4 ms·

There's been a whole bunch of fake news and it all started way before 2016. I'd consider the whole premise of the Iraq War to be fake news, for example. The onl

There's been a whole bunch of fake news and it all started way before 2016. I'd consider the whole premise of the Iraq War to be fake news, for example. The only reason they don't start there is that the same media now talking about fake news, helped to propagate them years earlier. What made their fake news worse, is that it was propagated by supposedly trustworthy sources, in a serious tone. This guy seems like such a clown that you'd only "believe" him, if you're already predisposed to think these things anyway.

interesthrow2 8y ago
Or the Mexican-American war, of the incident in the Golf of Tonkin that was fake and lead to the Vietnam war... Fake news was acceptable as long as it came from the government or mainstream media itself... it only became a problem when anybody could profit from it by shoving Google ads on the side...
- aries1980 8y ago
  How about Nathan Rothschild's courier to the stock exchange?
mrtksn 8y ago
Okay, I need to object here: You can't say that reported lies of the officials are the same as fiction made by media even if the outcome was the same. Media not doing good enough job to scrutinize public figures and officials are fundamentally different from media that creates content that is intentionally misleading or fake. One is screw up and the other one is fraud. Are you going to be equally mad to a friend of yours who hears that your SO is cheating on you and tells you what he heard(and the story turns out to be incorrect) and a friend who makes up a story about your SO cheating on you?
- scarejunba 8y ago
  Judith Miller made up news. The NYT published it for ages. She continues to have a career in journalism.
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  > You can't say that reported lies of the officials are the same as fiction made by media even if the outcome was the same. The notion that the media had no clue the official claims were thin seems extremely dubious to me. They knew. Even the fact that they didn't make a big deal out of not getting UN approval, or dismissing any doubters as unpatriotic suggests otherwise. It was simply a case of not wanting to upset their owners who in many cases stood to make a profit off the war, not wanting to seem unpatriotic, wanting to maintain "access" to high-level officials and going to the same parties as many of the officials they are supposedly watching over, (a room full of reporters was laughing even as Bush was making "jokes" about not being able to find WMDs), so there was simply no incentive to report the truth. You can see it to this day, it's not like oopps, the media has learned from Iraq. They've been as gushy over military adventurism in Libya, Syria etc. Luckily, the debate around Yemen is changing somewhat, if very slowly.

interesthrow2 8y ago

Or the Mexican-American war, of the incident in the Golf of Tonkin that was fake and lead to the Vietnam war... Fake news was acceptable as long as it came from the government or mainstream media itself... it only became a problem when anybody could profit from it by shoving Google ads on the side...

aries1980 8y ago
How about Nathan Rothschild's courier to the stock exchange?

mrtksn 8y ago

Okay, I need to object here: You can't say that reported lies of the officials are the same as fiction made by media even if the outcome was the same. Media not doing good enough job to scrutinize public figures and officials are fundamentally different from media that creates content that is intentionally misleading or fake. One is screw up and the other one is fraud. Are you going to be equally mad to a friend of yours who hears that your SO is cheating on you and tells you what he heard(and the story turns out to be incorrect) and a friend who makes up a story about your SO cheating on you?

scarejunba 8y ago
Judith Miller made up news. The NYT published it for ages. She continues to have a career in journalism.
AsyncAwait 8y ago
> You can't say that reported lies of the officials are the same as fiction made by media even if the outcome was the same. The notion that the media had no clue the official claims were thin seems extremely dubious to me. They knew. Even the fact that they didn't make a big deal out of not getting UN approval, or dismissing any doubters as unpatriotic suggests otherwise. It was simply a case of not wanting to upset their owners who in many cases stood to make a profit off the war, not wanting to seem unpatriotic, wanting to maintain "access" to high-level officials and going to the same parties as many of the officials they are supposedly watching over, (a room full of reporters was laughing even as Bush was making "jokes" about not being able to find WMDs), so there was simply no incentive to report the truth. You can see it to this day, it's not like oopps, the media has learned from Iraq. They've been as gushy over military adventurism in Libya, Syria etc. Luckily, the debate around Yemen is changing somewhat, if very slowly.