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The lowest level of truth telling is stating facts, but even stating facts can be extremely manipulative. If I were to say: "2x as many white Americans were k

The lowest level of truth telling is stating facts, but even stating facts can be extremely manipulative. If I were to say: "2x as many white Americans were killed by police as black Americans in 2018." This a true fact. If I take note of the fact that black Americans only constitute 13% of the population, then I can say "A black American is 2.3x as likely as a white American to be killed by police." This is also a true fact. So not only are facts capable of telling a narrative, but it gets much more complicated once you start introducing conclusions. If you say "A black person is 2.3x as likely as a white person to be killed by police in America. American police are being racially discriminatory when killing civilians." This is a fact and a conclusion, and most news consists of facts and conclusions. Both the fact and the conclusion serve a particular narrative, and that's an issue. The problem is that a news organization with a different set of objectives, or simply operating under a different framework, would be entirely capable of coming to an entirely different conclusion, or introduce entirely different facts alongside it. "A black person is 2.3x as likely as a white person to be killed by police in America. However, despite making up only 13% of the population, black Americans committed 36% of homicides, with an overall much higher representation in violent crime across the board. Only 5% of police shootings are with an unarmed victim, with the rest resulting from an armed altercation." Different narrative. In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those decisions. And to be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that.

waqas- 7y ago
This is the most important comment. Whenever i hear about someones saying that "XYZ should do something about fake news" i understand that they really dont understand the depth of the problem. Solving "fake news" is a non-trivial problem and no single arbiter of truth can tackle it, Facebook, twitter etc are claiming about "cracking down of fake news" but all that is just hogwash.
- Lewton 7y ago
  People seem to forget that the initial problem that led to the term “fake news” being used was actual fake, completely made up out of thin air, news. “Pope endorses Donald trump” being the classic example Not lying with statistics
moksly 7y ago
Every example you provide is legal, what isn’t legal is telling people that the moon is made of cheese in a non-satirical news article.
- grandmczeb 7y ago
  Would the following statement be allowed? “Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor. The prosecutor said he was forced out for leading a corruption probe into Hunter Biden's company.”
  - CraigJPerry 7y ago
    Yeah Why not? It’s pure narrative without conclusion. another source, in this case the ny times, would be equally free to publish the statement: “Vice President Biden was overseeing American policy toward Ukraine at the time, and he did push for the removal of the country’s top prosecutor, who was seen as corrupt or ineffectual by the United States and Western European governments. But there is no evidence he did so to benefit Hunter Biden or the oligarch who owns Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky.”
    - ralusek 7y ago
      You guys are disagreeing on facts, or at least entering muddy territory. > The prosecutor said he was forced out for leading a corruption probe into Hunter Biden's company > there is no evidence he did so to benefit Hunter Biden
      - CraigJPerry 7y ago
        “The prosecutor said” something. It’s entirely fair to report what the prosecutor said provided it’s clearly attributed as it was here. You’re free to draw your own conclusion that the prosecutor is possibly lying.
      - sjy 7y ago
        In addition to the point made by the sibling comment, these facts are consistent with an attack on Joe Biden for having an apparent conflict of interest, even if there was no evidence that he intentionally, corruptly used his power to benefit his son. (If he did, would you expect there to be any evidence?) Ethical public officials are expected to avoid apparent conflicts of interest.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
CraigJPerry 7y ago
I like your insight. Narrative is fine. Narrative with conclusion is challenging to deal with for large swathes of the population, myself included.
danmaz74 7y ago
You can frame facts in different ways, but you can also tell things that contradict known facts - ie, lies. It's the latter that shouldn't go without consequences.
- nabla9 7y ago
  Consider phrases like: "Some people say [lie]." (Fox News favorite) "According to some theories, [lie]" "Doctor Ganz Rechts Rassenreinheit says [lie]"
  - jeegsy 7y ago
    I'll be curious to learn how you define a known fact with emphasis on the 'known' part.
silvester23 7y ago
> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those decisions. And to be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that. I'm not trying to be snarky, but in all honesty, how do you feel this is working out for the US at this very moment?
- ralusek 7y ago
  There is obviously an upside and a downside. The platitude that "freedom isn't free" is something that seems to be lost on critics of the effects of liberty. I don't think the free speech absolutism present in the US was ever meant to suggest that there isn't such thing as undesirable speech, but rather that the potential for tyranny under regulated speech is a danger well worth avoiding at any cost. In addition to that, America is a country that works forwards from principles much more often than European nations, which very often work backwards from objectives. To frame the right to free speech in regards to whether or not it is "working out" is not a particularly American frame of reference. The principle that individuals should express themselves as they see fit, and that this is the foundation for a free and open society, is essentially square one.
  - Matty1992 7y ago
    >In addition to that, America is a country that works forwards from principles much more often than European nations, which very often work backwards from objectives. Have any examples to back this up? I dont even necessarily disagree with your original argument, but can we get away from the Europe vs America debate that always pops up on this board as if they can be compared in a reasonable way? Europe is made up of a bunch of independent countries alot of which have objectives and principles that conflict with other entities within Europe, let alone outside of it
    - 7y ago
randomsearch 7y ago
This is just whataboutism. Banning political ads does not affect whether people can misrepresent truths. Preventing lies does not affect whether misrepresent truths. However, banning political ads on Facebook does ban political ads on facebook, and banning lies does ban lies. Tech is not some magical playground disconnected from reality. Time for SV to grow up and engage with society and politics - they’re not an “optional, inefficient” part of life.
moopling 7y ago
I don't disagree with most of what you say, but I do disagree with your implied conclusion. Setting a baseline of limiting/banning provably false information is a good thing. Yes, it doesn't stop all forms manipulation of people towards any given agenda, but it certainly doesn't make it easier, and means things have to be at least slightly anchored to reality.
akie 7y ago
> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those decisions. And to be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that. This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. You philosophize on basis of the assumption that central authorities ('government') by definition cannot be trusted, and we should therefore be wary of anything that reeks of centralized decision making. That is a supremely American way of looking at the world. Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him nevertheless because of large scale & organized disinformation campaigns by the likes of (decentralized) propaganda entities like Fox News. How does your system deal with that then? Not very well, it seems. Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies, we're going to forbid it and if you keep in doing it you'll be slapped with a fine that really hurts and your CEO might have to go to jail"? What you don't seem to take into account in your comment is that centralized bodies can protect the weak from the powerful. If you only have decentralized entities, it's survival of the fittest – which is a nice way of saying that the weakest get eaten or die. I don't want to live in a society that has these values.
- ralusek 7y ago
  Trump has been able to do very little, and this is a good thing. However, what he has done is effectively demonstrate that the executive branch has too much centralized power, not too little. In regards to whether or not it would be great if we had a powerful centralized body that could determine what constitute outrageous lies worthy of a fine, no, for the reasons I've already stated, I do not think that this would be a good thing. I have no problem with European and Asian countries granting their (very often highly competent) governments greater authorities than what is afforded to the US government, but I think it's supremely important that there remains at least one superpower fundamentally predicated on a mistrust of a central authority.
Sander_Marechal 7y ago
This is a strawman argument. You don't have to define truth absolutely to ban news from spouting outright lies. The US seems to have a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And to be frank, the US should probably be more wary of that.
- ralusek 7y ago
  It's not a strawman for multiple reasons. For one, you have suggested that pointing out outright lies does not suffer from many of the same issues as asserting truth. "American jobs are being taken by illegal immigrants from Mexico." Is this a lie? No. But is this disingenuous and misrepresenting much more significant contributors to job loss? Yes. Is it a lie then? "Transgender women are women." Is this a lie? Depends entirely on definitions and presuppositions. Secondly, I think the more important takeaway is that the vast majority of the issues we're having in regards to political discourse have absolutely nothing to do with us not agreeing on facts. Neither side for most of the hard issues are relying on outright incorrect facts. So not only do I not think that identifying outright lies is as simple and free from bias as you suggest it to be, I also think that the cases in which this could be universally agreed upon would contribute very little to the majority of serious political discussions happening today.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    You don't have to capture every biased statement and bending of the truth to counter outright lies like "Obama was born in kenya" or "Trump was endorsed by the pope" Both of which are believed by huge amounts of Americans.
    - bart_spoon 7y ago
      > You don't have to capture every biased statement and bending of the truth to counter outright lies like "Obama was born in kenya" or "Trump was endorsed by the pope" You do if you want to make some kind of law about it. You are correct, there are plenty of instances where a story is blatantly false and could be taken care of by some kind of preventative action. But the distribution of possible lies is extremely long tailed. For every one of these instances, there are dozens where it is not entirely a lie, but not entirely the truth, or is biased, or a half-truth, or editorialized, or an extreme conclusion, etc. Libel and slander laws already exist, but are rarely invoked because of this reason. It is nigh impossible to create any kind of system or legislation that does more than what these laws already do, while also properly dealing with all of these edge cases. I mean, even your examples could easily get around any kind of preventative measures by couching their language. Instead of "Obama was born in Kenya", it could be phrased "rumors have begun to circulate that Obama was in fact born in Kenya". The desired effect of planting this lie in people's minds is still successful, but with a few words there is now no way to create a framework that legally prevents people from spreading lies that way, that is also consistent and not overbearing.
yoavm 7y ago
But these really aren't the type of lies that people consider fake news. Yeah, all the things you've written are facts, and their interpretations are what we call opinions. I agree with you that all of these statements, since they're true, should be allowed without a question. People still need to think and be critical. I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. It has nothing to do with facts like the ones you've stated above. These are simply lies. You can't argue that it's some interpretation, or just half of the picture or anything like that. It's simply a bunch of words phrased as a fact but they never happened. I can't see anything good coming out of this for any country. It ruins the ability to have a real debate in a society, and I think it harmed America (not only of course) greatly. And one last thing - yes, it probably shouldn't be one person from one political side that decides what's completely false and shouldn't be published (or perhaps better, be corrected), but I don't think it should be so impossibly complicated to create a system in which representatives from all sides can do this together. America already has structures like this implemented.
- Invictus0 7y ago
  Every president has lied; they have reasons to do it. Maybe it's to avoid revealing classified information, or to gain a political or geopolitics advantage. It doesn't matter; lying is an essential part of statecraft. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-history-of-lies-on-the-campaign-trail https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-history-of-lies-on... Edit: I would appreciate if whoever is downvoting can please explain why they are doing so.
  - cmrdporcupine 7y ago
    Yes, it does feel in large part that it's the crass and blatant nature of Trump's presentation that enrages, not just the actual content. As a Canadian I 'preferred' Obama, who ran on the line "change you can believe in" -- but he led the US empire substantially the same as any previous... and so this "can believe in" line, it really expresses a truth. The substantial piece was not that America would change, but that you could _believe_ in the fact that it would change. Little actually changed in America, at least from a distance. And once people stopped believing in the change... one gets Trump. Disgusting as he is, Trump really is "changing" America. And his lying is more transparent and blatant and crass, but also more theatrical and aggressive. It's weaponized.
krageon 7y ago
> In America, we understand American understanding birthed a society that openly fosters fascism. It should only be used as an ironic example, not as some sort of highroad ethical argument.
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  Is fascism a uniquely American ideology now? Which part of the world are you from that hasn't fostered fascism at some point?
- BurningCycles 7y ago
  How is american society 'openly fostering fascism' ?
Xelbair 7y ago
>>> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those decisions. And to be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that. In my honest opinion - every law should be made with assumption that in the future, or even now, an actor will exists that will abuse it to the utmost limits. One of reasons i am vehemently against article 13 in Europe, or anti-hate speech laws(as those can be abused to basically turn into censorship laws - while doing absolutely nothing but hiding the symptoms of systematic problems).
- infinitezest 7y ago
  I'm really surprised that _this_ isn't a more popular take-away among Trump detractors, particularly with regard to things like privacy and government surveillance. "Finding the right balance between security and privacy" sounds a lot different depending on who's mouth it's coming out of and who controls the levers.
Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
> So not only are facts capable of telling a narrative, but it gets much more complicated once you start introducing conclusions. "start introducing conclusions". So not just stating facts after all?
- infinitezest 7y ago
  I think OP is saying that facts alone can be used to spin a narrative. Inserting conclusions makes it even worse.
yodsanklai 7y ago
> but even stating facts can be extremely manipulative Another thing is the choice of facts you decide to state. All media have a bias in what type of news they decide to cover. Usually they pick stories based on what their audience wants to hear. I don't think there's a solution, besides trying to be more critical about medias in general.
atoav 7y ago
In Austria we have a body that regulates this and it kind of works. We still have various levels of quality, but flat out lying is far less common than in the US or UK. The body consists of a board of all media agencies and they self-regulate their behaviour and adhere to their commonly agreed principles (e.g. if you get facts wrong, people can demand follow-ups with a correction etc). In my eyes the US has a ideological perspective on many issues, that are basically "solved" in other democratic nations (with gun-law beeing the most shining example). I accept that you cannot directly apply solutions that work in one nation to another without reflecting the differences in culture and law, but it happens all too often that Americans claim something can't be solved, while it works perfectly fine somewhere else, without having sacrificed neither democracy nor freedom. When it comes to media regulation, it is a question of law and enforcement. If you don't trust your own courts to objectively judge what accounts to a violation and what does not or is ambiguous (like in your examples), then you have a problem with your justice system beeing influenced by politics and the principle of the seperation of powers is broken.
devilmoon 7y ago
But from what I've been taught in school, news articles should always aim to state only the facts as they have happened without trying to draw conclusions, show only one side of the story or inject the bias of the reporter. As long as you have journalists and editors able to do their jobs, stating facts doesn't become an exercise in pushing your narrative as you describe but simple reporting of "what happened" or "what has been said". In your specific example, you would report only on the actual statistical figures released, without trying to inject probabilities or percentages which are pushing your analysis and view of the data. News outlets are then free to print articles containing opinions, studies and conclusions, but this are called editorials and not news articles, and by definition they do carry the opinion of the writer and his/her innate bias on the matter. Even in this case, saying something false is different from interpreting the data or facts at hand. For example, you could write and publish an editorial examining the same statistics as before and come up with the conclusion that there might be a racial bias - some people might agree, some people might not, but it's still an opinion based on hard data and doesn't contain a lie. If you, however, started saying that it's all a plot orchestrated by the reptilians running society to make you think that there's a racial bias, that would indeed be a lie with no factual basis and should be punishable. There are facets and sides to every story you tell, but reducing everything down to the point where you conflate news reporting, opinions and lies is, imho, stupid.
- matwood 7y ago
  News is a lot like statistics. Just by which facts I show (and don't show), and how I show them I can push the reader to a certain conclusion. Even the wording matters. A great example is reporting on the stock market. "Market plunges 500 points!!", but the reality is that's ~1.8% and barely a blip.
hartator 7y ago
And all of this is unfortunately actually hate speech in Denmark because you can’t have stats on races.
- novalis78 7y ago
  The naïveté of - in particular Western Europeans - with regard to an ultimate truth handed down by ‘official’ bodies is mind boggling. Getting closer to the truth is a process not a static decree and accepting and dealing with the exact opposite viewpoint to your own - especially when it hurts - is part of adulthood nurtured by free thinking individuals in a free society. Learning about deception and lie, manipulation and propaganda is an extremely important and never ending learning process. (Disclaimer: I am a Western European living in the US)
tripzilch 7y ago
> If you say "A black person is 2.3x as likely as a white person to be killed by police in America. American police are being racially discriminatory when killing civilians." > This is a fact and a conclusion, and most news consists of facts and conclusions. Journalists usually quote somebody else for the conclusion, they don't use themselves as a primary source. And if they're good they get multiple quotes from different people to give a view of the differing opinions.
asjw 7y ago
In Europe we understand the difference between being biased and lying.

waqas- 7y ago

This is the most important comment. Whenever i hear about someones saying that "XYZ should do something about fake news" i understand that they really dont understand the depth of the problem. Solving "fake news" is a non-trivial problem and no single arbiter of truth can tackle it, Facebook, twitter etc are claiming about "cracking down of fake news" but all that is just hogwash.

Lewton 7y ago
People seem to forget that the initial problem that led to the term “fake news” being used was actual fake, completely made up out of thin air, news. “Pope endorses Donald trump” being the classic example Not lying with statistics

moksly 7y ago

Every example you provide is legal, what isn’t legal is telling people that the moon is made of cheese in a non-satirical news article.

grandmczeb 7y ago
Would the following statement be allowed? “Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor. The prosecutor said he was forced out for leading a corruption probe into Hunter Biden's company.”
- CraigJPerry 7y ago
  Yeah Why not? It’s pure narrative without conclusion. another source, in this case the ny times, would be equally free to publish the statement: “Vice President Biden was overseeing American policy toward Ukraine at the time, and he did push for the removal of the country’s top prosecutor, who was seen as corrupt or ineffectual by the United States and Western European governments. But there is no evidence he did so to benefit Hunter Biden or the oligarch who owns Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky.”
  - ralusek 7y ago
    You guys are disagreeing on facts, or at least entering muddy territory. > The prosecutor said he was forced out for leading a corruption probe into Hunter Biden's company > there is no evidence he did so to benefit Hunter Biden
    - CraigJPerry 7y ago
      “The prosecutor said” something. It’s entirely fair to report what the prosecutor said provided it’s clearly attributed as it was here. You’re free to draw your own conclusion that the prosecutor is possibly lying.
    - sjy 7y ago
      In addition to the point made by the sibling comment, these facts are consistent with an attack on Joe Biden for having an apparent conflict of interest, even if there was no evidence that he intentionally, corruptly used his power to benefit his son. (If he did, would you expect there to be any evidence?) Ethical public officials are expected to avoid apparent conflicts of interest.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

CraigJPerry 7y ago

I like your insight. Narrative is fine. Narrative with conclusion is challenging to deal with for large swathes of the population, myself included.

danmaz74 7y ago

You can frame facts in different ways, but you can also tell things that contradict known facts - ie, lies. It's the latter that shouldn't go without consequences.

nabla9 7y ago
Consider phrases like: "Some people say [lie]." (Fox News favorite) "According to some theories, [lie]" "Doctor Ganz Rechts Rassenreinheit says [lie]"
- jeegsy 7y ago
  I'll be curious to learn how you define a known fact with emphasis on the 'known' part.

silvester23 7y ago

ralusek 7y ago
There is obviously an upside and a downside. The platitude that "freedom isn't free" is something that seems to be lost on critics of the effects of liberty. I don't think the free speech absolutism present in the US was ever meant to suggest that there isn't such thing as undesirable speech, but rather that the potential for tyranny under regulated speech is a danger well worth avoiding at any cost. In addition to that, America is a country that works forwards from principles much more often than European nations, which very often work backwards from objectives. To frame the right to free speech in regards to whether or not it is "working out" is not a particularly American frame of reference. The principle that individuals should express themselves as they see fit, and that this is the foundation for a free and open society, is essentially square one.
- Matty1992 7y ago
  >In addition to that, America is a country that works forwards from principles much more often than European nations, which very often work backwards from objectives. Have any examples to back this up? I dont even necessarily disagree with your original argument, but can we get away from the Europe vs America debate that always pops up on this board as if they can be compared in a reasonable way? Europe is made up of a bunch of independent countries alot of which have objectives and principles that conflict with other entities within Europe, let alone outside of it
  - 7y ago

randomsearch 7y ago

This is just whataboutism. Banning political ads does not affect whether people can misrepresent truths. Preventing lies does not affect whether misrepresent truths. However, banning political ads on Facebook does ban political ads on facebook, and banning lies does ban lies. Tech is not some magical playground disconnected from reality. Time for SV to grow up and engage with society and politics - they’re not an “optional, inefficient” part of life.

moopling 7y ago

I don't disagree with most of what you say, but I do disagree with your implied conclusion. Setting a baseline of limiting/banning provably false information is a good thing. Yes, it doesn't stop all forms manipulation of people towards any given agenda, but it certainly doesn't make it easier, and means things have to be at least slightly anchored to reality.

akie 7y ago

> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those decisions. And to be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that. This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. You philosophize on basis of the assumption that central authorities ('government') by definition cannot be trusted, and we should therefore be wary of anything that reeks of centralized decision making. That is a supremely American way of looking at the world. Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him nevertheless because of large scale & organized disinformation campaigns by the likes of (decentralized) propaganda entities like Fox News. How does your system deal with that then? Not very well, it seems. Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies, we're going to forbid it and if you keep in doing it you'll be slapped with a fine that really hurts and your CEO might have to go to jail"? What you don't seem to take into account in your comment is that centralized bodies can protect the weak from the powerful. If you only have decentralized entities, it's survival of the fittest – which is a nice way of saying that the weakest get eaten or die. I don't want to live in a society that has these values.

ralusek 7y ago
Trump has been able to do very little, and this is a good thing. However, what he has done is effectively demonstrate that the executive branch has too much centralized power, not too little. In regards to whether or not it would be great if we had a powerful centralized body that could determine what constitute outrageous lies worthy of a fine, no, for the reasons I've already stated, I do not think that this would be a good thing. I have no problem with European and Asian countries granting their (very often highly competent) governments greater authorities than what is afforded to the US government, but I think it's supremely important that there remains at least one superpower fundamentally predicated on a mistrust of a central authority.

Sander_Marechal 7y ago

This is a strawman argument. You don't have to define truth absolutely to ban news from spouting outright lies. The US seems to have a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And to be frank, the US should probably be more wary of that.

ralusek 7y ago
It's not a strawman for multiple reasons. For one, you have suggested that pointing out outright lies does not suffer from many of the same issues as asserting truth. "American jobs are being taken by illegal immigrants from Mexico." Is this a lie? No. But is this disingenuous and misrepresenting much more significant contributors to job loss? Yes. Is it a lie then? "Transgender women are women." Is this a lie? Depends entirely on definitions and presuppositions. Secondly, I think the more important takeaway is that the vast majority of the issues we're having in regards to political discourse have absolutely nothing to do with us not agreeing on facts. Neither side for most of the hard issues are relying on outright incorrect facts. So not only do I not think that identifying outright lies is as simple and free from bias as you suggest it to be, I also think that the cases in which this could be universally agreed upon would contribute very little to the majority of serious political discussions happening today.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  You don't have to capture every biased statement and bending of the truth to counter outright lies like "Obama was born in kenya" or "Trump was endorsed by the pope" Both of which are believed by huge amounts of Americans.
  - bart_spoon 7y ago
    > You don't have to capture every biased statement and bending of the truth to counter outright lies like "Obama was born in kenya" or "Trump was endorsed by the pope" You do if you want to make some kind of law about it. You are correct, there are plenty of instances where a story is blatantly false and could be taken care of by some kind of preventative action. But the distribution of possible lies is extremely long tailed. For every one of these instances, there are dozens where it is not entirely a lie, but not entirely the truth, or is biased, or a half-truth, or editorialized, or an extreme conclusion, etc. Libel and slander laws already exist, but are rarely invoked because of this reason. It is nigh impossible to create any kind of system or legislation that does more than what these laws already do, while also properly dealing with all of these edge cases. I mean, even your examples could easily get around any kind of preventative measures by couching their language. Instead of "Obama was born in Kenya", it could be phrased "rumors have begun to circulate that Obama was in fact born in Kenya". The desired effect of planting this lie in people's minds is still successful, but with a few words there is now no way to create a framework that legally prevents people from spreading lies that way, that is also consistent and not overbearing.

yoavm 7y ago

But these really aren't the type of lies that people consider fake news. Yeah, all the things you've written are facts, and their interpretations are what we call opinions. I agree with you that all of these statements, since they're true, should be allowed without a question. People still need to think and be critical. I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. It has nothing to do with facts like the ones you've stated above. These are simply lies. You can't argue that it's some interpretation, or just half of the picture or anything like that. It's simply a bunch of words phrased as a fact but they never happened. I can't see anything good coming out of this for any country. It ruins the ability to have a real debate in a society, and I think it harmed America (not only of course) greatly. And one last thing - yes, it probably shouldn't be one person from one political side that decides what's completely false and shouldn't be published (or perhaps better, be corrected), but I don't think it should be so impossibly complicated to create a system in which representatives from all sides can do this together. America already has structures like this implemented.

Invictus0 7y ago
Every president has lied; they have reasons to do it. Maybe it's to avoid revealing classified information, or to gain a political or geopolitics advantage. It doesn't matter; lying is an essential part of statecraft. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-history-of-lies-on-the-campaign-trail https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-history-of-lies-on... Edit: I would appreciate if whoever is downvoting can please explain why they are doing so.
- cmrdporcupine 7y ago
  Yes, it does feel in large part that it's the crass and blatant nature of Trump's presentation that enrages, not just the actual content. As a Canadian I 'preferred' Obama, who ran on the line "change you can believe in" -- but he led the US empire substantially the same as any previous... and so this "can believe in" line, it really expresses a truth. The substantial piece was not that America would change, but that you could _believe_ in the fact that it would change. Little actually changed in America, at least from a distance. And once people stopped believing in the change... one gets Trump. Disgusting as he is, Trump really is "changing" America. And his lying is more transparent and blatant and crass, but also more theatrical and aggressive. It's weaponized.

krageon 7y ago

> In America, we understand American understanding birthed a society that openly fosters fascism. It should only be used as an ironic example, not as some sort of highroad ethical argument.

bart_spoon 7y ago
Is fascism a uniquely American ideology now? Which part of the world are you from that hasn't fostered fascism at some point?
BurningCycles 7y ago
How is american society 'openly fostering fascism' ?

Xelbair 7y ago

>>> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those decisions. And to be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that. In my honest opinion - every law should be made with assumption that in the future, or even now, an actor will exists that will abuse it to the utmost limits. One of reasons i am vehemently against article 13 in Europe, or anti-hate speech laws(as those can be abused to basically turn into censorship laws - while doing absolutely nothing but hiding the symptoms of systematic problems).

infinitezest 7y ago
I'm really surprised that _this_ isn't a more popular take-away among Trump detractors, particularly with regard to things like privacy and government surveillance. "Finding the right balance between security and privacy" sounds a lot different depending on who's mouth it's coming out of and who controls the levers.

Erlich_Bachman 7y ago

> So not only are facts capable of telling a narrative, but it gets much more complicated once you start introducing conclusions. "start introducing conclusions". So not just stating facts after all?

infinitezest 7y ago
I think OP is saying that facts alone can be used to spin a narrative. Inserting conclusions makes it even worse.

yodsanklai 7y ago

> but even stating facts can be extremely manipulative Another thing is the choice of facts you decide to state. All media have a bias in what type of news they decide to cover. Usually they pick stories based on what their audience wants to hear. I don't think there's a solution, besides trying to be more critical about medias in general.

atoav 7y ago

In Austria we have a body that regulates this and it kind of works. We still have various levels of quality, but flat out lying is far less common than in the US or UK. The body consists of a board of all media agencies and they self-regulate their behaviour and adhere to their commonly agreed principles (e.g. if you get facts wrong, people can demand follow-ups with a correction etc). In my eyes the US has a ideological perspective on many issues, that are basically "solved" in other democratic nations (with gun-law beeing the most shining example). I accept that you cannot directly apply solutions that work in one nation to another without reflecting the differences in culture and law, but it happens all too often that Americans claim something can't be solved, while it works perfectly fine somewhere else, without having sacrificed neither democracy nor freedom. When it comes to media regulation, it is a question of law and enforcement. If you don't trust your own courts to objectively judge what accounts to a violation and what does not or is ambiguous (like in your examples), then you have a problem with your justice system beeing influenced by politics and the principle of the seperation of powers is broken.

devilmoon 7y ago

But from what I've been taught in school, news articles should always aim to state only the facts as they have happened without trying to draw conclusions, show only one side of the story or inject the bias of the reporter. As long as you have journalists and editors able to do their jobs, stating facts doesn't become an exercise in pushing your narrative as you describe but simple reporting of "what happened" or "what has been said". In your specific example, you would report only on the actual statistical figures released, without trying to inject probabilities or percentages which are pushing your analysis and view of the data. News outlets are then free to print articles containing opinions, studies and conclusions, but this are called editorials and not news articles, and by definition they do carry the opinion of the writer and his/her innate bias on the matter. Even in this case, saying something false is different from interpreting the data or facts at hand. For example, you could write and publish an editorial examining the same statistics as before and come up with the conclusion that there might be a racial bias - some people might agree, some people might not, but it's still an opinion based on hard data and doesn't contain a lie. If you, however, started saying that it's all a plot orchestrated by the reptilians running society to make you think that there's a racial bias, that would indeed be a lie with no factual basis and should be punishable. There are facets and sides to every story you tell, but reducing everything down to the point where you conflate news reporting, opinions and lies is, imho, stupid.

matwood 7y ago
News is a lot like statistics. Just by which facts I show (and don't show), and how I show them I can push the reader to a certain conclusion. Even the wording matters. A great example is reporting on the stock market. "Market plunges 500 points!!", but the reality is that's ~1.8% and barely a blip.

hartator 7y ago

And all of this is unfortunately actually hate speech in Denmark because you can’t have stats on races.

novalis78 7y ago
The naïveté of - in particular Western Europeans - with regard to an ultimate truth handed down by ‘official’ bodies is mind boggling. Getting closer to the truth is a process not a static decree and accepting and dealing with the exact opposite viewpoint to your own - especially when it hurts - is part of adulthood nurtured by free thinking individuals in a free society. Learning about deception and lie, manipulation and propaganda is an extremely important and never ending learning process. (Disclaimer: I am a Western European living in the US)

tripzilch 7y ago

> If you say "A black person is 2.3x as likely as a white person to be killed by police in America. American police are being racially discriminatory when killing civilians." > This is a fact and a conclusion, and most news consists of facts and conclusions. Journalists usually quote somebody else for the conclusion, they don't use themselves as a primary source. And if they're good they get multiple quotes from different people to give a view of the differing opinions.

asjw 7y ago

In Europe we understand the difference between being biased and lying.