10 ms·

>Not only that, I used to be a commercial pilot, and I could not believe the amount of disinformation and outright ridiculous theories being bandied about by so

by blhack 10y ago

>Not only that, I used to be a commercial pilot, and I could not believe the amount of disinformation and outright ridiculous theories being bandied about by so called 'reputable' news sources. This is true every time there is a news story on about anything that somebody around me is an expert on. It's always "what the hell are they talking about!?" I've seen this directly, too. I've been on the local news quite a few times, and EVERY TIME what they end up broadcasting, and what I was explaining to them are different things. What's really really scary to me lately is all of this talk about "fake news", which originally referred to outright lies that were part of click-farms, but is now being talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are somehow the only source of "real" news. Frightening. Really truly actually frightening to me.

meric 10y ago
The media is shocked even after all newspapers and TV backed a single candidate, she lost. I speculate internally they blame alternative media, so now they run a campaign against 'fake news'. Of course it couldn't just have been the fact that most states and rural counties did not like Clinton much at all - the media's headquarters are all located in big cities so they were all blind. They are now blaming and accusing 'fake news' instead of taking a good look at themselves.
- elsonrodriguez 10y ago
  The media wants to be shocked that covering Trump 24/7 yielded a victory for Trump.
  - seandougall 10y ago
    And by complete coincidence, they now have a lot more to get people riled up about (and more clicks to sell) for the next four years.
    - talmand 10y ago
      That goes along with my thought that sometimes the NRA would rather have a Democrat in office for much the same reasons.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    They covered the election 24/7, not just Trump, and why not?
    - notahacker 10y ago
      It probably applies more to the Republican primaries, where Trump seemed to get as much publicity as the other candidates put together (and much more in international media) Negative publicity from news sources the typical registered Republican had a fairly low opinion of almost certainly helped him greatly in what was arguably the more difficult contest for him to win.
      - Chris2048 10y ago
        Negative publicity can swing both ways though, it could just as well sink him. Maybe Ron Paul should have gone for that kind of infamy :-D
      - ZoeZoeBee 10y ago
        This is pretty much the DNC playbook from the election, elevate a fringe candidate and marginalize the moderates during the primaries, to make it easier to tear down the candidate during the election. Problem is Dr. Frankenstein wasn't able to control her monster Operation Pied Piper, The DNCs 2016 Strategy From Wikileaks part of Podesta release 1) Force all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election; 2) Undermine any credibility/trust Republican presidential candidates have to make inroads to our coalition or independents; 3) Muddy the waters on any potential attack lodged against HRC. Pied Piper Candidates Ted Cruz Donald Trump Ben Carson https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120. see the attachment with email for the Strategy.
cyberferret 10y ago
It definitely is frightening at times. And frustrating at all other times too. I remember when news articles reported all the known facts up front, or they would do some research to post base facts. Talking about air accidents above, I remember when the first lines of a news article would contain the location, info on the airline as well as the aircraft type, departure and destination information etc. But it appears that these days, the rush to post something that will get clicked on bypasses all the actual information that people might want to know. Take the recent tragic crash in South America that wiped out a whole football team. When I heard about the scale of the accident, one of my first questions (as a former pilot, and knowing the carrying capacity and safety reputation of most aircraft) was "I wonder what aircraft model it was?". I read through 3 articles on common news sites which didn't state this information at all. Two of them didn't even have the airline or carrier name published in their story. I ended up resorting to a pilot discussion forum, where I found out the information I wanted.
- DonaldFoss 10y ago
  You hit the proverbial "nail on the head." Before 24/7 news channels and online access, the rush to "scoop" another newspaper still had a 16-hour cycle due to daily print runs. The infamous incorrect front page presidential election result made editors back up and double check things before rushing a story, but it didn't last long. Many years later, Dan Rather lost his job for not fact checking before reporting something he wanted to believe. When television news first appeared in the US, some claimed the death unfiltered information, which was already filtered, while others claimed the death of newspapers. The first didn't change much and the second barely changed. 24/7 cable news was already in vogue before Dan Rather's incident, who I believe claimed the high road, which helped remove Dan Rather. All that changed when the revenue sources changed. What I personally find hypocritical is the different standard for "breaking" news versus "regularly scheduled" news. Bryan Williams was excoriated for honoring veterans and having a normal, human memory. Breaking news and special updates are blatantly suspect and misleading, feeling line "spray and pray", with minimal or no fact or source checking, and there appears to be no consequence. I believe the Rather case was egregious and the Williams case trivial. I have a link to a study I need to find and post relating to the amount of international news viewing by country. More international news generally means more sources, purportedly meaning more viewpoints and balance. It feels like P. T. Barnum is running much of today's media outlets. Sensationalism combined with instant gratification gets more views = more ad revenue. "Always follow the money." as told to Bob Woodward in _All The President's Men_.
caseysoftware 10y ago
> is now being talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are somehow the only source of "real" news. I believe that was the intent all along. Blocking the bad ones and blessing the good ones are two sides of the same coin. We seem to think as long as government isn't doing it, it's not "censorship" and no problem. But we learn that time and time again, various governments major tech firms are actively working together. Even more fun.. where did you hear the term "fake news" or where do you hear it regularly? Is it the same people who claim they're the "real news"? Whether you agree or not, if you ask any suspect if they're guilty, the answer is "No!"
- jacalata 10y ago
  Sorry, but there actually are people who admit to writing fake news: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503...
  - blhack 10y ago
    Yes: http://www.nationalenquirer.com/ http://www.nationalenquirer.com/ I mean, obviously: http://www.nationalenquirer.com/photos/barack-michelle-obama-divorce-separation-plans/ http://www.nationalenquirer.com/photos/barack-michelle-obama...
  - caseysoftware 10y ago
    Yes: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism The first two were both NYT journalists - one a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1932 - and the third covers the 1890s, so let's stop acting like it's new, unique, or exists exclusively on one side or the other. This is how much of the modern press started.
    - 10y ago
elsonrodriguez 10y ago
What you're describing is Gell-Mann Amnesia: "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know." -Michael Crichton
- nether 10y ago
  More people are interested in world events than in science, so it's reasonable to assume a newspaper will set a higher standard of reporting for those events. A journalist who studied political science isn't equally inept at writing on all subjects; he might have some very good insights on politics. Similar to how most HN readers have very little expertise outside of software engineering, and have said some pretty ridiculous things on other fields.
  - jcoffland 10y ago
    > Similar to how most HN readers have very little expertise outside of software engineering, and have said some pretty ridiculous things on other fields. Wow, that could hardly be more wrong. HN has repeatedly demonstrated expertise in a very wide range of subjects. Sure there is a bias towards software but that's hardly the limit. Even if HN was only read by SW exports assuming that they don't know about anything else is ridiculous. Not that HN is nonsense free. Your comment for example.
    - adwn 10y ago
      > HN has repeatedly demonstrated expertise in a very wide range of subjects. Although I agree with this, there is also a lot of nonsense and factually incorrect statements. Not everyone is an expert in every field, and many people will make bold claims about topics in which they're not well versed – even on HN. Unfortunately, this applies to me as well sometimes.
graycat 10y ago
> frightening Well, it's sad. But, in part, you can relax: The "fake news" is just a current meme and will go away in at most a few weeks. You can hear so much about such a meme because the news organizations form herds, gang up, pile on.
- DonaldFoss 10y ago
  Tribal instincts, competing for scarce resources?
  - graycat 10y ago
    Maybe you were responding to "form herds, gang up, pile on". My explanation for why they do that: For a newsie, if some of the bigger guns in the MSM are saying that some candidate is a dirty rat, then it is both safe and easy for all the other newsies in the MSM to do the same. Just one newsie calling dirty rat likely won't have enough credibility to get much traction, but, if all the MSM newsies are saying dirty rat, then they all get credibility, not just for a claim of dirty rat but maybe also even for little green men from Mars. More generally, gangs offer to their members some safety of numbers, and people in gangs are more willing to throw stones. A friend of mine who remembers NYC some decades ago explains that the NYT wrote the stories and the rest of the MSM, especially the TV evening news, just went along -- easy, "no real work about it". Yes, no doubt much the same applied to tribes. If everyone joins in, then can bring down an elephant, mastodon, bison, reindeer or some such, no one member of the tribe is at much risk of injury, and everyone in the tribe eats that day. If some guy in the tribe just wants to sleep through the effort, then maybe the rest of the tribe won't let him eat!
Spooky23 10y ago
Blame OJ Simpson and that fucking white Bronco. That started this era of nonsensical analysis and up to the second coverage of random car chases, progressed to constant updates about other random things, and then the 9/11 ticker sent it to the moon.
XJOKOLAT 10y ago
>"I've seen this directly, too. I've been on the local news quite a few times, and EVERY TIME what they end up broadcasting, and what I was explaining to them are different things." Completely agreed from personal experience. Not new but always worth re-iterating. The news can't even get the basic facts right without twisting through addition or omission. How are we supposed to rely on them when factual sources are suspect/false in the age of fake/lie-news? Find experts. Do your own research.
- majewsky 10y ago
  I have seen this happen to a friend. He was active in a political party, and was interviewed by a local station which was doing a piece on politically active millenials. They sent a reporter with a camera crew and he spoke to them for over one hour about his political views and ambitions. In the end, only a single soundbite ended up in the piece. It was a metaphor he used somewhere inbetween, so forgettable that I can't even recall it.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> What's really really scary to me lately is all of this talk about "fake news", which originally referred to outright lies that were part of click-farms, but is now being talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are somehow the only source of "real" news. I am surprised by that too. This whole "fake news" thing appeared out of thin air around the US election and is reportedly a new phenomenon - as if most of the "regular" news coverage wasn't already of various degrees of fakeness.
- talmand 10y ago
  It was an undefined talking point that has spread farther and faster than it was likely intended. I suspect it will disappear soon as the stupidity of it starts to affect the major news agencies and social media.
  - krrrh 10y ago
    It referred to a real and serious phenomena, but now the phrase has been muddied by political rhetoric. It's still a problem, and it's different enough from the old clickbait sensationalism and conspiracy theory chain emails that it deserves its own name. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/for-the-new-yellow-journalists-opportunity-comes-in-clicks-and-bucks/2016/11/20/d58d036c-adbf-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html?postshare=9481480360195210&tid=ss_tw https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/for-the-new-yellow-j... https://medium.com/@ev/i-found-it-interesting-that-when-i-went-to-read-zuckerbergs-post-about-misinformation-there-were-2ce1393bd76f#.hs64bjm1y https://medium.com/@ev/i-found-it-interesting-that-when-i-we...
    - talmand 10y ago
      Nah, for the most part what some are calling "fake news" is still the old-fashioned clickbait. I can remember several scandals over the years from the big news agencies that would be considered "fake news" by today's standards. They range from just being wrong to outright fraud. This is nothing new, this crap existed before there were websites. It's just that people simply choose not to remember to continue their desire to have something whine about. It is also an old tactic by people wishing to discredit those that disagree with their agenda, whether it is political or economic.
croon 10y ago
> What's really really scary to me lately is all of this talk about "fake news", which originally referred to outright lies that were part of click-farms, but is now being talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are somehow the only source of "real" news. I'm genuinely curious to know where it's talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are the pinnacle of reporting? Honestly I never hear/read anything but hate for them?
cryoshon 10y ago
>What's really really scary to me lately is all of this talk about "fake news", which originally referred to outright lies that were part of click-farms, but is now being talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are somehow the only source of "real" news. this is an intentional ploy designed to conflate the issues of tabloid-trash and dissent. we don't even need a ban for the tabloid trash... but once we link it to dissenting from the mainline and call it the deciding factor of the election (a huge leap...), we put the mainstream media who have proven to be incompetent and dishonest back at the wheel.
digler999 10y ago
> Frightening. Really truly actually frightening to me. Don't worry, Congress is going to fix that for you if the "Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 ", H.R. 5181 passes. We'll have trusty folks over at the "Center for Information Analysis and Response" [1] to help us by "disseminating fact-based narratives" (!) to aide in determining whats true and whats false. How handy! [1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr5181/text https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr5181/text http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-07/propaganda-bill-congress-could-give-america-its-very-own-ministry-truth http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-07/propaganda-bill-con...
- throwaway22222 10y ago
  Done. It passed and we now have a Ministry Of Truth.

by blhack 10y ago

meric 10y ago

The media is shocked even after all newspapers and TV backed a single candidate, she lost. I speculate internally they blame alternative media, so now they run a campaign against 'fake news'. Of course it couldn't just have been the fact that most states and rural counties did not like Clinton much at all - the media's headquarters are all located in big cities so they were all blind. They are now blaming and accusing 'fake news' instead of taking a good look at themselves.

elsonrodriguez 10y ago
The media wants to be shocked that covering Trump 24/7 yielded a victory for Trump.
- seandougall 10y ago
  And by complete coincidence, they now have a lot more to get people riled up about (and more clicks to sell) for the next four years.
  - talmand 10y ago
    That goes along with my thought that sometimes the NRA would rather have a Democrat in office for much the same reasons.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  They covered the election 24/7, not just Trump, and why not?
  - notahacker 10y ago
    It probably applies more to the Republican primaries, where Trump seemed to get as much publicity as the other candidates put together (and much more in international media) Negative publicity from news sources the typical registered Republican had a fairly low opinion of almost certainly helped him greatly in what was arguably the more difficult contest for him to win.
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      Negative publicity can swing both ways though, it could just as well sink him. Maybe Ron Paul should have gone for that kind of infamy :-D
    - ZoeZoeBee 10y ago
      This is pretty much the DNC playbook from the election, elevate a fringe candidate and marginalize the moderates during the primaries, to make it easier to tear down the candidate during the election. Problem is Dr. Frankenstein wasn't able to control her monster Operation Pied Piper, The DNCs 2016 Strategy From Wikileaks part of Podesta release 1) Force all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election; 2) Undermine any credibility/trust Republican presidential candidates have to make inroads to our coalition or independents; 3) Muddy the waters on any potential attack lodged against HRC. Pied Piper Candidates Ted Cruz Donald Trump Ben Carson https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120. see the attachment with email for the Strategy.

cyberferret 10y ago

It definitely is frightening at times. And frustrating at all other times too. I remember when news articles reported all the known facts up front, or they would do some research to post base facts. Talking about air accidents above, I remember when the first lines of a news article would contain the location, info on the airline as well as the aircraft type, departure and destination information etc. But it appears that these days, the rush to post something that will get clicked on bypasses all the actual information that people might want to know. Take the recent tragic crash in South America that wiped out a whole football team. When I heard about the scale of the accident, one of my first questions (as a former pilot, and knowing the carrying capacity and safety reputation of most aircraft) was "I wonder what aircraft model it was?". I read through 3 articles on common news sites which didn't state this information at all. Two of them didn't even have the airline or carrier name published in their story. I ended up resorting to a pilot discussion forum, where I found out the information I wanted.

DonaldFoss 10y ago
You hit the proverbial "nail on the head." Before 24/7 news channels and online access, the rush to "scoop" another newspaper still had a 16-hour cycle due to daily print runs. The infamous incorrect front page presidential election result made editors back up and double check things before rushing a story, but it didn't last long. Many years later, Dan Rather lost his job for not fact checking before reporting something he wanted to believe. When television news first appeared in the US, some claimed the death unfiltered information, which was already filtered, while others claimed the death of newspapers. The first didn't change much and the second barely changed. 24/7 cable news was already in vogue before Dan Rather's incident, who I believe claimed the high road, which helped remove Dan Rather. All that changed when the revenue sources changed. What I personally find hypocritical is the different standard for "breaking" news versus "regularly scheduled" news. Bryan Williams was excoriated for honoring veterans and having a normal, human memory. Breaking news and special updates are blatantly suspect and misleading, feeling line "spray and pray", with minimal or no fact or source checking, and there appears to be no consequence. I believe the Rather case was egregious and the Williams case trivial. I have a link to a study I need to find and post relating to the amount of international news viewing by country. More international news generally means more sources, purportedly meaning more viewpoints and balance. It feels like P. T. Barnum is running much of today's media outlets. Sensationalism combined with instant gratification gets more views = more ad revenue. "Always follow the money." as told to Bob Woodward in _All The President's Men_.

caseysoftware 10y ago

> is now being talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are somehow the only source of "real" news. I believe that was the intent all along. Blocking the bad ones and blessing the good ones are two sides of the same coin. We seem to think as long as government isn't doing it, it's not "censorship" and no problem. But we learn that time and time again, various governments major tech firms are actively working together. Even more fun.. where did you hear the term "fake news" or where do you hear it regularly? Is it the same people who claim they're the "real news"? Whether you agree or not, if you ask any suspect if they're guilty, the answer is "No!"

jacalata 10y ago
Sorry, but there actually are people who admit to writing fake news: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503...
- blhack 10y ago
  Yes: http://www.nationalenquirer.com/ http://www.nationalenquirer.com/ I mean, obviously: http://www.nationalenquirer.com/photos/barack-michelle-obama-divorce-separation-plans/ http://www.nationalenquirer.com/photos/barack-michelle-obama...
- caseysoftware 10y ago
  Yes: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism The first two were both NYT journalists - one a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1932 - and the third covers the 1890s, so let's stop acting like it's new, unique, or exists exclusively on one side or the other. This is how much of the modern press started.
  - 10y ago

elsonrodriguez 10y ago

What you're describing is Gell-Mann Amnesia: "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know." -Michael Crichton

nether 10y ago
More people are interested in world events than in science, so it's reasonable to assume a newspaper will set a higher standard of reporting for those events. A journalist who studied political science isn't equally inept at writing on all subjects; he might have some very good insights on politics. Similar to how most HN readers have very little expertise outside of software engineering, and have said some pretty ridiculous things on other fields.
- jcoffland 10y ago
  > Similar to how most HN readers have very little expertise outside of software engineering, and have said some pretty ridiculous things on other fields. Wow, that could hardly be more wrong. HN has repeatedly demonstrated expertise in a very wide range of subjects. Sure there is a bias towards software but that's hardly the limit. Even if HN was only read by SW exports assuming that they don't know about anything else is ridiculous. Not that HN is nonsense free. Your comment for example.
  - adwn 10y ago
    > HN has repeatedly demonstrated expertise in a very wide range of subjects. Although I agree with this, there is also a lot of nonsense and factually incorrect statements. Not everyone is an expert in every field, and many people will make bold claims about topics in which they're not well versed – even on HN. Unfortunately, this applies to me as well sometimes.

graycat 10y ago

> frightening Well, it's sad. But, in part, you can relax: The "fake news" is just a current meme and will go away in at most a few weeks. You can hear so much about such a meme because the news organizations form herds, gang up, pile on.

DonaldFoss 10y ago
Tribal instincts, competing for scarce resources?
- graycat 10y ago
  Maybe you were responding to "form herds, gang up, pile on". My explanation for why they do that: For a newsie, if some of the bigger guns in the MSM are saying that some candidate is a dirty rat, then it is both safe and easy for all the other newsies in the MSM to do the same. Just one newsie calling dirty rat likely won't have enough credibility to get much traction, but, if all the MSM newsies are saying dirty rat, then they all get credibility, not just for a claim of dirty rat but maybe also even for little green men from Mars. More generally, gangs offer to their members some safety of numbers, and people in gangs are more willing to throw stones. A friend of mine who remembers NYC some decades ago explains that the NYT wrote the stories and the rest of the MSM, especially the TV evening news, just went along -- easy, "no real work about it". Yes, no doubt much the same applied to tribes. If everyone joins in, then can bring down an elephant, mastodon, bison, reindeer or some such, no one member of the tribe is at much risk of injury, and everyone in the tribe eats that day. If some guy in the tribe just wants to sleep through the effort, then maybe the rest of the tribe won't let him eat!

Spooky23 10y ago

Blame OJ Simpson and that fucking white Bronco. That started this era of nonsensical analysis and up to the second coverage of random car chases, progressed to constant updates about other random things, and then the 9/11 ticker sent it to the moon.

XJOKOLAT 10y ago

>"I've seen this directly, too. I've been on the local news quite a few times, and EVERY TIME what they end up broadcasting, and what I was explaining to them are different things." Completely agreed from personal experience. Not new but always worth re-iterating. The news can't even get the basic facts right without twisting through addition or omission. How are we supposed to rely on them when factual sources are suspect/false in the age of fake/lie-news? Find experts. Do your own research.

majewsky 10y ago
I have seen this happen to a friend. He was active in a political party, and was interviewed by a local station which was doing a piece on politically active millenials. They sent a reporter with a camera crew and he spoke to them for over one hour about his political views and ambitions. In the end, only a single soundbite ended up in the piece. It was a metaphor he used somewhere inbetween, so forgettable that I can't even recall it.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> What's really really scary to me lately is all of this talk about "fake news", which originally referred to outright lies that were part of click-farms, but is now being talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are somehow the only source of "real" news. I am surprised by that too. This whole "fake news" thing appeared out of thin air around the US election and is reportedly a new phenomenon - as if most of the "regular" news coverage wasn't already of various degrees of fakeness.

talmand 10y ago
It was an undefined talking point that has spread farther and faster than it was likely intended. I suspect it will disappear soon as the stupidity of it starts to affect the major news agencies and social media.
- krrrh 10y ago
  It referred to a real and serious phenomena, but now the phrase has been muddied by political rhetoric. It's still a problem, and it's different enough from the old clickbait sensationalism and conspiracy theory chain emails that it deserves its own name. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/for-the-new-yellow-journalists-opportunity-comes-in-clicks-and-bucks/2016/11/20/d58d036c-adbf-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html?postshare=9481480360195210&tid=ss_tw https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/for-the-new-yellow-j... https://medium.com/@ev/i-found-it-interesting-that-when-i-went-to-read-zuckerbergs-post-about-misinformation-there-were-2ce1393bd76f#.hs64bjm1y https://medium.com/@ev/i-found-it-interesting-that-when-i-we...
  - talmand 10y ago
    Nah, for the most part what some are calling "fake news" is still the old-fashioned clickbait. I can remember several scandals over the years from the big news agencies that would be considered "fake news" by today's standards. They range from just being wrong to outright fraud. This is nothing new, this crap existed before there were websites. It's just that people simply choose not to remember to continue their desire to have something whine about. It is also an old tactic by people wishing to discredit those that disagree with their agenda, whether it is political or economic.

croon 10y ago

> What's really really scary to me lately is all of this talk about "fake news", which originally referred to outright lies that were part of click-farms, but is now being talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are somehow the only source of "real" news. I'm genuinely curious to know where it's talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are the pinnacle of reporting? Honestly I never hear/read anything but hate for them?

cryoshon 10y ago

>What's really really scary to me lately is all of this talk about "fake news", which originally referred to outright lies that were part of click-farms, but is now being talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are somehow the only source of "real" news. this is an intentional ploy designed to conflate the issues of tabloid-trash and dissent. we don't even need a ban for the tabloid trash... but once we link it to dissenting from the mainline and call it the deciding factor of the election (a huge leap...), we put the mainstream media who have proven to be incompetent and dishonest back at the wheel.

digler999 10y ago

> Frightening. Really truly actually frightening to me. Don't worry, Congress is going to fix that for you if the "Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 ", H.R. 5181 passes. We'll have trusty folks over at the "Center for Information Analysis and Response" [1] to help us by "disseminating fact-based narratives" (!) to aide in determining whats true and whats false. How handy! [1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr5181/text https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr5181/text http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-07/propaganda-bill-congress-could-give-america-its-very-own-ministry-truth http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-07/propaganda-bill-con...

throwaway22222 10y ago
Done. It passed and we now have a Ministry Of Truth.