If democracy relies on an informed populace and the electorate gets a tremendous amount of information from Facebook memes then the news isn’t the problem. It’s the people. But since politicians benefit from having a stupid electorate to manipulate don’t expect any solution.
Check post #56, and now Trump continues to show us why not counteracting fake news will cause a lot of harm because the new commander in chief is a consumer of them.
The source of that? Most likely Infowars, from the maker of swill news Alex Jones.
https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/802998519355310080
There is a ton of implications in such a tweet, but the most immediate harm is to toss gasoline into the fires that are dividing the nation, fires that Trump used to gain power. And in this case it is a result of fake news.
As I commented in the pit thread: There are also reports that point at Trump skipping most of the security briefings that an upcoming president was supposed to follow. Never mind that a lot of people around the world are risking their lives to get us a lot of that information and it will be ignored at the most critical level for our nation.
Just remember folks, the USA got involved in the gulf wars thanks to an American diplomat following the instructions from the white house to essentially tell Saddam Husein that the USA would not meddle in the affairs that he had with Kuwait. Saddam thought that then it was a permission to invade Kuwait as nowhere there was a note to tell Saddam in no uncertain terms that we would indeed defend Kuwait. I can foresee worse misunderstandings with Trump and the users of fake news and information cabinet and staff that Trump is putting together.
Your questions have been addressed. What I believe I’m seeing in your rebuttal is an attempt to deflect the plain facts by the device of demanding to see a precise mathematical quantification of that which is unquantifiable. The criteria that you seem to find elusive are really quite straightforward. Let’s look at your examples.
If you have a hard time distinguishing between fake news and things like The Onion, the National Enquirer, and the Daily Show, you are surely unique because no one else I know does. Fake news is specifically intended to mislead to promote a political cause or candidate on false pretenses. The Onion is a well-known and generally pretty funny satirical site which has no particular political bent and doesn’t seek to politicize or mislead, the National Enquirer is a cheap tabloid with little real influence whose readers are more interested in alien abductions than politics, and the Daily Show, especially under Jon Stewart, has been a great vehicle – despite its comedic slant – for expounding on real, relevant, contemporary news issues. Such as their typical schtick of running a clip of a politician making some sort of sanctimonious statement of principle, then juxtaposing that with older clips revealing his blatant hypocrisy. That’s not “fake news”, it’s true journalism and a public service that we don’t get enough of from the mainstream media. The Daily Show has also had more politically relevant guests and engaged them in more substantive interviews than virtually any other talk show on the air.
Getting back to the topic, I could even put aside all the cites and just ask one question: why do you think a dangerously unqualified buffoon is currently the president-elect, to the astonishment of, well, pretty much the whole world? Could anyone possibly believe even for one moment that it’s based on a considered analysis of his policy proposals, of which he had almost none, and none at all that were either consistent or doable? How has this insanity come about?
Part of the answer is that it’s complicated, of course, with more than one factor at play – including the inadequacies of mainstream media. But there’s not a lot of doubt about the fact that his whole campaign was largely based on a web of lies. The lying and hucksterism is so ingrained that even now, even after winning the election, he can’t stop himself, recently trying to blame Hillary’s lead in the popular vote on massive illegal voting. He does this with no concern whatsoever for the implications to public policy and public order, and here’s the thing: the fake news sites are a major enabler for this kind of bullshit. It cannot exist in complete isolation. Hillary’s alleged criminality, her alleged push for “open borders” with “hundreds of millions” of immigrants pouring in, the great danger of admitting any Muslims, the criminality of Mexicans – these vicious memes were all disseminated and promoted by the promulgators of fake news.
Here’s another take on Mr. Fake News himself:
Sure, all politicians lie. But Donald Trump is in a class by himself.
He lies strategically. He lies pointlessly. He lies about important things and meaningless things. Above all, he lies frequently. Since he began his campaign last June, the Republican presidential candidate has subjected America to a daily barrage of inaccuracy and mendacity … The extreme, unprecedented quantity of Trump falsehoods is why we started fact-checking everything he said. From mid-September through Sunday, we did 28 “#TrumpCheck” analyses of every word he uttered or tweeted in a given day. The total: 560 false claims, or a neat 20 per day.
I’m reminded of the words of President Roosevelt in September 1939; it was on the eve of the Second World War, but the words have an enduring truth. As reported by the New York Times, “there was little he could say at this critical period in the world’s history, he remarked, except to appeal to the newspapermen present for their full cooperation in adhering as closely as possible to the facts, since this was best not only for this nation but for civilization as a whole.”
Words to live by. The Times and best of the major media continue to strive to do just that, but they’ve been undermined by a virulent cottage industry of fake news that has now completely changed the political landscape. Back in 2004 fake news turned John Kerry from a war hero into an alleged coward; today, fake news is no longer single-issue but a dominant political force.
I’d prefer to avoid infowars myself so I’ll take the claim at face value for the sake of discussion. To that end, it does seem pretty harmful if the President Elect is sowing doubt based on false information. I think this speaks to the 2nd question I asked, but not the first.
I don’t think the first question has been addressed at all really. It’s not a deflection, nor a demand for precise quantification. Guidelines, generalities, broad definitions, those would all work but thus far it’s been crickets. Like I said before, care to take a stab at it?
Personally, I don’t think I’ve been a heavy or knowing consumer of fake news myself so there is nothing to distinguish between. But yes, it’s clear that the Onion is satire and the Enquirer is something else - like glorified fan fic, but The Daily Show billed itself as fake news even though it was so much more than that. It’s easy to see when these items veer towards satire, but what I was getting at is not recognizing that, but what could be actionable.
In other words, if people believed that an Onion story was true in a large way, and propagated the falsehood far and wide, would that be a problem with the Onion, or a problem with the consumer, or both?
I don’t think the whole world was astonished, far from it. That you characterize it this way is strange. 538 gave Trump a 1 in 3 chance just about. If I win a bet that I have a 1 in 3 chance, I wouldn’t describe my reaction to be astonished. Wang was probably astonished. But the whole world - not even close. But to your question about why Trump won - because more people who voted in states that had a decisive impact on the election results thought Trump would be better overall than Clinton. Pretty straightforward. But the results were very close, so any number of things could have shifted the results. Me personally - I did not want Clinton to be president. I also didn’t want Trump to be president. In no world would I ever vote for either. But I did consider policy proposals and there are some of Trump’s that I think were superior to Clinton’s. You probably disagree. How has this insanity come about? Probably part of the reason is some combination of Clinton’s supporters underestimating Trump, those same people not understanding those who would support Trump, and a whole bunch of other reasons.
As I said earlier: Before any steps towards combatting a problem are taken, I think it’s important to define what the actual problem is, or at least parameters where the problem exists. It can’t simply be that news is false - satire would be the victim. It can’t be that it is popular - news would be okay or not okay based on the number of people it fools. Didn’t Trump say that he wanted to tighten up libel laws? Is that something that you would agree with?
Yeah, there was an answer to the second question, I do think the answer to the first one was pointed by Peter Hadfield already, while the internet is to blame for the prevalence of a lot of the fake news, the internet also gives one the tools to do a check on what is a reliable source.
Checking the source is one of the main ones. It is basically what I do point many times before: if you are what you eat, you are also what you read/view.
As pointed, most of the fake news when attempted to be spread around on educated people fail because they can usually identify the bad sources. I can say that experience has a lot to do with that. But when science is a factor in a news item one can identify how reliable the alleged information is.
While that site is about students looking at how valid a source is, the steps can be used by many that nowadays have access to the internet. Of course as Hadfield said: yes, not everyone can do that; but the already mentioned option is to check science sites that one can have easier access and allows one to check the info.
One of those recommended sites, Scientific American, also posted a kit to use. Not only for science sources, but it can be used for all sources in general:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/finding-good-information-on-the-internet/
Personally, as a quick “cheat” I also search for items that look fishy in The Skeptic’s dictionary. and if one is in the pit, the condescension and take no prisoners approach (so use it mostly to check the links) of Rationalwikican be used.
I disagree that the first question was addressed. Hadfield describes how false information can be conveyed, but not necessarily what meets the criteria of “fake news”. Based on recent topics and discussion this seems like some kind of new problem but simply false information is hardly new. The criteria of what is being bemoaned cannot simply be information that is false - that has existed for a very long time and since the early days of the internet places like Snopes were useful to point out false stories.
The rest of what you describe I would group as resources for a more informed public - that’s a good thing. But I think the problem here is misidentified. The problem doesn’t seem like “fake news” whatever that may be as currently undefined, but more when people consume this information uncritically. The problem then is people, not fake news and attacking fake news seems like a red herring. It’s why I ask for criteria because without that it seems like sour grapes over the results of the current election rather than a principled position against “fake news”.
I like fake news when it looks like the Daily Show. I like satire. I like the Weekend Update on SNL. I don’t think fake news like this is a problem. I also really really like free speech. So if we are going to say that fake news is some kind of scourge to be fought, then I think it’s important to define what it is. I’m certain it is not measured by facebook likes.
Fake news does exist no matter if they had failed to help Trump win. They would still remain a problem if Clinton had won.
What you miss is that what I pointed has nothing to do with suppression of fake news as you are implying. It is actually that fishy free speech has to be countered with more accurate free speech.
Again, what you demanded: “the criteria that can be used to evaluate what constitutes fake news” was offered already indeed. That it is a problem or not is actually another issue, but it has already been pointed out why it is harmful. Ignorance brought by fake news will and is indeed a factor that affects our very own economical well being.
I got that point - I said as much: The rest of what you describe I would group as resources for a more informed public - that’s a good thing. Others have introduced ideas that are actual suppression (post #36) but I acknowledge you have not done so.
But the title of the thread is what do we do to fight fake news. Thus far I don’t think we do anything to fight fake news. I think we do a lot to give people resources so they can be better informed. That’s why I think this idea of “fake news” as something to fight is a red herring.
One big step in the right direction would be to remove the malice requirement from media libel/slander lawsuits.
If the media publishes something inaccurate about someone, they should be forced to pay stiff penalties. Doesn’t matter if it was intentional or not. If it’s factually inaccurate, they pay up. And the penalties need to be severe enough to seriously threaten to put the media network out of business after multiple such errors.
I’m sorry but your explanation does seem like trying to make a difference that is not much important or even there. IMHO fighting fake news is [del]part of a complete breakfast[/del] is one important part of fighting ignorance and indeed offering resources to people is part of that.
I have to point out that I also do agree with others that satirists like Jon Stewart are like the jesters that did tell the dangerous truths. So I would not put things like the Daily Show in the “fake” news column.
I’m separating something along the lines of penalizing a person for publishing false information and providing resources so people can recognize false information. That to me is a significant difference and important as penalizing has free speech implications and providing resources does not. Simply providing more information is great and there’s really no issue at all with that. But once the topic veers towards penalties then it is incredibly important to carve out the details of what would warrant that treatment.
I too enjoyed Stewart on TDS. He was great. I’m not saying what he did was always fake news - but he did offer self described fake news. That some of it was accurate isn’t the point.
I would think that what I posted would show that I do agree, the issue then was that we are being told by you to not fight against it; however, the “fighting” part to me is referring to counteracting that with more real information. Supporting groups like NPR would be one good step and while one can not force the horse to drink the water the problem I see is that the good water holes are being poisoned. An effort should be made not to punish the fake news creators and distributors but to drain the ones funding their operations. No need to punish individuals.
Seems to me that a lot of the fake part was about how dumb he made the bullshitters out there look. The bullshit was counteracted a lot with efforts like this one:
[QUOTE] The historic People's Climate March takes place in New York City while a House of Representatives committee struggles with the basic principles of global warming. [/QUOTE]Related to that, the misinformation out there was mostly paid by fossil fuel companies and by groups that are mostly funded by them too, unfortunately that is just about the last swamp the new president would like to drain. Pointing also about the harm that we as a nation are getting into thanks to fake sources of information.
OTOH, I have to point out that I do agree with **Bone **here that you are demanding that the first amendment be dismantled. Not going to get my support for that one.
IMHO the target should be the puppeteers’ money. Here one should remember that the people not only demanded but did elect people in government to control, for example, the fake information coming from the tobacco companies. The owners or makers of fake news about the alleged safety of cigarettes and other tobacco products back then did not get into trouble for distributing/repeating the gross misinformation. The tobacco companies were the ones that did. Because they were trying to get around the ugly fact that their product also killed people. There was no need to make changes in libel laws, because the harm to society was demonstrated by taking the companies to court and getting concessions from them, but most importantly to the issue at hand:
The companies nowadays have to fund efforts to get the most accurate information available to the people, at least in the USA. IOW: in this case there are more sources of truthful information on that subject that are funded properly.
So again, do not kill the messenger, concentrate on the ones funding the disinformation that they are also originating.
At this point I just want to clarify a few things, including (last point below) that we were actually arguing about slightly different things, namely acknowledging the effect of fake news on current politics (which I think is plainly obvious) versus advocating some means of “controlling” the news (which is a perilous path).
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About the “astonishment” element: I’m not talking about the world being astonished that somewhat improbable poll results the day before turned into a victory on election day. I’m talking about the bigger picture, where observers were repeatedly astonished that Trump was even being taken seriously as a candidate, astonished again when he started winning primaries, yet again when he won the nomination, and finally (and I speak for many Americans that I know) in complete shock after Nov 8. This is not a “I’m disappointed that my candidate didn’t win” scenario. It is a “WTF is happening to this country?” scenario.
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Saying that one wouldn’t be happy with Trump OR Clinton as prez is fine as a generalization, but when translated into voting it implies an extremely false equivalency. Hillary was a flawed candidate, nothing more, and nothing remotely like the monster that the fake news sites tried to portray. Policy-wise, her election would have been the election of a competent centrist, essentially just another day of business as usual. The election of Trump is seen as deeply disturbing by most of those who have examined his rhetoric and his actions, and is broadly supported by those who actually believe the rhetoric, which as I’ve previously shown is primarily based on a web of lies. And since one of them had to win and the other had to lose – there was no other realistic choice – the implication of false equivalence had real consequences, which will play out over the next four years. Which brings us around again to the subject of fake news and how a web of lies ever got the traction that it did, because there’s no doubt that Trump did have quite a large contingent of enthusiastic supporters, including blatant racists and ignoramuses with apparently less political knowledge than the average ten-year-old.
No, satire would not be the victim, because the source of satire is always a satirical site or program – if there is some miniscule proportion of the population that misinterprets obvious satire from an obvious satirical source as factual, it’s not going to impact elections or transform the very fabric of society.
I think our disconnect here is that one has to be very careful about how one defines “fake news” if one is going to advocate prohibitions against it, and I’m not advocating prohibitions, I’m just asking for an acknowledgment that fake news is indeed a growing problem that did indeed impact the last election in a very unfortunate way. As you said in the previous post, “I’m separating something along the lines of penalizing a person for publishing false information and providing resources so people can recognize false information. That to me is a significant difference and important as penalizing has free speech implications and providing resources does not.” I agree.
Now we have someone making decisions – sometimes rather astounding decisions – about major executive-branch appointments that are appalling to people who understand the implications, whereas most of those who supported Trump are just relieved that there isn’t going to be an influx of the hundreds of millions of illegals that Trump told them Hillary was going to let in, and are undoubtedly back at their fake-news sites “learning” new stuff – indeed, currently featured on Breitbart: Trump’s claim of millions of illegal voters is absolutely true; a bunch of liberal elites are plotting to “delegitimize” the president-elect; Planned Parenthood is modern-day eugenics; the New York Times faked news in order to help Castro’s revolution, etc.
What to do about this I frankly don’t exactly know, but for once I have to agree with the libertarians and free speech advocates that government control isn’t the general answer. But surely the first step is to recognize that it is, in fact, a problem. Perhaps part of the answer would be to bolster the role of legitimate media in reporting news the way other countries do, improving their credibility along with an education campaign that emphasizes critical thinking and how, no, the chain email you got from your crazy uncle with unbelievable revelations about the opposing candidate is probably not “news”, and that the incredible and the unbelievable from isolated niche sources like Facebook posts should probably be regarded with incredulity and should be disbelieved. And this is so critically important, not so that “my” party wins against “your” party, but for the preservation of democracy and pushing back the dark prospect of America actually becoming incapable of governing itself. There’s an awful lot more to democracy than nearly half the population apathetically staying home on election day while the other half staggers out to cast ballots based on misinformation.
All of that said, I don’t rule out the idea that, in at least some contexts, major media broadcasting material labelled as “news” should be held to reasonable standards of accuracy and should not be permitted to intentionally make stuff up for the purpose of deception, and that such standards would be part of the element of trust that we accord to the mainstream media.
That’d put most media outlets out of business in fairly short order. Mis-spelt someone’s name? That’s a suin’. Referred to a woman as Mrs when she preferred Ms? That’s a suin’. Got someone’s job title wrong? You’d better believe that’s a suin’.
And I’m sure I’ve missed it, but didn’t we already define “Fake news” as news which was patently made up/grossly exaggerated and not satire or parody?
I agree with all of this.
First off, I don’t see how extending the current restrictions on lying (libel, slander, defamation) is somehow destroying freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is a concept in more than just the U.S., and many of them have laws about news and knowingly peddling false information.
That said, the people in power are the ones who benefited from the fake news, so nothing can be done at the government level. It’s just a non-starter.
So the solution is going to have to come from the ground up. We’re going to need trusted institutions that can verify the information in the news. We’re going to need education in how to spot fake news, from the ground up. We’re going to need to change our habits on thinking any one news item is real–always look for multiple sources. We’re going to have to use a lot more video.
Rich people who care about this are going to have to start providing grants and such for quality news coverage. Crowdfunding needs to contribute to it happening.
Fortunately, there is to some extent that the problem will take care of itself. People have a vested interest in being right, and so, when a fake news story gets them, it will hurt. I’ve already seen the shaming happen, to the point of people pulling down their fake news article posts on Facebook. These people are then suspicious of what they read, and will need a way to confirm it. That’s ripe for the picking in educating in avoiding fake news.
I mean, despite what you may be led to believe, people are getting better at critical thinking, not worse. The problem is mostly that people who grew up in a different age where you could trust what was in print haven’t developed new habits.
FDR went on to intern the Japanese based on fears of sabotage that his own administration had studied and determined to be baseless, and the press cheered. Things weren’t any better back in the past.
You seem to be spreading fake news yourself.
No one knows how many people illegally voted, it could be in the millions.
Liberal elites are plotting to delegitimizethe President elect.
Abortion is modern day eugenics for somesupporters.
The New York times did publish false information about Castro that helped the revolution such as ““There are no Reds in the Cabinet and none in high positions in the Government or army in the sense of being able to control either governmental or defense policies. The only power worth considering in Cuba is in the hands of the Premier Castro, who is not only not Communist but decidedly anti-Communist…” Herbert Matthews, 16 July 1959”
You need to change where you get your news.
A paper discussed before, many other experts found flaws on it and then the most pedantic flaw was that the authors expected those illegal votes to swing the 2014 midterms to the Democrats, well, they were wrong even on that.
Incidentally I do remember that when Politifact or Factcheck debunked the latest tweet from El Trompo about the illegal votes they also mentioned that flawed study as one item the ones that are making the fake news about the illegal votes are relying on. Sounds a lot like when in discussions about tobacco news the tobacco industry pointed to mercenary research from Dr. Seitz that took money from the Tobacco companies. The point here is not that conflict of interest, but that like in the voter study a flawed paper has been looked at for support a very controversial conclusion that in reality is at odds with what many other researchers have found.
What you report here is just spin that does not appear in the article you cite.
Even the article admits it was just speculation from the writer.
What I do think is happening here is that you do read the fake news that are telling you about how to look at the original incident and you just linked to the articles. **Articles that as usual with fake news spreaders they really did not bother to read or check any followups or context about the articles. **
As the USA was supporting yet another right wing dictator, Batista, he had told everyone that Castro was dead, in reality what the reporter did was to counter fake news coming from El Supremo.* The reporter was indeed just making note of what Castro was saying, that it was ultimately a lie was not the fault of the reporter.
*Yes, I do know that Castro was in the end no better, but I will guess here that most of the right wing media does not bother much in telling you that many of the exiles in Cuba were supporters of dictatorships and made worse fake news (Castro too, but again the context here is that the NY Times was actually countering fake info from the Batista regime).