The New Media Fear

seems to be of 'deep fake imagery',
where the ease with which A.I.
can generate and multiply false images
alarms the consumers of  older images
that were produced more slowly,
where the slowness with which the images
were made made them seem more believable.

Such slow folk fear that 'the news'
will be infected with the mutability
and disposability that video games employ,
taking over what we view as the news,
as some sort of new, newly minted
impossible-to-unpick propaganda.

I don't want to worry anyone,
but with both scale and form
we have been there in the past,
with with the fixed photographs
of early Soviet era propaganda.
whilst in liberal countries
the tabloid press sell more papers
when the headline has a pun in it
than when they are telling the public 
what their government is doing.

What the present fear boils down to,
is the public spotting that something is wrong,
but them not being able to work out
what it is and how it was done.