In Our View: Fake News A Real Problem

A free and independent press is among the most sacrosanct facets of American society, one deemed so important that it is included in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Since the founding of the nation, the media has played an important role as a watchdog against government excess, acting with the ethos that information is good for the public and that credibility must be preserved. Because of that, recent revelations of actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation are particularly galling.

In 2007, FBI agents created a fake news story attributed to the Associated Press and sent a link through private messaging to the MySpace account of a student who was suspected of making bomb threats at Timberline High School in Lacey. When the teen clicked on the headline, “Technology savvy student holds Timberline High School hostage,” he unwittingly downloaded malware that allowed law enforcement to track his location.

The suspect eventually was sentenced to 90 days in juvenile detention. Yet while the FBI has dismissively expressed an end-justifies-the-means attitude in the wake of the trickery coming to light, the scenario represents an egregious misstep on the part of law enforcement. “This ploy violated AP’s name and undermined AP’s credibility,” Paul Colford, director of media relations for the Associated Press in New York, told The Seattle Times. And Christopher Soghoian, chief technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “It’s a dangerous road impersonating the media. If people do not trust the news media, then our democracy cannot function properly.”

Many people, undoubtedly, do not trust certain media outlets these days. Yet it is true that a free and open democracy cannot function without the role played by reporters. The United States has thrived under a system that protects personal liberties against excessive power, and an independent media has played a crucial role in maintaining that balance. Journalistic credibility and freedom must be protected against perceptions that the press is a tool of law enforcement or is spreading false information, and when one news outlet’s credibility is undermined by the government, it serves to harm all outlets.

As Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told The Seattle Times: “The FBI and Justice Department owe some answers to news organizations and the public: How often have they impersonated news organizations to send malware to suspects? Do they regularly falsify news articles and impersonate media websites for their hacking targets?” Because the public deserves answers to those questions, the wink-and-a-nod that has emanated from officials is alarming. “We identified a specific subject of an investigation and used a technique that we deemed would be effective in preventing a possible act of violence in a school setting,” said Frank Montoya Jr., special agent now in charge of the FBI’s Seattle office.

The absurdity of that response is highlighted by the fact that the FBI easily could have avoided the subterfuge. Inventing a fictional media outlet likely would have had the same result without sullying the name of a respected organization.

As it stands, the FBI’s action continues a disturbing pattern of hostility toward a profession that works to keep government accountable to those who elected them. The presidential administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have racked up disappointing legacies of opaqueness, and, as they have demonstrated, it’s not a far leap to get from sneakiness to constitutional abuses.