3 ms·

It is way too simplistic to decree certain sites fake or not, and I would have hoped than an article from MIT would acknowledge this instead of reinforcing this

It is way too simplistic to decree certain sites fake or not, and I would have hoped than an article from MIT would acknowledge this instead of reinforcing this "fake news" meme. If you've heard about yellow journalism as well as Project Mockingbird, then you can appreciate the fact that news is a tool to entertain and manufacture consent and occasionally inform. All of it lies on a spectrum between fake and not fake. Even The Onion which is intentionally satirical, typically has a nugget of truth in each of his stories, which is why it's good satire. If you're not already convinced how ridiculous this term is, consider for a moment: How do you prove if a certain publication is "fake news" or not? If a "not fake news" mainstream news source publishes a single story which is later corrected or retracted, is the entire publication forever labeled "fake news" or is a certain amount of fake stories required for a publication as a whole to be considered fake?

gdulli 9y ago
Journalists have been making mistakes since the beginning of journalism but if you're paying attention you know there's a new class of web site that's qualitatively different from journalism. It doesn't make an attempt to do anything but spread transparent lies. And it's effective because it's aimed at a specific audience that's susceptible to believing what it wants to believe without asking questions, regardless of the transparency of the lie to everyone else. There's a specific reason the term "fake news" was just recently coined. And there's a reason why some are trying to pervert the term by applying it to anything that's mistaken. Because then it applies to everyone instead of calling attention to those who are specifically benefiting from it.
- rssmllr 9y ago
  I hear where you're coming from, and it could very well just be that the term appeared to help explain why Hillary lost the election. However, I believe the term can easily be used to silence independent news sources that are telling inconvenient truths. The motive for this could be that the proliferation of new media news sources (social media, blogs, youtube) is a threat to mainstream establishment news sources' bottom line, as well as their immense power in shaping public dialogue.

gdulli 9y ago

Journalists have been making mistakes since the beginning of journalism but if you're paying attention you know there's a new class of web site that's qualitatively different from journalism. It doesn't make an attempt to do anything but spread transparent lies. And it's effective because it's aimed at a specific audience that's susceptible to believing what it wants to believe without asking questions, regardless of the transparency of the lie to everyone else. There's a specific reason the term "fake news" was just recently coined. And there's a reason why some are trying to pervert the term by applying it to anything that's mistaken. Because then it applies to everyone instead of calling attention to those who are specifically benefiting from it.

rssmllr 9y ago
I hear where you're coming from, and it could very well just be that the term appeared to help explain why Hillary lost the election. However, I believe the term can easily be used to silence independent news sources that are telling inconvenient truths. The motive for this could be that the proliferation of new media news sources (social media, blogs, youtube) is a threat to mainstream establishment news sources' bottom line, as well as their immense power in shaping public dialogue.