{"id":8326,"date":"2026-05-11T19:10:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T19:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=8326"},"modified":"2026-05-11T19:10:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T19:10:43","slug":"a-simple-historical-fact-explains-why-boomers-are-more-likely-to-fall-for-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=8326","title":{"rendered":"A simple historical fact explains why boomers are more likely to fall for misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\u2019s more to the generational divide than age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It never fails, you\u2019re sitting there trying to get through a day in the office without freaking out over the office lunch thief when your phone screen lights up. A message from your mother or grandmother appears. There\u2019s no context to the message, it\u2019s just a link to an article about grocery stores requiring passports to enter. You don\u2019t even bother clicking on the story before quickly typing back, \u201cit\u2019s fake, mom\u201d then continuing on with your day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The short response isn\u2019t because you\u2019re being flippant but because as a Millennial<\/a>, you\u2019ve become used to filtering false stories from your boomer relatives. Of course you know your well meaning relatives are intelligent in so many areas but you can\u2019t figure out why they don\u2019t recognize sketchy websites or obviously made up stories. There\u2019s actually a really simple reason that this may be happening, specifically when it comes to the boomer generation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"boomers;<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

They never had to learn to fact check, thanks to the Mayflower and Fairness Doctrine. Not only did they not need to fact check news sources, they didn\u2019t have to critically think about the information that was presented to them when it came from places of authority. This isn\u2019t because they were blindly trusting. It\u2019s because the information provided by news stations or radio broadcasts no matter how controversial were not allowed to contain any bias or misinformation. They could literally trust everything a newscaster said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That type of fair and unbiased news reporting was the result of an FCC ruling called the Mayflower Decision<\/a> (also known as the Mayflower Doctrine) that preceded the Fairness Doctrine. In 1938 a former Yankee\u2019s employee Lawrence J. Flynn accused two radio stations of airing one-sided political views, editorials and attacks against politicians the owner of the network didn\u2019t like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"boomers;<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

According to the 1948 Columbia Law Review<\/a>, due to this kerfuffle, the FCC announced a rule in 1941 that \u201cthe radio broadcaster and his station should be allowed neither to editorialize nor take a stand on any controversial matter. This policy appeared as a concomitant to the previously announced position of the Commission that whenever controversial issues were presented they were to be treated impartially and objectively.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1949, three years after the first boomers were born, The Fairness Doctrine was passed<\/a> building from the FCC\u2019s guidance on the Mayflower Doctrine. This legislation was meant to break up the monopoly of audience control by ABC, NBC, and CBS with concerns that the news stations could promote extreme bias. It required news outlets, which included radio stations, to provide equal airtime to opposing views. The information needed to be factual in nature without editorializing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"boomers;<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Doesn\u2019t that sound lovely? In a world where every other headline is written to scare the bejesus out of you and news pieces feel more editorialized than factual, having policy in place to tamper it would probably be beneficial. So what happened? Boomers spent all of their childhood, teen years and early adult years never having to question the factuality rating of their news. Then after more than 40 years of television and radio stations having guardrails in place, Ronald Reagan\u2019s administration started rolling it back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the Reagan Library<\/a> FCC Chairman, Mark S. Fowler who was on Reagan\u2019s presidential campaign staff, released a report saying, \u201cthe doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.\u201d By 1987 the doctrine was completely repealed despite the objections from Congress. In an attempt to maintain the law, Congress attempted to codify it with the Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987. The bill passed the House and the Senate but Reagan vetoed it and according to the Reagan Library, there were not enough votes to overturn the veto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"boomers;<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Essentially, from 1941 to 1987, boomers could wholeheartedly trust any news outlet no matter where the news was coming from. By 1988, America had it\u2019s first sensationalized news radio show with Rush Limbaugh where wild claims began to fly with no one there to stop it. The removal of the Fairness Doctrine with nothing to replace it left an entire generation at risk of easily falling for misinformation, propaganda and scams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By this point boomers are parents and Gen X and elder Millennials were in school or heading to school soon. We didn\u2019t have any sort of legislation or policy to force news sources to be factual. From the time we reached junior high school, fact checking was part of every day life and we often had to have multiple sources to back up one claim. When the internet became commonplace, we were promptly informed that Wikipedia was not a valid source and learned how to spot suspicious websites. Millennials especially were taught to be skeptical of everything we read online or heard on the news if we couldn\u2019t verify it with other sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"boomers;<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In addition to learning to identify malicious websites, we were also taught how to spot obvious spin and sensationalism. These are all skills learned during important developmental years. They\u2019re even more important skills to have with the meteoric rise in misinformation, propaganda and sensationalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These just aren\u2019t skills that boomers were taught and by the time they needed them they were deep in the realities of parenthood. Many of them may not have even known there was a shift in policy around factuality in news simply trusting the guy behind the news desk to tell them the truth. While age may be the obvious gap between boomers and Millennials, one generation grew up in a world where news anchors provided facts with no spin. The other grew up with spin everywhere, learning to trust nothing without fact checking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s more to the generational divide than age. It never fails, you\u2019re sitting there trying to get through a day in the office without freaking<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/698606316_1453188650175455_2572292685298479989_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8328,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8326\/revisions\/8328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}