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I’m reminded by the stories in 2016 on how the Pope has endorsed Donald Trump. Was it true? Not in the slightest. And yet these stories got millions of impressi

by tbenst 6y ago

I’m reminded by the stories in 2016 on how the Pope has endorsed Donald Trump. Was it true? Not in the slightest. And yet these stories got millions of impressions. Enabling the spread of harmful, false, foreign-planted propaganda to spread like a cancer in our democracy is worth taking a moral stand over. Actors that propagate such falsehoods have earned their punishment. Equivocation in this thread to NYTimes publishing on Trump tax returns boggles the mind, and shows the sorry state of 2020. It’s reminiscent of how Trump redefined “fake news”—a phenomena associated almost exclusively with right-wing falsehoods masquerading as news—to mean “facts that are so damning of me that I construct a reality-distortion field to blind my followers”. I am dismayed by how many commenters here seemingly abandon objective Truth and descend into the anarchy of textual equivocation.

360walk 6y ago
Here is an interesting study on NYTimes and fake news: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-media-election-trump.php https://www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-media-election-trump.... It makes the case that: 1) Adults in America saw hardly any fake news stories (on average one per person, massively dwarfed by real news and political ads) 2) Main Stream Media were far more "to blame", focusing on scandal instead of policy. They give an example of the NY times ran more front page stories on Hillary's emails in 10 days, than they ever ran on Trump/Hillary policy comparisons.
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
Great, but what does that have to do with the laptop, which came from Delaware and not Russia? You can’t spout a debunked conspiracy theory about Russian spies and then rail on about objective truth.
- tbenst 6y ago
  I was specifically referring to the Pope story in that case. I have no idea if the Hunter Biden laptop is actually real, but our default assumption should be skepticism: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/24/hunter-biden-laptop-disinformation/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/24/hunter-bid...

by tbenst 6y ago

360walk 6y ago

Here is an interesting study on NYTimes and fake news: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-media-election-trump.php https://www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-media-election-trump.... It makes the case that: 1) Adults in America saw hardly any fake news stories (on average one per person, massively dwarfed by real news and political ads) 2) Main Stream Media were far more "to blame", focusing on scandal instead of policy. They give an example of the NY times ran more front page stories on Hillary's emails in 10 days, than they ever ran on Trump/Hillary policy comparisons.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago

Great, but what does that have to do with the laptop, which came from Delaware and not Russia? You can’t spout a debunked conspiracy theory about Russian spies and then rail on about objective truth.

tbenst 6y ago
I was specifically referring to the Pope story in that case. I have no idea if the Hunter Biden laptop is actually real, but our default assumption should be skepticism: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/24/hunter-biden-laptop-disinformation/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/24/hunter-bid...