Fake News 'Crowding Out' Real News (bbc.co.uk)

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.

Comments

Starting?

[s_p_oneil]

Starting? I think that boat sailed (and probably sank) years ago.

Re:Starting?

[tsqr]

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?

[racermd]

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.

Re:Starting?

[Austerity Empowers]

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 gathering, who paid for it, when was it done, are there compounding issues, how was the data obtained, etc. If we cannot all agree on the facts, then the rest is just dildos and sandpaper. And I find we cannot agree on the facts.

Re:Starting?

[ConceptJunkie]

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.

Nowadays the number of sources is orders of magnitude bigger and it's difficult or impossible to chase down everything you read to determine what facts are real and what aren't. Te duplicity in the media, whether it be some crank loner writing a blog or the most established news sources has also increased exponentially. Everything is propaganda and facts are nearly irrelevant with respect to the goals that practically every medium that claims to be news.

Perhaps people are thinking less critically, but those of us who do try to think critically (at least I am) are left thinking it's nearly impossible to sift through the noise to find the signal.

Re:Starting?

[MightyMartian]

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.

Re:Starting?

[Nidi62]

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 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?

[nealric]

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.

headline is Logic bomb exploding

[goombah99]

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

[Ksevio]

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

Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding

[Train0987]

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

[liquid_schwartz]

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

[goombah99]

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.

Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding

[bobbied]

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

[Train0987]

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

[rickb928]

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.

Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding

[Nidi62]

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

[Train0987]

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.

Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding

[apoc.famine]

Which is super telling when one party tries to defund education while the other tries to pump money into it.

Re: headline is Logic bomb exploding

[Train0987]

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.

Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding

[bobbied]

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 networks. Good reporting costs money, takes time and it isn't profitable anymore (not that it ever really was). So the industry has been consolidating, merging and fighting bankruptcy after bankruptcy. So they have turned to being tabloids, publishing click bait news stories with dubious sources in a desperate attempt to make a few pennies, pay salaries and their hosting services. Even the established legacy outlets are doing this now.

Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding

[Lonewolf666]

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 that traditional media were not as impartial as they like to make us believe.

Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding

[liquid_schwartz]

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/... 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 than they put in. The article goes on to say that illegals pay $23.6 billion in taxes. They make it sound like a big plus, as if it helps. Left out is that they cost $134.9 billion, which means that the net cost is still >$100 billion in the red. This is far more than editorial bias, it's only pushing half the story with key facts unmentioned. The key fact of the costs are common sense, this isn't asking too much or a level of detail that is above average. The Vox article is what I'd call fake news. All it has is a straw man in the beginning followed by Enron style math where all liabilities are ignored.

People have gone really stupid

[DogDude]

At least on social media, people have lost their collective minds. We've stopped posting anything that allows for any sort of discussion on social media, because people seem to be really insane on social media. They say and act very stupidly. If this is where most people are getting their news these days (and I don't doubt that it is), God help us all. The human race is going to eat itself because it's too fucking stupid to live.

"Fake News" is the banner...

[forkfail]

...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...

[nine-times]

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.

Re:"Fake News" is the banner...

[Theaetetus]

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.

Not a problem for me

[Snotnose]

Mostly because I get 0.0% of my news from Social Media. And it will stay that way until some pissed off relative signs my corpse up with Facebook.

Long time coming

[Virtucon]

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.

Re:but this article

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

You get what you don't pay for

[goombah99]

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.

Re:You get what you don't pay for

[Iamthecheese]

Wall Street Journal you say? And the venerable New York Times? I'm sure you're fine then.

Re:Politicians need to control this

[DavidHumus]

By "legacy media" you mean traditional news sources that fact-check, edit, and issue corrections when mistakes are discovered?

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?

Re:Politicians need to control this

[Train0987]

Your "traditional" news sources have given up all journalistic integrity in exchange for agenda pushing activism decades ago.

Re:Hate News

[Train0987]

George Orwell predicted folks like you.

Re:Politicians need to control this

[cascadingstylesheet]

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.

Re: Fact-checking as a UBI career.

[Train0987]

Learn how to think critically and you won't be so gullible.

Re:Politicians need to control this

[Train0987]

Yep, the same ones who breathlessly reported on the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Saddam's WMD's.

Re:Hate News

[Train0987]

People who would censor "fake news" are far more dangerous than those who put it out. At least the latter allows people a choice.

Just to set the record straight

[presidenteloco]

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

[DNS-and-BIND]

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. 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. http://imgur.com/a/OMD6b#ed8AV...

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.

Ex-CBS reporter's book reveals how liberal media protects Obama

Compilation of CNN & MSNBC Cutting Guests Mics to Protect Hillary Clinton

The entire media endorsed Hillary.

CBS's John Dickerson: http://www.mediaite.com/online...">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.

Look at all these respected journalists express surprise, dismay, and a total lack of understanding that Hillary lost. 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.

Re:Just to set the record straight

[sysrammer]

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.

Re:Just to set the record straight

[admin7087]

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.

Re:Just to set the record straight

[pots]

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 CNN vetting questions I guess? I don't know anything about this particular event, but I'd be surprised if they didn't do that at all of the presidential debates. The only totally unmoderated debate that I know of is the Fancy Farm picnic in Kentucky, and it's just a bunch of people screaming at each other. It's totally useless, as you might expect.

The rest of your list is mostly the same, though I find this one kinda funny: "The entire media endorsed Hillary." You do understand that the media's job is to be objective, right? Objective does not mean nonpartisan, that's not the same thing. If one candidate is an absolute disgrace, then it's the job of the media to call that person out and expose their misdeeds. It's no surprise that all of those newspapers supported Hillary, when Trump was the alternative.

Re:Hate News

[Kurrelgyre]

It's a false choice, based on a false equivalency.