Fake News 'Crowding Out' Real News (bbc.co.uk) 237
The volume of disinformation on the internet is growing so big that it is starting to crowd out real news, the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee chairman has said. From a report: Tory MP Damian Collins said people struggle to identify "fake news." MPs in their committee report [PDF] said the issue threatens democracy and called for tougher social network regulation. The government said it plans to introduce a requirement for electoral adverts to have a "digital imprint". This would mean that all political communications carried online would need to clearly identify who they were published by. Labour said the government "needs to wake up to the new challenges we face and finally update electoral laws". The report follows the Cambridge Analytica data scandal earlier this year. The London-based data analytics firms and tech giant Facebook were at the centre of a dispute over the harvesting and use of personal data - and whether it was used to influence the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election or the UK Brexit referendum.
Starting? (Score:3)
Starting? I think that boat sailed (and probably sank) years ago.
Re:Starting? (Score:5, Interesting)
Starting? I think that boat sailed (and probably sank) years ago.
Indeed. The National Enquirer was founded in 1926. But then, it's not run by Russian agents (afaik), so maybe it doesn't count.
Re:Starting? (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference I see today vs. yesteryear is that the populace at-large is doing less critical thinking about how news should be ingested. That is, asking the following questions: Who is writing it? Why are they writing it? Is it to inform or entertain (or both)? What viewpoint are they trying to convey and why is that viewpoint important from the perspective of the author? How is it important to you as the reader/viewer?
Picking up on the objective of the author was one of the little details that was stressed for a short period when I was in high school (more than half my life ago... wow, I feel old). I think my classes covered that subject for all of about two weeks before moving on to other test-able curricula.
We see a lot of stress on the "what" and not much on the "why" and "who." While we ought to trust the news outlets to do that job, certain "news" outlets absolutely have an agenda and either selectively choose to report certain facts to reinforce their message or omit certain facts that may undermine that message. Another tactic is presenting opinion as "fact" or outright lying. Knowing what kind of message the outlet is trying to convey is as important as the content they publish. Much of the "fake news" can easily be filtered out by the reader if they just apply those basic steps while seeking out reporting from multiple diverse sources and knowing how to properly independently fact-check sources.
I guess I'm saying that people, in general, may need a refresher on those critical thinking skills.
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The difference I see today vs. yesteryear is that the populace at-large is doing less critical thinking about how news should be ingested. That is, asking the following questions: Who is writing it? Why are they writing it? Is it to inform or entertain (or both)? What viewpoint are they trying to convey and why is that viewpoint important from the perspective of the author? How is it important to you as the reader/viewer?
Not to mention, what are the actual facts, what is the evidence, who did the gatherin
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The difference I see today vs. yesteryear is that the populace at-large is doing less critical thinking about how news should be ingested.
I don't know what you mean by "yesteryear", but the number of sources for news is increasing exponentially. 50 years ago, you had the big 3 networks and the newspaper, and that was it. Regardless of what you thought about the source, your choices were extremely limited. I think it was about 50 years ago that widespread distrust of the media started to become a thing.
No
Re:Starting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it though? A few big outfits have their own journalism departments but wire services still do the bulk. Outfits like Breitbart and even Fox News largely wrap wire stories in layers of editorial. They're basically aggregators.
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The difference I see today vs. yesteryear is that the populace at-large is doing less critical thinking about how news should be ingested. That is, asking the following questions: Who is writing it? Why are they writing it? Is it to inform or entertain (or both)? What viewpoint are they trying to convey and why is that viewpoint important from the perspective of the author? How is it important to you as the reader/viewer?
Is that really any different than yesteryear? Classically, most people got their news from their local paper, which advanced their own biases. For example, I'm in Boston, where we have a liberal, pro-Democratic paper, the Boston Globe; and a conservative, pro-Republican paper, the Boston Herald, and their news and opinion articles are clearly slanted to advance the editors' viewpoint. Pre-Internet, the vast majority of people subscribed to only one of those papers. And while we'd like to believe that people
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It also makes it easier to find ones which agree with you.
Want to take a guess which path most people choose?
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The difference I see today vs. yesteryear is that the populace at-large is doing less critical thinking about how news should be ingested. That is, asking the following questions: Who is writing it? Why are they writing it? Is it to inform or entertain (or both)? What viewpoint are they trying to convey and why is that viewpoint important from the perspective of the author? How is it important to you as the reader/viewer?
Wow! Really? You really think grandma and grandpa did anything but completely lap up whatever the talking head on the box had to say? You think they critically analyzed and questioned the motivations of the thing their government was feeding them?
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Too many people assume that if the story matches their preconceived notions that it must be accurate. Then they start filtering out contrary views. Flat earth thinking on a global scale.
People need to be universally skeptical (Score:2)
until we perfect AI bullshit detectors that is.
Even then, how will you know you're believing an honest AI?
Learn and use solid epistemology principles (and cognitive bias awareness) in deciding what to believe and how much. Anyone that can't do that is no more than a victim going forward; flotsam tossed on the seas of garbage.
Re:Starting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, you can even point to real, factual news like the fact that collusion isn't a crime and therefore Trump is indeed suffering from a witch-hunt [foxnews.com] and people won't believe it.
Webster definition of collusion: "secret agreement or cooperation especially for an illegal or deceitful purpose; acting in collusion with the enemy
Webster definition of conspiracy: "1 : the act of conspiring together 2 a : an agreement among conspirators b : a group of conspirators"
Webster synonym of conspiracy: "2 a secret agreement or cooperation between two parties for an illegal or dishonest purpose a conspiracy among the leading manufacturers to fix prices
Synonyms of conspiracy
collusion,"
Last time I checked, conspiracy was an indictable crime. Since conspiracy is an actual legal term, there could be a risk of possible lawsuit by publicly accusing someone of conspiracy. Collusion is a little more nebulous and has no legal meaning, at least in this sense.
Re:Starting? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is that people cannot distinguish fact from opinion and cannot distinguished biased news from "fake news."
"Collusion is not a crime" is a factual statement. "Trump is indeed suffering from a witch-hunt" is an opinion. An opinion can't be "fake news" because an opinion does not have a truth value.
"Fake News" is a news story without any factual basis. Traditionally, it was used to apply to stories from media outlets that either don't actually exist or don't do any fact finding at all. They were stories that were calculated to generate clicks because they conformed to the bias of a particular political group.
Biased news is a separate phenomenon from fake news. A biased outlet (and all outlets have some bias) at least makes a good faith attempt to report statements with an affirmative truth value, but may omit relevant facts or over-emphasize others. Reporting that "Collusion is not a crime" is a true but biased statement. Yes, there is no crime called "collusion." However, the word "collusion" is simply the one that was seized upon to describe a variety of actions that may be crimes. So saying "collusion is not a crime" is like saying "killing someone is not a crime." Yes, it's possible to legally kill someone (in self-defense, for example), but there are a wide variety of crimes you could be charged with if you kill someone.
People have now weaponized the term "fake news" to apply to any news reported with a bias that they dislike. The danger is that this delegitimizes any opinion you don't like and serves to demonize your political opponents. There was a time when it was assumed that both political parties wanted the best for the country but just had different ideas of how to achieve it. Now, people think the other side is affirmatively evil. It's hard to actually solve problems with someone who thinks you are evil.
Re:An opinion not having a truth value (Score:2)
An "opinion" is a propositional attitude of expressed belief about a proposition.
It is saying "in my opinion, X is true, was true, or will be true."
The proposition X, if well formed and embedded in (expressed in terms of) a reality-descriptive, generally reality-corresponding theory, can have a truth value.
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Some form of criminal conspiracy. Educate yourself:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Too bad paywall... But some form of criminal conspiracy? Like conspiring with a presidential candidate to win a debate [washingtonexaminer.com]? So far, what we have are people being indicted for actions taken prior to the Trump campaign (and, in fact, often whilst working with strong Democrat lobbyist groups [thehill.com]), or for "lying" about something that wasn't criminal, prohibited, or illegal in any way, shape or form [thehill.com] (basically a process crime).
Now, there ARE several indictments of Russians, but given that the previous Administration [yahoo.com]
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I didn't hit any paywall, but I will still help you educate yourself:
Collusion is not a crime by itself. Here are the charges Mueller could be exploring.
Special counsel Robert Mueller in 2013. (Thew/Epa-Efe/Rex/Shutterstock/Thew/Epa-Efe/Rex/Shutterstock)
by Matt Zapotosky October 31, 2017 Email the author
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III fired his opening salvo this week, unsealing charges against three former Trump campaign aides thought to have engaged in a medley of wrongdoing.
The cases he revealed, legal analysts said, indicate he is pursuing an extensive probe that will explore both personal wrongdoing of those connected with President Trump and possible efforts campaign officials took to work with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
Collusion — the word Trump often uses to describe Mueller's case, even as he asserts such a thing never happened — is not itself a crime, and Mueller's team will probably have to sort through unseemly political dealings to determine whether a law was broken, legal analysts said. In his first public charges, though, Mueller offered a hint of the direction he might take.
Former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, for example, pleaded guilty to making a false statement to FBI investigators who asked about his contacts with foreigners claiming to have high-level Russian connections.
Of particular note, he falsely described his interactions with a London-based professor claiming to have connections to high-level Russian officials who purportedly had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails."
Papadopoulos said his interactions with the professor — thought to be Joseph Mifsud, the director of the London Academy of Diplomacy — occurred before he joined the campaign and did not amount to much. In fact, the professor told him about the emails in April 2016 — after his role on the campaign was made public — and the two were involved in extensive discussions about a possible meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, according to Papadopoulos's plea agreement.
The conversation about emails is possibly a critical piece of evidence, legal analysts said. That is because one charge that investigators might try to substantiate against those higher in the Trump campaign is a conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
If Mueller can find evidence that members of Trump's team conspired in Russia's hacking effort — by directing it or aiding in another way — they might face criminal charges, legal analysts said. Papadopoulos's plea says that he discussed some of his efforts to broker a meeting with the Russians with other, more senior Trump campaign officials — although some seemed to treat him warily.
"There's a significant difference between the Russians having dirt and offering that dirt, and someone asking the Russians to commit an illegal act to obtain that dirt," said Jacob Frenkel, a white-collar lawyer at Dickinson Wright who previously worked in the now-defunct Office of the Independent Counsel. "The latter likely would be prosecutable, and probably as a conspiracy to commit a computer crime or as a computer crime."
Papadopoulos's conversation about "emails of Clinton" took place a month after Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's email account was hacked and well before WikiLeaks released his messages. Also, it was not until June 2016 that The Washington Post reported that the Democratic National Committee's computer network had been breached.
But at that time, it was well known that Clinton had deleted tens of thousands of emails she deemed personal from her private server. Those messages were of great interest to Republicans who believed they might show something nefarious.
It was unclear to what emails the professor was referring or if he truly had access to any messages damaging to Clinton. Jonathan Biran, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice at Biran Kelly, said Mueller's team is probably asking, "What did people within the campaign know about how those emails had been obtained," and whether they had reason to believe they were illegally obtained.
Aaron Zelinsky, a lawyer in the special counsel's office, said at Papadopoulos's plea hearing, which was held in secret earlier this month, that the foreign policy adviser's case was a "small part" of a "large-scale ongoing investigation." Though Papadopoulos was first arrested in July, the court kept his case sealed for months after prosecutors asserted that making it public would "significantly undermine his ability to serve as a proactive cooperator."
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, his longtime business partner, were charged in a separate, 12-count indictment in connection with their work advising a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine. While their charges do not directly relate to their roles on the Trump campaign, legal analysts said the case could offer a preview of how Mueller plans to proceed.
Among many other counts, including conspiracy to launder money and failing to file reports of foreign bank accounts, Manafort and Gates were charged with carrying out a conspiracy against the United States. Specifically, the special counsel alleged that they worked to defraud the Justice and Treasury departments as they tried to hide their incomes and lobbying work for Ukrainian interests.
Mueller could be working to convince Manafort and Gates to cooperate, and he could also be trying to send a message to others in Trump's orbit that he will leave no stone unturned and that those who deceive investigators will be charged, legal analysts said.
But Mueller also could be signaling a charge he could pursue in connection with the coordination case — a conspiracy to defraud the United States by coordinating with Russia.
"Collusion is not a crime, but basically the criminal equivalent is conspiracy," said former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason. "You could have a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. by interfering with our election."
Mueller must also separate efforts that might seem seedy from those that are illegal.
An opposition research firm funded by Clinton's campaign and the DNC tapped a former British spy to dig into Trump's personal and business dealings, and the former spy purportedly solicited information from Russian government officials. That work might similarly be viewed as an unsavory effort to engage with foreign interests to win an election, but it would not necessarily be illegal if there was no conspiracy to defraud anyone, legal analysts said.
"There could be something out there that stinks to high heaven," Frenkel said, "but it doesn't make it a violation of law."
Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.
As for the whataboutisms, if there are any crimes there, by all means they should be treated as crimes, including process crimes, which are still crimes.
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Let him go to jail too if he's found guilty of any crimes, I don't care.
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Most journalists I read or podcasts I listen to are well aware that collusion isn't a crime. I don't think I've heard it described as such since 2016.
"It's not the crime, it's the cover-up"
headline is Logic bomb exploding (Score:5, Interesting)
First, fake news is not crowding out real news. But this article is perhaps an example of fake news. Is it crowding out something?
Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding (Score:5, Interesting)
The beauty of the internet is that it allows readers to check multiple sources for any one subject/story, as opposed to just swallowing whatever the legacy media told them to believe. That scares the shit out of them.
Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding (Score:5, Insightful)
The beauty of the internet is that it allows readers to check multiple sources for any one subject/story, as opposed to just swallowing whatever the legacy media told them to believe. That scares the shit out of them.
The danger of the internet is literally anybody can put up a website that looks like it's a reliable source so it's easy to fool a lot of people quickly. The next danger is the ability to skew search engine results by "paying" for higher ranking.
The end result is that the "truth" is for sale and there is no way to know if what you are reading is actually the truth or somebody's attempt to influence you to support their cause.
Also, it means the that the mainstream media outlets, who are chasing profits, are prone to publish sensationalism over substance.. Which is the third problem... The internet is about profit, not about facts or truth. What they fear is losing their audience, either by offending them when the facts don't agree with reader's opinions or being shown for the profit whores they have become.
Then, dare I mention him, Trump comes along and upsets everybody's apple carts, by using the same medium to push his messaging and all you know what breaks lose. Now we are in this rough and tumble period where everybody has to figure out what the hub-bub is about and when and how it will end.
The new reality is, the internet is a waste land where grains of truth are strewn about in the sand dunes of a partisan desert being blow around by the breath of the yelling talking heads.
Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding (Score:5, Informative)
Before the internet literally anybody could spread whatever rumor they wanted and there was no way to check for yourself. It wasn't that long ago that such word of mouth was the only way to get any news.
Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding (Score:5, Insightful)
Before the internet literally anybody could spread whatever rumor they wanted and there was no way to check for yourself. It wasn't that long ago that such word of mouth was the only way to get any news.
And before the internet those rumors were pretty much limited to people you know. Now, with the internet, as Jonathan Swift said "Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it". People are more likely to believe the first thing they hear, so by the time the truth reaches them, it's too late.
Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding (Score:4, Funny)
The answer is more critical thinking, not less. More information, not less. It's OK to venture outside your bubble and read something you disagree with every now and then.
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The answer is more critical thinking, not less. More information, not less. It's OK to venture outside your bubble and read something you disagree with every now and then.
I agree. The only way to refute people peddling lies and falsehoods is to first know what they are peddling. That's why I occasionally listen to talk radio on the way home in the afternoon. The problem is, most people throwing around the "fake news" mantra are decidedly not using critical thinking.
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Which is super telling when one party tries to defund education while the other tries to pump money into it.
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And it's telling when the people who defend the defunding of education open with arguments against fictional problems.
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Your post is an example of the kind of fake news they are taking about. A populist message with little basis in reality, designed to appeal to a specific demographic.
How many Slashdot users who claim it's easy to fact check stuff online have actually just read it, nodded because it confirms their existing views on millennials, and scrolled on.
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Wasn't it you up the page talking about critical thinking? Perhaps you should try it.
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Nonsense. I would argue that one learns more from propaganda than from the truth. Propaganda presents more information than the truth in many circumstances (like the who, what and why behind those putting out such propaganda). The trick is having critical thinking skills.
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Man, that is some choice Orwell "lies are truth" shit right there.
It's how people like you are made to believe that Trump didn't say something he literally said on camera an hour ago.
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Before the internet literally anybody could spread whatever rumor they wanted and there was no way to check for yourself. It wasn't that long ago that such word of mouth was the only way to get any news.
And even then, the media, was agenda driven. I observed such political bias 25 years ago in the media, long before the internet was a thing or the talking heads came into being. I can assure you that it's much WORSE now.
The question is what the antidote is. MORE garbage from the internet? Censorship OF the internet? What?
Censorship is NOT the answer, nor is it consistent with the 1st amendment. So we cannot do this anyway. What does that leave?
In my view, the solution is one of personal responsibili
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But the owners of the legacy media had a lot more control of what got published or at least which direction the spin should have.
For instance, work contracts between the German newspaper publisher Axel Springer SE used to contain clauses that required solidarity with the USA and a commitment to Israel's right to live. Which is clearly a bias.
Now I cannot really complain about the Israel part. Germany still has no moral right to bash Israel. Not after the Holocaust. But the "solidarity with USA" part shows t
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At least when you get news via "word of mouth" you see whose mouth it's coming out of, and you know who to blame when it turns out to be bullshit.
That is in contrast to those who get their news from 4chan or reddit or Cambridge Analytica.
The internet as it exists today is literally a psyops machine. And it's a machine that collects information on you and knows exactly what BS you are inclined to believe.
Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding (Score:5, Interesting)
It was once assumed that any news outlet that could afford to publish was trustworthy - proof that not only does money talk, it demands to be heard.
And we know that news outlets that predated the Internet are no more or less trustworthy now than they were back then. Discerning truth or at least objectivity isn't any easier than ever, though it seems harder because there are more to consider. This is false. Those legacy outlets had a history that confirmed trust without any real foundation.
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It was once assumed that any news outlet that could afford to publish was trustworthy - proof that not only does money talk, it demands to be heard.
And we know that news outlets that predated the Internet are no more or less trustworthy now than they were back then. Discerning truth or at least objectivity isn't any easier than ever, though it seems harder because there are more to consider. This is false. Those legacy outlets had a history that confirmed trust without any real foundation.
Personally I find the legacy outlets only slightly better than the fly by night, come lately, website operators. Most of the legacy operators have long ago left the era where "news" was about network prestige, trust and not profit. There are a few dinosaurs left who attempt to adhere to traditional journalistic ethics at these places, but profits are driving your local newsroom and have for more than a decade. News papers are dying, Network news has deteriorated into the dueling 24 hour cable news networ
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The beauty of the internet is that it allows readers to check multiple sources for any one subject/story, as opposed to just swallowing whatever the legacy media told them to believe. That scares the shit out of them.
Except most "journalists" these days just copy and paste identical stories from the same wire service or press release without doing any real writing or thinking.
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The beauty of the internet is that it allows readers to check multiple sources for any one subject/story,
The downside of the internet is that people can find a source confirming anything no matter how wrong.
legacy
n. something no longer fashionable which usually differes from the proposed alternative by actually working. (apologies to Stroustrup)
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People don't fact check all the stuff they read. Most of the time they don't even read TFA, it's not just a Slashdot tradition it's everywhere.
That's how this stuff works. It's just believable enough for people to not bother questioning it or reading too deeply. Over time it skews their world view and they start believing the really crazy stuff.
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Learn how to think critically and you won't be so gullible.
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I imagine it depends a lot on your news source. If you only get your news from facebook and are friends with lots of gullible idiots, then you're gonna see a lot of fake news
To be fair I think that there's a lot of examples of inaccurate news from "regular" news outlets. I've lost count of how many many news articles conflate illegal immigrant with legal immigrant for example. These biases cause "regular" news to get dubbed fake news, and the label really has been earned in many cases. Every site has some axe to grind is my observation.
Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never read any news story I was an expert on and seen it fully correct. One has to read widely to not be mislead even accidentally.
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I imagine it depends a lot on your news source. If you only get your news from facebook and are friends with lots of gullible idiots, then you're gonna see a lot of fake news
To be fair I think that there's a lot of examples of inaccurate news from "regular" news outlets. I've lost count of how many many news articles conflate illegal immigrant with legal immigrant for example. These biases cause "regular" news to get dubbed fake news, and the label really has been earned in many cases. Every site has some axe to grind is my observation.
Biased news is not inherently "fake news". All news has some level of inherent bias just from the level of deciding what is "newsworthy" and what isn't. And that's before adding any editorial spin on the facts. You just have to recognize that bias and account for it. For example I get a lot of my foreign news from al-Jazeera, and I realize a lot of their content will have a pro-Qatar and pro-Palestine slant. There will always be inaccuracies as well, it's the nature of information-you always get more wi
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Biased news is not inherently "fake news". All news has some level of inherent bias just from the level of deciding what is "newsworthy" and what isn't. And that's before adding any editorial spin on the facts. You just have to recognize that bias and account for it. For example I get a lot of my foreign news from al-Jazeera, and I realize a lot of their content will have a pro-Qatar and pro-Palestine slant. There will always be inaccuracies as well, it's the nature of information-you always get more with time. "Fake news" is taking objective facts and claiming the opposite, not transparently correcting factual inaccuracies in reporting once they become known, or even just making shit up. "Fake news" has gone from the meaning "false news" to "news I don't like".
Deliberately cherry picking stats from legal immigrants, who are largely positive, and applying those to illegal immigrants, who are largely negative, is more than editorial bias. It's deliberately being misleading, which is certainly a flavor of lying, and is in fact what I'd call fake news. Here is an example: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/13/... [vox.com] The straw man they create is illegal immigrants pay no taxes. The actual issue many taxpayers have , myself included, is that illegal immigrants take out more t
You get what you don't pay for (Score:5, Insightful)
I subscribe to both the NY times and the Wall Street Journal (just don't read the comments section or the editorials). There's plenty of real news in these papers. Support them if you like real news.
Non-paywalled news is going to go for clicks as the profit center so Dopamine news is what one gets there. It's not necessarily fake just not composed with integrity as it's quantity over quality.
Real news just doesn't change fast enough. This is also why news tied to a print publisher has sort of a natural limit of quantity and durability.
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Do you have any evidence (Score:2)
Mod up-- need Godwin's law for Trump. (Score:2)
Yes. Please. make slashdot Trumpless.
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People have gone really stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yet somehow humanity survived just fine before social media even existed. The idiots who destroyed that medium can keep it.
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"Fake News" is the banner... (Score:3, Insightful)
...under which full censorship and surveillance will come.
In this postmodern age, most are more interested in their own subjective truth being widely accepted than they are in actual objective truth for its own sake. Thus, the question becomes not so much "will it happen" but "who will control it". And the powers that be are already operating on this premise.
Re:"Fake News" is the banner... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, creating fake news is also one of the steps that authoritarians take on their way to dictatorships.
The real problem isn't people calling out fake news as such, but the people in power incorrectly calling out real news as "fake news", and then using their power to push their own fake news.
Because really, there is actual fake news, and it needs to be identified. The government doesn't need to censor it, but we, as a people, need to resist against malicious propagandists.
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Unfortunately, creating fake news is also one of the steps that authoritarians take on their way to dictatorships.
The real problem isn't people calling out fake news as such, but the people in power incorrectly calling out real news as "fake news", and then using their power to push their own fake news.
Because really, there is actual fake news, and it needs to be identified. The government doesn't need to censor it, but we, as a people, need to resist against malicious propagandists.
As long as the people tasked with identifying what's true and what's fake are not the people in power.
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Well I agree... to a point. For example, I don't think it's controversial to think that law enforcement can get involved in cases of fraud, or that courts can hear slander and liable cases. There are times when a disreputable source of information needs to be taken to task, but there has to be a very high standard for that.
But what I was arguing is more that, there's a particularly knee-jerk reaction towards anything resembling censorship, and we worry about true things being labelled "fake news" by some
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Yup.. We are rushing headlong into a story line that would make Orwell proud..
Not a problem for me (Score:3)
Long time coming (Score:4, Insightful)
This started when news became
1) Less filtered. We had journalists and editors. Journalists sought out stories, investigated them and editors reviewed their work. Sure there were biases and still are but now it's about getting first to get it out there quality of source/content be damned. This also precipitates more lazy fuck journalists and so-called editors more anxious to get a story pushed and who gives two fucks about if it's true or not.
2) More entertainment. News was something that happened all the time but you were exposed to it less frequently. Now you have TV shows, Cable Networks and the Internet bombarding you stories that are more infotainment than news. It's hard to distinguish what's important vs. fluffy kittens. This has also led to aggregators who now calls themselves news organizations *cough* Huffington Post *cough* News used to be consumed when you read a newspaper, a magazine or watched the evening news with Cronkite, now it's in your face 24/7 and they have airtime to fill. That's why you have contrived things like "townhall meetings" to discuss whether or not Michelle Obama's opinion actually fucking matters.
3) ADHD of our population. Attention span akin to the life expectancy of gnats.
4) I blame the parents, get off my lawn.
Fake news is a meme (Score:2, Troll)
The volume of disinformation on the internet is growing so big that it is starting to crowd out real news
I think this article is a perfect example since that isn't actually true except in the minds of those who want it to be so. Back here in the real world "fake news" is something that mostly exists in the mind of one Donald John Trump and his supporters and it means news he doesn't like. He actually acts as if sources like Fox News report actual facts reliably. There is some actual false or misleading reporting but that is nothing new and will never go away.
And frankly if you actually use twitter or Facebo
Solution: dump social media (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Every week, a new threat to democracy (Score:2)
Two world wars were fought to save democracy.
Now it is threatened by "fake news," whatever that is?
Forget it -- if your system is that fragile, let it fall.
Giving everyone the vote, regardless of whether they can tell fake from real, was a mistake obviously.
There has always been fake news (Score:2)
There are 3 critical differences today.
First, most people seem to completely lack critical thinking skills.
Second, as advertising dollars have gone charging after social media, away from traditional news, we've lost research, vetting, source verification, professionalism and objectivity from the news cycle
And Lastly is political polarization. We have politicians, more importantly the "leader of the fre
Re: (Score:2)
Allow me to respond.
First, people appear more gullible that ever, more so on the internet where everyone is somewhat faceless.
Second, advertising is worse than that, sometimes it isn't even clear it is an advertisement. There is so much noise now news and truth get lost in the muck, assuming an advertisement hasn't blocked or driven you away from the content.
Third, we have a political party that lost an election, and ever since since has been on a smear and tear down campaign of the winner all while crying
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Second - perhaps advertising is "worse", but then again, without vetted news people, stories and processes - a result of advertising capital moving from news media to social medial - no organization can be held accountable.
Third - Fact; the GOP hasn't won popular vote in a first term presidential election since Bush 1 - 27 years ago. . The only way the GOP can hang on to the seat is via gerrymandering. But, you just keep waiving that "lost election" flag so
Knowledge is power (Score:2)
Who do you trust? (Score:2)
The problem is that all the sources of news have proven untrustworthy, so there's no way to validate the stories. People want to believe what they want to believe anyway, and if there's no place that has trustworthy reporting, why fight it?
If the traditional news sources had not sold out (generally after being bought up), then the problem would be considerably less severe. As it is...
There are still a few sources I generally trust. They are biased, but I haven't noticed them actually lying. Of course, t
Lazy (Score:2)
Tory MP Damian Collins said people struggle to identify "fake news."
"fake news" rarely holds up to scrutiny and fact checking. So it's not really a struggle, but a glut of apathy.
The simple solution ... (Score:2)
... is to bar "news," from entering the social media bubbles and echo chambers.
Social media is just that: A meeting place to be social.
News sites abound outside those limits and consumers can elect where to go get it.
Fake news will always be available and popular.
Look at The Enquirer.
People recognize tabloids for what they are.
Because (Score:2)
"threatens democracy and called for tougher social network regulation"
So because something threatens freedom, they should become less free
Leave it to the Brits ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Correct, labeling everything on the internet 'Fake News' is more the death-rattle of the legacy media who have lost all relevancy.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What place is there for irony when the biggest promoter of the term "fake news" is someone who averages five untrue public statements a day?
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Your "traditional" news sources have given up all journalistic integrity in exchange for agenda pushing activism decades ago.
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Your "traditional" news sources have given up all journalistic integrity in exchange for agenda pushing activism decades ago.
I blame Ron Burgundy. Anchorman 2 was an excellent documentary on how we got the media industry we have today.
Re:Politicians need to control this (Score:5, Interesting)
By "legacy media" you mean traditional news sources that fact-check, edit, and issue corrections when mistakes are discovered?
That would be nice. Instead, we had Dan Rather [wikipedia.org].
Re:Politicians need to control this (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, the same ones who breathlessly reported on the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Saddam's WMD's.
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Re: (Score:2)
take all that energy and change the world with your actions
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
making the news and journalism entirely unprofitable
They already did that with the advent of online news sources, and look where that got us. Hell, it's because the news has been so entirely demonetized that fake news thrives, since everything now has to be either uninformed listicles or vitriol-filled opinion pieces. And of course, if you want the truth made public with the sting of money, there has always been PBS/BBC news, but they don't present everything in sexy setpieces or easily digestible sound bites.
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George Orwell predicted folks like you.
Re:Hate News (Score:4, Insightful)
People who would censor "fake news" are far more dangerous than those who put it out. At least the latter allows people a choice.
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It's a false choice, based on a false equivalency.
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Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
The US isn't a democracy.. We are a representative Republic.
What's the difference?
In a democracy, everybody votes on every question directly and usually majority wins.
In a representative Republic, voters pick who they want to represent them. Then those picked go make decisions about the issues.
THIS is how we where founded and why things like the electoral college, Congress and the Senate exist.
Just to set the record straight (Score:4, Informative)
The term "fake news" arose in US dialog to describe bizarrely distorted and completely made up hit pieces put out against Hilary Clinto and the Democrat campaign by various Trump-supporting people and also certain foreign actors, some of whom were supporting Trump and some were just out to make a living off ad-click revenue.
Trump started calling the mainstream media "fake news" as a defensive tactic, to deflect from the accusations of fake news helping him get elected.
Just so we're clear on where this all came from.
Yes, the US mainstream media is distorted and prone to sicophantic support for US policy, like the Iraq war cheerleading for example, but their level of distortion is nothing compared to the spew of right-wing completely and obviously fake rubbish that started spewing out during the 2016 election campaign.
Re:Just to set the record straight (Score:5, Informative)
You joking? The mainstream media that we know for a fact was colluding with the Democrats to throw the election for Hillary? We have hard proof; Wikileaks confirms. [wikileaks.org] Freedom of the Press does not imply Honesty of the Press. The media tells only the story that confirms its own view, that in the end it was incapable of seeing an alternative outcome and of making a true risk assessment of the political variables - reaffirming the Hillary Clinton camp's own political myopia. This defines the parallel realities in which liberals, in their view of themselves, represent a morally superior character.
Here's CNN getting caught red-handed planting debate questions. [youtube.com] http://imgur.com/a/OMD6b#ed8AV... [imgur.com]
On June 16, 2014, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank published a column alleging that a peaceful Muslim was nearly verbally lynched by violent Islamophobes at a Heritage Foundation-hosted panel. What Milbank described was despicable. Unfortunately for Milbank and the Washington Post's credibility, someone filmed the event and posted the film on YouTube. Panel discussants, including Frank Gaffney and Brigitte Gabriel, made important points in a courteous manner. Saba Ahmed, the peaceful Muslim, is a "family friend" of a bombing plotter who expressed a specific desire to murder children. It soon became clear that Milbank was, as one blogger put it, "making stuff up."
CNN cuts off congressman when he mentions Wikileaks with Clinton [youtube.com].
Ex-CBS reporter's book reveals how liberal media protects Obama [nypost.com]
Compilation of CNN & MSNBC Cutting Guests Mics to Protect Hillary Clinton [youtube.com]
The entire media endorsed Hillary. [twimg.com]
CBS's John Dickerson: http://www.mediaite.com/online... [slashdot.org]">Donald Trump Didn't Ruin the Press's Reputation, We Did That Ourselves.
Here's the media changing headlines to attack Trump on dozens of occasions. [imgur.com]
Look at all these respected journalists express surprise, dismay, and a total lack of understanding that Hillary lost. [youtu.be] They even admit it: "I genuinely do not understand America."
Journalists don't want the media to stop being partisans, they just want them to be *more effective* partisans! To be more effective at beating Trump. The assumptions and goals are the same - Trump is evil, he should be destroyed. It never occurs to the media or their "critics" that the media is not supposed to have any skin in the game...you can only "lose" if you are fighting an opponent...and THAT'S THE PROBLEM.
What bothers me the most about the media is that not only are they horribly prejudiced - they don't even seem to be able to recognize their prejudice. That's so bad.
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OTOH, the main stream media gifted Trump with billions in free coverage while going on about how good for ratings Trump is. If the MSM doesn't want someone as President, they ignore them like they did with Ron Paul, even going so far as listing 1st,2nd and 4th place in the primaries and not mentioning Paul's 3rd place finish.
The truth is that the owners of the MSM are generally interested in one thing, making money, whereas the reporters and editors are more varied. It's why they don't like leftist candidat
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The mainstream media that we know for a fact was colluding with the Democrats to throw the election for Hillary? We have hard proof; Wikileaks confirms.
You seem to have linked the wrong document here, this is just a campaign strategy document. It doesn't say anything like what you're suggesting. I would like to see this proof though, after all of the bullshit accusations it would be nice to see something concrete.
I'm not going to go through all of your links, especially not the video ones, but let's see here... I see a picture of a woman holding a printout of an email with "Your Question" written at the top. And that is proof of... something. Proof of C
Re:Just to set the record straight (Score:4, Informative)
The fake trolls are out in force today.
Anyways, I remember the Fake News meme starting up around the time Fox got a judge to agree that News does not have to be Factual.
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The term "fake news" arose in US dialog to describe bizarrely distorted and completely made up hit pieces put out against Hilary Clinto and the Democrat campaign by various Trump-supporting people and also certain foreign actors, some of whom were supporting Trump and some were just out to make a living off ad-click revenue.
Just to set the record straight:
The term "fake news" went viral by panicked and authoritarian leftists after Trump won the election. It was an attempt to conflate [reason.com] blatantly "fake news" clickbait with right-leaning websites, so that those sites would be censored by the tech giants, conveniently ignoring the mirror version on the left. The future is now:
"So what happens if Facebook staff were to look at Zimdars' list and accept it and decide to censor the sharing of headlines from these sites? It's within Fac
Re:Just to set the record straight (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right about the term "fake news" but I'd like to add that talking about "US mainstream media" is way too vague to be of any use in any discussion. In the US you absolutely have to distinguish between newspapers, radio, and TV:
- Radio plays no substantial role. Some US radio hosts may be informative whole others would land in prison or pay hefty fines for libel, slander, and hate speech in almost every other civilized country.
- TV "news" is mostly hysterical crap and also very biased in the US. It has always been like that, the quality is really low almost everywhere. If you primarily get your "news" from Fox or CNN, you will remain uninformed, though certainly less than if you get your news from other internet sources like news aggregation sites.
- Most US newspapers are outstanding, no matter which political bias they have. The people who criticize newspapers do not read them. The printed versions are extremely informative, and a good way to get good background information in the US (besides other sources like foreign online news,directly tapping into press agencies, documentaries).
Every other alleged news source in the US is not only crap, it doesn't even generate any news. Left and right wing "info sites", bloggers, social media, etc. do nothing else but copying news from shady sources who copied the news in the place. Most of them employ no journalists or way too few, and even worse, most of them don't even have subscriptions for news agencies.
So in a nutshell, US TV channels and the social media are and have always been horrible 'news' sources, but printed newspapers are fairly good and will inform you.
In my experience the people who criticize mainstream media are almost universally uneducated and misinformed because they get their "news" from way less reliable sources and do not understand that somewhere there needs to be real journalist recording, taking pictures, and jotting down notes in order for there to be any news at all.