Breathe
By Susana Moscatel
"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated," Mark Twain famously replied in 1897, because a newspaper was about to publish the "tragic news," mistaking him for a relative. Ten years later, it was the New York Times that did publish that the author had died at sea, after several yachts had been lost from sight due to bad weather conditions. Since he had not yet sailed, he found himself in the position of denying the false news in the same newspaper, writing about it. Ouch.
This is one of many historical examples of fake news and that is what it meant until recently. News that was not true. They were not politician's tools to discredit their opponents or journalism itself. Nor were they planned, in fact few greater embarrassments for an editor than to publish something so clearly false. I wonder if today that caliber of embarrassment still operates in the media.
