3 ms·

>The question is, what is the truth? you won't learn this reading news articles online, and especially not from comment sections. the irony of the term "fake

>The question is, what is the truth? you won't learn this reading news articles online, and especially not from comment sections. the irony of the term "fake news" is that it creates the false notion that there was once such a thing as "real news". information channel manipulation is a very very very old tradition.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>the irony of the term "fake news" is that it creates the false notion that there was once such a thing as "real news". I'm friends with a journalist. He has opinions, slants, lenses, and even biases. However, he lives around here, and the stuff he publishes is based on events he has actually witnessed, live, in real-time. There is no equivalence between my friend the journalist (real news), and some teenager in Macedonia getting paid to make up sensational bullshit (fake news).
- metaphorm 10y ago
  there is such a thing as reporting and investigation. very little of that survives the editorial process. if I want to read some reporting, I'll have to go to a source that values it. i.e. not the NYTimes (or equivalent). The entire apparatus of the mass media has become thinly veiled editorial positioning, even in stories that are claimed as "news". a recent example of this effect: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/17/another-followup-to-economists-on-education/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/17/another-followup-to-eco... my point is that the work of actual investigators is no longer the primary interest of mass media, and it hasn't been for a long time.
  - dfabulich 10y ago
    How would you know if you were wrong about this? Maybe NYTimes is actually pretty good, and posts like yours are trying to undermine our faith in actual journalists.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      you're right, its hard to know. that's why I linked an example of a reasonably good empirical study examining editorial bias in a NYTimes article. criticism of this kind is important in revealing those kinds of flaws. in many instances its not actually the journalist doing this, but the editors. NYTimes, for example, has recently begun the practice of making undocumented changes to online articles _after_ initial publication. here is a recent example of that practice: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-new-york-times-sandbagged-bernie-sanders-20160315 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-new-york-t... and the times public editor's response to the controversy https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/new-york-times-bernie-sanders-coverage-public-editor/ https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/new-york-t... so why am I pointing this out? is it to undermine faith? I find it shocking that you would have any faith left at all. What is there to even be undermined? in other words, who is responsible for convincing you what is true and what isn't? if you take things on faith you are demonstrating an attitude that you are ambivalent about the truth. that attitude displays a preference to have certainty in your dogma and to not be challenged about the trustworthiness of the sources of that dogma.
  - DenisM 10y ago
    Did you mean to equate fake news with editorial bias? Because that's what I read from your comments, and I can't agree to that, even remotely.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      what is currently being called "fake news" is not the same thing as editorial bias nor do I equate them in the sense that I don't distinguish between the two. I do distinguish between them. however, fake news and editorial bias are used to accomplish the same thing: disinformation. that is the level which I equate them.
      - DenisM 10y ago
        Editorial bias omits some facts and leaves other on the table, thus providing some source of facts. If you had several sources with different editorial biases you could get a good set of facts to work with. This isn't as good as "objective" reporting, if there was ever such a thing, but it's still quite workable. It worked rather well for a long time. To say "they both accomplish the same thing" is to omit a very important distinction - while both can mislead, one can still be used to advance the discussion and the other cannot.
        metaphorm 10y ago
        there's a difference between editorial bias that emerges as an unavoidable artifact of work done by flawed humans, and editorial bias driven by political agenda. the former is expected and forgivable. the latter is disinformation.
      - enraged_camel 10y ago
        The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines disinformation as "false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth." By this definition, editorializing cannot be equated to fake news. The former is the process by which editorial teams introduce bias into the news reports by inserting their own interpretation of the facts. Fake news is the process by which outright lies are fabricated. The former is about adding flavor to food - you may not like the flavor, but you can usually still taste the food underneath. The latter is about serving shit as food - if you eat it, it will make you sick.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>the irony of the term "fake news" is that it creates the false notion that there was once such a thing as "real news". I'm friends with a journalist. He has opinions, slants, lenses, and even biases. However, he lives around here, and the stuff he publishes is based on events he has actually witnessed, live, in real-time. There is no equivalence between my friend the journalist (real news), and some teenager in Macedonia getting paid to make up sensational bullshit (fake news).

metaphorm 10y ago
there is such a thing as reporting and investigation. very little of that survives the editorial process. if I want to read some reporting, I'll have to go to a source that values it. i.e. not the NYTimes (or equivalent). The entire apparatus of the mass media has become thinly veiled editorial positioning, even in stories that are claimed as "news". a recent example of this effect: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/17/another-followup-to-economists-on-education/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/17/another-followup-to-eco... my point is that the work of actual investigators is no longer the primary interest of mass media, and it hasn't been for a long time.
- dfabulich 10y ago
  How would you know if you were wrong about this? Maybe NYTimes is actually pretty good, and posts like yours are trying to undermine our faith in actual journalists.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    you're right, its hard to know. that's why I linked an example of a reasonably good empirical study examining editorial bias in a NYTimes article. criticism of this kind is important in revealing those kinds of flaws. in many instances its not actually the journalist doing this, but the editors. NYTimes, for example, has recently begun the practice of making undocumented changes to online articles _after_ initial publication. here is a recent example of that practice: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-new-york-times-sandbagged-bernie-sanders-20160315 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-new-york-t... and the times public editor's response to the controversy https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/new-york-times-bernie-sanders-coverage-public-editor/ https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/new-york-t... so why am I pointing this out? is it to undermine faith? I find it shocking that you would have any faith left at all. What is there to even be undermined? in other words, who is responsible for convincing you what is true and what isn't? if you take things on faith you are demonstrating an attitude that you are ambivalent about the truth. that attitude displays a preference to have certainty in your dogma and to not be challenged about the trustworthiness of the sources of that dogma.
- DenisM 10y ago
  Did you mean to equate fake news with editorial bias? Because that's what I read from your comments, and I can't agree to that, even remotely.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    what is currently being called "fake news" is not the same thing as editorial bias nor do I equate them in the sense that I don't distinguish between the two. I do distinguish between them. however, fake news and editorial bias are used to accomplish the same thing: disinformation. that is the level which I equate them.
    - DenisM 10y ago
      Editorial bias omits some facts and leaves other on the table, thus providing some source of facts. If you had several sources with different editorial biases you could get a good set of facts to work with. This isn't as good as "objective" reporting, if there was ever such a thing, but it's still quite workable. It worked rather well for a long time. To say "they both accomplish the same thing" is to omit a very important distinction - while both can mislead, one can still be used to advance the discussion and the other cannot.
      - metaphorm 10y ago
        there's a difference between editorial bias that emerges as an unavoidable artifact of work done by flawed humans, and editorial bias driven by political agenda. the former is expected and forgivable. the latter is disinformation.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines disinformation as "false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth." By this definition, editorializing cannot be equated to fake news. The former is the process by which editorial teams introduce bias into the news reports by inserting their own interpretation of the facts. Fake news is the process by which outright lies are fabricated. The former is about adding flavor to food - you may not like the flavor, but you can usually still taste the food underneath. The latter is about serving shit as food - if you eat it, it will make you sick.