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"Fake news" is an awkward word choice by the President but I think I understand who he is targeting. There is a trend among major news organizations to do repo

"Fake news" is an awkward word choice by the President but I think I understand who he is targeting. There is a trend among major news organizations to do reporting with an agenda in mind. Whereas traditional reporting was "this happened and then this happened...", the agenda-driven reporting reads like "this happened because so-and-so is trying to <insert politicized opinion>". Sometimes these pieces push the facts to the very bottom of the story. Sometimes they exclude them entirely. I place the blame on editors with agendas driving the reporting process. This happens on both the left and right. Fox News, Washington Post, L.A. Times--they are all frequent offenders. I'm just so sick of it. Any sophisticated reader can spot this biased reporting quickly but other readers can't and are sucked in. I wish there was a strong just-the-facts movement/resurgence in reporting. I'm basically down to the Wall Street Journal in my daily reading selections.

jacquesm 9y ago
Fox News and the Washington Post are about as different as could be when it comes to the level of their reporting. Fox is straight up propaganda, to the point that it is ridiculous that anybody would even take them serious, they're about at the level of Russia Today. The Washington Post is more along the lines of 'manufacturing consent', and if they lie it is by omission.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Fox is straight up propaganda, to the point that it is ridiculous that anybody would even take them serious. Even conservatives, including some recent Fox commentators, are starting to acknowledge that with Fox’s shift from a fairly broad right-wing/Republican propaganda machine to a more specifically pro-Trump propaganda machine.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    It's about time, but at the same time there will be many more months of damage and it will at the present rate of destruction take multiple election cycles, maybe as much as decades before the damage is undone, assuming it will even happen.
- JBReefer 9y ago
  To me, "manufacturing consent" is scarier. Fox News is ridiculous and everyone - _especially Fox News_ - knows it. The Washington Post is as you claim, which feels dangerous. The same with the Times (and the Journal on any non-free market health policy) in the modern era - there's a lot that's left out: important context is intentionally omitted to shape the narrative or to produce an angle, which is much more malicious. Fox News/HuffPo/Breitbart/TPM don't scare me because they're somewhere between junkfood and supermarket tabloids. It's the people who lie when they appear to tell the truth - like WSJ coverage of any single payer country - that freak me out.
  - projectileboy 9y ago
    While I agree with you to a certain extent, I feel you may be underestimating just how much sway Fox News, conservative talk radio, and Facebook have with rural white Americans. When you (intentionally or not) only get your information from one source, at some point it seems you stop questioning it.
  - nkrisc 9y ago
    I think outright falsehoods will always be more dangerous than "lies by omission." Though leaving out certain facts may make the remaining facts more persuasive one way or another, the remaining facts are still, by their nature, true and open to interpretation by the viewer.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > To me, "manufacturing consent" is scarier. I don't know about that. The way in which Fox News now makes policy by influencing that 'audience of one' is having a real and direct impact on the world far outside of the United States. As for malice: I think that purposefully destroying your country in order to pocket some $ is far more malicious than shaping public opinion, even though of course I would much rather have that people would really take the time to educate themselves on the various issues and that we would all follow the Swiss model of Democracy - in my opinion the only country that currently gets it right. That's a pipe dream given the degree to which people typically wish to invest in the political process but that's the thing to strive for, even if it takes another couple of decades to get there. And in Switzerland the media are of a fairly high quality for much the same reason: the electorate is pretty smart there and very hard to dupe.
daxorid 9y ago
> "Fake news" is an awkward word choice by the President For context, it was the opponents of the President who coined the term. It was originally designed to discredit Pizzagate, etc. He co-opted it and turned the term against the MSM. Edit: thanks for the downvotes. Where am I factually incorrect?
- mrguyorama 9y ago
  Using the term "Mainstream Media" without referring to Fox News is hilarious
  - daxorid 9y ago
    Agree. I didn't say anything about Fox. They are definitely MSM. An accurate perspective of the reality of uniparty puts Fox News mere nanometers to the right of CNN.
Covzire 9y ago
Once you go a little deeper with this line of thinking you'll discover that the vast majority of our news media isn't simply enough pushing "here's what happened and here's exactly what you should think of it", as bad as that is, but it's more sinister then that: "here's what you should think about, what you should think of it, and least of all here's what actually happened". Sometimes the media is playing favorites to make someone money or to make someone lose money. Sometimes it's purely political. In any case, real fact based reporting is virtually dead and will only get deader as news empires continue to consolidate.
zzzeek 9y ago
> I'm basically down to the Wall Street Journal in my daily reading selections. Because.... somehow you think the WSJ, owned by Rupert Murdoch of all people, is not biased (start with [1])? Is it possible you're just selecting for the particular bias that creates the least amount of friction with your existing world view? [1] https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/02/01/wall-street-journal-reporters-concerned-about-papers-softer-trump-coverage/215211 https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/02/01/wall-street-jou...
praneshp 9y ago
Not just in political news. On the Youtube shooting day, about 1 hour after the incident when the head cop briefed the press, CNN's "expert" was already confident that it was a love triangle. Of course, they are kicking themselves for it, they could've had a field day if they found out the shooter had a muslim background.
- Natsu 9y ago
  Baha'i, actually. It's a weird offshoot, I'd say they're roughly like an Islamic version of the Unitarians.
s2g 9y ago
> but I think I understand who he is targeting anyone who disagrees with him or criticizes him. > This happens on both the left and right oh cool, "both sides".
snerbles 9y ago
Agenda-driven reporting is older than you think. The 1898 sinking of the USS Maine comes to mind, where the papers put the public into such a frenzy that it led to war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...

jacquesm 9y ago

Fox News and the Washington Post are about as different as could be when it comes to the level of their reporting. Fox is straight up propaganda, to the point that it is ridiculous that anybody would even take them serious, they're about at the level of Russia Today. The Washington Post is more along the lines of 'manufacturing consent', and if they lie it is by omission.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Fox is straight up propaganda, to the point that it is ridiculous that anybody would even take them serious. Even conservatives, including some recent Fox commentators, are starting to acknowledge that with Fox’s shift from a fairly broad right-wing/Republican propaganda machine to a more specifically pro-Trump propaganda machine.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  It's about time, but at the same time there will be many more months of damage and it will at the present rate of destruction take multiple election cycles, maybe as much as decades before the damage is undone, assuming it will even happen.
JBReefer 9y ago
To me, "manufacturing consent" is scarier. Fox News is ridiculous and everyone - _especially Fox News_ - knows it. The Washington Post is as you claim, which feels dangerous. The same with the Times (and the Journal on any non-free market health policy) in the modern era - there's a lot that's left out: important context is intentionally omitted to shape the narrative or to produce an angle, which is much more malicious. Fox News/HuffPo/Breitbart/TPM don't scare me because they're somewhere between junkfood and supermarket tabloids. It's the people who lie when they appear to tell the truth - like WSJ coverage of any single payer country - that freak me out.
- projectileboy 9y ago
  While I agree with you to a certain extent, I feel you may be underestimating just how much sway Fox News, conservative talk radio, and Facebook have with rural white Americans. When you (intentionally or not) only get your information from one source, at some point it seems you stop questioning it.
- nkrisc 9y ago
  I think outright falsehoods will always be more dangerous than "lies by omission." Though leaving out certain facts may make the remaining facts more persuasive one way or another, the remaining facts are still, by their nature, true and open to interpretation by the viewer.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > To me, "manufacturing consent" is scarier. I don't know about that. The way in which Fox News now makes policy by influencing that 'audience of one' is having a real and direct impact on the world far outside of the United States. As for malice: I think that purposefully destroying your country in order to pocket some $ is far more malicious than shaping public opinion, even though of course I would much rather have that people would really take the time to educate themselves on the various issues and that we would all follow the Swiss model of Democracy - in my opinion the only country that currently gets it right. That's a pipe dream given the degree to which people typically wish to invest in the political process but that's the thing to strive for, even if it takes another couple of decades to get there. And in Switzerland the media are of a fairly high quality for much the same reason: the electorate is pretty smart there and very hard to dupe.

daxorid 9y ago

> "Fake news" is an awkward word choice by the President For context, it was the opponents of the President who coined the term. It was originally designed to discredit Pizzagate, etc. He co-opted it and turned the term against the MSM. Edit: thanks for the downvotes. Where am I factually incorrect?

mrguyorama 9y ago
Using the term "Mainstream Media" without referring to Fox News is hilarious
- daxorid 9y ago
  Agree. I didn't say anything about Fox. They are definitely MSM. An accurate perspective of the reality of uniparty puts Fox News mere nanometers to the right of CNN.

Covzire 9y ago

Once you go a little deeper with this line of thinking you'll discover that the vast majority of our news media isn't simply enough pushing "here's what happened and here's exactly what you should think of it", as bad as that is, but it's more sinister then that: "here's what you should think about, what you should think of it, and least of all here's what actually happened". Sometimes the media is playing favorites to make someone money or to make someone lose money. Sometimes it's purely political. In any case, real fact based reporting is virtually dead and will only get deader as news empires continue to consolidate.

zzzeek 9y ago

> I'm basically down to the Wall Street Journal in my daily reading selections. Because.... somehow you think the WSJ, owned by Rupert Murdoch of all people, is not biased (start with [1])? Is it possible you're just selecting for the particular bias that creates the least amount of friction with your existing world view? [1] https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/02/01/wall-street-journal-reporters-concerned-about-papers-softer-trump-coverage/215211 https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/02/01/wall-street-jou...

praneshp 9y ago

Not just in political news. On the Youtube shooting day, about 1 hour after the incident when the head cop briefed the press, CNN's "expert" was already confident that it was a love triangle. Of course, they are kicking themselves for it, they could've had a field day if they found out the shooter had a muslim background.

Natsu 9y ago
Baha'i, actually. It's a weird offshoot, I'd say they're roughly like an Islamic version of the Unitarians.

s2g 9y ago

> but I think I understand who he is targeting anyone who disagrees with him or criticizes him. > This happens on both the left and right oh cool, "both sides".

snerbles 9y ago

Agenda-driven reporting is older than you think. The 1898 sinking of the USS Maine comes to mind, where the papers put the public into such a frenzy that it led to war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...