The rise and future of fake news

[Rippounet]

15 hours ago, Knight ofthe Laughing Tree said:

well said-- and basically, you're just speaking about ad-hominem attacks, yes? 

Not necessarily. Politicians often make grand declarations about what they want to do. The media's job should be to check whether their program is credible, explain how it fits into the greater historical perspective, and what consequences can be anticipated.

And this is copy-pasted from another thread:

52 minutes ago, Mexal said:

The NY Times just posted a 6 byline article about Trump conflicts of interest around the world. They sent these reporters to those countries to investigate. It's long and worth a read.

I just wish this level of reporting was done prior to the election instead of the thousands of stories on Clinton's emails. I know it wouldn't have mattered but it should have been done. Only real story I remember trying to figure this out was the Newsweek story by Eichenwald. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 Russian Propaganda Effort Helped Spread "Fake News"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?postshare=5001480036529328&tid=ss_tw

 

 

 

[Proposition Dirk]

Mhm, yes...

 

And this is Glenn Greenwald's excellent reply to hat article:

 

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/

[The Anti-Targ]

On 27/11/2016 at 3:53 AM, Clueless Northman said:

So, the same outlets who kept telling us Saddam had huge stocks of WMDs are now complaining about "fake news"?
Or is this about the USS Maine and the Spanish-American War? You know, that bit Pulitzer published about - that should tell you everything you need to know about modern and current US journalism that their most precious price is named after a lying warmongering hack.

So, I won't shed a tears about allegedly "mainstream media" getting a taste of their own fucking medicine. They and everyone else have always dealt with propaganda, it's just that it's more blatant and in-your-face nowadays, and even the supposedly respectable ones have to follow on this path - which only sinks their reputation a bit more, while their more blatant competition never had any reputation to preserve.

And all the while that you are gloating at the downfall of traditional media, the people will be suffering more, not less, at the mis-information and dis-information that is being spread throughout the world. We shouldn't be scoffing at the media for getting a taste of their own medicine and being sidelined because of it. We should be calling on the news media to clean up their shit and actually become a trusted, credible and non-politically biased source of important information for the general public, and institutions that will speak truth to power rather than be their mouthpiece.

Infowars and their ilk are not going to do that.

[Swordfish]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

And all the while that you are gloating at the downfall of traditional media, the people will be suffering more, not less, at the mis-information and dis-information that is being spread throughout the world. We shouldn't be scoffing at the media for getting a taste of their own medicine and being sidelined because of it. We should be calling on the news media to clean up their shit and actually become a trusted, credible and non-politically biased source of important information for the general public, and institutions that will speak truth to power rather than be their mouthpiece.

Infowars and their ilk are not going to do that.

The problem is, that isn't the kind of news media people want.

If a mainstream media outlets reported the news with integrity, but no one bothered to read it, would it make a sound?

[Commodore]

Matt Drudge (ironically since he's become a purveyor of fake news) predicted all of this at the dawn of the Internet Age

 

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

7 hours ago, Swordfish said:

The problem is, that isn't the kind of news media people want.

If a mainstream media outlets reported the news with integrity, but no one bothered to read it, would it make a sound?

I'm having difficulty remembering a time where mainstream news anything but extremely unreliable. Pre-internet I think the only real difference was we all tended to trust the media. But I can think back to the 90's and remember reading newspapers thinking 'this is clearly made up gibberish'. Nobody knew any different back then. My dad would lap up anything written in the paper and take it as gospel, he still does. 

I don't think there was ever a time where journalistic integrity was the norm, it was always an outlier or an exception. It doesn't make money. 

[Yukle]

5 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

I'm having difficulty remembering a time where mainstream news anything but extremely unreliable. Pre-internet I think the only real difference was we all tended to trust the media. But I can think back to the 90's and remember reading newspapers thinking 'this is clearly made up gibberish'. Nobody knew any different back then. My dad would lap up anything written in the paper and take it as gospel, he still does. 

I don't think there was ever a time where journalistic integrity was the norm, it was always an outlier or an exception. It doesn't make money. 

I agree with this - up to a point. Newspapers are still limited in most areas in what they are allowed to print. They cannot, for instance, defame or use hate speech and the likes.

However, in the age of the Internet it's much harder to prosecute. Furthermore, while newspapers are expensive to print, it's not expensive to create a reasonably plausible looking website. So it's harder to discern at a glance which news outlets are authentic, especially those from overseas you don't normally read.

With online content free of most of the same restrictions as print it's easier to print false news, or to simply flat out lie / promote hate speech / defame and so on. It's not that these things didn't already happen, but they've become easier to do and it's harder to prevent.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

6 minutes ago, Yukle said:

I agree with this - up to a point. Newspapers are still limited in most areas in what they are allowed to print. They cannot, for instance, defame or use hate speech and the likes.

However, in the age of the Internet it's much harder to prosecute. Furthermore, while newspapers are expensive to print, it's not expensive to create a reasonably plausible looking website. So it's harder to discern at a glance which news outlets are authentic, especially those from overseas you don't normally read.

With online content free of most of the same restrictions as print it's easier to print false news, or to simply flat out lie / promote hate speech / defame and so on. It's not that these things didn't already happen, but they've become easier to do and it's harder to prevent.

All very true. I guess in the past we had a much more limited choice of media as well. Something like The national enquirer was printing obvious nonsense, but you kind of knew that when you read it. 

I have often gotten into arguments with people online, especially around the Russian crisis, when they would post up articles from websites that were clearly not exactly trustworthy sources of information. It made me realise how much of what is out there is propaganda in one way or another.

[Yukle]

Just now, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

I have often gotten into arguments with people online, especially around the Russian crisis, when they would post up articles from websites that were clearly not exactly trustworthy sources of information. It made me realise how much of what is out there is propaganda in one way or another.

The inability to discern authentic from inauthentic news (especially when something should be obviously false) is concerning.

As for arguing about it on the Internet - the golden rule is: never argue with an idiot because nobody can tell you apart.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

Just now, Yukle said:

The inability to discern authentic from inauthentic news (especially when something should be obviously false) is concerning.

As for arguing about it on the Internet - the golden rule is: never argue with an idiot because nobody can tell you apart.

Lol, correct, we are all idiots really. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 hours ago, Swordfish said:

The problem is, that isn't the kind of news media people want.

If a mainstream media outlets reported the news with integrity, but no one bothered to read it, would it make a sound?

Swordfish,

Please tell me you aren't dismissing the idea that people prefer false news that confirms their worldview to truth as a mere blip in the market?  I, for one, find it hugely disturbing regardless of individual political views.

[Commodore]

 

[TerraPrime]

In my experience of arguing with people about creationism on the internet, one phenomenon I observed is that it takes 10 times more effort and resource to debunk a falsehood than it does to propagate one.

If someone claims that the human eye is an example of irreducible complexity and thus, refutes evolutionary theory, the effort it takes to dismantle it will take a whole page, or more. People who are new to the topic will have a near-insurmountable amount of work to do to sift through the published articles and find the truth. By the time they are done, hours later, they will face yet another false claim, this time maybe on the complexity of the bacterial flagella apparatus.

Disinformation in the news serves the same function - it overwhelms people's ability to sift and winnow. It's not that people are inherently incapable of discerning truth from falsehood, it's that in an environment where half of what you encounter may be false, it takes an unrealistic amount of effort to verify each claim. In any standard news reporting, there might be 3 to 4 claims that need to be verified. Most people won't have the time, even if they are motivated to do the fact-checking.

So, if you're inclined to have the populace not scrutinize your platforms and ideas too closely, you'd do well to flood the market with distractingly false information and wear people out to the point where even legitimate and valid news are given a skeptical look because, well, who can tell the difference any more?

[Rippounet]

3 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

I'm having difficulty remembering a time where mainstream news anything but extremely unreliable. Pre-internet I think the only real difference was we all tended to trust the media. But I can think back to the 90's and remember reading newspapers thinking 'this is clearly made up gibberish'. Nobody knew any different back then. My dad would lap up anything written in the paper and take it as gospel, he still does.

Having delved in the mainstream media of the eighties, I was surprised by the quality of the reporting done at the time. There was bias of course, but also a genuine effort by many journalists to put things in perspective and bring both sides of an argument when they could (even when they obviously rejected one of them). I was also surprised by the accuracy of the information available at the time.
The differences between then and now are subtle. On the part of the media, I'd say what has changed is that instead of trying to present all aspects of an issue, the media now tends to dismiss what can't be sensationalised ("boring" economic analyses for example) to focus on "shock" headlines. But there is also a tendency to report convenient "narratives" instead of trying to deconstruct them.

[DireWolfSpirit]

When I hear the term "Fake News" the two things I think of first are Judith Millers NYT reporting and the terror alerts Homeland Security use to put out every time the Bush administration wanted to bury a bad news cycle. The whole of main stream media dutifully played right along with those color code farcical announcements which FAIR later exposed as blatantly timed for screening negative stories elsewhere and had little to nothing to do with terror threats. As for Judith Miller, her WMD reporting was so egregious the Times was forced to put a full 2 page apology in the paper. 

We have an issue with fake reporting on the web, but its not like our "papers of record" or the MSM are some models of virtue to aim for. I personally prefer the indy type media you find on listener supported programming like Democracy Now or PBS. Also while the Nation and Mother Jones still do investigative reporting on the left, the right has a lineup of talk show idiots and bought and paid for columinists and climate change denialists.

As long as the right enjoys their profitable Clear Channel monopoly on the airwaves and has a endless supply of oil money to fund the climate change denial, they have little incentive to switch to fact based or investigative reporting. Why should they bother, they are winning the House, Senate and Executive branch, so fake news serves them nicely.

[Swordfish]

7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Swordfish,

Please tell me you aren't dismissing the idea that people prefer false news that confirms their worldview to truth as a mere blip in the market?  I, for one, find it hugely disturbing regardless of individual political views.

I'm saying that's the world we live in.  There is, in my opinion, simply no desire to apply skepticism toward news that aligns with ones preferences, and critical thinking seems to be a mostly lost art when it comes to determining what is real and what is not. 'Fake news'.  The issue is not so much the strictly made up stuff, but as a wise man once said, there are lies, damn lies, and internet news stories.  The issue s really about spin as much as it is about lies.

At the end of the day, it's up to the consumer to determine what's real and what isn't.

It's pretty simple really.

1 - Don't click on headlines that are obviously click bait.

2 - Apply significant skepticism to those items that align with your own preferences.

Problem solved.

But this lets the wind out of the outrage balloon, so don't hold your breath.

 

[Swordfish]

2 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

When I hear the term "Fake News" the two things I think of first are Judith Millers NYT reporting and the terror alerts Homeland Security use to put out every time the Bush administration wanted to bury a bad news cycle. The whole of main stream media dutifully played right along with those color code farcical announcements which FAIR later exposed as blatantly timed for screening negative stories elsewhere and had little to nothing to do with terror threats. As for Judith Miller, her WMD reporting was so egregious the Times was forced to put a full 2 page apology in the paper. 

We have an issue with fake reporting on the web, but its not like our "papers of record" or the MSM are some models of virtue to aim for. I personally prefer the indy type media you find on listener supported programming like Democracy Now or PBS. Also while the Nation and Mother Jones still do investigative reporting on the left, the right has a lineup of talk show idiots and bought and paid for columinists and climate change denialists.

As long as the right enjoys their profitable Clear Channel monopoly on the airwaves and has a endless supply of oil money to fund the climate change denial, they have little incentive to switch to fact based or investigative reporting. Why should they bother, they are winning the House, Senate and Executive branch, so fake news serves them nicely.

Are you suggesting Mother Jones is a credible source?

[DireWolfSpirit]

9 hours ago, Swordfish said:

Are you suggesting Mother Jones is a credible source?

Absolutely, also the Nation

[Swordfish]

11 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Absolutely, also the Nation

Ha.