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Wow, well written OP and many good responses. I do worry about 'fake news' - news that is demonstrably false or misleading vs news I might not like (anticipating those inevitable knee jerk accusations).
I wish I had an easy answer, but ultimately it seems until more of the electorate proactively engages in their own serious fact checking and rejects fake news, the problem will persist. I have no idea how that will happen, I wish I was more hopeful. It's just too easy to listen to media from our respective like minded sources instead of thinking. And we have to be willing to critically examine the faults of our own parties - and keeping them honest too. We can't challenge fake news from one side, and give fake news from others a pass when we know (or should) better.
Where I thought the internet would make us more aware of others and other POV's - it's done just the opposite too often, it's made it easier for all of us to find other like minded people to reinforce what we already want to believe and ignore all others.
1. Read more than 1 source; if you read about something from only one source and no one else is reporting it, it's probably bogus. Also, if you find a story in a blog that's only picked by other likeminded blogs and not picked up by any mainstream source at all (including Fox News), it's suspect. If it's a legit story more than obscure blogs will pick it up.
2. Read sources from both the left and the right. See if the basics of the story are basically the same, albeit with perhaps different points of emphasis. If so, more than likely it's true.
3. Gather all the information that you can from legitimate news sources and then interpret it.
Seek the facts rather than just tunnel-focusing on what you want to be true.
1. Read more than 1 source; if you read about something from only one source and no one else is reporting it, it's probably bogus.
2. Read sources from both the left and the right. See if the basics of the story are basically the same, albeit with perhaps different points of emphasis. If so, more than likely it's true.
3. Gather all the information that you can from legitimate news sources and then interpret it.
Seek the facts rather than just tunnel-focusing on what you want to be true.
+1
Also, fact check the stories and topic when possible. That could be through sites like snopes.com, factcheck.org, and politifact; or just through your own fact-finding (ideally both).
Also - and this is a big one - be skeptical of EVERYTHING (news-related) that you see shared on social media. Facebook is breeding ground 101 of "fake news" on both sides of the political aisle. Just because your uncle with 6 friends shared something about Obama's Islamic religion practices doesn't make it true.
That was actually explained later. It was a tweet and not "news" anyway:
What is reported mistakenly and later gets corrected is not fake news.
The trending story now about Valerie Jarrett moving in with Obama is fake news, but several posters on this site treat as gospel. We'll see if the Daily Mail makes a correction later so it can be not fake. You can see some of it here. So much ignorance. Laura Jarrett, daughter of close Obama adviser will cover DOJ for CNN
"What is reported mistakenly and later gets corrected is not fake news"
"mistakenly"
It was NOT ""mistakenly"" it was LAZY and "assumed'.
It was reported to the press pool as missing because the "reporter" ASSUMED it had been removed WITHOUT checking it our fist and making sure.
Reporters are EXPECTED to check things OUT and NOT make ASSUMPTIONS, usually based on the their OWN BIASES.
This IS the problem.
They post things, write stories, report them on TV WITHOUT investigating FIRST.
They get a "little" bit of information and run with it.
They omit facts and interject just enough fact then twist things, make assumptions, etc, to fit their agendas.
THIS is why they have less creditd then even Congress and THAT is LOW.
Others in the pool commented on it OPENLY through the Internet.
Even if it had been removed, so what?
Why would it even be mentioned, except to portray trump as a "racist"
#FakeNews: Media Falsely Reports Trump Removed MLK Bust From Oval Office
Kristinn Taylor Jan 20th, 2017 8:21 pm 139 Comments
The news media did it again. Friday night the Internet was ablaze over a false spread report by White House reporters that President Donald Trump had removed a bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., from the Oval Office that had been placed there by his predecessor President Barack Obama. The controversy was fueled by the reappearance in the Oval Office of the Winston Churchill bust removed by Obama. “When I met Trump as President elect I asked him to return the Churchill bust to the Oval Office. First day:” “The Martin Luther King jr. Bust has been moved out of the Oval Office according The People Magazine DC Bureau Chief who was in there this pm” “From White House pool reporter @toddgillman: the MLK bust is no longer in the Oval Office. A bust of Winston Churchill is back though.”
Hours after Trump inaugurated, Martin Luther King bust is out of Oval Office. Bush-era Winston Churchill bust returns, per @justinsink
— Mike Dorning (@MikeDorning) January 21, 2017
“Hours after Trump inaugurated, Martin Luther King bust is out of Oval Office. Bush-era Winston Churchill bust returns, per @justinsink” “will we have as much of a collective freak out over the MLK bust being removed from the Oval as we did about the Churchill bust? prob not” After much angst and hatred aimed at Trump, corrections were posted.
Let's face it, fake news is a huge epidemic in our country that is a threat to the very foundation of our democracy. It started trickling on low-watt AM stations and supermarket tabloids in the 80s and early 90s, and then Fox News made it mainstream in the late 90s. For the first time, Fox offered conservative viewers a 24-hour news source with reporting and stories that were slanted towards their worldview. Liberals responded by creating MSNBC and their own radio station, Air America. Then in the 2000s as the Internet exploded, fake news sites of all kinds, on the left and the right, became more prevalent. Social media sealed the deal, giving fake news outlets much wider and more prominent exposure. We really saw this come to a head in the Obama administration.
First, I fully support freedom of the press in this country and unfortunately, I believe fake news falls under this category. It would be a big problem if the government decided to all of a sudden crack down on it. However, back in the 90s nobody took tabloids like Weekly World News and the National Enquirer seriously, yet today they take similar sources to be gospel. We have reached a point where conservatives and liberals are no longer even living in the same reality, being that they get their news from sources that are tailored to their political views. As a result, this may be possibly the least-informed generation in American history, despite the fact we have the most access to information.
So the question is, something needs to be done if we want to save our democracy. How do we convince people to take anything from InfoWars or Occupy Democrats with the same grain of salt they once took Weekly World News with? How do we convince people that Fox News and MSNBC are good for re-affirming your political views but aren't credible for balanced information (much like an opinion column)? I have no idea, but something has to be done.
Trump started the whole "fake news" meme and, as usual, his followers immediately began parroting him. There's no getting through to these people. They think Breitbart is a legitimate news site. Steven Bannon, the creator of Breitbart and now in our White House:
“I’m a Leninist,” Steve Bannon told a writer for The Daily Beast, in late 2013. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
And that's exactly what he and Trump are doing: burning down the country, handing everything over to the corporations. Who needs clean water and air? Climate change is a "Chinese hoax"! Etc. These lunatics can utter the most ridiculous or frighteningly un-democratic things, can dismantle protections for the American people, and Trump's followers giddily kiss their boots. It's hopeless.
Trump started the whole "fake news" meme and, as usual, his followers immediately began parroting him.
Technically, it was not Trump who started the meme, but he certainly did distort the meaning of the term and created a bunch of confusion in the process. The term is actually over a hundred years old, but in its sudden resurrection last fall as meme, it initially had a perfectly good and useful meaning - it referred to "news articles" that were literally made-up and given headlines that were designed as "click bait". Trump then started calling the mainstream media "fake news" whenever he saw a story he didn't like, which mostly destroyed any further practical use for the term. It has now become a virtually meaningless term, which is unfortunate because the phenomena of made-up stories for the sake of click bait is still with us, but now, sadly, we no longer have a quick, easy, catchy term for it.
And, it's a couple pages later, but I'm still waiting for some specific examples of "genuine fake news" in the traditional mainstream media.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
Since right-wingers have been so loudly denouncing fake news in the mainstream media, I would really like to be able to discuss some specific examples.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 03-04-2017 at 08:25 AM..
I'm a conservative, but I agree Fox News deliberately fans the flames of polarization. Unfortunately CNN and MSNBC do as well, though their bias is a little subtler. And talk radio, and online "news" sources are much worse. Add an electorate that exclusively watches and listens to sources that just reinforce what they already believe, and I don't know how we break the cycle.
But I still think somehow we will, but it may be painful in the interim. As I've said in other threads, unfortunately I think our country has to go way right, or way left, to awaken the electorate and break the status quo/gridlock. But if there's an easier way, I'm all for it.
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