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Snopes.com Editor on Fake News: Social Media Is Not the Problem (backchannel.com)
"Honestly, most of the fake news is incredibly easy to debunk because it's such obvious bullshit..." says Brooke Binkowski, the managing editor of the fact-checking at Snopes.com. "It's not social media that's the problem. People are looking for somebody to pick on." mirandakatz shared this article from Backchannel:
The problem, Binkowski believes, is that the public has lost faith in the media broadly -- therefore no media outlet is considered credible any longer. The reasons are familiar: as the business of news has grown tougher, many outlets have been stripped of the resources they need for journalists to do their jobs correctly. "When you're on your fifth story of the day and there's no editor because the editor's been fired and there's no fact checker so you have to Google it yourself and you don't have access to any academic journals or anything like that, you will screw stories up," she says.
I found this article confusing. Snopes seemed to be trying to steer the conversation back to erroneous stories from "legitimate publications," which erode the public trust in all mainstream outlets. (Which I guess then over time hypothetically makes people more susceptible to fake news stories on Facebook.) But her earlier remarks suggest it's not really credibility that's lacking there -- it's the absence of someone convenient to pick on. So what is the problem? Is it the news media's lack of credibility? Algorithms that disproportionately reward alarming stories? A human tendency to seek information that confirms our pre-existing biases? What do Slashdot readers think is causing what this article describes as "our epidemic of misinformation"?
I found this article confusing. Snopes seemed to be trying to steer the conversation back to erroneous stories from "legitimate publications," which erode the public trust in all mainstream outlets. (Which I guess then over time hypothetically makes people more susceptible to fake news stories on Facebook.) But her earlier remarks suggest it's not really credibility that's lacking there -- it's the absence of someone convenient to pick on. So what is the problem? Is it the news media's lack of credibility? Algorithms that disproportionately reward alarming stories? A human tendency to seek information that confirms our pre-existing biases? What do Slashdot readers think is causing what this article describes as "our epidemic of misinformation"?
I think there's some false information often interleaved with news stories in general. For example, about a year ago a muslim dude and his family had their visa to the US canceled, (they were going on a trip to Disneyland) and one of the major cable news channels I saw it aired on (I believe it was NBC) painted a narrative that it was because of Trump, even though Trump hadn't even been the republican nominee yet, and to this day still holds no political office.
Even for those outlets that didn't paint such a narrative, I suspect the story wouldn't have made news at all if Trump hadn't said anything. It turns out the guy had links on his facebook account to taliban and al-qaeda websites, and his cousin attended mosque with a known terrorist. That triggered a red flag that got his visa canceled. So why was this even in the news at all?
The problem with this article is that Snopes itself has a pretty strong left-wing bias.
No they don't. It is just you reacting to fact checking that you didn't like. Just like 538 people were accused of being pro-Hillary, right until during the last week when they had the highest odds for Trump of any media organization. Then people on the left started accusing it of being pro-Trump.
Regardless of the true bias (if any) of 538 models, people (from either side) were not accusing 538 of being biased because of a careful analysis of their model, but simply because it didn't match their personal political preference.
That is exactly what you are doing when you call Snopes "a pretty strong left-wing bias".