News

According to Thursday's New York Times, some Italian schools will teaching their students to identify fake news, beginning on October 31. It's well to be prepared, of course. But is the need new? In Luigi Barzini's The Italians, chapter "The Pursuit of Life", I find

Very few then are the rules which can help an Italian plot his course and steer a safe line in a country which has never really accepted the moral teaching of feudalism, and in which society, the law and State have feeble powers. He must defend himself. He begins early by being his own school-teacher (most schools are inadequate) and professor (universities are poor, backward, and badly run). Later he must be his own journalist (published new of internal affairs can be so biased that to rely on them is to court disaster), his own literary, film, art, and drama critic (reviews rarely reflect the worth of the film, book, or drama, but a number of factors, the personal relation between author and critic, their respective political parties, relative ages, philosophical bias, and so forth), his own strategic expert in times of war (nobody will tell him who is winning and when to run until too late), and his own fiscal expert (to distinguish which are the taxes to be paid fully, which only in part, and which to be ignored altogether). He must at times be his own lawyer, policeman, and judge. In short, his security depends not on the combined exertions of his countrymen to which he should add his own but mostly on his individual capacities and native shrewdness.

(My italics.) The Italians was published in 1964; the edition I have was printed in 1996.