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Title speaks for itself. What exactly is fake news?
And if it's not clear, I'm not looking for examples. I don't want a bunch of people saying "Breitbart" or "CNN." I'm asking for an explanation for what fake news is. What it looks like. How it's done. Maybe why it's done. The reason I ask is because I see it thrown around and it simply seems like it's just a blanket term for that which you do not personally agree with.
It may also be useful to have this follow up question: what is "real" news, and how is it different from fake news?
Fake news is a completely fabricated story, published by a non journalist or media outlet- picked up and shared via social media.
It's presented as though it is credible journalism, yet is an article written by someone whose intention is to just generate traffic to their site to make money.
In contrast, an article that doesn't support your political party, or doesn't necessarily name sources is NOT fake news.
"Real news" is when objective journalists ask real questions and probe for real answers, then get confirmation from at least two additional sources, then write spell-checked and professionally edited articles or file professionally produced reports that attempt to accurately portray what was said and done, by whom and when and where and if possible how and why, and justapose that against other known facts, such as quotes and dates and events, hopefully also explaining why the story is newsworthy and any possible or potential impact upon the players themselves, their adversaries, the public, or some other group -- without advocating a point of view or favoring one side over the other. Of course, you won't see it in this pure form much any more.
"Fake news" is a story that may or may not have any basis in fact, published, web cast or otherwise presented in a manner that looks exactly like real news, so people believe it is real news, but it in no way resembles what's described above. Readers/viewers of this stuff tend to get most of their information from these sources, because they're not very well read and don't realize what it is, and also/therefore they're not well informed. Publishers of fake news could have any number of motivations, but the most common are to generate ad revenue from clickbait and thus profit off it, or to further a political agenda. Sometimes both, as in the case of Brietard.
For years the right wing has been undermining the closest thing we have to actual journalism, CNN and the like, by constantly referring to them as "lame stream media" and the "liberal" media, and now they're just out and out calling it "Fake news," lumping it in with another thing thing entirely. Are CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc all corporate owned and managed and therefore biased? Yes. Do they ignore major stories and frustrate the hell out of us? Yes. Do they often fall back on "both sides do it" and he said she said filler crap? Yes. But most of the time, I think, reporters and analysts on TV news and mainstream news outlets are trying to get across what they think is true. They're not intentionally trying to deceive as actual fake news does.
One example is the article written by the fake news site "70News" about a week after the elections that claimed Trump had won the popular vote. The site deliberately published this fake news to spread through social media and generate traffic. Millions of people believed this article without taking into account the source. Even a conservative pastor from a mega-church re-tweeted the link to the article thinking Trump had won the popular vote.
Always check the source. As soon as I saw it was from 70News, an unknown source, I knew it was fake news. If you're not sure, Google the source or look it up on Wikipedia. Wikipedia and Snopes are 2 sites that are neutral and fact-based and their objective is to publish true facts. Wikipedia generates enough traffic that if anything published on a high-traffic subject is untrue, it will immediately be corrected.
Basically "fake news" should only refer to news that deliberately publishes facts that are not true and can be debunked. It shouldn't refer to anything subjective or opinion-based, so clearly the fake President is misleading the American public by referring to CNN or any media outlet other than the Christian Broadcast Network and Fox News as fake news, which is a very dangerous move. In my opinion, fact-checking sites like Snopes will need to come together and become as big as Google in the next few years to combat the tsunami of fake news. Just look at YouTube and you'll see millions of videos with fake news.. and people will believe anything they want to.
Here's a list of fake news websites from Wikipedia. This explains everything: List of fake news websites
I, personally, classify fake news as any "news" that only tells partial truths or tells a fact based story in a way that pushes a particular narrative and omits other facts that do not support said narrative.
Fake news to me are those completely fabricated stories - not the ones that suggest a bias -- I mean the ones that are just too crazy -- that whole pizza store thing and the Clintons, the voter fraud of 3 million votes last election (still not one piece of evidence -- three million is substantial -- we are talking buses and buses of people moving around to vote twice).....
That's fake news.
CNN asking if Adele's win over Beyonce isn't fake news...it's a discussion piece.
We have a problem with the news channels. The real headline news can only last maybe half an hour every few hours and then they have to fill with discussion shows. Unfortunately the average American viewer mixes up Hannity, AC360, Rachel Maddow iwth 'news media'. They are media -- social media.....a form of entertainment but they aren't real news shows. They are the editorial section of the paper....
I, personally, classify fake news as any "news" that only tells partial truths or tells a fact based story in a way that pushes a particular narrative and omits other facts that do not support said narrative.
"Real news" is when objective journalists ask real questions and probe for real answers, then get confirmation from at least two additional sources, then write spell-checked and professionally edited articles or file professionally produced reports that attempt to accurately portray what was said and done, by whom and when and where and if possible how and why, and justapose that against other known facts, such as quotes and dates and events, hopefully also explaining why the story is newsworthy and any possible or potential impact upon the players themselves, their adversaries, the public, or some other group -- without advocating a point of view or favoring one side over the other. Of course, you won't see it in this pure form much any more.
"Fake news" is a story that may or may not have any basis in fact, published, web cast or otherwise presented in a manner that looks exactly like real news, so people believe it is real news, but it in no way resembles what's described above. Readers/viewers of this stuff tend to get most of their information from these sources, because they're not very well read and don't realize what it is, and also/therefore they're not well informed. Publishers of fake news could have any number of motivations, but the most common are to generate ad revenue from clickbait and thus profit off it, or to further a political agenda. Sometimes both, as in the case of Brietard.
For years the right wing has been undermining the closest thing we have to actual journalism, CNN and the like, by constantly referring to them as "lame stream media" and the "liberal" media, and now they're just out and out calling it "Fake news," lumping it in with another thing thing entirely. Are CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc all corporate owned and managed and therefore biased? Yes. Do they ignore major stories and frustrate the hell out of us? Yes. Do they often fall back on "both sides do it" and he said she said filler crap? Yes. But most of the time, I think, reporters and analysts on TV news and mainstream news outlets are trying to get across what they think is true. They're not intentionally trying to deceive as actual fake news does.
Clear?
A very good explanation.
One way, as noted, to know if the journalist is professional is if they contact the subject of any story, tell the subject the basis of the story, and then ask the subject to comment on the pending story. If the subject provides a comment, in it goes into the story.
I have often thought that it is silly for people to proclaim CNN as a 'fake' news station. They continually have people from both sides of an issue on air. Indeed they seem, to me, to go out of their way to have Trump apologists on the shows. For a while it seemed that Kellyanne Conway lived on CNN. It is silly from beginning to end.
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