That’s my bad then – my point is that we need to keep a tight definition of what “fake news” is, because if it gets diluted, which it did almost immediately after Mark Zuckerberg made it a household term, then people won’t see it for the problem it is. It’s a big problem, but it’s also very specific. It’s basically like spam; if someone’s talking about how to deal with spam and someone else is like, “Oh yeah, I hate spam, my uncle is always sending me this crap.” No, we’re not trying to deal with the content of your inbox, we’re just trying to target a handful of high-volume spammers. Same thing here, the fake news problem is pretty much limited to bogus websites that can be blacklisted once discovered. We can address that problem without lumping it in with the much bigger problem of “people believe stupid stuff.”
Well if “fake news” doesn’t include these things then it would be great to have a simple term that does.
Any time someone’s reporting something to the masses that they could trivially debunk but choose not to (or even consciously choose to lie) then that’s something seriously wrong in my opinion. Calling the set of all these things “Bad journalism”, say, doesn’t quite catch it, because it might just evoke images of sensational headlines, or celebrity news.
What Hannity et al do is a lot worse than that.
I also don’t get why “momentary lapses” should get a pass (or why it was even mentioned). If I punch some random guy in the face, then sure, I can try to ask for lenient sentencing given that it is not typical behaviour for me, but I can’t say I haven’t committed an assault.
I just call that bad journalism – intentionally bad, but not fake. The basic story is true – Obama was given a medal by someone he himself appointed. The implication Brietbart is adding, that the award was somehow implicit in the appointment, or worse, directly ordered, is merely speculation that they’ve bundled up with the real news and tried to present as fact.
I don’t want to defend this as something that should exist, but it existed before October 2016 when “fake news” became a thing, and nobody was really calling it fake news before that.
I’m giving it a pass because people have taken to referring to major news organizations like NBC, CBS, CNN, as “fake news sources” because of Rathergate or that one time Brian Williams lied. They want to discredit entire histories of solid journalism based on single incidents.
IMHO, and based on the refusal to do basic corrections that are possible now thanks to the current technology, all the types of news described in the OP can and become fake news when no proper corrections are added by the ones reporting the news.
Here is an example where even after the source was corrected by the misunderstood scientists the ones distributing the news make half assed and still misleading “corrections” to the reports they made:
The result is then a “calcification” or a canonization of bad pieces of information that are then repeated forever in their bubble of information.
-Megyn Kelly Interview Comet Ping Pong Restaurant Owner James Alefantis Pizzagate Conspiracy
At 01:08 Kelly to talk about pediphile and sex ring followed by a photo, at 01:24, Alefantis had posted on his/Comet’s facebook page. A photo of a child, his godchild, with her hands taped to a table in his resturant. A photo that Alefantis says was on his facebook page for a year and a half. A photo that Alefantis is/was proud to display.
And Alefantis is shocked that someone on the internet would actually object to a photo of a child in restraints. :rolleyes:
The pizzagate story jumped from social media to the LSM, those media outlets which couldn’t be bothered to provide all of the facts of the story. But they couldn’t/wouldn’t provide the Who, What, Why, Where, and When to their viewers/readers. What would be the point when it’s obvious that the viewers/readers aren’t demanding that the news media outlets provide the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
It appears that some mope with a gun finally decided to check out this story for himself. For the sake of the children, of course. :rolleyes:
Fake news thrives in an environment where the viewer/reader can’t trust the main stream news outfits. Imagine a world where you could turn to an MSNBC and trust them to tell you the whole truth all of the time.
Fake news it any news that isn’t true. People want to differentiate the various types of fake news but that only legitimizes some types of fake news. It’s not OK for news outlets to make mistakes. It’s understandable, but it’s not OK. It’s not OK for news outlets to be fooled by unverified reports. That’s not understandable. That’s just horseshit reporting.
I agree.
Incidentally, my example and my point is that real news sources of information do acknowledge errors and the real news people are reprimanded or worse, others should contrast that with very dubious sources were the “errors” are not ever acknowledged. Leading to what I call the poisoning of the source, where debunked information is still curated and when people that think they are looking at a valid source of info are in reality just reading the never corrected information and continue to be misled and to mislead others.
Rather did make a big mistake and CBS decided to accept his resignation and many others were terminated.
Yep, that is what happens among sources that take accuracy seriously. By contrast real weasels like James Okeefe are not sacked for repeatedly passing bad pieces of information to the public repeatedly. In fact “reporters” like him are usually kept in the payroll or used again by the likes of Breitbart and Fox.
Narrative following twaddle ?
I don’t think you’re treating the different stories in the same manner.
If you focus on all the details of the stories, then all contain blatantly false components. If you focus on whether there is some kernel of validity to some of it, then all do. There’s no difference.
This is part of the problem with the focus on “fake news”. It’s now in vogue as a “thing”, and it’s therefore an easy label to apply to stories that you don’t like. But sometimes it’s just stories that you don’t like. (No matter what the justification. All the stories you cite are ridiculous conspiracy theories, and in some versions contain outright false/misleading facts. But the ultimate conclusion is a matter of opinion.)
My own definition of “fake news” is where the core facts (as opposed to ancillary and possibly sensational details) are objectively false (as opposed to being farfetched conclusions and matters of opinion).
These conditions will generally come about when people mistakenly assume Onion (or similar) articles are real, or when political partisans make stuff up. Some of these might eventually find their way into mainstream news reports, and they’re still “fake news”. But a media organization reporting on something based on shoddy reporting or people passing on far-fetched conspiracy speculation is not “fake news”, or at any rate is not in the same category, whatever you might call it.
One person’s fake news story is another’s Onion article accidentally taken seriously. I think it’s pretty difficult to differentiate the two in an actionable way really. Imagine any of the fake news stories that have been complained about as if they originated under the banner of The Onion and I think the magnitude of the complaints would drop tremendously.
Some of their stories are set up as reality, although I’m not sure any of them are.
I think you’re thinking of the late, lamented Weekly World News.
The National Enquirer is mainly a gossip rag. And they’re known for reporting things that turn out to be true, and before other news outlets are willing to touch them. If they are manufacturing stories, that is a problem.
They did break that John Edwards scandal which destroyed his political career. It shocked me at the time because up to that point I’d disregarded the Enquirer as useless tripe, and then they reveal a major news story which turns out to actually be true.
My understanding is that “fake news” consists of deliberately false, salacious stories meant as hoaxes and click bait done on sites that pretend to be real news sources (often done up to look like they’re associated with print newspapers and television news stations), with no disclaimers or other signs that it’s fabricated aside from information that can’t be corroborated with a reliable source. This excludes conspiracy sites, propoganda pages, or sites that give news with a political slant or excessive editorialism. And yes, these sites are both excessively prevalent and are a fairly recent phenomenon, which is why there is also a new term for them.
Isn’t “fake news” a phrase Jon Stewart used for The Daily Show? If you want a word specifically for completely fraudulent clickbait, you may need to be more specific.
Except that’s not what we’re talking about. There is a clear, unsubtle difference between, say, a news source with a history of solid reporting getting the facts wrong on a story or falling for a hoax, and a non-reputable trumped-up internet blog inventing “news” out of whole cloth. The latter is what people mean when they talk about “fake news”. The only reason I can think of to spread the definition this broadly is, well, this:
Seriously, if you want to stretch fake news that broadly, what term would you use to describe sites like WTOE 5 and papers like the National Enquirer, who intentionally spread dishonest and false news created out of whole cloth?
Here’s a quick litmus test to determine whether or not your approach to news makes any sense whatsoever.
Can you see the substantial differences between Dan Rather and the spunkbubble who published the article about the pope endorsing Donald Trump, or do they both just produce fake news?
Can you see the substantial differences between CNBC and WTOE5 News or are they both just fake news sources?
If not, you’ve fallen into the trap of cynically assuming that because everything is shit, everything is equally shit. So that if your mechanic gets a spark plug wrong once, you might as well let a rabid gorilla try to fix your car.
Then again, I have little doubt that there are those who are intentionally pushing that cynical, inane line of logic - it is, after all, more or less exactly the logic that could lead an otherwise rational, skeptical person to vote for Donald Trump.
The whole truth?
The whole truth?
Dude, the “whole truth” about Pizzagate is that it’s an insane, baseless conspiracy theory dreamed up by madmen in a desperate attempt to smear Hillary Clinton to people just as deranged as they are, and the only reason it became newsworthy in the first place is that some nutjob with a gun took it seriously! That’s the whole truth. There’s no reason to get into the reasoning behind it, any more than there is reason to get into the reasoning behind the people who believe that Barack Obama is a secretly gay Kenyan Muslim - they’re fucking crazy people, and getting into their “reasoning” is giving them entirely too much credit. The only reason they should be exposed at a national level is when they do, well, something like that, to mock and shame them, and remind people why believing insane conspiracy theories is dangerous.
So when you say this:
I have no idea what it’s supposed to have to do with the rest of your post. What, are you complaining that MSNBC didn’t waste everyone’s time going over the details of this insane conspiracy theory and why it’s wrong? Should they also do this with 9/11 truthers, birthers, creationists, flat earthers, climate denialists, and David Icke?
For someone allegedly bemoaning the fact that you can’t trust the mainstream media, you are doing everything in your power to discredit them on incredibly spurious grounds. You’re the one here pretending that there’s some equivalency between MSNBC and, say, Breitbart. That’s nonsense.