5 ms·

But the media told me it was the russians! Surely well established media cannot be sending out fake news deliberately!?

by EJTH 10y ago

_fizz_buzz_ 10y ago
It's also the established media that tells you that it wasn't Russian hackers now. So, what's your point?
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  That all media is bullshit and the whole fake news fiasco is hypocritical. No one fact checks or does real investigative journalism. WaPo might as well call themselves into wars or whatever that crap is called. At least the latter, delusional as they might be, believe they make world better place instead knowingly working for the great propaganda machine.
  - pmyteh 10y ago
    Obviously false. There is an explosion of fact checkers and still plenty of investigative journalism teams. If you mean 'not every story is fully fact-checked and the product of investigative journalism', then sure. But then, they never have been. That's the nature of a news industry that tries to fill a paper by print time every day (or, in modern terms, to get their stories out a minute before the competition online).
    - jerf 10y ago
      Then those "fact checkers" and "investigative journalism teams" obviously aren't doing much good, if they weren't deployed for what was obviously going to be an explosive article. If the fact checkers couldn't be deployed for this story, they obviously are stretched to near-nonexistence. I really don't envy you right now, trying so vigorously to defend something that has long since become so obviously indefensible. Sure, it could be the case that the media is really, really careful all the time, exercising their nigh-superhuman judgment with fairness and care, but this one story just happened to slip through. But it is a far more parsimonious explanation that the story flattered their biases and they shipped it without so much as a tenth of the examination they'd give a story that doesn't favor flatter their biases. The "this was an exception to their otherwise phenomenal care!" excuse wears quite thin when you have to deploy it several times every day. This story isn't an exception. The exceptional thing about it is that they got nailed so hard on it they were forced to retract, not that they had stuff to be retracted.
      - pmyteh 10y ago
        I'm not defending the story at all. It ran on the word of two insiders, one of them anonymous. It turned out to be wrong. No shock there. And news production is in no way associated with exceptional care - and never has been. It's associated with rushing copy out for tight deadlines. There are lots of problems with the way news is made. But in this case, what was actually reported ('officials say Russia implicated') is true. What seems to be false is that the officials' claims had any merit. Newsroom incentives are to get breaking news out. That's one reason a lot of stuff in the papers is wrong. Incidentally, investigative journalists don't do breaking news - they run long term investigations, which are usually published as such. They're massively important, but not a panacea for poor news coverage.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- EJTH 10y ago
  My point is that this "fake news" trend is pretty ironic - since it comes from some of the most prolific propaganda outlets, that despite being caught in the act of promoting a certain agenda over truth, continues to attempt to bullshit what is left of their readership. The pure desperation of using "fake news" as a mantra for weeks suggests that the conglomerate hold is finally dwindling away in the american media sphere.
trhway 10y ago
>it was the russians! it is very easy to confirm. If there are fingerprints left with visible traces of canned pork fat ("tushonka") then it was really russians. (For whom remember - "The 18th moment of Spring or How do hedgehogs procreate.")
- lisivka 10y ago
  You can buy tushonka in any voentorg, so it's not reliable any longer. Visit card or passport left in place is much better than tushonka. It's long way for CIA.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
"Fake news" is a brilliantly positioned term that is meant to imply that somehow mainstream media is not mostly fake.
- mjolk 10y ago
  Using the term "mainstream media" makes me wince, but I agree with you. It's their ham-handed attempt to recover from being exposed as puppets of the Democratic Party; doubling down on the big lie that anything that runs counter to their narrative is "fake news" and that social media is to blame, not lack of journalistic integrity in previously (somewhat) trusted organizations. Unfortunately, they'll be around for a long time, and definitely long enough to get away with the current popular trick: publishing lies, waiting for other organizations to reprint those lies, then issuing corrections quietly so that rubes talk about how that's proof of integrity.
  - whoiskevin 10y ago
    "puppets of the Democratic Party" Please that is the problem here. Constant looking for sides and making false statements while pretending to be the "one" that knows the truth in comments.
    - mjolk 10y ago
      > Constant looking for sides and making false statements while pretending to be the "one" that knows the truth in comments. The list of campaign donors to the DNC showed that media organizations as affiliated with the Democratic Party. They picked their sides; post-hoc documentation did not do this. Further, recognizing corruption and lack of journalistic integrity doesn't mean that I'm pretending to be some sort of political prophet -- if anything, it's a bigger problem that those who criticize misinformation are expected to provide a equal counterbalance.
      - mjolk 10y ago
        past edit window, but: s/showed that media organizations as/showed that media organizations are/ not sure what happened to my english there

But the media told me it was the russians! Surely well established media cannot be sending out fake news deliberately!?

by EJTH 10y ago

But the media told me it was the russians! Surely well established media cannot be sending out fake news deliberately!?

_fizz_buzz_ 10y ago

It's also the established media that tells you that it wasn't Russian hackers now. So, what's your point?

angry-hacker 10y ago
That all media is bullshit and the whole fake news fiasco is hypocritical. No one fact checks or does real investigative journalism. WaPo might as well call themselves into wars or whatever that crap is called. At least the latter, delusional as they might be, believe they make world better place instead knowingly working for the great propaganda machine.
- pmyteh 10y ago
  Obviously false. There is an explosion of fact checkers and still plenty of investigative journalism teams. If you mean 'not every story is fully fact-checked and the product of investigative journalism', then sure. But then, they never have been. That's the nature of a news industry that tries to fill a paper by print time every day (or, in modern terms, to get their stories out a minute before the competition online).
  - jerf 10y ago
    Then those "fact checkers" and "investigative journalism teams" obviously aren't doing much good, if they weren't deployed for what was obviously going to be an explosive article. If the fact checkers couldn't be deployed for this story, they obviously are stretched to near-nonexistence. I really don't envy you right now, trying so vigorously to defend something that has long since become so obviously indefensible. Sure, it could be the case that the media is really, really careful all the time, exercising their nigh-superhuman judgment with fairness and care, but this one story just happened to slip through. But it is a far more parsimonious explanation that the story flattered their biases and they shipped it without so much as a tenth of the examination they'd give a story that doesn't favor flatter their biases. The "this was an exception to their otherwise phenomenal care!" excuse wears quite thin when you have to deploy it several times every day. This story isn't an exception. The exceptional thing about it is that they got nailed so hard on it they were forced to retract, not that they had stuff to be retracted.
    - pmyteh 10y ago
      I'm not defending the story at all. It ran on the word of two insiders, one of them anonymous. It turned out to be wrong. No shock there. And news production is in no way associated with exceptional care - and never has been. It's associated with rushing copy out for tight deadlines. There are lots of problems with the way news is made. But in this case, what was actually reported ('officials say Russia implicated') is true. What seems to be false is that the officials' claims had any merit. Newsroom incentives are to get breaking news out. That's one reason a lot of stuff in the papers is wrong. Incidentally, investigative journalists don't do breaking news - they run long term investigations, which are usually published as such. They're massively important, but not a panacea for poor news coverage.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
EJTH 10y ago
My point is that this "fake news" trend is pretty ironic - since it comes from some of the most prolific propaganda outlets, that despite being caught in the act of promoting a certain agenda over truth, continues to attempt to bullshit what is left of their readership. The pure desperation of using "fake news" as a mantra for weeks suggests that the conglomerate hold is finally dwindling away in the american media sphere.

trhway 10y ago

>it was the russians! it is very easy to confirm. If there are fingerprints left with visible traces of canned pork fat ("tushonka") then it was really russians. (For whom remember - "The 18th moment of Spring or How do hedgehogs procreate.")

lisivka 10y ago
You can buy tushonka in any voentorg, so it's not reliable any longer. Visit card or passport left in place is much better than tushonka. It's long way for CIA.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

"Fake news" is a brilliantly positioned term that is meant to imply that somehow mainstream media is not mostly fake.

mjolk 10y ago
Using the term "mainstream media" makes me wince, but I agree with you. It's their ham-handed attempt to recover from being exposed as puppets of the Democratic Party; doubling down on the big lie that anything that runs counter to their narrative is "fake news" and that social media is to blame, not lack of journalistic integrity in previously (somewhat) trusted organizations. Unfortunately, they'll be around for a long time, and definitely long enough to get away with the current popular trick: publishing lies, waiting for other organizations to reprint those lies, then issuing corrections quietly so that rubes talk about how that's proof of integrity.
- whoiskevin 10y ago
  "puppets of the Democratic Party" Please that is the problem here. Constant looking for sides and making false statements while pretending to be the "one" that knows the truth in comments.
  - mjolk 10y ago
    > Constant looking for sides and making false statements while pretending to be the "one" that knows the truth in comments. The list of campaign donors to the DNC showed that media organizations as affiliated with the Democratic Party. They picked their sides; post-hoc documentation did not do this. Further, recognizing corruption and lack of journalistic integrity doesn't mean that I'm pretending to be some sort of political prophet -- if anything, it's a bigger problem that those who criticize misinformation are expected to provide a equal counterbalance.
    - mjolk 10y ago
      past edit window, but: s/showed that media organizations as/showed that media organizations are/ not sure what happened to my english there