4 ms·

My favourite example of fake news came from real life. A friend uploaded a video of him salmon fishing on Haida Gwaii a sea lion came and snatched their fish of

My favourite example of fake news came from real life. A friend uploaded a video of him salmon fishing on Haida Gwaii a sea lion came and snatched their fish off the line just as they were about to get it on the boat. He ended up licensing the video out and it ended up on msnbc, some news talk show and a few other news sites. Not a single one gave the correct information. One video said it was in california another got the place right but said he was sturgeon fishing another one said an eagle came and took the fish and didn't give the location. Even a simple fishing video was turned into complete and outright lies. I honestly don't trust anything from anywhere after seeing that.

throwaway5752 7y ago
Errors are not lies. Disinformation is the latter. You should take everything with a grain of salt, but motivation is the critical distinction.
- grawprog 7y ago
  All of the info was provided both directly to the news companies and was available in the description in the original and videos that were reuploaded by the licensee. There was no excuse for it not to be corrrect.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    Sure, messing up details about a fishing clip is inexcusable, but you still have a long way to go before showing there was an conspiracy that ensured all those details ended up wrong.
    - grawprog 7y ago
      Not a conspiracy. Willful negligence to make their story. They don't care about facts. They care about what they think gets them views. I don't think it's nefarious. The point is if they're willing to change facts to suit their needs for such an insignificant story, chances are it happens regularly with more important things.
astine 7y ago
This is pretty incredible. Do you have any links to these news stories?
dragonsky67 7y ago
I think if you talk to anybody who has been involved in an event covered by the media, you will find stories about how wrong they got it. Sometimes it will be facts that are reported incorrectly, others it will be bias introduced to push a particular agenda. In a lot of cases simple editing can frame a sound bite in such a way as to bend the story. I was on a military deployment overseas many years ago, and it was entertaining to see how events were reported back home. It was vary rare for any report to gain more than a parsing resemblance to what actually happened. In a lot of cases many separate events were confounded into a single report and in all cases the subtleties of the event were completely lost. The result is that as you say you cannot take any reporting to be the actual facts of the situation. If you are interested in an event your only recourse is to investigate the event yourself. Talk to participants and observers and even then you have to examine their and your own biases to ensure that is taken into account when drawing your conclusions. Facts are for Mathematics, and even then, that is an opinion.
- grawprog 7y ago
  When i was in school we spent a whole day learning how to write press releases and talk to the media. The idea was, don't write anything other than facts, don't say anything not on the press release and be prepared for them to take anything you say and twist it any way.

throwaway5752 7y ago

Errors are not lies. Disinformation is the latter. You should take everything with a grain of salt, but motivation is the critical distinction.

grawprog 7y ago
All of the info was provided both directly to the news companies and was available in the description in the original and videos that were reuploaded by the licensee. There was no excuse for it not to be corrrect.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  Sure, messing up details about a fishing clip is inexcusable, but you still have a long way to go before showing there was an conspiracy that ensured all those details ended up wrong.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    Not a conspiracy. Willful negligence to make their story. They don't care about facts. They care about what they think gets them views. I don't think it's nefarious. The point is if they're willing to change facts to suit their needs for such an insignificant story, chances are it happens regularly with more important things.

astine 7y ago

This is pretty incredible. Do you have any links to these news stories?

dragonsky67 7y ago

I think if you talk to anybody who has been involved in an event covered by the media, you will find stories about how wrong they got it. Sometimes it will be facts that are reported incorrectly, others it will be bias introduced to push a particular agenda. In a lot of cases simple editing can frame a sound bite in such a way as to bend the story. I was on a military deployment overseas many years ago, and it was entertaining to see how events were reported back home. It was vary rare for any report to gain more than a parsing resemblance to what actually happened. In a lot of cases many separate events were confounded into a single report and in all cases the subtleties of the event were completely lost. The result is that as you say you cannot take any reporting to be the actual facts of the situation. If you are interested in an event your only recourse is to investigate the event yourself. Talk to participants and observers and even then you have to examine their and your own biases to ensure that is taken into account when drawing your conclusions. Facts are for Mathematics, and even then, that is an opinion.

grawprog 7y ago
When i was in school we spent a whole day learning how to write press releases and talk to the media. The idea was, don't write anything other than facts, don't say anything not on the press release and be prepared for them to take anything you say and twist it any way.