The meaning “fake news” took on a substantially different connotation in the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when the term developed quite negative connotations. Just a few years before, the sorts of satirical, misleading techniques employed by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report (which featured two pretend fake news anchors/comedians) were often celebrated as media products that encouraged critical thinking.
The first chapter in this part, “An Oral History of the Yes Men,” discusses how two prankster-activists use humorous deceptions to encourage critical thinking and get their political points across. The Yes Men demonstrate one of the many ways pranking and similar deceptions can shake people out of their daily routines and rewire taken-for-granted realities. By turning the world upside down—even for a brief moment—it can be seen from a new vantage point, a different perspective. This can spur people to imagine a better society and, occasionally, turn fantasy into reality through the hard work of community building and activism. For instance, one of the Yes Men’s most successful mergings of grassroots political action and pranks, not covered in the following chapters, occurred at a conference held on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans.
On August 28, 2006, Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum stood onstage alongside the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana, posing as “Rene Oswin”—an assistant undersecretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Having tricked the conference organizers into believing he was a genuine government official, he announced a New Deal–like plan for the Gulf Coast that included requiring oil companies to set aside some of their profits for wetland renewal (the lack of which exacerbated flooding during the storm). Bichlbaum/Oswin emphasized that HUD’s mission was to provide affordable housing, but admitted that it failed. To correct this problem, he announced that the agency was going to halt plans to demolish five thousand residential housing units that former occupants desperately wanted to move back into. These apartment complexes received only minor damage from the storm, but because of their close proximity to valuable downtown-area real estate, they were condemned. However, soon after Bichlbaum left the podium, reporters discovered his imposture, and a HUD spokesperson denounced it as a “sick” hoax. Survivors Village, a tent-city protest group that collaborated with the Yes Men, didn’t share that opinion, noting that their lie was told to reveal a larger truth. An essential part of the Yes Men’s method has always been “the big reveal,” in which they publicly announce their deception and explain to reporters the purpose behind it (a concern that is certainly not employed by fake news clickbait sites).
The second chapter in this part, “An Interview with the Yes Men,” calls into question the continued efficacy of satirical tactics. Tracing the duo’s history from the 1990s to the present, interviewer Kembrew McLeod discussed with Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum the strategies behind some of the Yes Men’s actions. During their conversation, they also addressed how the shifting media landscape and changing technologies have altered the way they approach their humorous, deceptive campaigns. Many of the questions the Yes Men have asked themselves can also be generalized in ways that can help us all better understand the murky, mediated world we live in today.
The third chapter in this part, Sophia A. McClennen’s “All ‘Fake News’ Is Not Equal,” also reminds us that there was a time not so long ago when the “fake news” broadcast on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was celebrated as a critique of, and corrective to, sensationalist news media. As she notes in the chapter, for example, Jon Stewart was even voted the most trusted journalist not long after Walter Cronkite’s death. McClennen argues that irony is one of the key characteristics that distinguishes the “fake news” produced by The Onion (whose headlines sometimes seem plausible) from the sorts of “fake news” disseminated on social media (which is intentionally meant to fool people). Because those ironic news stories are meant to prompt readers or viewers to think critically, in ways that are complex and not literal, they encourage media consumers to think for themselves. “Ironic fake news teaches us to question the status quo,” McClennen states; “unironic fake news teaches us to panic about everything.”
Stephen Duncombe, Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy (New York: New Press, 2007).
Christine Harold, OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
Andrea Juno and V. Vale, eds., Pranks! (San Francisco: RE/Search, 1987).
Leonard C. Lewin, Report from Iron Mountain: On the Possibility and Desirability of Peace (New York: Free Press, 1996).
Graham Meikle, Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet (New York: Routledge, 2002).