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> And don't think I'm just being partisan. You are just being partisan. The notion that somehow fake news is a thing, that it misleads people, or that it affec

• eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >You are just being partisan. I just don't think the two sides are equivalent here. AFAIK, there is no far-left fake news website with the same revenue or audience numbers as the far-right has right now. The far-right is winning. If you side with them, go ahead and be happy, but I don't think I've said anything false by merely noting that they're succeeding in their stated goals of making money and spreading their views. >Fake news has been a part of our media since forever. Go read the tabloids. People enjoy that stuff and that's all it is, entertainment. Would you ban tabloids from newsstands too? I'm not advocating banning anything. I'm advocating that ordinary journalistic standards should apply to anything which markets itself as journalism.
  • bluecalm 10y ago
    By far right do you mean Breitbart? I mean Breitbart is big and profitable and it seems the competition on far left isn't doing that well (salon, vox, motherjones). If we move a bit more to the center I think left is winning by big margin. Right side has Fox News, left side has CNN, MSBNC, Huffington Post, New York Times, Washington Post there is also clear very visible political bias of big technology firms like Facebook, Google, Twitter and Reddit which play a big role in controlling the narrative. I think you are very wrong about "far right" or even "right" winning. People vote for them more often than in the past because their narrative resonates with what people find important at this point in time but they don't get anywhere close to fair share of media, let alone win.
  • maratd 10y ago
    > AFAIK, there is no far-left fake news website with the same revenue or audience numbers as the far-right has right now. Why is this a competition you want to win? Seems like a race to the bottom. > I'm advocating that ordinary journalistic standards should apply to anything which markets itself as journalism. There are no universal "journalistic standards". There are standard to which specific outlets hold themselves to and that's great, but that's hardly an argument to holding others to the same standard. I have no expectation that The Sun holds itself to the same standard as The New York Times and frankly, I wouldn't want them to.
    • eli_gottlieb 10y ago
      >Why is this a competition you want to win? Seems like a race to the bottom. Who said I want to win? >There are no universal "journalistic standards". There are standard to which specific outlets hold themselves to and that's great, but that's hardly an argument to holding others to the same standard. Well, if I might put forward a positive program, I think that publishing falsehoods under cover of journalism, in a way that harms people's lives, should be a civil offense which the victim can sue for. Let the lawyers duke it out in court: not every case will be ruled the right way, but being sued is itself a penalty that will discourage sleaze. We already have a moral standard for when "fake" speech stops being free: when it is both false and harmful. I don't think we'll destroy the freedom of Western societies by expanding that to cover, "both bullshit and harmful", and we'll deter quite a lot of genuine harm.
  • tomp 10y ago
    Can you please cite examples of fake news from breitbart (fake NEWS, not merely opinion pieces you disagree with or that poorly argue their points) before making such sweeping generalized statements?
• dragonwriter 10y ago
  Fake news is a thing (as you acknowledge after dismissing the idea), and not only has it been around forever, it has misled people forever, and influenced elections for as long as there have been elections.
  • maratd 10y ago
    I could have been more eloquent. By "thing" I wasn't referring to the concept, but to the hysteria related to it after the election.