# What's so bad about fake news sites? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 15, 2016, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092 "2016-11-15T20:46:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/41 "2016-12-07T00:02:16Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The fake news sites are awful. Why, just in the past few years fake news sites told us that ‘mattress girl’ had been raped, that one in four women will be raped or sexually assaulted on campus, that there was a campus rape crisis, that women only make 74 cents on the dollar for doing the same job as men, that the Benghazi attack was triggered by a video. I remember one televised fake news site where all the people on a panel raised their arms up in the air in sympathy with the fake ‘hands up - don’t shoot’ meme. > > There’s certainly a lot of fake news out there. You literally didn’t post a single bit of fake news. You posted news that was the best information we had at the time, but then was later corrected. They all involved real things that happened, and told the story as it evolved over time. Fake news is made up. It may use a real incident as a starting point, and it may not. But it’s made up. The facts are fake. They don’t have retractions. They make shit up to get people angry and get them to believe absolutely fabrications. And entire websites are devoted to this now.\* And they get play in what is the largest news aggregator we now have: Facebook. And the second largest: Google searches. I know Google is now going to filter its news to make sure that there are real sources to the information, to keep out the bullshit. I heard at least some people on Facebook are trying to do the same thing. Yeah–they’re doing the electronic equivalent of us yelling “CITE?” And this is supposedly a bad thing? \*The biggest has its founder as part of the upcoming Trump administration. I wonder why we’re worried that ignorance is winning? ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/42 "2016-12-07T07:21:40Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > This afternoon, a North Carolina man with an assault rifle went into the pizza restaurant I mentioned a few posts ago. Patrons fled, and the man fired a few shots. Eyewitnesses said he was looking for the tunnels where children were being tortured by friends of Hillary Clinton. > > What. The. Fuck. “Yeah, but he has an IMDB page so clearly it’s all a false flag orchestrated to divert attention from all the legitimate questions being asked by pizzagate investigators.” Seriously, this is the level of ‘reasoning’ being deployed by the deplorables. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/43 "2016-12-07T07:47:02Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The fake news sites are awful. Why, just in the past few years fake news sites told us that ‘mattress girl’ had been raped, that one in four women will be raped or sexually assaulted on campus, that there was a campus rape crisis, that women only make 74 cents on the dollar for doing the same job as men, that the Benghazi attack was triggered by a video. I remember one televised fake news site where all the people on a panel raised their arms up in the air in sympathy with the fake ‘hands up - don’t shoot’ meme. > > There’s certainly a lot of fake news out there. > **[Stop Calling Everything “Fake News”](https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/stop-calling-everything-fake-news.html)** > > Two months ago, almost no one was talking about fake news. A Google Trends search for the term shows that it barely registered before October. Now you... Again, these stories were not simple acts of bad journalism. They were either largely or wholly fictitious, and intentionally so. And for the most part, they were published on obscure, anonymously owned sites that appear to have been created relatively recently for the purpose of publishing fake news, plagiarized or hastily aggregated news, conspiracy theories, propaganda, or a mix of all four. […] Fake news is the proper term for this sort of content. The word fake means not genuine—a forgery or a counterfeit. It implies an intent to deceive. This phenomenon deserves attention, because the top fake news stories are often shared even more widely than the actual news. You’re not talking about fake news. You’re talking about journalistic failures, or in some cases, your own failure of understanding. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/44 "2016-12-07T11:46:41Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > You literally didn’t post a single bit of fake news. I’d say the Rolling Stone campus rape article closely parallels the Breitbart “distort and misreport” style of pseudo-journalism, except that of course Rolling Stone is not a fake news “site” since it does not have this distortion as its goal, and indeed was unaware of the issues in the article. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/45 "2016-12-07T20:43:49Z")
Yesterday Buzzfeed published a study of Americans’ responses to fake news: > [@](#): > > An exclusive Ipsos poll conducted for BuzzFeed News found that 75% of American adults who were familiar with a fake news headline viewed the story as accurate. … The results paint a picture of news consumers with little ability to evaluate the headlines that often fly toward them without context on social media platforms. They also — surprisingly — suggest that consumers are likely to believe even false stories that don’t fit their ideological bias. And the survey calls into question the notion — which Facebook has reportedly begun testing — that consumers themselves can do the work of distinguishing between real and fake news. > > The new data comes from an online survey of 3,015 US adults conducted between Nov. 28 and Dec. 1. For more on the methodology, see the bottom of this article. > **[Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/fake-news-survey)** > > An exclusive Ipsos poll conducted for BuzzFeed News found that 75% of American adults who were familiar with a fake news headline viewed the story as accurate. It won’t come as a surprise to readers of this thread that Republican respondents fared worse than their Democratic peers when it comes to swallowing fakery–but the Democrats have little to brag of, either: > [@](#): > > The survey found that those who identify as Republican are more likely to view fake election news stories as very or somewhat accurate. Roughly 84% of the time, Republicans rated fake news headlines as accurate (among those they recognized), compared to a rate of 71% among Democrats. ---
**Author:** ![baccer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b77776/32.png) [@baccer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/baccer)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2016, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/46 "2016-12-12T08:16:34Z")
So most commenting here seem to dismiss this Pizzagate thing as “fake news”. That’s a very vague term which tells us nothing about the situation at hand, but it’s all you ever seem to here from the debunkers, the msm and others. If you’re going to debunk something and you never even mention any of what some are describing as the evidence, you’re a failure at debunking, and obviously don’t know the first thing about how to prove something wrong. There can only be so many reasons for this kind of fake debunking, and I can’t think of any that doesn’t involve the intentional minimization and/or suppression of evidence, well, other than stupidity or a big head. That being said, can anyone actually show me why the evidence should be dismissed. I’d like to think these things aren’t going on, but quite frankly there is enough circumstantal evidence to warrant a thorough official investigation. So why should all this just be dismissed? I’ll give you a head start as to some of the questions I’d need answered. 1. Has any of the documents Wikileaks has been putting out over the last ten years been proven false or faked? 2. Have the Podesta emails been proven to be faked? 3. Why do so many of the emails use certain words out of context? (Mostly, but not all food related words) 4. Is the FBI lying about many of these words being used as code language used in pedophile groups? That’s just a start, but I’d need many more questions to be answered to dismiss this as “nothing here”, so if anyone could help out, that’d be great. I know one thing, I’d have a hard time sending my child to a family friendly pizza joint that had entertainment like this. [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQPy6dz3w5g) ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2016, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/47 "2016-12-12T08:48:48Z")
> [@baccer](#): > > So most commenting here seem to dismiss this Pizzagate thing as “fake news”. That’s a very vague term which tells us nothing about the situation at hand, but it’s all you ever seem to here from the debunkers, the msm and others. If you’re going to debunk something and you never even mention any of what some are describing as the evidence, you’re a failure at debunking, and obviously don’t know the first thing about how to prove something wrong. At a certain point, you take something more seriously than it deserves. Clinton is running a child prostitution ring out of a pizzaria, based on coded messages from private communications, where certain words allegedly are referring to other things. Based on what? Fucking nothing. These people are _insane_. There’s about as much reason to “debunk” Pizzagate as there is to “debunk” conspiracy theories about the flat earth. > [@](#): > > There can only be so many reasons for this kind of fake debunking, and I can’t think of any that doesn’t involve the intentional minimization and/or suppression of evidence, well, other than stupidity or a big head. Because it’s _fucking insane_. The only reason to put in actual effort to “debunk” it is for the amusement of other skeptics, because anyone who actually believes that shit is \*beyond \*far gone. They’re incapable of critical thought or source analysis. So why bother spending the time to explain why? > [@](#): > > That being said, can anyone actually show me why the evidence should be dismissed. What evidence? The fact that Podesta talks about having Pizza once in a while? The fact that if you are allowed to replace words at random by pretending there’s a code you can make things sound sinister? There’s nothing there. > [@](#): > > That’s just a start, but I’d need many more questions to be answered to dismiss this as “nothing here”, so if anyone could help out, that’d be great. Anyone else want to bother? Because I honestly don’t, and I don’t see why anyone else should. This “theory” is completely bonkers. It’s less “we didn’t actually go to the moon” and more “the moon is a giant hologram”. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2016, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/48 "2016-12-12T20:30:16Z")
It’s not “fake news”, it’s “alt-truth”. There is obviously a continuity, with rigorously fact-checked, peer reviewed journalism on one side, completely made up propagandist bullshit on the other, with various degrees of satire, honest reporting errors and biased reporting falling in between. The problem is that because we have created this adversarial political process and because Americans are dumb as shit, some people think there is an equivalency between all news sources, so long as your particular point of view is represented. MSNBC shows a left-leaning bias and Rolling Stone was maybe too eager to publish a couple of stories before properly fact-checking so that justifies the right leaning bias of Fox News, the right-wing propaganda of Breitbart and the lunatic ravings of every wack-job Alt-Right blog and clickbait news engine. It’s like you tell someone 90% of what Donald Trump said was fact-checked and proven to be complete BS and they will say that “all politicians lie”, like it’s all equal. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2016, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/49 "2016-12-12T22:29:26Z")
> [@baccer](#): > > 1. Has any of the documents Wikileaks has been putting out over the last ten years been proven false or faked? Not that I’m aware of. There have been some stories that were faked Wikileaks, but the stuff Wikileaks has actually released, have been the genuine article AFAIK. > [@](#): > > 1. Have the Podesta emails been proven to be faked? No, but then again why would we suspect that? They’re just plain old boring emails between people I don’t know. > [@](#): > > 1. Why do so many of the emails use certain words out of context? (Mostly, but not all food related words) Like what? What was out of context? > [@](#): > > 1. Is the FBI lying about many of these words being used as code language used in pedophile groups? What has the FBI said is code language? All I’ve seen is baseless speculation by people on the Internet who have poor critical thinking skills. I have seen from a source that I trust was that the abbreviation “c.p.” was used for “child pornography,” and that at some point morphed into “cheese pizza.” That’s a pretty weak association to be accusing someone of molesting kids. I just looked at my own email and there are hundreds of messages that refer to pizza. Am I now a suspect too? That’s the problem with this brain-dead conspiracy theory. There is literally nothing, no evidence at all, unless you re-interpret some words to mean other things. I could take your post here and with a made up list of word substitutions, I could change the meaning to say that you like to break into farmers’ barns and have sexual relations with the animals. But that’s not evidence, it’s crazy-talk! ---
**Author:** ![John\_Bredin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@John\_Bredin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Bredin)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2016, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/50 "2016-12-12T23:41:11Z")
The references to food as a secret code in Pizzagate reminds me of a subplot in Agatha Christie’s _Death on the Nile_ where a terrorist is caught because he received a telegram using a code where certain vegetables (potatoes, artichokes, etc.) referred to certain weapons and munitions. For those unclear on the point, _Death on the Nile_ is fiction. Not real. Imagined. :smack: There was no Hercule Poirot, no Colonel Race of the British Secret Service, no actual real-world telegrams referring to explosives as artichokes. Ripping off a nearly century-old mystery when making up a slanderous fiction of one’s political enemies is not at all original and only mildly amusing. :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092.md?page=2)