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"?

Comments

Re:Blame the news websites.

[Calydor]

I wish it was just slipping.

Over the course of the past five years or so I've seen every major newspaper in my country (Denmark) turn into tabloids, with extremely clickbaity article names, misinformation, mistranslations, butchered grammar, lack of understanding of the subject matter or even the metaphors they try to use ...

It's pretty much as the article summary says - they are forced to crank out so much content with so little oversight, assistance or perhaps even education that it ends up a complete and untrustworthy mess.

Here are some quick translations of the top stories on the websites for each of the three biggest newspapers:

Ekstra-Bladet:
Trump raging after boos: Ole Henriksen refuses to apologize! (Because an entire theater was booing at Mike Pence, but this one guy gets singled out because he's originally from Denmark)
Fitnessbabe shares completely honest picture: This is what my body really looks like (Front page material right there)

BT:
Friday is when it happens: Black Friday will beat all records (Why is Black Friday even a thing outside the US, let alone front page material a week in advance?)
Famous Danes losing money: They have million dollar villas for sale - but no one wants to pay the price (Oh hey, we're still feeling a recession)

Berlingske Tidende:
Check it yourself: Your part of the country reveals your taste in music
And a special one just for subscribers: Men: "We want to do everything. So do our wives."

How are people supposed to take these newspapers seriously? How are we supposed to believe anything we read there?

Re:Blame the news websites.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Fake news, you say? Would this amazing coincidence of dozens of media outlets running the exact same theme qualify? This isn't news, it's coordinated propaganda. Fox News? You're missing the forest for the trees.