ABSTRACT
The news has been recognised since the Enlightenment as being vital for a democracy, and ‘fake news’ appears to poison the well. In practice, however, there is no binary between faked and ‘unfaked’ news; rather, all journalism exists on a continuum between verifiable fact and pure fiction. Journalistic ‘truth’ has, in fact, always been more of a brand than a promise. Since it can never be achieved, the claim of objectivity, especially, gives a hostage to fortune which can be used to undercut journalism’s validity. Current panics about fakery e.g. Trump’s definition of ‘fake news’ as any news he disagrees with, are not the issue. Real ‘fake news’ (fiction presented as journalism) is also not the real problem, however, and neither is the impact of Web 2.0. Rather, the true source of this ‘crisis’, if anyway real, is the gap between what the news is expected to be, and what is actually possible.
