Fake News

Trump Pinocchio at Whitehouse Press Conference

Trump shouting at the Press — Michael & Josh — #weeklycartoon

We’ve portrayed Trump previously as ‘Pinocchio’. We were inspired to produce this one based on the ‘stories’ that come out of the Whitehouse on a regular basis. Enjoy!

He tells them that they are fake news, whilst he’s the one telling the biggest stories ever told.

Michael de Groot


[embed]https://youtu.be/VjqEUBIREvc[/embed]

Are business awards fake news?

Hugh MacLeod

Probably…

This question comes up regularly for me and when I received the following message twice in two different social media inboxes, I am convinced they probably are.

Hi. I feel honoured and humble that I have been nominated for ‘the Most Inspirational Person of the Year Award’. The winner is selected by the public and the public vote is now open until 20th July. I would be grateful if you could please vote for me.

Please click the link and it will take you to the voting page then select, ‘the Most Inspirational Person of the Year Award’ and vote for me. Please ask your friends, family and contacts to vote for me too. Thank you for your support.

I was especially astounded with the last sentence.

Ask friends, family and contacts!

What?

Not only are you asking me to vote for you, when I have totally no idea if you are in fact ‘The most inspirational person of the year’ and then you ask me to get my friends, family and contacts to vote for you too?

You really can not be serious, can you?

Totally serious, this is how business awards get awarded. Get yourself nominated and then go after your connections and beg them to vote for you.

I will never believe another business award again. In fact I’ve never believed them or taken part for this very reason. In fact I know of organisations that will even ask you to fill out a questionnaire to nominate yourself. Nominate yourself and then collect votes.

So I have concluded that business awards fulfil two needs, number one, the organising event or organisation needs more publicity for themselves and number two the actual individual needs more publicity for themselves. Basically they both need more recognition and appreciation from the public. In a word they need more love.

By getting complete strangers to vote for you, it actually is no different from wishing that people clap, like, comment or heart your content.

As humans we will never self-actualise on the basis that we’re always looking for something outside of ourselves.

My wish for the awards business is to start awarding teams, not individuals, not for the good they do in society or our communities but for the good they do for themselves. Teams that have successfully reinvented themselves despite the hardships they’ve had to endure in years gone by. Real hardships not some made up award category like ‘The most inspirational person of the year!’.

Just be ‘The most inspirational person of the year to yourself’ and avoid needing other people’s endorsement to say so.

Happy voting!

Michael de Groot

Journalism

Can we still trust our journalists? We’re all exposed to news, whether on TV, the web, social media, newspapers and digital news. But how do we know that anyone is actually telling the truth?

Everyone is desperate to get more eyes on their publications and in the main this is for one single reason. Advertisers revenue. Advertisers revenue is how news channels survive. Sure the BBC may be an exception to that rule and after all everyone with a TV, probably most these days has to be a licence for the privilege to watch the BBC.

So apart from them (BBC) everyone else needs to earn a revenue in order to pay their workers and keep them in jobs. So desperate are news channels these days that they are probably willing to risk a few bad stories in order to pull in the punters.

Dr. Jamie Whyte is a Director of Research at The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a free market think tank, based in London and his TEDxWarwick 2018 talk was very revealing. A news channel in Germany have already been fined for their fake news.

Mind Map created by me after attending TEDx Warwick 2018

They need to prove to their advertisers that their site or publication is the most active or popular in terms of eyeballs and as such they will need to get those punters (us) into their world.

There’s nothing better than a well thought out and sensational headline to grab our attention. We think we’re just clicking through to an innocent and factual story but in fact we’re all pulled into an advertising multi billion industry that pays many workers to keep spewing out garbage every single day.

The total global advertising spend in 2018 is forecasted to be $558 billion, that’s half a trillion!

Chart by Statista.com — Global advertising spend from 2010 to 2018 (in billion US dollars)

Happy advertising!

Michael de Groot