Remind Me Again How "Fake News" Is a Right Wing Problem?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Inspired by this retraction of a story that sounded fishy from the get-go.

The “mainstream” liberal media are so eager to believe that the Trump election is a sign of incipient fascism that they eagerly publicize any allegation of racism or Islamophobia they hear. Even when the story seems wholly implausible.

Yes, “Pizzagate” is fake news. But so are loads of incidents that liberals read and share.

Dozen of REAL dead Christians in Egypt the other day sparked less liberal outrage than an imaginary incident of Islamophobia.

2

From the article:

You don’t see a difference between a woman lying about an event and filing a police report (and the media subsequently writing a story based on that report) and another website just making shit up and posting it?

In the first instance, the journalist was misled. In the second instance, the writer just lied. It’s the second thing that people are talking about. For a contrast, the 2008 woman who cut a “B” into herself and said that a black Obama supporter attacked her and carved it into her wasn’t “fake news” even if right wing news jumped on the story. It was just people being misled, same as this subway harassment story.

3

Both stories SHOULD have raised a lot of flags. BOTH stories called for a little bit of legwork on the part of reporters.

The legwork didn’t happen. That is unforgivably lazy. If ANY reporter publishes a false story (or puts it on line) without any vetting, that is fake news. Period. End of story.

4

Oh, okay. I guess we’re done here, then.

5

Remind me how these examples demonstrate that “fake news” isn’t a right-wing problem.

They show it’s not exclusively one, sure, but I’ve not seen that claimed anywhere.

6

Perhaps if you include INTERNATIONAL news sources…

BBC
UK Times
UK Guardian
Canada CBC
Al Jazeera

Along with…
ABC
CBS
NBC
New York Times
Washington Post
Los Angeles Times

…and then drop the term “liberal media”, replace it with the term FACTUAL MEDIA, then your post will not sound like a bunch of Russian Propaganda! (Perhaps attempting to validate fake news?)

The problem is with Facebook “news” and younger people using that as their ONLY news source. For REAL stories, identical information about particular stories will be found at all the above news sources above.

So read multiple sources above, and if they are all saying the same thing, then that is a good indication the story is true. If a story turns out to not be true, the above are pretty quick to write about that as well.

7

(post shortened)

The journalist was misled? Interesting statement. The “journalist” failed to verify the story. The “journalist” failed to vet the information. The “journalist” failed to do their job as a journalist.

Fake news is news that is fake. One lied, and the other was too lazy, or deliberately chose, not to do their job.

8

No, it’s not. The real news reports on alleged crimes all the time. They do so with the best information at their disposal. The police in this situation believed the story. Reporting with the best information we have currently is what the news is supposed to do!

It will also report further information when it becomes available. This includes discovering the alleged crime didn’t happen. There’s a reason they report everything as alleged, as there is a nonzero chance they will have to come back and say it was false later. That’s the nature of crime reporting!

Trying to take a real problem and redefine it to where the other side “does it too” is not going to fix the problem. Heck, even if you do suddenly find that gold at the end of a rainbow, and find a fake news story that the Left fell for, it still won’t fix the problem.

The problem is not that one fake news story propagated. The problem is that there was a systematic attempt at using fake news in this election. One of the purveyors of such now is officially part of the upcoming administration.

We even now know that the fake news came in part from Russia in trying to influence our elections. It was flat out propaganda.

The tu quoque fallacy has literally never worked for the Right. It’s not going to work now. And it shouldn’t ever be seen by regulars on a supposedly anti-ignorance message board.

And neither will redefining words out of existence. Fake news is fake news, not news that turned out to be untrue after further investigation.

Fake news is stuff like Clinton having a seizure disorder, or stuff about her raping people, or Pizzagate. This was not just stuff that floated in Facebook memes, but written as genuine fake news on multiple sites.

And, now, one of those sites even tipped their hand. A company stopped doing business with them. So they put out a hit article on them. Check out the Breitbart/Kelloggs ordeal–it’s full of complete bullshit.

And that’s the fake news outfit that has the President-elect’s ear. That’s the problem you need to fix, not trying to blame the Left.

9

When right wingers talk about Islamophobia, they’re not faking it.

10

No, it’s not. And it completely misses the point of the fake news controversy to misunderstand it like that.

Period. End of Story. Other definitive I’m Right You’re Wrong remark.

11

Hey astorian, didn’t we just have this conversation? Seems kinda silly to start a second thread about another example of the same topic you’d taken over another thread with just earlier this week.

12

Not really, no. Even if the journalist did absolutely no work (this one seems to have at least read a police report) towards verifying the story, it’s still not remotely the same as the journalist sitting down and saying “Gonna make up some shit about Trump today!”

Look, I get that there’s a strong desire to make all these equal because that takes the spotlight off the deluge of TotallyTrueRightWingNewsDotCom nonsense. And so if conservatives can say “But look! LOOK! They did it too!” then they can avoid addressing that (and admitting how easily they were swayed by it). But, nope, they’re not remotely the same and not at all what’s being discussed when the topic is fake news stories.

13

I swear, the main takeaway from this election (and IMHO, what caused the defeat of reason and rationality) isn’t “fake news,” it’s “false equivalence.” I’ve had to restrain myself constantly from posting those two words in virtually every political thread.

In any large partisan group activity, you’re going to find some folks from both sides doing almost anything. That does not make the two sides “equal,” and frankly, pretending it does (“Hillary’s just as bad, maybe worse, than Trump!”) made me lose what little respect I had left for the GOP.

14

I have to assume the OP missed this that was posted a few times already:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=19843815

Yes, there is bad reporting from both sides, but fake news are not the same thing. There is no denying that there was a report made. And and not just left leaning news reported who did lie there.

Fake news go further than that, and one very important property of them is that the source never corrects the deception because many times they are not just the ones reporting items that may be shown later where the subject did lie, but that those sources are many times the makers of the fake news or they made up the grossly wrong spin that they already do know is fake to begin with.

What is worse is that, regarding that Breitbart dirty lie of a report, the people in the coming administration are listening, reading and believing that sorry source.

15

You wanna call it false equivalence? Fine. You’re determined not to learn anything? I can’t force you to.

But get this through your heads: if you get your information from “mainstream” media, you are being given false information constantly. And that false information, not coincidentally, tends to serve a particular Narrative.

Rolling Stone and Slate published bogus stories that they did not make any real effort to corroborate. WHY did they publish these stories? Because these stories seemed to confirm what they already WANTED to believe: that a Rape Culture dominates college campuses and that America is filled with violent racists who regularly beat or harrass innocent Muslims.

Reporters don’t bother to verify such stories- they run with them, believing they’re serving a Greater Truth, even if they’re spreading an actual lie.

And guys like you swallow these stories hook, line and sinker, while scoffing at rubes gullible enough to believe in Pizzagate.

16

(post shortened)

Horseshit. Fake news is fake news. Reporting a story that hasn’t been properly vetted is no different than making up the story. The end result is the same. We the people don’t know what’s going on because the media outlets failed to properly do their job.

You may find that to be acceptable? I don’t.

17

Let me know when Right Wing Truth Report starts issuing retractions.

18

If you’re desperate to draw a false equivalence to cover for your side, I bet this is true. If you’re a rational thinker, it’s not.

19

I’m curious what more you expected the reporter to do in this case. There was a witness alleging harassment, and a police report supporting it. Was the reporter supposed to track down the anonymous people accused of harassment and get their side of the story?

The story turned out to be false, they reported exactly that, and retracted the original. How exactly does that compare with accusing a pizza place of running a human trafficking ring in the basement it doesn’t have, and continuing to do it AFTER someone goes in with firearms?

One side owns its mistakes and apologizes for them. The other ignores domestic terrorism and just yells more loudly.

20

Of course, you accept nothing less than the truth in all matters. We know this from your numerous posts raging furiously against the “Pizzagate” lies and those responsible for spreading them, and your outspoken support of “Honest Don” Trump for President.

Do you have a link to the Breitbart retraction story where they admit that all the Pizzagate conspiracy claims were outlandish bullshit? TIA.