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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.
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
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
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.
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
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.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.