7 ms·

> the public has lost faith in the media broadly — therefore no media outlet is considered credible any longer. Mass media has mostly lost their grip on manufa

by rdtsc 10y ago

> the public has lost faith in the media broadly — therefore no media outlet is considered credible any longer. Mass media has mostly lost their grip on manufacturing consent. It was effectively used in the past for that. The Democrats have relied on it too heavily. That was the old school strategy - those who control the media, control the outcome. In this case it backfired on them. The more money, manipulation and control they poured into it, the more insiders they had, the less trustworthy they became. Instead of stopping and re-evaluating, they doubled down on lies, which made them even less credible. One thing they missed is that to be effective, they had to keep up appearances of some nominal impartiality. In a way they are one of the primary reason this election was lost. They manufactured Kool-Aid, which is fine, that's their job, but then instead of giving it to the Trump supporters, they gave it to Hillary supporters. They were showing all blue maps with a Hillary landslide. There was no other choice, of course, after endorsing her openly for months, they'd never show an all red map. Even if somehow they had one projected. (They didn't. USC / LA Times poll predicted a win for Trump, and it is an interesting reason why, but that for another discussion...) The idea perhaps was to discourage undecided/Trump voters by showing that candidate has 1% chance of winning, so why bother voting. In the end it had the exact opposite effect. They showed a Hillary landslide and so Hillary supporters stayed home. Why bother putting your shoes on or staying in line if it is landslide anyway. So then last week everyone started talking about "Fake News" almost overnight. All was good, nobody likes lizard people, everyone thinks that's crazy. But then it quickly turned into a label that gets thrown at "news I don't agree with". Just a few days ago, a story about an oil field and Texas and it seems they got the estimates wrong or the model for the cost was off and it immediately got slapped with the label of "Fake News". In a certain way it is not surprising. Throwing labels around is basically the new way of conducting discourse. One can blame Twitter for it (I am sure there is some study already on how Twitter affects discussion and exchange of ideas). You can say so much in a 140 characters so what you do is throw a label at the end "Fake News" / "Soros" / "Sexism" and you're done, point proven.

csydas 10y ago
I don't think some of these points are necessarily accurate. Speaking generally, "fake news" is a real problem, though a more accurate term would perhaps be "poorly vetted" news. Large media outlets feel the need and pressure to compete with the rapidity of social media for news since prior to doing so, the large media outlets appared to be lagging behind "real news". I think that it's better to say that we're still not sure how to handle and adjust to a new world where data updates are instanateous for the general population. The traditional gatekeepers have lost a lot of power and many new ones have risen up in their place - the new gatekeepers have various degrees of fact checking and integrity, so they can produce more content and faster, meaning that anyone regardless of affiliation can find nearly instant authoritative sources on just about anything they care to in a matter of seconds, with search bubbles catering to their biases. Fake news in the context of it being poorly researches and poorly vetted is a real problem. We don't have the system of checks that journalism used to have for instaneous news pieces, and it's not something you can mine out either - it requires some actual fact checking; did this person really say this? what is the context of the statement? was the piece legitimate or satire? It's not necessarily a disinformation battle, no, but man, it's really hard to sort through a lot of the information out there, especially when the majority of the populous is used to having a few definitive sources they can rely on for good hard hitting journalism.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  > Seaking generally, "fake news" is a real problem, though a more accurate term would perhaps be "poorly vetted" news. Undoubtedly. However I agree with Snopes here in that this was not "the" problem of why this election was lost. > I think that it's better to say that we're still not sure how to handle and adjust to a new world where data updates are instanateous for the general population Agree. I see that the landscape is changing quickly but how it is changing or the exactly reason need to be figured out. > Fake news in the context of it being poorly researches and poorly vetted is a real problem. Yeah, I like that Google and Facebook have started to attack the problem. I am a bit suspicious of those using this label all too quickly as it dilutes its meaning. > but man, it's really hard to sort through a lot of the information out there, especially when the majority of the populous is used to having a few definitive sources they can rely on for good hard hitting journalism. Agree. The lack of trust is the issue. I am guessing that's why the appeal of Wikileaks and email. Those can obviously be editorialized based on what's released and what isn't. However what is released can be considered as a reliable source. So in this environment of uncertainty, many probably saw raw email texts as one of the few instances of "valid" news (for better or for worse).
fryguy 10y ago
Wait, are you seriously suggesting that all of the polls that were done (http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/national-polls/ http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/n...) were manufactured by leftist media? Seriously? Look at all of them. Up until the final week when it seemed like many republicans decided they could stomach Trump and changed from undecided to Trump, Hilary was indeed an 80% favorite on 538. Sure, some of the other models on other websites had Hilary with a higher percentage chance, but isn't that the whole idea behind data journalism that you build a model and feed data to it? 538 had a good podcast on this topic: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/model-talk-debriefs-the-2016-results/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/model-talk-debriefs-the-... And besides, having a poor model is not at all fake news. Fake news is completely making things up.
- CodeWriter23 10y ago
  Fake news is also lying through omission or using logical fallacies in analyzing facts or statements.
- tomohawk 10y ago
  It was a serious strategy on the part of the Clinton campaign to make the polls look more favorable. http://www.hangthebankers.com/wikileaks-podesta-emails-polls-rigged-hillary-clinton/ http://www.hangthebankers.com/wikileaks-podesta-emails-polls... The timeline of the Reuters polls suddenly bumping to a Hillary landslide confirms.
  - fryguy 10y ago
    You don't know what oversampling means in the context it's being used if you think that quote means that they're trying to bias the polls. One might argue that the article you linked is exactly the kind of fake news that is being talked about.
- seertaak 10y ago
  > Wait, are you seriously suggesting that all of the polls that were done (http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/n... http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/n...) were manufactured by leftist media? Seriously? In the run-up to the Brexit referendum, some hedge funds did private polls, rather than relying on the publicly disseminated ones (which of course predicted a Remain victory). Those same hedge funds bet on Brexit and made a lot of money. What does this tell you about the quality of the public polls? Fact is, polls can be used as a tool to bludgeon a minority opposition, by sowing disunity amongst the opposition, and by demoralizing them through the strong suggestion that victory is impossible (NYT: 15% chance Trump victory). We have evidence that the Clinton campaign aggressively pressured a multitude of actors into bending the rules. (See Wasserstein-Schulz and Donna Brazile scandals.) We have strong evidence of quasi-universal, vehement opposition to Trump in the mainstream media, and therefore of the willingness of those actors to succumb to such pressures. In addition, if you understand how stratified sampling works, you can convince yourself that it is not so difficult to skew the results in one direction while still maintaining plausible deniability. So why do you think the proposition that polls were systematically biased is so unserious? > Fake news is completely making things up. Sure, but the professor who typed up the widely-shared hit-list of "fake" news sites included Breitbart and Drudge Report, which are manifestly not fake news sites.
CodeWriter23 10y ago
> Mass media has mostly lost their grip on manufacturing consent. Or...have they? They knew Trump's rallies were bursting with supporters while Clinton's were not. They kept up the narrative that Clinton was a shoo-in. And then 46% of all registered voters stayed home instead of voting. Had they told the truth, I believe voter turnout would have been much better. So how are you so certain the MSM didn't manufacture their desired outcome?
- cronjobber 10y ago
  To get a viable conspiracy theory, it would have involved crafting thousands of "Podesta/DNC e-mails" that show one kind of co-ordination, fake-leak them, while making sure that all of your communication to and between thousands of media people to co-ordinate the real conspiracy would remain secure.
Laforet 10y ago
I remember some solid refutation on why the USC/LAT poll was biased since it was a tracking poll with a biased sample and gave a couple of voters on niche demographics too much weight, etc etc. Turns out they were pretty much right which makes us question all the social science accepted as valid.

by rdtsc 10y ago

csydas 10y ago

I don't think some of these points are necessarily accurate. Speaking generally, "fake news" is a real problem, though a more accurate term would perhaps be "poorly vetted" news. Large media outlets feel the need and pressure to compete with the rapidity of social media for news since prior to doing so, the large media outlets appared to be lagging behind "real news". I think that it's better to say that we're still not sure how to handle and adjust to a new world where data updates are instanateous for the general population. The traditional gatekeepers have lost a lot of power and many new ones have risen up in their place - the new gatekeepers have various degrees of fact checking and integrity, so they can produce more content and faster, meaning that anyone regardless of affiliation can find nearly instant authoritative sources on just about anything they care to in a matter of seconds, with search bubbles catering to their biases. Fake news in the context of it being poorly researches and poorly vetted is a real problem. We don't have the system of checks that journalism used to have for instaneous news pieces, and it's not something you can mine out either - it requires some actual fact checking; did this person really say this? what is the context of the statement? was the piece legitimate or satire? It's not necessarily a disinformation battle, no, but man, it's really hard to sort through a lot of the information out there, especially when the majority of the populous is used to having a few definitive sources they can rely on for good hard hitting journalism.

rdtsc 10y ago
> Seaking generally, "fake news" is a real problem, though a more accurate term would perhaps be "poorly vetted" news. Undoubtedly. However I agree with Snopes here in that this was not "the" problem of why this election was lost. > I think that it's better to say that we're still not sure how to handle and adjust to a new world where data updates are instanateous for the general population Agree. I see that the landscape is changing quickly but how it is changing or the exactly reason need to be figured out. > Fake news in the context of it being poorly researches and poorly vetted is a real problem. Yeah, I like that Google and Facebook have started to attack the problem. I am a bit suspicious of those using this label all too quickly as it dilutes its meaning. > but man, it's really hard to sort through a lot of the information out there, especially when the majority of the populous is used to having a few definitive sources they can rely on for good hard hitting journalism. Agree. The lack of trust is the issue. I am guessing that's why the appeal of Wikileaks and email. Those can obviously be editorialized based on what's released and what isn't. However what is released can be considered as a reliable source. So in this environment of uncertainty, many probably saw raw email texts as one of the few instances of "valid" news (for better or for worse).

fryguy 10y ago

Wait, are you seriously suggesting that all of the polls that were done (http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/national-polls/ http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/n...) were manufactured by leftist media? Seriously? Look at all of them. Up until the final week when it seemed like many republicans decided they could stomach Trump and changed from undecided to Trump, Hilary was indeed an 80% favorite on 538. Sure, some of the other models on other websites had Hilary with a higher percentage chance, but isn't that the whole idea behind data journalism that you build a model and feed data to it? 538 had a good podcast on this topic: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/model-talk-debriefs-the-2016-results/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/model-talk-debriefs-the-... And besides, having a poor model is not at all fake news. Fake news is completely making things up.

CodeWriter23 10y ago
Fake news is also lying through omission or using logical fallacies in analyzing facts or statements.
tomohawk 10y ago
It was a serious strategy on the part of the Clinton campaign to make the polls look more favorable. http://www.hangthebankers.com/wikileaks-podesta-emails-polls-rigged-hillary-clinton/ http://www.hangthebankers.com/wikileaks-podesta-emails-polls... The timeline of the Reuters polls suddenly bumping to a Hillary landslide confirms.
- fryguy 10y ago
  You don't know what oversampling means in the context it's being used if you think that quote means that they're trying to bias the polls. One might argue that the article you linked is exactly the kind of fake news that is being talked about.
seertaak 10y ago
> Wait, are you seriously suggesting that all of the polls that were done (http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/n... http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/n...) were manufactured by leftist media? Seriously? In the run-up to the Brexit referendum, some hedge funds did private polls, rather than relying on the publicly disseminated ones (which of course predicted a Remain victory). Those same hedge funds bet on Brexit and made a lot of money. What does this tell you about the quality of the public polls? Fact is, polls can be used as a tool to bludgeon a minority opposition, by sowing disunity amongst the opposition, and by demoralizing them through the strong suggestion that victory is impossible (NYT: 15% chance Trump victory). We have evidence that the Clinton campaign aggressively pressured a multitude of actors into bending the rules. (See Wasserstein-Schulz and Donna Brazile scandals.) We have strong evidence of quasi-universal, vehement opposition to Trump in the mainstream media, and therefore of the willingness of those actors to succumb to such pressures. In addition, if you understand how stratified sampling works, you can convince yourself that it is not so difficult to skew the results in one direction while still maintaining plausible deniability. So why do you think the proposition that polls were systematically biased is so unserious? > Fake news is completely making things up. Sure, but the professor who typed up the widely-shared hit-list of "fake" news sites included Breitbart and Drudge Report, which are manifestly not fake news sites.

CodeWriter23 10y ago

> Mass media has mostly lost their grip on manufacturing consent. Or...have they? They knew Trump's rallies were bursting with supporters while Clinton's were not. They kept up the narrative that Clinton was a shoo-in. And then 46% of all registered voters stayed home instead of voting. Had they told the truth, I believe voter turnout would have been much better. So how are you so certain the MSM didn't manufacture their desired outcome?

cronjobber 10y ago
To get a viable conspiracy theory, it would have involved crafting thousands of "Podesta/DNC e-mails" that show one kind of co-ordination, fake-leak them, while making sure that all of your communication to and between thousands of media people to co-ordinate the real conspiracy would remain secure.

Laforet 10y ago

I remember some solid refutation on why the USC/LAT poll was biased since it was a tracking poll with a biased sample and gave a couple of voters on niche demographics too much weight, etc etc. Turns out they were pretty much right which makes us question all the social science accepted as valid.