You can shape somoene's political opinion almost any way you want by reporting honestly on each story, without omitting anything relevant. Just choose carefully

You can shape somoene's political opinion almost any way you want by reporting honestly on each story, without omitting anything relevant. Just choose carefully which stories to report. That's why I find it hard to worry about stereotypical fake news - biased sampling is a powerful tool, and much harder to debunk. Focusing on statistics instead of individual stories helps, but is doubly limited - it doesn't sway people as much as appeal to emotion, and the statistics have to be available. If you're trying to decide which one of several warring factions is the 'good' guys, there will be no statistics, only a bunch of isolated reports, possibly funded by some government trying to sway public opinion for its own purposes (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/03/how-britain-funds-the-propaganda-war-against-isis-in-syria https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/03/how-britain-fu... - in this case it's against ISIS, which I happen to agree aren't the 'good' guys, but there's no indication such methods are limited to opposing ISIS, and deciding -which- group of rebels to help can be just as powerful - wouldn't want to give power to someone who's gonna nationalize oil production, or weaken patent protections on crops ( https://www.grain.org/article/entries/150-iraq-s-new-patent-law-a-declaration-of-war-against-farmers https://www.grain.org/article/entries/150-iraq-s-new-patent-... )!).