Fake News Is Food Colouring

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Fake news is like food colouring where the ice cream has a peach and lime flavour.  It is not possible to determine the percentage, despite label claims that it is 60% peach and 40% lime, simply because no peaches or limes were chopped and thrown into a blender to produce it.

What is important is that it sells.  Health fanatics are not left out.  They can pick up potato chips with a kale flavour from supermarket aisles. 
Fake news’ designers use colouring to capitalize on the demand for updates about certain people, usually folks created by the camera and live for the camera.  We might not know our federal tax number by heart, but we have all the stats about the rich and famous.  We even compare notes when two celebrities wear the same $5 000 gown:  Who wore it better, A or B?
We consume fake news voraciously even when the headline tells us it is. The magnet is so powerful, common sense flies out of the window.  We don’t even mind pseudo journalism, where the piece quotes members of the family that cannot be named, anonymous close friends or unidentified hotel and palace insiders.

 News colouring is attractive because it is our reality.  We colour work, home and play to be accepted in chosen life clusters.  We will not lie and say we went to Santiago Chile but, we will omit that we stayed in the hotel room most of the time because we hated the heat, food, people and ‘strange’ languages.
We therefore don’t mind some food colouring in the news.  It is more exciting than our lives.  

By:  Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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