Why do people have to quote fake news like it's an invented problem? I guess there could be some disagreement on the scope of the problem, but there's inevitably a better-trained person in this world who will be researching and becoming a subject matter expert on this in the coming years on it's effects and breadth.
It essentially is an invented problem, which was immediately abused by both sides of the political spectrum, so an absolute version of it is hard to nail down.
There's little or no proof I've seen that shows any significant number of people actually believe the stuff on small sketchy sites in question originally - and then the term definition got expanded to seemingly include any slightly misinformed MSM article.
There's some proof, in the amount of shares (non-ironic ones) that these websites would get on Facebook.
The abuse of the term is infuriating because the "fake news" websites are so clear cut, there shouldn't even be a debate. Some websites just make up facts to write a story, as their main source of stories. And there's no way CNN, Breitbart, MSNBC, any of them fit the claim.
In hindsight, the term Fake News wasn't a good one. "Organized [foreign] disinformation" is both more descriptive and would have been less easily appropriated and diluted.
I hear you, but I think some of that is some sort of blind support, rather than an informed opinion that many of the viewers would necessarily repeat. Just a matter of wanting to cheer your team on with no regard for fact or not.
There's also a factor of people from the other side going there. Or people just curious.
Overall, I don't think that it's a good idea to use mere traffic as a way to determine influence.
>>There's little or no proof I've seen that shows any significant number of people actually believe the stuff on small sketchy sites in question originally
The proof is that the sites get large numbers of repeat visitors and their articles get shared unironically on social media.
I mean creators of these sites make tens of thousands of dollars a month. That may be small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but put all of them together and they make up a sizable portion of total Internet media readership.
Because the term "fake news" is about two months old, and no sooner was it invented than people started abusing it well beyond its original definition.
The term was made up to describe completely and deliberately made-up news stories created for lulz or clicks, but immediately expanded to also include news that isn't deliberately falsified but might just be biased, distorted, true yet deceptively phrased, or non-deliberately inaccurate -- and from there used as a general catch-all term for criticising any news source you don't like, whether that's Breitbart or CNN.
There is very little objective news left, and very few unbiased umpires remaining to judge it. I don't think any of us should trust facebook, of all places, to set itself up as the arbiter of what is "fake" and should be censored, as the company's own political views are well known and I don't believe they are likely to be capable of applying consistent standards to both sides.
There is very little objective news left, and very few unbiased umpires remaining to judge it.
I think part of this comes from the idea that there ever was objective news, which is a myth. Not in the sense that it's all biased editorial pieces, but that there is going to be bias in every story, just from the fact that it's written by a human. What people should keep in mind is how hard the journalist is working against that bias to be objective.
Once people are poisoned with the idea that any bias is bad, coupled with their own biases as readers, varying levels of critical reading skills, and partisans charging the atmosphere, people can be too quick to dismiss everything, rather than being encouraged to read critically and get what they can from news sources.
Similarly, the idea of unbiased umpires. Again, everyone's going to have biases, including those held up as umpires. Those same umpires are likely to hold political opinions as well. Is it even fair to think they don't or shouldn't? What's important is to see how their political beliefs influence their work.
Perhaps I'm too naïve, but I still believe people can do good, unslanted work while holding political beliefs. I'd like to think I can, and I extend that benefit of the doubt to others until they prove to me that it's undeserved. Similar to news sources, I think people have been encouraged to think that this is separation of work product from personal politics is impossible in others.
I think both of these are very real problems, and I'm personally trying to work to improve this as much as I can.
Wow. CNN is now regarded as being on the end of a political spectrum. What a world we live in. I mean, attempting to be impartial is now a political act. That's crazy.
I don't see the GP making any claims about where they are on the political spectrum, however. If anything, that looks like a list of unreliable news sources to me.
Lest we forget, CNN's credibility came into focus when their role in rigging the debates was discovered. There was an attempt to divert that by claiming nebulously that the emails had been 'altered', but then it was established that they were DKIM validated. CNN's Cuomo also told us that reading Wikileaks is "illegal" only to be contradicted by far more reputable lawyers at Popehat. Incidentally, Cuomo is an attorney and he should know better.
Your post's parent's point, in the bit you quoted, is how "Fake news" has become — or is perhaps more accurately a thing certain people are trying to make into — a way of dismissing news sources you don't like.
I don't read any endorsement or disparagement of either source in that post, or even an implication that they're "of a kind", except insofar as some people have painted both with a "fake news" brush, or that "objective" reporting is hard to find, anywhere.
Neither of those claims should be particularly controversial.
I think this is more allusion to the Prez calling CNN FAKE NEWS all the time rather than a value judgement by GP.
There's an argument to be made that CNN smells blood since January 21st and is looking to be the ones that make the kill. The fact that news orgs have to choose coverage priorities is, in itself, political.
Even if the coverage itself is impartial, would 24/7 coverage of Trump be non-political?
Yes. A lot of media critiques try to discern bias in the content. However, bias exists prior to that. What and who is covered is bias. Ignoring a topic could be bias not how the topic is covered.
