Sixteen days ere this posting, pioneering culture-jammer Alan Abel (left) passed away from cancer complications.* Most of his activities centered on hoaxing media with such stunts as performing a phony wedding between a Idi Amin imposter and a fair-haired lass from Minnesota, choreographing multiple faintings during the taping of a Phil Donahue Show episode, and staging a sham sexual competition.
Abel’s work began in the 1950s, a time when the average American’s faith in institutions of government and culture was at its peak. Abel challenged the uncritical acceptance of press as fact and nothing but the fact by exposing how information services failed numerous times to do simple fact checking.
Nowadays, we’ve been inundated with numerous sources deliberately propagating inaccurate information, or in our current vernacular, “fake news.” And it’s hardly surprising that numerous mainstream outlets have mistaken these stories for true, and subsequently repeated them on the air, on their websites, and in their publications.
Abel would be the first to point out that this inattention to accuracy and critical evaluation of breaking information is nothing new for the press. In fact, he made a legendary career out of these media shortcomings. And as long as news borders on entertainment, or for that matter propaganda, we can expect more of the same.
I understand why there’s an almost knee-jerk defense of mainstream media, savaged as it is by a well-financed, well-connected propaganda machine that, quite frankly, serves parties who are opposed to basic principles of democracy, and dedicated to the concentration of economic, political and cultural clout into fewer and fewer hands. And I sympathize with the exasperation felt by many when demonstratively accurate statements (e.g., “This is what you said on this date, and here’s the videotape of you saying it on this date”) are deemed false, or having a political bias. Indeed, many people feel that scholarship and science have a “liberal” bias, if such a thing is possible.
At the same time, I look at institutions like academia, politics and media and remember Abel’s brave examples that prove in no uncertain terms that there are inherent flaws within these systems, flaws that we can detect and diminish/manage.
In case you’re wondering why I put a question mark in the title of this post, it’s because Abel has faked his death before. Many newspapers dutifully printed the obituary without so much as verifying his health or lack thereof. So it’s rather fitting that many of his obituaries have qualifying statements. The New York Times, famously burned by the original death hoax in 1980, titled their sendoff, “Alan Abel, Hoaxer Extraordinaire Is (On Good Authority) Dead at 94.” National Public Radio aired a segment titled “Alan Abel Has Died, For Real this Time.”
Minnesota Public Radio didn’t take any chances, writing, “No Joke. Alan Abel is Dead. Maybe.”
I’m not taking any chances either, hence the question mark. I have to think that whenever Abel’s concerned, the truth of a situation is never what it seems.
Funny. That’s kinda similar to how I think of CIA.
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*You can read more about Abel here in this X Spot post dated 14 July 2010. If you're in good need of a chuckle, visit his blog, Alan Abel's Questionable Comments.
Abel’s work began in the 1950s, a time when the average American’s faith in institutions of government and culture was at its peak. Abel challenged the uncritical acceptance of press as fact and nothing but the fact by exposing how information services failed numerous times to do simple fact checking.
Nowadays, we’ve been inundated with numerous sources deliberately propagating inaccurate information, or in our current vernacular, “fake news.” And it’s hardly surprising that numerous mainstream outlets have mistaken these stories for true, and subsequently repeated them on the air, on their websites, and in their publications.
Abel would be the first to point out that this inattention to accuracy and critical evaluation of breaking information is nothing new for the press. In fact, he made a legendary career out of these media shortcomings. And as long as news borders on entertainment, or for that matter propaganda, we can expect more of the same.
I understand why there’s an almost knee-jerk defense of mainstream media, savaged as it is by a well-financed, well-connected propaganda machine that, quite frankly, serves parties who are opposed to basic principles of democracy, and dedicated to the concentration of economic, political and cultural clout into fewer and fewer hands. And I sympathize with the exasperation felt by many when demonstratively accurate statements (e.g., “This is what you said on this date, and here’s the videotape of you saying it on this date”) are deemed false, or having a political bias. Indeed, many people feel that scholarship and science have a “liberal” bias, if such a thing is possible.
At the same time, I look at institutions like academia, politics and media and remember Abel’s brave examples that prove in no uncertain terms that there are inherent flaws within these systems, flaws that we can detect and diminish/manage.
In case you’re wondering why I put a question mark in the title of this post, it’s because Abel has faked his death before. Many newspapers dutifully printed the obituary without so much as verifying his health or lack thereof. So it’s rather fitting that many of his obituaries have qualifying statements. The New York Times, famously burned by the original death hoax in 1980, titled their sendoff, “Alan Abel, Hoaxer Extraordinaire Is (On Good Authority) Dead at 94.” National Public Radio aired a segment titled “Alan Abel Has Died, For Real this Time.”
Minnesota Public Radio didn’t take any chances, writing, “No Joke. Alan Abel is Dead. Maybe.”
I’m not taking any chances either, hence the question mark. I have to think that whenever Abel’s concerned, the truth of a situation is never what it seems.
Funny. That’s kinda similar to how I think of CIA.
_______________
*You can read more about Abel here in this X Spot post dated 14 July 2010. If you're in good need of a chuckle, visit his blog, Alan Abel's Questionable Comments.
