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The correct term is “propaganda”. We shouldn’t use the term “fake news”, which is a term designed to undermine trust in news institutions. When we use the term

by mch82 7y ago

The correct term is “propaganda”. We shouldn’t use the term “fake news”, which is a term designed to undermine trust in news institutions. When we use the term, we contribute to the undermining.

tsimionescu 7y ago
That is confusing terms. Propaganda can and usually is built out of true news as well as fake stories - true news presented selectively, given a specific interpretation etc. can be a very powerful tool. Fake stories and their spread are a different matter - they can be a form of propaganda as well, but they can also serve other properties (selling ads, such as in spam, is a major reason for fake stories).
- cjslep 7y ago
  I've been using the word "paltering" or "to palter" to help make this distinction. Once "lying by being truthful" has a concrete name like paltering, it is easier to get others to start to see the different kinds of propaganda and label them. Paltering is what Chomsky rails against in traditional media in his books such as Manufacturing Consent. Ex: tortured Polish Solidarity Catholic priests in the USSR get national headlines, but Catholic Priests murdered by US-funded death squads in Guatemala do not.
keiferski 7y ago
Considering the behavior of top news organizations over the past ±20 years, I have no problem calling them both propaganda and fake news.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Animats 7y ago
"All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods." "It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying." - Hitler Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, is generally credited with scaling up the "big lie" technique. He had access to radio broadcasting, which was new then, and pushed mass production of radio receivers. With those powerful tools, propaganda became far more effective.
dredmorbius 7y ago
The term "fake news" originated in the late 1980s and applied to corporate packaged media presentations, "VNR" and "ANR" (video/audio news releases), and the term continued to be used for such through at least 2007. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news The practice is an old one, though the term is largely a 20th century development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fake%20news&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cfake%20news%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fake%20news&ye... (I believe that the 1940s spike had a different connotation from the 1980s-1990s usage.) The term became massively more widely used during the 2016 US presidential campaign, and its popular meaning shifted under a misuse assault to "news I don't like", though that strikes me itself as a disinformational tactic to water down the term: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news

by mch82 7y ago

tsimionescu 7y ago

That is confusing terms. Propaganda can and usually is built out of true news as well as fake stories - true news presented selectively, given a specific interpretation etc. can be a very powerful tool. Fake stories and their spread are a different matter - they can be a form of propaganda as well, but they can also serve other properties (selling ads, such as in spam, is a major reason for fake stories).

cjslep 7y ago
I've been using the word "paltering" or "to palter" to help make this distinction. Once "lying by being truthful" has a concrete name like paltering, it is easier to get others to start to see the different kinds of propaganda and label them. Paltering is what Chomsky rails against in traditional media in his books such as Manufacturing Consent. Ex: tortured Polish Solidarity Catholic priests in the USSR get national headlines, but Catholic Priests murdered by US-funded death squads in Guatemala do not.

keiferski 7y ago

Considering the behavior of top news organizations over the past ±20 years, I have no problem calling them both propaganda and fake news.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Animats 7y ago

"All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods." "It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying." - Hitler Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, is generally credited with scaling up the "big lie" technique. He had access to radio broadcasting, which was new then, and pushed mass production of radio receivers. With those powerful tools, propaganda became far more effective.

dredmorbius 7y ago

The term "fake news" originated in the late 1980s and applied to corporate packaged media presentations, "VNR" and "ANR" (video/audio news releases), and the term continued to be used for such through at least 2007. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news The practice is an old one, though the term is largely a 20th century development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fake%20news&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cfake%20news%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fake%20news&ye... (I believe that the 1940s spike had a different connotation from the 1980s-1990s usage.) The term became massively more widely used during the 2016 US presidential campaign, and its popular meaning shifted under a misuse assault to "news I don't like", though that strikes me itself as a disinformational tactic to water down the term: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news