Essay on "Fake News"

John Devine

English 01

Prof. Bennett

4/10/12

Discerning “Truth” Within the Hyperreality

“If you watch the news and don’t like it, this is your counter program to the news”

-John Stewart

“search of instances where the American imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake; where the boundaries between game and illusion are blurred, the art museum is contaminated by freak show, and falsehood is enjoyed in a situation of ‘fullness,’ of horror vacui.”

-Umberto Eco

In Author Benjamin Woolley’s novel “Virtual Worlds” he states, “The concept of an independent, objective reality was an assumption of the modern age that could not be sustained in the face of the technological and economic developments of the late, twentieth century” (Woolley 198). This statement may seem counter intuitive to what some feel technology has offered the media with the ability to access the world and knowledge quicker and faster. However, at the core of this argument is that the technology offers the media outlets the ability to augment the reality of the story they are covering. Meaning that a news outlet could affirm that what they are stating are the facts while at the same moment retrofitting the reality of the situation to fit a certain perspective. This idea is key to the post modernistic philosophy of hyperreality. Hyperreality is the notion that in a technologically advanced world where a myriad of media outlets exist that can wholly filter an event, how is an individual’s consciousness able to discern reality from an augmented reality. Hyperreality also encompasses the idea that copies or reinterpretations of concrete items or events can become substantially more real than the original, thus making it hyper real. An example of this is Da Vinci’s the Last Supper, purportedly the most reproduced piece of art in history. When seeing a life size replica one cannot help but be astounded by the vibrant colors and the detail in...