So who becomes the arbiter(s) of "fake news"?

[mjr]

In other words, who determines what's "fake news" and what's not?

Is the National Enquirer "fake news"? Remember, they got the John Edwards/Reille Hunter thing right.

What about Fox? CNN? MSNBC? TMZ? HuffPo?

Drudge is a news aggregator.

Because it's highly possible that the "Conservative" news outlet audiences (both viewership and readership) will point to numerous "Liberal" outlets and scream "fake news". Likewise the other way around.

And if one news agency airs/prints a story, and another news agency posits it as "fake news", who's right, and how would we know?

Also, I get that "fake news" is different from "biased news", though one can lead to the other, and "biased news" can be mistaken for "fake news".

Additionally, what about stories that aren't completely reported? Like where they report part of a story, then have to say "Oops...here's really what happened...", but only after they get called out on it by people who posted raw video on social media/YouTube?

How far are we from labeling something as "fake news" when it's really just "news I don't like"?

So who are the arbiters of "fake news"? If you say "we are", how do you know? Take the election as an example, and how different people viewed the candidates. Some people viewed Hillary Clinton as evil incarnate, and some thought there was a massive witch hunt. Same with Donald Trump. Some think he's evil incarnate, some think a lot of stuff about him is made up, or whatever. In both of those cases, who's right?

It wasn't called as such, but "fake news" was prevalent throughout the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Anyone remember that? It was mixed in with Newspeak. And you HAD to believe it...or else. In the novel, though, there was no "fake news", because the Party just told you what was true, and you had to accept it.

"We've always been at war with Eastasia"

It's seriously like we're making our way slowly toward our own "Ministry of Truth"...

The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education and the fine arts.

Further,

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.

[Daskinor]

The News Aggregators themselves.

It's a business call, on their part. A gamble that people want to see news that is somehow veritably true. How much effort each aggregator puts in is their own decision

If Facebook(used as an example because it is popular) decides the a site posts to much fake news articles they can chose to blacklist them. People who dislike that the site is blacklisted can chose another aggregator.

We get into a pesky point of view problem. Some people will see it is censorship, others as preserving the integrity of a 'News' that shows you actual truthful news. There are going to be people complaining it only protects the dumb who are unable to figure out things on their own. And of course everything in-between.

This is a separate issue from the news producers that will still publish whatever they want. Fight against each-other based on differing points of view, or re-report each others bullshit.

[ben_who]

The gold standard for whether or not something is real is whether it can be verified. If Breitbart writes an article about a Townhall story which quotes Bill O'Reilly saying "some people think," then there's no source. But then Breitbart claims that O'Reilly's assertion is correct based on the fact that Townhall reported it.

There was a documentary movie called "The Gay Agenda" that circulated, I think, in the 1980s. I watched it in a gender studies class. One of its biggest flaws, obvious as all hell, was that five different "authorities" were interviewed - and all five of them were citing each other. It was a great big circle that didn't actually go back to any sort of research or social development. They were all propping each other up; there was zero independent review.

I once did an interview with a fellow who wrote a book on entrepreneurship; it was one of the first feature interviews I ever did. After the interview was over, I got a call from the guy saying he wanted to go over the article before I submitted it for publication. My boss told him to pound sand; we had his interview on the record and he didn't have editorial privilege. The article went out as-is. Later, the subject excoriated the article as a "hit piece." Evidently he'd chickened out when he reconsidered some of his quotes - which were all on tape, and presented in-context - and tried to have them pulled.

Just to show you how crazy this is, this was a TRADE magazine. The article didn't lean in any particular direction except "This guy wrote a book; here's a featured look at his career thus far." To be a tender young writer under attack from an interview subject because I didn't give him final copy approval was an eye-opening moment, and I started to wonder whether journalism was really the career for me.

On the other end of the spectrum, my mother once made a comment about an in-depth story we covered in the paper. This was the kind of seventy to eighty thousand word story that later gets compiled into a book; it runs over several days in multiple feature articles and two-page spreads, with later followups from the principals. These are the articles that win awards. My mother's comment? That it was a complete fiction, entirely invented, from beginning to end.

That's a fascinating assertion. This story had been in production for several months; it had dozens of sources, gotten the nod from our legal team, endured several rounds of follow-ups, depended on multiple points of contact, and involved hundreds of people. There were notes, recordings, interviews, public documents, FOIA requests, and videotapes. To insist that every single word of it is fiction is to assume that the events didn't take place, the people were all fictional, the quotes were all invented, and a Pulitzer-winning premier reporter spent a few days banging it out in his office rather than spending months in pursuit of it in the North Woods. But my mother had been so well trained to simply disbelieve anything that she disagreed with that she was able to ride with the assumption that the story was entirely invented.

Believing the unsourced and disbelieving the sourced is what puts us where we are today. We're not helpless; we can find things out for ourselves. Here's the mountain of evidence claiming that something is real; here's one Fox News reporter undoing all that work by claiming liberals made it up. Not finding the principals and doing a followup, not making a phone call and getting a quote, not doing one damn thing to verify all that work - just claiming it's fake, flashing a smile, and going on to denounce the America-hating commie faggots that would even suggest such a thing.

If you want a commuter lesson in how to identify fake news, I can't think of a better place to start than the docudrama "Shattered Glass." It's about a guy who really did get away with planting fake news in a liberal-tilting print publication, for quite some time. All it took to unmask him was a reporter from another publication asking a few questions. Spoiler alert: things do not go well for him.

[mjr]

Ben:

Thank you for that insightful post. That brings up a couple of other questions, though. I understand that "news media" only has so much "space" (i.e. time or column-inches) to run their stories. But sometimes stories are blatantly misrepresented -- by major news outlets. These outlets (especially in this day and age) ought to know better.

Case in point: There was a story that CNN ran during a protest of a woman who CNN characterized as "calling for peace" when she was shown on video appearing to admonish a crowd for rioting and starting fires in an inner city area. The problem: that wasn't the full context, and she was essentially telling the crowd not to do it in the inner city -- but to go out to the suburbs and do it. The story was misrepresented until "Social Media" posted the actual, raw video, and CNN had to make an on-air correction and issue an apology.

Another one, if you'll recall, is the Dan Rather "fake document" scandal, and the Brian Williams thing. Both took a credibility hit, and both had to offer apologies.

Another thing that happens is that sometimes instead of your example of "some people think", you get "sources say", without actually naming the sources. I know it's semantic, but they could both equate to the same thing.

[TheHuckster]

Ben:

Thank you for that insightful post. That brings up a couple of other questions, though. I understand that "news media" only has so much "space" (i.e. time or column-inches) to run their stories. But sometimes stories are blatantly misrepresented -- by major news outlets. These outlets (especially in this day and age) ought to know better.

They do know better. It's just that they don't care, because they're following the almighty dollar. There's no incentive for them to spend a ton of resources to get the news right, because the public doesn't care about that, or they do, but not enough to warrant changing their habits.

They want to show the people what they want to see. CNN viewers want to see instances of people showing compassion, so they'll contrive videos like the one you cited to make them feel better about themselves. Fox viewers want to see reasons to hate democrats, so they'll use any liberal's words against them out of context, or choose some of the more extreme liberals' statements and say it's representative of all liberals. If either of them changed their ways, those people will say that they're no longer "unbiased" and yell and scream about it.

Another one, if you'll recall, is the Dan Rather "fake document" scandal, and the Brian Williams thing. Both took a credibility hit, and both had to offer apologies.

Not just apologies, those things ruined their careers. Both had to step down from their anchor positions.

[mjr]

Not just apologies, those things ruined their careers. Both had to step down from their anchor positions.

Just the risk of that seems like an awfully high price to pay, doesn't it? I mean, I would think that Dan Rather and Brian Williams would both think about the consequences of those things. Especially in the modern era of 24 hour news, "citizen journalists", social media, and the Internet.

Though it does make me wonder how many in the news media think of themselves as "demigods" or as "power brokers" of some sort.

[protege]

Just the risk of that seems like an awfully high price to pay, doesn't it? I mean, I would think that Dan Rather and Brian Williams would both think about the consequences of those things.

Unfortunately, some people think that they're untouchable. Their heads swell up to the size of planets, and think that they'll never deal with the consequences. Case in point, one of my fellow schoolmates was an attorney. Was? Yep, was. He had everything going for him--good job, good pay, Mercedes, mansion, etc. but threw it all away for $50K.

That is, he got caught embezzling money from one of his clients. He thought he could outsmart everyone and thought he'd get away with it. Then one day, his client had a check bounce. Client went to the bank, and was like that account should have been full. Seems the attorney had forged the clients' signatures on paperwork that he'd drawn up...giving him access to the accounts

He took advantage of their age and that they really didn't know the "legalese" he was throwing around. In the end, not only did he go to jail and get heavily fined plus having to pay retributions, but he got disbarred, lost everything, including his reputation. Last I heard, his wife divorced him, and he was working at McDonald's.

Like many people with huge egos, he got caught up in it...and it cost him dearly. Same deal with the fallen news anchors--they let their own egos be their undoing. Sad, but true.

[TheHuckster]

Unfortunately, some people think that they're untouchable.

Yep. Similar thing happened to someone I know. And he was the last person you'd think would do this, too. He had a cushy job, was paid well, and worked in a position that was all about bettering people's lives, and he took full advantage of it. He got away with his scheme for about 3 years before he got caught, and when he did, there was a local media explosion from it, since he worked in the public sector, and was highly regarded.

From what it sounded like, he stole $60K in small increments here and there. Each little scam was probably something like a few hundred here, a thousand there, and it just added up. I'm sure as he did it, he wasn't realizing how much it was adding up, until he got caught.

This happened less than a year ago, so I don't think he's even been sentenced yet, but his life is over at this point. I don't know what's going through his head right now, but I'm sure he's regretting what he's been doing, even if that regret is for selfish reasons.

[ben_who]

I'm going to expand a bit; I might have to make a few posts to hit all the high points, but I want to throw one out there right now. Here it is:

Cable news is awful.

It is. It's just terrible. You couldn't conceive of a worse way to consume information. Think about it - they need to fill 24 hours of airtime. That airtime has to be VIDEO. Everything has to have a sense of urgency and immediacy to keep you watching. They need to keep you in that seat for ten more minutes, five more minutes, however long it takes to get that commercial in front of you. They're desperate for it, and they'll do anything to get it.

The hell of it is, we need the news. An informed population is the foundation of democracy; we're a self-ruling people who need to be able to make good decisions about our lives. So we all sit sopping up cable news and think we're getting "informed." We're not being informed, we're being entertained, and we've fooled ourselves into thinking that's a virtue.

I was once surprised by a survey that said that Fox News was the most accurate of the three 24-hour networks in terms of their actual news coverage. Reading deeper revealed that Fox news has less news than the other two; at the time, while MSNBC and CNN boasted 9 hours of news in a 24-hour news day, Fox News boasted only six. The rest was opinion and advocacy programming tarted up to look like news.

And people think it IS news. I've had family members un-ironically refer to Glenn Beck as "the news." A friend once referred to Bill O'Reilly's show as "the news," apparently because it was on in the same timeslot as the network newscasts. He genuinely thought O'Reilly was their anchor.

They have to put this shit on. They have to. They have to fill that time, and they have to keep you watching. They don't peddle the left wing or the right wing, they peddle urgency and outrage. Fox News just happens to be better at selling urgency and outrage than the other two; that's why their ratings are higher. They're number one? Good for them. Does that mean they're the most accurate? No, just that they're the most popular. And how do they keep those ratings up? How do they keep more people watching longer? By selling urgency and outrage. It's been more effective to do so on the right, which doesn't speak well for them; it makes the average American conservative look like a credulous doof. CNN and MSNBC have less time to sell urgency and outrage because they have more news, so they have fewer viewers watching less. They're not saints in this; they have the same problem on a different scale, but Fox News is number one for a reason, and it's not a good reason: because they make the news more entertaining by selling it better.

And the trouble with immediacy is that you sacrifice accuracy. "We bring you the news as it happens!" Well, no one knows what the hell the news is as it happens, and no responsible human being should claim that that's what they're doing. Then they zoom in on the most dramatic or salacious part of the story. Ten million marchers could protest peacefully down Main Street, but if one window gets broken, that gets the 24-hour treatment. Take a look at this photo of the entire American news media focused on a single burning trash can.

So I wouldn't recommend cable news to anyone. I get my news from the local paper, which I pay actual money for. Decent journalism costs money; shit journalism is free. You get what you pay for.

[mjr]

Here's another piece I think would make the conversation here interesting...

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...410-story.html

1 issue, two different perspectives (generally based upon ideology). Who's right? Is there "fake news" here, and if so, what is it? Is it ideologically based?

[s_stabeler]

I'd say it's something of a hybrid. The bit about Rice requesting the identities of people referred to anonymously in NSA reports is news- and taking it as partial validation of Trump's claims isn't unreasonable. However, when it starts becoming more like a big conspiracy theory, it crosses over into fake news, because it started to have the implication that anyone who disagreed with them was making things up.

[mjr]

The bit about Rice requesting the identities of people referred to anonymously in NSA reports is news- and taking it as partial validation of Trump's claims isn't unreasonable.

This is the part I'm talking about. When News Agency A is talking about it, but News Agency B isn't, and explicitly says they're not going to talk about it, to me that's a problem.

[s_stabeler]

not really- they simply don't think it's newsworthy (and may be right- while it only happens in exceptional circumstances, "unmasking" in this context merely means "we have a report from the NSA of a conversation between an American and a foreigner who is being monitored. We would like to know who they are for X reason" NOT "we should publish their name near and far" which is what the conservative media seem to be implying.)

basically, what makes something fake news is when it's either only got a slim amount of evidence, or no evidence that isn't made up. As I said, in this case, it's real news that she requested the unmasking of the trump team member. It's also real news to speculate on reasons for the request. However, it becomes fake news when you say that this proves that there was espionage on Trump by the White House under Obama. It also becomes fake news when you say that this definitively proves there is a coverup when there is a reasonable innocent explanation.

[Canarr]

Another interesting article that leaves open discussions on the question: who is right? And who decides who is right?


If governments were serious, they would target family dysfunction in communities most at risk of domestic violence. As the latest data, released last week from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics shows, domestic violence overwhelmingly is concentrated in welfare-dependent and indigenous communities.

This inescapable fact keeps being howled down by uptight media feminists who want to pretend that domestic violence knows no social boundaries and is equally prevalent in Woollahra and Mosman as Blacktown and Walgett.

Well, the high indigenous towns of Walgett, Moree Plains, Glen Innes, and Coonamble have the greatest rates of domestic violence in NSW, and the welfare capitals of Blacktown, Penrith, Wyong, and Liverpool suffer the most incidents.

A woman in Walgett is 20 times more likely to be a victim than a woman in Mosman, and 13 times more likely than a woman in Woollahra; in Blacktown the chances are six times greater than in Mosman and four times more than Woollahra.

We’d be better spending $30 million on intensive social work in those at-risk areas, helping people find jobs, beat addictions, send their children to school and generally get their lives together.

The only politician willing to push back on the domestic violence madness is Liberal Democrats Senator David Leyonhjelm, who cross-examined the public servants responsible for the “Let’s Stop it at the Start” campaign last month at a Senate Estimates hearing.

Leyonhjelm managed to extract the information from Department of Social Services managers Tracey Bell and Dr Roslyn Baxter that the campaign had spent $420,000 on research.

But for all that money, Bell and Baxter still couldn’t provide any evidence to back up the campaign’s central thesis: that “there is a clear link between violence towards women and attitudes of disrespect and gender inequality”.

They could not provide any evidence that poverty, alcohol abuse and drug abuse are not more significant factors, or explain why they weren’t mentioned in the campaign.

Leyonhjelm also pointed out that there is no “epidemic” of violence against women. According to the ABS Safety Survey of 2012, 1.5 per cent of women have reported experiencing physical or sexual violence or threat by a partner or ex-partner in the previous 12 months. Rates have been stable for a decade.

But there has been an increase in domestic violence against males — rates have risen from 0.4 per cent of men in 2005 to 0.6 per cent in 2012. Where’s the public service announcement? Where’s the hashtag activism?

“What I am questioning,” said Leyonhjelm, “is whether the very strong focus on women as victims of domestic violence is misplaced. It should be ‘victims of domestic violence, full stop’.”