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The US Government Funds A War On Online Fake News (bangordailynews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post:
Congressional negotiators on Wednesday approved an initiative to track and combat foreign propaganda amid growing concerns that Russian efforts to spread "fake news" and disinformation threaten U.S. national security. The measure, part of the National Defense Authorization Act approved by a conference committee, calls on the State Department to lead government-wide efforts to identify propaganda and counter its effects. The authorization is for $160 million over two years...
The Senate Intelligence Committee, meanwhile, has approved language in the fiscal year 2017 intelligence authorization bill calling for new executive branch efforts to combat what it characterized as "active measures" by Russia to manipulate people and governments through front groups, covert broadcasting or "media manipulation." "There is definitely bipartisan concern about the Russian government engaging in covert influence activities of this nature," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. "If you read section 501 of this year's intelligence authorization bill, it directs the President to set up an interagency committee to 'counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence over peoples and governments.'"
Several senators on the intelligence committee also asked President Obama to declassify any information relating to the Russian government and the U.S. election.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, meanwhile, has approved language in the fiscal year 2017 intelligence authorization bill calling for new executive branch efforts to combat what it characterized as "active measures" by Russia to manipulate people and governments through front groups, covert broadcasting or "media manipulation." "There is definitely bipartisan concern about the Russian government engaging in covert influence activities of this nature," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. "If you read section 501 of this year's intelligence authorization bill, it directs the President to set up an interagency committee to 'counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence over peoples and governments.'"
Several senators on the intelligence committee also asked President Obama to declassify any information relating to the Russian government and the U.S. election.
Let the US government fake news win!
We called it propaganda for hundreds of years? Why change now? Is this some form of doublenextplusgoodspeak?
I use a high quality source for my news. TheOnion.com is America's finest news source (it says so in Google) and provides me with everything I need to know about news. If everyone would use high quality news sources, we would all know the truth like I do.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Look. If you think your populace is too stupid to discern between a clickbait tabloid and real news (whatever the fuck that is these days), going after the messengers will only aggravate the issue. Either through malice or stupidity, a government truthiness division will just make people more likely to validate their biases towards those that are government approved. This is just a ploy for votes/money anyways. The CIA has long participated with the media in terms of combating propaganda and injecting the party line into the zeitgeist.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
The time is coming where any news expressing something the government doesn't want us to hear will
just have a FAKE label slapped on it, followed by a "Fake News Removal Order" (Evolution of the DMCA) sent to the hosting website.
If it were really about eliminating the fake news threat; a major goal would instead be to improve education of the people to more readily spot suspicious content, evaluate it logically and rationally, and not be fooled by snake oil.
A lot of /.ers will say if you're dumb enough to fall for fake news that's your problem. You're ignoring what happens to millions of people's brains as they age. Not everyone has their full mental facilities in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Unless you're going to start administering tests to decide who gets to vote (and please God, let /.ers be smart enough to know why that's a bad idea) then the problem of fake news needs to be faced head on.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What part about freedom of the press and "congress shall make no law" don't they understand
Shit, they might as well name the new effort the Ministry of Truth so that it can be crystal clear what they are trying to accomplish.
So when does the US government fund a war against fake network news, or the general bullshit spewed forth by our elected officials ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
mixed in with the Streisand Effect
What, the US mainstream media didn't work hard enough disparaging Donald Trump for the last year? Let's dredge up the Russia boogeyman again and say Russian propaganda is a threat to US propaganda. We need to install a new government branch called the Department of Propaganda to counter such danger to national security. Citizens and countrymen, it's time to double, nay triple our propaganda efforts this time, so that it doesn't fail again!
Trump won. Hillary lost. The establishment is imploding. The swamp is draining.
By the way, I'll call the bluff. Exactly what "fake news" caused the election to go Trump's way? And what's your evidence? I can wait.
The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 (part of the National Defense Authorization Act) has repealed the domestic prohibition, allowing the government's propaganda to be directed at/created for Americans for the first time in over 40 years.
Russian propaganda is an excuse and diversion to prevent people from realizing that this is a new effort of the US government to create and disseminate propaganda to the American public, fully backed by the law. The line "2017 intelligence authorization bill calling for new executive branch efforts" sounds a lot to me like "President Trump will have this new propaganda tool at his disposal to hoodwink US residents even further than they already have been by every source already."
It also smacks of a return to the Cold War anti-USSR propaganda spouted by every source. I can't help but feel a "wag the dog" situation is unfolding, with a growing Russian bogeyman to distract us from our growing domestic problems.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
This is old news. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Trump will use this new government power to determine which news is legitimate and which is "fake". Perhaps he will send the IRS after his enemies in the "fake" news camp, just like the Obama Administration did with the Tea Party. I hope you're not on the donor lists the IRS will be demanding from those organizations that Trump doesn't like. If you are, you better have all your financial records in order.
The FEC may also want to talk to you if your donations funded any "Citizens United" style communications to voters about Mr. Trump or his close allies. Hope you didn't make a criminal mistake by donating to the Wisconsin recount efforts or supporting them materially.
Big Government power sure is awesome, isn't it?
"[C]ounter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence over peoples and governments."
Covert? Seemed rather overt to me.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
When foreign state-funded news agencies started making their content available in English and broadcasting it on the internet, the USA was bound to cry foul for losing control of the public narrative. Now they're trying desperate measures to get it back. What I wonder is how they're going to frame it so that news from regimes that they don't like is labeled FAKE, while news from others is allowed. RT doesn't have to make stuff up to make the US govt. look bad. All they're doing is hiring critical US journalists and satirical comedians to report facts however they want to (as long as they're not critical of Putin or the Kremlin). It's not that hard to do.
Zero to do with "fake" news (as if real news exists). Everything to do with wrenching 160m from taxpayers and handing it to friends of big government.
The current state of affairs is too complicated for an AC analysis in a single post but I will say a few things. The two main political parties are closer to each other than we realize. If you look at Europe and elsewhere, you find greater differences and more parties. Because they are so similar, they have spent decades attempting to distinguish themselves and their supports from the each other. They have played the people against each other through sensationalist rhetoric, attack campaigns (good ol' muckraking as it used to be called), lies and incessant fear that the other party is trying to destroy your life and family. We've dug a 3 mile deep trench in a 10 foot wide field and convinced everyone that the people on the other side are monsters. Incidentally, this sort of dehumanizing psychology is what allowed so many soldiers to view the enemy as animals and treat them accordingly. When we no longer see people, we are no longer bound by any empathy.
So how is this relevant to fake news? The connection is simple imo. If you believe that the other side is a manipulative, pathological liar, then everything they say and everything that agrees with their viewpoint must be wrong. It can't be considered or even analyzed. So what do you do? You seek out views that reflect your own side and you end up in an echo chamber.
While I believe that the internet has the greatest potential we have ever seen to bring us together and unite us as a species on a path to a better future, that potential is not being realized. We may be here together on this site right now, collectively considering the consequences of fake news, the recent election, the growing surveillance across the globe, and we may share the same shock and dismay and even fear, but this is yet another echo chamber. All forms of social media seem to reinforce this and the potential of the itnernet is lost in groupthink.
We have reached a point where the American government is going to start policing media for fake news in the interest of national security. This is the motivation of China with their great firewall. That was the motivation of the old Soviet governments. Censorship and control are not the answer. Meaningful dialogue and a critical eye are. We need to stop with the vehement rhetoric and the everpresent need to prove the other side wrong or scream about how the sky is falling. We need to calmly start asking for citations and weigh the evidence presented. We need to remember that most issues are finely nuanced and that sometimes both sides are partially right and partially wrong. We need to stop seeking out spurious information that confirms our own worldview and re-inforces our comfy bubble, but rather seek out contrary information and evaluate it.
If we can do that then all the BS in the world from foreign state agents won't make a difference. We are only susceptible to it now because of all the ridiculous infighting. Decades of that have left us uncritical, petulantly defensive, blind to facts, and obstinate to an impossible degree.
If your response to this is to just blow it off as "yeah, people are stupid, you can't do anything about it" or make more sarcastic comments then you are part of the problem. This can be changed. Shitty government can be changed. Shitty news agencencies can be run out of business. It just won't happen if we're all sitting around mouthing off about how bad everything is on the internet instead of discussing ways to fix it.
Of course, the pessimistic cynic in me says that this won't even show up on the page. Prove that voice wrong.
Oh, great. So now we'll have a truth commission
Next we need to find the disloyal propaganda-spewing reporters and make them sign loyalty oaths.
Oh, and don't forget that Hollywood is owned by foreigners. Something should be done about that.
Seriously. They meddle in elections all over the globe.
Elect anyone who is slightly socialist?
USA to the rescue!!
Elect someone the USA doesn't like? Must be election fraud!!
Nationalize oil companies? Here, have an embargo.
Violate the human rights of women and immigrants, don't have democratic elections, no freedom of religion, no free press?
Please be our ally UAE!!
Honestly, fuck the US and their hypocrisy.
They can complain about russians influencing their election when they stop fucking around with countries all over the world.
"going after the messengers will only aggravate the issue."
History might have an example or two.
Historical article: "Establishment of Minitrue"
People who blame Russia should be sent to Russia so that they can be sued in a Moscow court
This is the government realising that the internet is taking control of ideas away from big media and giving it to the people ... of the whole world. Unfortunately some of the people are apparently paid by the Russian government and that's going to be hard to deal with. Big media is relatively easy for the government to control, or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, neither of them like the change in the status quo. Luckily for those in the US, you have strong constitutional protections for free speech.
,,, PUSSY GRABBER becomes President of the United States of America.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
In a last ditch desperate plea to the community, The Onion posts an article that the feds are coming, and they need help, but everyone just laughs at it.
God spoke to me
Yes, we know. All mainstream media are fake news. All hail the trustworthy Fox News and Breitbart. Wikipedia has a left-wing bias, as has physics, universities, Einstein (dirty Jew) and science in general. All hair our great Fuerer Trump and his new Mobocracy.
Is to fix the credibility of the so called real news, in this election they basically burned all their goodwill as fast as a gamegear plow thru batteries.
This much censorship makes it MORE likely there's something to the allegations, not less. Nobody cares when the National Enquirer makes up nonsense about Brangelina or the Weekly World News claims to have found aliens.
You remember.......the one the Obama administration blamed for the Benghazi attack? Does that count as fake news?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
All hair our great Fuerer Trump and his new Mobocracy.
You're a recent college graduate and on drugs, aren't you?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I used to turn to BBC for reliable news but once they became embedded during the Iraq war they never extricated themselves and are no longer a reliable news source. I turned to Al Jazeera who always reported both sides and went out of their way to help me understand the other side of the story but the US military actually targeted them and arrested them so they stopped printing the truth. There is only fake news left. I now read a variety of sources like Russia Today as well as western news and judge the truth to be somewhere in the middle of the two lies.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
After a year of dealing with CTR shills, this is the last thing I want to hear.
Once Trump is inaugurated that war will be ended. Does it give the POTUS the option to redirect the remaining funds elsewhere? Somehow I doubt Trump is going to get the people working under this bill all jobs at Carrier though...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Unlike you, he was able to pass the entrance exam.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'd like to see that report, 97% is way too high to be believable. I don't think you could get 97% of people to self-identify as human.
All hair our great Fuerer Trump and his new Mobocracy.
You're a recent college graduate and on drugs, aren't you?
For what it is worth, I am a PhD and definitely not a recent college graduate. Most of those are legitimate news sources, but then that has less meaning than it used to. I do watch a fair amount of CNN, or rather listen when I'm doing something else. CNN tends to be mostly correct, but they also gave Trump lots of free air time, not because they like Trump, but because they like money. CNN is also fact light. They need to fix that, but first they need to fire all the shills. If your primary purpose is to represent a party or a candidate, you should be gone.
Still, to be fair, CNN was certainly way better than the crap that was floating around Facebook. It was beyond criminal that this crap wasn't denounced by _everyone_, but then Trump never complains when he is helped, regardless of how bad it is for the country.
How do we fix it? My suggestion is this.
1) Enough tax money to pay for many independent news agencies at various levels, local, state, etc.
2) The boards leading the agencies can be elected, but cannot have any association with any political candidate in the past so many years.
3) Each agency checks the reporting on other agencies. Have promotions linked to either outstanding reporting or uncovering lies of other reporters. Whether a reporter gets promoted is reviewed by a random set of his peers that changes. Rotate who checks whom. Yes, I don't like all the potential back stabbing that is possible, but the truth is a precious thing, and it can be objectively proven. We need to do that.
4) Agencies remain independent. If the associated board fails to act to stop bad reporting, then the recourse is for the town to hold a special election to replace the board.
5) To prevent the emergence of a fox news town, provide a way for a set of independent agencies to basically declare an entire agency a failure. De-fund it and redeploy the resources elsewhere. This should be a high bar and not done easily. One possible indication of failure is if repeated surveys on common provable factual information reveal that the people that watch said news consistently believe lies, well that would mean they have been nicely indoctrinated by lies. Garbage in. Garbage out.
6) Move people around somewhat. Make sure that you rotate different providers so that people see a range of viewpoints, or at least have them available during the most common news hour. When fact checking provide multiple links when possible. For instance, if say 3845 out of 3902 accredited news agencies say Trump is a liar, well people have no excuse if they believe the opposite.
7) Make sure people know relevant details. What some con man tweets is not necessarily news worthy. His myriad conflict of interests and the sheer vastness of his lies are. The fact the vast majority of accredited news sources didn't endorse him is a relevant piece of news as well as why they didn't endorse him, and no it wasn't because they were all in the tank for Hillary.
Now you can't entirely stop people from following non credible sources, but we can do our best to make sure credible reporting is supported. It is sort of like broccoli. If you put it in front of a kid, tell him it is good for him, and he still throws it on the floor and refuses to eat anything but french fries, well, if that is how our country ends, then so be it.
What's worse is when you think you can spot most of the propaganda and spin. Then you find the alt news sites that really have investigated the facts, collected evidence, and show the actual videos with analysis, and you realize how bad the propaganda problem really is. Basically we've been snookered for decades and generation, getting worse and worse.
...why not try to educate the public to the point that they can actually recognize it themselves?
If it's going to be as successful as the war on drugs or the war on terror, it should provide a reliable pork barrel for the decades to come.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But who is "the man"? And who is NOT "the man"?
That's the key question here. Just because someone is wrong doesn't mean that someone contradicting him is right.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have to admit when I started hearing about all of this "fake news" everywhere I was like here we go again... puppeteers pushing social memes so that when they "crack down" either electronically or legislatively they will have public cover for censorship.
It certainly is no secret to anyone Russia has been targeting the west with propaganda campaigns for many years. Putin has made public statements gloating over ROI from such efforts. Neither is it news the Internet is chalk full of BS. What is so different today that warrants this "fake news" narrative to now be pushed so hard? Sore losers throwing tantrums over Drumpf win?
I doubt he graduated.
> 1) Enough tax money to pay for many independent news agencies at various levels, local, state, etc.
OPM (Other People's Money) You've just "self-identified" yourself as a lib-leftie.
> 6) For instance, if say 3845 out of 3902 accredited news agencies say
> Trump is a liar, well people have no excuse if they believe the opposite.
If ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC gang up to tell everybody to vote for Clinton... oh wait.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Going after fake news? does this mean the US government will be attacking its own propaganda sites too? or is this just more hypocrisy where it is only everyone else that isn't allowed to create fake news?
For someone who has a problem with fake news, you watch a lot of CNN. CNN, ABC, and every other corporate media outlet, including Fox, boldly proved themselves to be pro institution censorship rings this election. It was so blatant, they will never get away with it. Though, the fact that some of you are still unaware months later, shows how much of a hold they had. That's a nice plan to try to make media accountable, but it will never work because the problem isn't with false reporting (false reporting loses viewers), it's with agenda reporting in the hands of a few elite agencies. You can't stop selective reporting, or creative wording. The solution to "fake news" and censorship is just to allow as many people to speak as possible. The internet is already solving that with alternative media. Unfortunately, the system is trying to stop it, but they're running out of brainwashed zombies to help them.
How fucking braindead stupid do you have to fucking be to fucking do that?
Have you read any news lately? Were you completely unaware of the misogynerd narrative?
The lizard people told you to do it? Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I AM SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF THE GROUP PUNISHMENTS. YOU PEOPLE ARE DIPSHIT ASSHOLES.
Where they were being sued for knowingly broadcasting false stories? They eventually prevailed, the judge citing that they were entertainment rather than news, and weren't obliged to be truthful.
It is really bizarre, the way fact checking and standing up to liars, fear mongers, hate speech has been twisted around so that it is now called "propaganda" and "censorship". I suppose we are fortunate in some ways - at least Trump's nasal whine doesn't evoke quite the same passion as Hitler, and I don't think they have a master manipulator like Goebbels yet. And unlike in Germany in the thirties, companies are not flocking to him as one; and we now have the internet, so perhaps there is hope that he won't get it all his way. But it is going to be grim for a while.
All mainstream media are fake news. All hail the trustworthy Fox News and Breitbart.
Er, but aren't they mainstream too? Or is it just that you disagree with what you perceive to be their political alignment?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Maybe that's because if they didn't life in a modern university would be intolerable? And they would never get tenure.
As I recall, pretty well everyone in the USSR self-identified as a socialist too.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I protest your anti-Japanese racism!
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
OPM (Other People's Money) You've just "self-identified" yourself as a lib-leftie.
As opposed to a rightie who loves to take OPM as you put it but refuses to talk about it in a sensible way or even admit to it? Red states receive on average considerably more federal money than blue ones. That makes republican voters net beneficiaries of "other people's money" more than democrat voters.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Care to explain which emails were fake? Because the last time someone did that they got educated in DKIM hashes, learned that yes, the DKIM hashes cover the body of the message, learned that there were actually multiple signatures on some of them, learned that the relevant keys were not revoked (and can still be found in DNS... as well as my post history, just in case), and essentially all the arguments were proven false thanks to the non-repudiation that DKIM offers.
Or maybe you relied on when CNN lied to us to tell us it was illegal to read wikileaks, helping to hide how they rigged the debate?
Or you think it takes state-level intelligence to hack Podesta when he fell for a stupid spear phishing scam claiming some random IP allegedly in the Ukraine had hacked in and followed the bit.ly link to reset his Gmail password? Which is doubly-odd because Google never said anything about Russian hackers targetting anyone and they do actually warn targets about state-sponsored attacks whenever possible (usually this is China, though).
That's genuinely how people think in a post-truth world. They think that all politicians are liars, all media is biased and published fake news, all experts are either idiots or biased... So they just decide to believe people who tell them what they want to hear, without bothering to figure out if it is true or not because, if you didn't get it the first time, everything is a lie anyway.
There is no truth, only that warm fuzzy feeling of having your existing views confirmed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
We're talking about different things. I'm talking about the Russian effort to spread fake news stories that fed into already existing bizarre conservative conspiracy theories.
All hair the Queen!
sore twisted loser
The Republican Climate Change deniers are passing a law regarding monitoring truth in news? These are the same guys that has recently earned headlines like House Science Committee Tweets Climate-Change Denying Breitbart Article.
The are giving the power to "enforce" what is fake to an incoming president with about 70% of his statements rated from "mostly false" to "pants on fire" ( Donald Trump's file)?
I started to write a novel around this concept a decade ago. My friends urged me to abandon the idea was it was too far fetched. "Not believable," they said. "Would never happen," they argued.
I agreed that it was a silly idea.
Damn.
"Physician, heal thyself."
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Yet another butthurt millenial who thinks "they made a wrong prediction" = "everything they say is a lie".
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Shouldn't that be "maldavian"?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The Soviets have been fomenting internal strife in the US since, at least, 1961. But that was Ok, because their propaganda was helping the Leftist causes.
Now that the Russians — in the mistaken belief, that Trump will be nicer to them than the alternative (of "Reset" fame) — chose to root for him, it is, suddenly, something, a government needs to fight. First Amendment be damned.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Not the FreeState nutter again.
I'll just point out, as I've done before, that this boils down to, "We're all gonna move someplace where it's easy for us to take over, and fuck the locals and how they might feel about it."
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Goldstein won the popular vote, but BB looks to take the Electoral College.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
1) Enough tax money to pay for many independent news agencies at various levels, local, state, etc.
If it's paid for with tax money, it's not independent. Everything else you mentioned is window dressing and easily worked around. Let us also note here that if 3845 accredited news agencies say Trump is a liar and Fox News doesn't, then a lot of people are going to believe Fox News.
Sorry, but there's a great deal of magic thinking here. Government, like any large, unaccountable bureaucracy would readily subvert such a massive program. As I see it, the biggest difference between today and such an alternative is that far less of my money is being squandered on bad media today.
No, not because they made a wrong prediction, because they've been caught taking tips from Hillary on which stories to air, and how to air them. Because they've been caught giving Hillary debate questions before the debates. Because they have so blatantly cut people off the air just as they started to talk about that and other important news that was surfacing about the election. CNN is finished when you figure how ignorant they kept you. Odd that you would assume I'm a millennial. Most people don't become conservative until they're old enough to have heard both sides of the story.
Well, they're funding a war on some fake news sites.
One way to identify a fake news site: did they refer to Fidel Castro as a "leader" or "revolutionary" and not as a dictator?
I'm guessing the NYT is not one of the sites they'll be gunning for.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Just about every word that falls out of Trump's vile mouth is fake news. How about the news when he said he would release his tax returns as soon as the audit was done? And just why can he not release his tax returns from past years that are not under audit? One reason is that if we can see his tax returns we may see illegal profits being given him by foreign powers. So let's apply those fake news stories to Trump and his ilk.
When I turned 16 in 1962 I spent some of the first money from my first job on a shortwave radio and discovered Radio Moscow. Most of what they broadcast was pure propaganda, but it did teach me that in some areas, other points of view were valid. The U.S. government did nothing to stop it in 1962, and now it wants to spend $160 million over two years. I could see spending money to make it harder to find ISIS sites, but Russian fake news is in a different category. Maybe it really does pose more of a danger than ISIS sites, but it's a very different kind of danger. The only thing clear is that propaganda can't be stopped. It's just a matter of degree.
"there is no truth, only that warm fuzzy feeling"
Isn't that more of a byproduct of postmodernism? Seriously, it is the academic equivalent of 'there is no truth, only warm fuzzy feelings' that has many advocates in all levels of academia pushing 'feels before reals'.
I am sorry, but 'fake news' has always been around. Social media allowed a boon by giving independent voices ability to reach more people. It didn't help that MSM (all of it) told a thousand little lies to promote a narrative. Is 'Hands up Don't Shoot' fake news? How many times do you see a 'Hands up Don't Shoot' narrative pushing little lie and start questioning how many other stories were lied about? How many little lies and narrative pushings does it take for an average person to reject that source of information? It is not an irrational thing to do unless you think that 'authoritative' sources gain their authority by some other means than telling the truth.
Experts calling people idiots that don't toe the line is why people stop listening to experts. Pundits and politicians calling everyone names is why people stopped listening to pundits and politicians because when people find out that the pundits and politicians were narrative crafting they stop listening. It is not an irrational thing to do.
"Hands up, don't shoot" was reported as a witness statement. Not untrue at all, that's what the witnesses claimed was said.
It's quite different to deliberately making up fake news to get clicks or mislead people.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You mean the ones that are today on Slashdot as more fake news that the WaPo got hit by? :) Where the project listed "partners" that had never even heard of it? The clickbait sites that nobody actually seems to have believed?
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/12/04/0050250/are-we-seeing-propaganda-about-russian-propaganda
Even when the eye witness testimony was found to be false and questionable to begin with, it was still pushed by media as the correct narrative through bastardized virtue signals. It is not the only instance were the narrative is more important than reporting the facts. It is rational to disregard sources that continually lie and misconstrue the truth whether that be through omission, one side representation, virtue signaling, ideological pandering, or narrative crafting at the expense of the evidence. It isn't one instance of poor journalism that creates distrust to news outlets. It's the continuous diarrhea of poor journalism that suits a narrative at the expense of facts and objective reasoning. Fake news has always been around. The only difference today is that MSM lost legitimacy and authority they had because they abandoned journalistic integrity and they have to compete with other snake oil salesmen.
Well, okay, let's do as you suggest. The ultimate ad-hominem, reject all media because it's been found to be inaccurate. Mainstream, non-mainstream alike, because it's not like Breitbart or Reddit are any better.
Now what? How do we know anything about anything happening beyond our immediate vicinity?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You claim certainty that Trump is "...ridiculously unprepared and still doesn't really understand what the job entails." but there is a bit of reality you and others like you still have not yet faced:
Barack Obama had never done a productive thing in his life when elected President.
He had a good academic career, many years of experience as a State Legislator, almost 4 years as a US Senator, and was clearly competent and obviously had a strong grasp of policy.
Still he didn't have sufficient Federal experience and paid for it in his first couple years in office.
Everybody has their opinions about whether Trump is good/evil, right/left (Lots of Republicans fear he is too liberal and Democrat-aligned), etc but the simple fact is that the man is far more qualified to be CEO of the US (The President is the top executive job in the US government, the head of the executive branch)
CEO is a very different position than President.
than Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and George Bush COMBINED. Trump has been successfully running a multi-billion dollar international corporation through about 40 years of economic ups and downs and shifting legal sands and even across shifting international lines. He has employed tens of thousands of people around the world and has hired and fired, promoted and overseen and monitored hundreds of managers of his many sub units of his vast holdings and has probably more experience in managing a team that manages a complex, hierarchical, distributed entity than ANY US President since Eisenhower.
He's mostly a franchise at this point, licensing his name to other groups to throw on hotels. When he manages things himself bankruptcies and unpaid bills are a typical outcome.
I suspect he's pretty good at real estate, and he may do a decent job of managing his organization, but his chaotic disorganized campaign was a common story line during the election, the most obvious evidence being the two campaign managers he fired and turfing the entire transition team several days after winning.
His managerial abilities are clearly not universally awesome.
He was also caught out many times simply not understanding fairly basic things about different policy areas, what the POTUS did, or even what the constitution said.
I stole this Sig
You, as a free agent, have the responsibility to inform your vote to clear your conscience and understand that everyone is trying to convince you of something. You should promote critical thinking and civic responsibility instead of evangelizing the 'fake news' i.e. propaganda in the 21st century. The methods by which it spreads has changed but that does not change propagandas potential to influence the real world. Fake news has always been around we just called it different things. We were able to overcome those problems then as we will today. We are not special or unique with the difficulties of civilized society just because we communicate faster.
"United States of America" is a horribly long name, almost as bad as USSR. It should be renamed "Trumponia".
"Tumponia" summarizes the true essence of the country. It is the place that elected Trump. In 100 years time American robots will be proud of the moment when Tumponia became great.
Okay, but if every source of information about the world beyond your immediate ken is unreliable and must be rejected, how can you possible be informed about the world?
That was my point really. No media outlet is perfect, but some are clearly better than others. Obviously you should still be sceptical, but just because CNN isn't perfect doesn't mean you need to run to Breitbart instead. The latter is 90% bullshit, people just like it because it happens to align with their prejudices.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Double secret probation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...