3 ms·

It's not but it is often very misleading. I don't think the fake news is actually what won the election anyway. If anything it was Wikileaks' extreme authentic

by lhnz 10y ago

It's not but it is often very misleading. I don't think the fake news is actually what won the election anyway. If anything it was Wikileaks' extreme authenticity that won the election, and I'm struggling to understand how this is 'fake'. I'm assuming that they're trying to delegitimise it by association however. I also find it hard to believe that it was Russia that orchestrated the leaks with zero evidence shown. It's not so easy to trace cyberattacks, and it just seems like officials are looking for a scapegoat for why they didn't win. There seems to be just as much fake news coming out of the left as from the right, albeit smarter less off-the-wall/gutter stuff.

jessaustin 10y ago
I agree with this, but I suspect the bigger factor in the election result was that the "straight" news media had stopped going through the nonpartisan motions. They forgot that the tradition of the appearance of objectivity is more for the benefit of the news media than for the public. Once no one has a halo of open-mindedness, there's no reason to listen to Brian Williams over Ed Schultz or Sean Hannity. They could push a more conservative or independent public slightly to the left or to the center, but only slightly, and only when that's all they tried to do. This time they pushed too hard, and the whole edifice collapsed. Frankly the news media seems not to have learned this lesson. If anything the last few weeks have seen them even further off the reservation. When in a decade it's clear that the institution of journalism is completely dead, this episode will loom large in explanation. "Journalists" are seriously arguing that providing relevant information about political candidates is an "attack on the nation". They're mortgaging all their credibility for the latest unsourced meta-analysis of months-old public information spoon-fed to them by petulant spurned spooks. Every day they come up with something goofier, and yet they can't escape the impression that we've heard this all before. What stands out the most is the complete lack of objectivity. If a Republican candidate were crying about losing due to anonymous (even if vaguely Slavic...) revelations about her banal tawdriness, they'd be falling over themselves to laugh at her.

by lhnz 10y ago

jessaustin 10y ago

I agree with this, but I suspect the bigger factor in the election result was that the "straight" news media had stopped going through the nonpartisan motions. They forgot that the tradition of the appearance of objectivity is more for the benefit of the news media than for the public. Once no one has a halo of open-mindedness, there's no reason to listen to Brian Williams over Ed Schultz or Sean Hannity. They could push a more conservative or independent public slightly to the left or to the center, but only slightly, and only when that's all they tried to do. This time they pushed too hard, and the whole edifice collapsed. Frankly the news media seems not to have learned this lesson. If anything the last few weeks have seen them even further off the reservation. When in a decade it's clear that the institution of journalism is completely dead, this episode will loom large in explanation. "Journalists" are seriously arguing that providing relevant information about political candidates is an "attack on the nation". They're mortgaging all their credibility for the latest unsourced meta-analysis of months-old public information spoon-fed to them by petulant spurned spooks. Every day they come up with something goofier, and yet they can't escape the impression that we've heard this all before. What stands out the most is the complete lack of objectivity. If a Republican candidate were crying about losing due to anonymous (even if vaguely Slavic...) revelations about her banal tawdriness, they'd be falling over themselves to laugh at her.