Goodwin offers us a prime example of a fake news story.  Doubtful she intentionally wrote a fake news story, but her story has all the elements of one.  It's so well written, in fact, it fooled the BBC editors into thinking it was a real story.  Let's go through Ms. Goodwin's story one step at a time to show why it is a fake news story. Hopefully, by the time I'm done mansplaining (or rednecksplaining, drunksplaining or drunkrednecksplaining) why Ms. Goodwin's story is fake news, you'll catch the irony I'm presenting.

Ms. Goodwin's story is a simple one:

"Before explaining something to someone, ask if they need an explanation.  It's the polite and civil thing to do rather than assuming they're too stupid to understand the matter at hand."

Ms. Goodwin expanded my thirty-three word factual snippet into a eight hundred twenty word fake news article.  Let's break it down.

Social media world

The trend among news site wannabes, writer wannabes, and anyone with no experience outside of Mom's basement is to turn to social media to show the importance and validity of what the article is going to tell you.  Ms. Goodwin's "news story" is based solely on her Twitter post.

This may come as a surprise to geeks who haven't ventured much past their front door and only know the world through the virtual vision of social media, but social media is not a reflection of the real world.  Social media and all the "excitement" it generates is make believe.  Ms. Goodwin's article appealed mostly to trolls looking for their own fifteen minutes of fame.  It also served the purpose of making her fifty bucks for getting another written-in-half-an-hour article churned out and published.  She does have a living to make. 

"Look at me!" the story screams.  "I made a simple flow chart and it went viral.  I'm validated by the general public!"

First of all, from Ms. Goodwin's article, "3,300 comments, 50,000 retweets, and 120,000 likes" is not a viral tweet.  With 336 million Twitter users, the highest number in the stats (likes) translates to about one grain of sand in the kids' sandbox.  If we add all the likes, retweets, and comments as support for what her article had to say, we'd still have one grain of sand agreeing with her article.

Second, social media responses are hardly a valid statistical measurement of  anything.  If Ms. Goodwin understood any basic statistical measures, she would know her 173,300 statistical sample represented only Internet consumers of social media, specifically Twitter users, and not the general public at large. 

When something "goes viral," viral is undefined.  On Twitter, the tweet didn't go viral by any measurement, but even if it did, was the tweet viral across the social media platforms?  Doubtful.  Most viral posts on social media only mentions one platform, not cross platforms.  Ms. Goodwin's tweet wasn't viral on Twitter (as the numbers show) and she makes no mention of her flowchart going viral anywhere else.  Her tweet had Twitter appeal at the moment it was posted and that's it.

General rule: if an article is based mostly (more than half) on social media reaction, it is fake news.

Journalistic ethics violation

The Society of Professional Journalists state that journalists should avoid stereotyping.  "Journalists should examine the ways their values and experiences may shape their reporting," the guidelines explain.

By definition, "mansplaining" is a derogatory, and sexist, term.  Feminist bloggers coined the term about ten years ago and a couple of years later it worked it's way into the mainstream lexicon.  Mansplaining is a condescending term used to describe condescending behavior some men exhibit towards women, but is generically ascribed to all men who explain anything.  (Am I mansplaining, rednecksplaining, drunksplaining or drunkrednecksplaining now?)

When some of Ms. Goodwin's more astute readers questioned the m-word as being an example of female chauvinism by pointing out that men tend to explain things...to everybody...she dismissed the accusations.  She justified the term as being valid since there is ample evidence that how we learn to communicate is gendered biased.

On some esoteric level, I agree with her sociological explanation of how our communication skills were developed and are taught.   Some of the biases need to be fixed.  Denigrating men, in general, with derogatory terms is not the best way to effect change, though. You don't fight fire with gasoline.

Just as men should mothball their sexist tendencies, women should do the same.  We all should embrace gender differences and discard the hurtful ones.  Responsible journalists and editorialists (yes, professional editorialists are still held to journalistic standards) shouldn't be fueling the gender divide on the BBC news site or any news site.

Faulty premise

Ms. Goodwin took a shortcut that every writer wannabe is guilty of doing.  She took the intellectually lazy route of stereotyping the villain then proceeded to tear down the villain to size.  In Ms. Goodwin's article, the villain is men.

What is the intellectually lazy route?

Quite simply, don't treat people as individuals.  Find the labeled box the individual fits in for the purpose of the story, stuff them in and then proceed to prove your point.  I'm mansplaining (or maybe rednecksplaining, drunksplaining, or drunkrednecksplaining) because, obviously, I fit into the box labeled "man," "drunk," or "redneck," and I wouldn't be surprised if someone else labeled a new box, "male drunk redneck" because, you know, female drunk rednecks -oh, wait, there's such people as female drunk rednecks? - are completely different than their male counterparts.

Real and honest journalists and editorialists don't look for the labeled boxes to make their point.  I could easily put Ms. Goodwin into a lot of boxes right now, but I refuse to.  Either I make my point based on intellectual honesty or I don't make my point at all.  Men explain things.  So do women.  Neither one is mansplaining nor womensplaining.  They are simply explaining.  They may be explaining politely or impolitely, but even that determination is to be made by the two engaged in the conversation.  Trying to expand the claim of impolite explaining to include some sort of sexist undertones is sexist itself.

Boxing people with neat little labels is not only a sign of intellectual laziness, but also a sign of a bigot or just about any -ism or -ist word out there we use to describe groups of people.  I have no problem labeling Ms. Goodwin as a probable sexist or female chauvinist, but no group she may belong to (women, feminist, author wannabes, extra-terrestrial) are stuffed in there with her.  Why?  Because people are people and they all should be treated as individuals, not products of a labeled box.  Ms. Goodwin sits in the box labeled "female chauvinist" all by herself.  Sure, she shares the box with other female chauvinists, but I'm not talking about those other individuals right now.  They are irrelevant to my story. 

Unfortunately, Ms. Goodwin took the alleged conversation of two of her coworkers and turned those two conversations into a box labeled "men" and proceeded to bash men in general. In the process, she painted women as "victims."

Hmm, there's an interesting conundrum.  By all accounts of her Internet presence, Ms. Goodwin is a highly successful woman despite all the "mansplaining" she may have suffered through.  Public life is replete with examples of successful women who don't mince their words any more than any man.  Some of those women scare me, especially Judge Judy and my Mom.

Oh, I see.  Because I'm explaining this, I'm mansplaining and need to shut up.

Sorry.

The take away

Spotting fake news, even in editorial form, is easy.  The writer should always strive for factual information (which also means not omitting relevant facts), impartiality, and neutrality.  Be alert for the red flags of a fake news story.  Relying on social media response as "proof" is a red flag.  Stereotyping people is a red flag.  Not relying on validated research is a red flag.  Misapplying validated research is a red flag.

With all that said, Ms. Goodwin would be a good addition to the Five Drunk Rednecks.  Her article was an entertaining read that, while falling a bit short of this blog's editorial standards, did generate a ripple caused by a dying gnat's plummet in the ocean of social media so, "yeah!"

By the way, did you catch the irony of this article?  If not, I reckon I failed to adequately explain what a fake news story is.


TL;DR folks:
Y'all have been placed in a box labeled "lazy people."  Read the article or at least look at the chart below, which is unrelated to the article.  The chart is the result of a challenge to make another pointless flowchart.

Instead of a YouTube video for your viewing pleasure here's
another pointless flowchart explaining Trump supporters. 

Posted by A Drunk Redneck