4 ms·
How do you draw the line between "alternative media" and "lies"?
by Qworg 10y ago
How do you draw the line between "alternative media" and "lies"?
- Vaskivo 10y agoYou shouldn't censor lies. You should prove that they are lies. [EDIT] (just to add something to my post) If you delete/ommit/censor lies youd end up with: a) If every lie is removed, maybe everything that was removed is a lie. Which is not true. b) You end up with a "cry wolf situation", which may blow up hardly on facebook. You don't "cry wolf". You show that the wolf is there. Otherwise, the first time you screw up, you will lose all credibility.
- komali2 10y agoBut people don't believe proof that a lie is a lie - see the entire Trump phenomena. All he has to do is Tweet "fake news," and people won't believe any attempts to rationalize.
- Vaskivo 10y agoJust because it doesn't work perfectly it doesn't mean we shouldn't do the right thing. To me, the ends don't justify the means.
- matt4077 10y agoThere's this old saying: "You can't prove a negative". It's wrong in that you often can indeed prove a negative, but the idea is still useful. Example: What would it take to conclusively proof that I never killed anybody vs. that I did? For the former, you'd basically need a continuous video feed from my birth. (b) "hardly" means something other than what you're thinking. No worries, many Russians make that mistake when speaking english.
- wfo 10y agoI could ask how you draw the line between "mainstream media" and "lies" just as easily and just as poignantly. The answer is easy in both cases. When they lie, it's a lie. When they don't, it's not.
- oculusthrift 10y agobecause "mainstream media" like nyt and wapo have well respected, educated journalists working around the clock to research stories and find evidence whereas "alternative media" is a guy in his moms basement making up stories. just as with science, people only dispute it when it goes against their own interests.
- NoGravitas 10y agoThat's quite an oversimplification. Your characterization of the alternative media is sometimes right (except that they're usually not making up stories -- they're usually summarizing stories produced by regular journalists, often with an editorial overlay). But there are also alternative media sources doing real research and investigative journalism, like Democracy Now! and the Intercept. On the other hand, the biggest, most respected of the mainstream publications, the NYT and the WaPo, have permanently tainted themselves by acting as stenographers for US government disinformation campaigns -- most notably in the run-up to the Iraq war, when they consistently promoted the fake WMD story.
- threeseed 10y agoThe Iraq War happened well over a decade ago. And the New York Times et al all did internal reviews of their behaviour and made substantive changes. From Morning Joe, this morning, you can already see that the New York Times has learnt lessons from that era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaI0u0ZdpMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaI0u0ZdpMg So the idea that they should still after all this time be permanently tainted is ridiculous and frankly is just an excuse by those who have different political persuasions.
- NoGravitas 10y agoMaybe a decade seems like a long time to you; not to me. I may just be old. But I also never saw any documentation about those internal reviews and substantive changes -- I would like to see them. From an outsider's perspective, however, it doesn't look like anything has changed. Cokie Roberts is still employed, for example /snark
- maxfurman 10y agoIt's simple! If you want to believe it, it's "alternative media," and if you don't it's a filthy lie.