A world without doubt

The beauty of 'fake news' is that you never have to reconsider your beliefs again

Rohingya refugees.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Adnan Abidi)

This is the editor’s letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

Have you heard? It's simply not true that Myanmar's military leaders are massacring the Rohingya Muslim minority. Never mind the eyewitness accounts of soldiers throwing babies into fires, or the photos of the more than 600,000 starving Rohingya who've fled to squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh. "There is no such thing as Rohingya," a Myanmar official declared this week. "It is fake news." Ah, fake news. Such a useful concept. Totalitarian states have long known its power and utility, but autocrats are now taking lessons from the U.S. Crying "fake news" can magically erase any inconvenient evidence, whether it points to genocide, the destructive impact of rising global temperatures, Russia's election interference, or a favored politician's predations on teenage girls. The lying media made it all up!

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William Falk

William Falk is editor-in-chief of The Week, and has held that role since the magazine's first issue in 2001. He has previously been a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Gannett Westchester Newspapers and at Newsday, where he was part of two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes.