4 ms·

So much "news" today is opinion masquerading as fact. While news media companies often do get the facts wrong, even when the facts are right, those facts are he

So much "news" today is opinion masquerading as fact. While news media companies often do get the facts wrong, even when the facts are right, those facts are heavily colored by commentary and slant, often leaving out other facts that don't adhere to the narrative. I'm highly skeptical when the author's conclusion is that readers can't discern fake news on their own, when even educated people disagree on what is fake news, when the author thinks that people doing their own research is a problem, and virtue lies in believing the common narrative.

rstuart4133 3y ago
It's always been that way. My favourite example is the nightly financial report, where they will invariably say "the market did [something] today because of X". Very occasionally, like on 9/11, they will be right. But most of the time, it's near impossible to say why they market moved the way it did. They are just authoritatively babbling plausible sounding bullshit. The amazing thing for me is for decades I believed them. They don't just do it there of course. Another thing people describe is to read a mass media report on some event you attended, and not recognise it. I didn't realise how true that was until it happened to me. It was a report in by time.com of an event I attended in my local city. The report was all true, but it focused on a 10 person street protest. They were doing it because 1 million other people were attending the event, almost all of which were blithely unaware of the presence of those 10 people. It was a complete irrelevancy, yet it was probably the only words a fair chunk of the world's population got to read about the event. This was all decades ago. Today, surprise surprise, people write and say anything to get your attention, so they can display a ad and make money from you. Nothing has changed. Not even the motivations.

rstuart4133 3y ago

It's always been that way. My favourite example is the nightly financial report, where they will invariably say "the market did [something] today because of X". Very occasionally, like on 9/11, they will be right. But most of the time, it's near impossible to say why they market moved the way it did. They are just authoritatively babbling plausible sounding bullshit. The amazing thing for me is for decades I believed them. They don't just do it there of course. Another thing people describe is to read a mass media report on some event you attended, and not recognise it. I didn't realise how true that was until it happened to me. It was a report in by time.com of an event I attended in my local city. The report was all true, but it focused on a 10 person street protest. They were doing it because 1 million other people were attending the event, almost all of which were blithely unaware of the presence of those 10 people. It was a complete irrelevancy, yet it was probably the only words a fair chunk of the world's population got to read about the event. This was all decades ago. Today, surprise surprise, people write and say anything to get your attention, so they can display a ad and make money from you. Nothing has changed. Not even the motivations.