Fake News Nation
The Long History of Lies and Misinterpretations in America
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- 39,99 €
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- 39,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
How rumors, lies, and misrepresentations shaped American history
After the election of Donald Trump as president, people in the United States and across large swaths of Europe, Latin America, and Asia engaged in the most intensive discussion in modern times about falsehoods pronounced by public officials. Fake facts in their various forms have long been present in American life, particularly in its politics, public discourse, and business activities – going back to the time when the country was formed. This book explores the long tradition of fake facts, in their various guises, in American history. It is one of the first historical studies to place the long history of lies and misrepresentation squarely in the middle of American political, business, and science policy rhetoric.
In Fake News Nation, James Cortada and William Aspray present a series of case studies that describe how lies and fake facts were used over the past two centuries in important instances in American history. Cortada and Aspray give readers a perspective on fake facts as they appear today and as they are likely to appear in the future.
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Cortada, a research fellow at the University of Minnesota, and Asprey, an information science professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, illuminate fake facts and falsehoods throughout American history in this informative survey. The authors discuss falsehoods in advertising, most specifically, in medicine, and list patent medicines (those not backed by scientific research) that claimed cures for tuberculosis ("Piso's Cure for Consumption") and diabetes ("Kaadt's cures") and were advertised in newspapers throughout the 19th century. They also explore how misinformation shaped political events, such as the freewheeling presidential election in 1828 of Andrew Jackson, who was accused in the press of "wife-stealing," and they devote time to the many conspiracy theories surrounding the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln ("Confederate public officials arranged the assassination") and John F. Kennedy (perpetrated by, depending on who one is listening to, the Russians, FBI, CIA, Castro, the Mob, or Vice President Lyndon Johnson). The authors conclude that "Americans have always lived in a parallel information-rich universe." This fascinating narrative of lies, half-truths, and fabricated theories serves as a timely history.
