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In my opinion, fake news isn’t nearly as prevalent or as dangerous as news that mostly tells the truth as a technicality or formality, but is presenting a radic

In my opinion, fake news isn’t nearly as prevalent or as dangerous as news that mostly tells the truth as a technicality or formality, but is presenting a radically skewed and biased narrative. That kind of dishonesty fools even people on the upper end of cognitive ability. Modern news cycles are edited together like reality TV shows. The bias is for sensationalism, and for supporting and validating the worldview of the journalists and financial backers involved. The media’s gestalt can be a massive deliberate lie and con on the entire population, and they can easily achieve that without ever telling a single individual lie. Which isn’t to say they don’t sometimes resort to flat-out lying, there’s a good amount of that too. But mostly what the “credible” news sources do is take a large selection of truths, and sum them up to a whole that’s deliberately engineered to deceive everybody for the sake of sensational, political and social bias.

empthought 9y ago
I think recent events (thanks in no small part to susceptibility to "fake news") have shown that the "radically skewed and biased narrative" of what many call the Washington consensus is far preferable to letting the Breitbarts of the world get away with their actual lies. Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives.
- deleted 9y ago
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- malvosenior 9y ago
  > Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives. It makes it far worse. Very few people take Breitbart seriously but many will take CNN or NYT seriously. The mainstream media is far too powerful to ignore when they push a narrative. Smaller outfits on the far left/right don't pose the same existential threat to our society.
  - Barrin92 9y ago
    The consumption habits of people proof this statement wrong. Tabloid newspapers have higher circulation than anything else. In some countries a majority of people receive their news from facebook or other social media feeds. Television channels like fox news draw more viewers than cspan. The mainstream media is not that mainstream at all. The principle of 'the big lie' still works very well.
    - HappyKamper 9y ago
      So it is up to big brother to save the day, right? Because, according to you, humans are incapable of being rational or well informed, they must therefore be taken care of as if we were toddlers? Where does it end and how do you choose whose freedom you will allow?
    - malvosenior 9y ago
      When your audience is affluent and powerful, you don't need as many to have an oversized impact. It's not like NYT has a small readership. They are massive and their influence is far greater than that of The Enquirer.
      - behindmyscreen 9y ago
        Affluent and powerful people are typically people that are smart enough to parse out any mild bias and ignore it. The Gomer and Cletus crowds of the world that vote are the people that are the risk for the lies of the fake news sources because they vote and are a very large group.
      - Barrin92 9y ago
        In a democracy the affluent and powerful have as many votes as anybody else. If the NYT only manages to reach a upper class clientele who already agree with the NYT they are not very powerful at all. (as we have seen during the last election, if the NYT et al were that powerful we would have seen a different outcome) Tabloids and fake news rags on the other hand have been reaching far into the middle class, the non-voters and so forth, in other words they're generating an audience among people who we would have considered to be immune to demagoguery.
- HappyKamper 9y ago
  >Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives. Better according to who? Thanks but no, I'll make my mind regardless of what you or others think is better. It is not for you to decide whether I should be lied to or just misled by the "better narrative". If I have two bills and both are fake I want to know.
- ramblerman 9y ago
  > Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives. In your opinion. Which your entitled to, but to silence the other voices/biases, that's a scary road to take on behalf of the general populace.
  - empthought 9y ago
    Who's silencing anything? I was responding to this thesis: > fake news isn’t nearly as prevalent or as dangerous as news that mostly tells the truth as a technicality or formality Which is demonstrably false, as we can see by the prevalence of large-scale acceptance of outright false propaganda and its aftermath. Breitbart-style lies are far more dangerous than WSJ-style story selection.

empthought 9y ago

I think recent events (thanks in no small part to susceptibility to "fake news") have shown that the "radically skewed and biased narrative" of what many call the Washington consensus is far preferable to letting the Breitbarts of the world get away with their actual lies. Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
malvosenior 9y ago
> Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives. It makes it far worse. Very few people take Breitbart seriously but many will take CNN or NYT seriously. The mainstream media is far too powerful to ignore when they push a narrative. Smaller outfits on the far left/right don't pose the same existential threat to our society.
- Barrin92 9y ago
  The consumption habits of people proof this statement wrong. Tabloid newspapers have higher circulation than anything else. In some countries a majority of people receive their news from facebook or other social media feeds. Television channels like fox news draw more viewers than cspan. The mainstream media is not that mainstream at all. The principle of 'the big lie' still works very well.
  - HappyKamper 9y ago
    So it is up to big brother to save the day, right? Because, according to you, humans are incapable of being rational or well informed, they must therefore be taken care of as if we were toddlers? Where does it end and how do you choose whose freedom you will allow?
  - malvosenior 9y ago
    When your audience is affluent and powerful, you don't need as many to have an oversized impact. It's not like NYT has a small readership. They are massive and their influence is far greater than that of The Enquirer.
    - behindmyscreen 9y ago
      Affluent and powerful people are typically people that are smart enough to parse out any mild bias and ignore it. The Gomer and Cletus crowds of the world that vote are the people that are the risk for the lies of the fake news sources because they vote and are a very large group.
    - Barrin92 9y ago
      In a democracy the affluent and powerful have as many votes as anybody else. If the NYT only manages to reach a upper class clientele who already agree with the NYT they are not very powerful at all. (as we have seen during the last election, if the NYT et al were that powerful we would have seen a different outcome) Tabloids and fake news rags on the other hand have been reaching far into the middle class, the non-voters and so forth, in other words they're generating an audience among people who we would have considered to be immune to demagoguery.
HappyKamper 9y ago
>Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives. Better according to who? Thanks but no, I'll make my mind regardless of what you or others think is better. It is not for you to decide whether I should be lied to or just misled by the "better narrative". If I have two bills and both are fake I want to know.
ramblerman 9y ago
> Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives. In your opinion. Which your entitled to, but to silence the other voices/biases, that's a scary road to take on behalf of the general populace.
- empthought 9y ago
  Who's silencing anything? I was responding to this thesis: > fake news isn’t nearly as prevalent or as dangerous as news that mostly tells the truth as a technicality or formality Which is demonstrably false, as we can see by the prevalence of large-scale acceptance of outright false propaganda and its aftermath. Breitbart-style lies are far more dangerous than WSJ-style story selection.