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posted by
janrinok
on Wednesday November 16 2016, @12:17AM
from the truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth dept.
from the truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth dept.
Despite the best efforts of Mark Zuckerberg to downplay Facebook's role in the election of Donald Trump, the scrutiny of how fake news is spread on the platform has intensified.
Buzzfeed News is reporting that "more than dozens" of Facebook employees have created an unofficial task force dedicated to addressing the issue.
Buzzfeed quoted one member of that task force, who did not want to be named over fears for their job.
"[Mark Zuckerberg] knows, and those of us at the company know, that fake news ran wild on our platform during the entire campaign season," the source said.
The election shook out the way it did because there were ways around the narrative the media was pushing?
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Facebook's Fake News Crisis Deepens
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Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:13AM
Except Snopes has long cajoled people not to trust them but do their own research (and in fact, people often trot out unconfirmed stories as proof when they are simply unconfirmed), and politifact is biased in approach-
Trump was the most fact-checked of all the 2016 candidates. Of the 650 fact checks PolitiFact conducted, 158 were on Trump -- good for 24 percent of the total. Hillary Clinton was fact-checked 120 times over that same period, approximately 18 percent of the total. As PolitiFact notes, the number of Trump fact checks is to be expected because "he made himself more available on television in the early part of his campaign than his Democratic or Republican rivals. Trump also participated in more debates (11 by our count) than either of the top Democratic contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders."
So, yes, Trump has been fact-checked 38 more times than Clinton. And, yes, PolitiFact was the one deciding what statements to fact check.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/01/donald-trump-has-been-wrong-way-more-often-than-all-the-other-2016-candidates-combined/ [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/12/27/in-2008-politifacts-2013-lie-of-the-year-that-you-could-keep-your-health-plan-under-obamacare-it-rated-true/#5c61f842316a [forbes.com]
And if you really want to discuss post-factual, there is no better place to start than with feminist claims of US campuses have rates of rape exceeding the Congo, which has been ongoing, has been debunked repeatedly, and refuses to die.
There are multitudes of different truths to be found in the media, from the misunderstood to the half-truth to outright lie. Even a fact checker can only really help with one of these instances, and the rest are in the arena of claim/counter-claim where there is certainly bias, but not the type you're speaking to.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:47AM
So, yes, Trump has been fact-checked 38 more times than Clinton. And, yes, PolitiFact was the one deciding what statements to fact check.
Oh please. Do not even pretend that Trump wasn't a flowing river of outlandish statements begging to be factchecked.
Yours is the false equivalency of journalistic objectivity at work. The two candidates did not say equal numbers of check-worthy things. What do you want them to do? Ignore crazy shit that Trump said because Clinton wasn't running the crazy train at full speed too?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:02AM
Yours is the false equivalency of journalistic objectivity at work. The two candidates did not say equal numbers of check-worthy things.
Was that simply because Trump is bat-shit insane, or that the media used kid gloves and often times failed to report wikileaks revelations about Clinton?
I mean if we are going to discuss journalistic objectivity...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:19PM
Google: "wikileaks clinton"
Result: 46 million hits.
I think it was covered a bit...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:23PM
OOh, let's get even more specific, using The Donald's favorite whipping boy the New York Times:
Google: "site:nytimes.com wikileaks clinton"
Result: 42,200 results.
The New York Times covered the story over fourty thousand times!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:55PM
Which is good and all, but can you do a comparison against some Trump keywords? How about sentiment analysis next? Nah, lets just look at keywords which to try to prove your point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:43PM
Strangely none of Trumps' lies included lying to congress, if we are talking false equivalency.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:06PM
Strangely none of Trumps' lies included lying to congress, if we are talking false equivalency.
Oh they will, don't you worry.