SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
I found an interesting article on fivethirtyeight.com about fake news and how to address it. It's a long article but worth the read. This bit is near the end:
Media outlets keep trying to debunk fake news. This won't work, particularly for readers who have already decided that the traditional press is fake news — and, fair or not, partisan. Research suggests that the more partisan a topic, the more likely people who identify strongly with one side will double down on their argument even if they are presented with facts that counter it.
Maybe, instead, the media should do a better job of distinguishing real news from fake news, to regain readers' trust. Click-based advertising has left us adrift in a sea of inaccurate, sensational headlines, even at legitimate news outlets; this makes it easier for dramatic fake news headlines to survive. Aggregation has us spreading stories with no original research or corroboration, and it makes everyone look bad when outlets fall for fake bait. Over the holidays, a heartwarming story about a Santa Claus who visited a child's deathbed went viral. Three days later, the Knoxville News Sentinel, which originally published the story, retracted it, but not before it had spread to CNN, Fox, USA Today and more.
Maybe the news should stop trying so hard to entertain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @02:52AM
So, this puts most of CNN under fake news then considering they've been pushing the narrative, along with many other major news networks, that Putin (directly) hacked the election despite Assange continually pointing out that the DNC leaks were not done by a state party?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 07 2017, @02:58AM
Yeah, pretty much. I'll also point out that CNN and the rest of MSM worked hard from day one to establish that Trump didn't have a chance in hell of winning the nomination, much less the election. Every poll published by MSM had Hillary winning by a huge margin. When you looked beyond MSM, you had much more reasonable polls. So, yeah, MSM, CNN, MSNBC, Turner, Hearst - all of the mainstream media.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @03:06AM
Yeah! Listen to Runaway on this, 'cause he's consumed more fake news than almost anyone here! That makes him kind of an expert.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 07 2017, @03:31AM
LOL - there's a difference between "consume" and "evaluate". I called the recent election way back in the summer. There were still a couple republicans hanging on, with slim hopes of beating Trump, but I called the election then. Trump, by a slim margin. I evaluated all the fake news available, eliminated the bullshit, and called the election. You could have done the same.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @03:36AM
Man are you full of yourself.
You had a 50/50 chance of picking the right candidate.
You won the coin-toss. That doesn't make you a critical thinker.
In fact, claiming that winning the coin-toss makes you a critical thinker pretty much proves you are not a critical thinker.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @03:46AM
Runaway is his own fake news! In fact, I don't think he is Runaway at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @06:59AM
Consume, evaluate, or be infiltrated by. Runaway is an example of the latter. He does not even know what "the latter" is, so pro tip, it means "the last one". Why cannot college-educated peoples speak in language that Runaway can understand? It is cruel. But back to the point. Fake news has worked so well on Runaway that he thinks he is critically evaluating news! How sick is that? But it is the ultimate success of propaganda: the victims themselves insist on the truth of what they are being fed! Fake news so fake that it cannot be fake! And dupes so stupid that they cannot tell the difference! And if anyone should try to correct them, there is always the "liberal educated elites with things like truth and facts, who are trying to deceive us!" innoculation. Runaway is so deep into this that I do not think he can be reached. His reality is so far detached from real American that he is now serving Russians. And the more we try to save him, the more he will see us as the "mainstream liberal fake-news media". So the only thing we can do is deport his ass. His only claim to being an American is that he was born on American soil. He probably will claim that his parents were citizens, but the only reason they were is that they were dropped on American soil. Ultimately, Runaways is the fourth or fifth generation anchor baby, and I am sure that the Quapaw will be happy to get rid of him.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 07 2017, @04:30AM
Doing it once, no. I've called it correctly nine times in a row though. Make of that what you will.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @03:30PM
And I called it 12 times in a row!
No, make that 20 times!
I'm a genius!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday January 07 2017, @07:50PM
If he called it in the summer, it was better than 50/50... Trump wasn't the sure candidate until later: he was running against others in his own party.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:23PM
By last summer Trump had clenched the nomination. I suppose there was the chance that there would be some shenanigans at the convention, but by the rules he unstoppable number of delegates. So barring some highly unlikely circumstances we all knew who the candidates were going to be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @09:28PM
You will note he never actually called anything.
He's provided no links to him claiming trump will win.
Its all just post-hoc rationalizing.
Much like Trump claiming he was against the iraqi war and citing interviews from like a year after it had already started.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @03:03AM
Assange is not supposed to know who his sources are in the best case scenario. If the DNC courier story is true, then it might undermine the story being told by the intelligence agencies. Or it might be that a Russian asset handed off the documents in person to Assange's buddy. Either way, the intelligence agencies could be right, and they have evidence they are not releasing.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @03:08AM
Yep. I was going to suggest another breakdown to differentiate CNN and WaPo from things like purposefully edited livestock farm or Planned Parenthood videos. On reflection, that's not necessary. CNN and WaPo are being exactly as disingenuous. Google seems to promote WaPo so every time I go to Google News, I sooner or later click a WaPo story by accident. It's simply shameful.
There is one distinction I think we need: editorial/opinion. CNN and WaPo regularly publish opinion pieces as though they're news.
I'm the guy from the Onion article who doesn't have a TV, so I have no idea what CNN is like on the airwaves lately.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @03:50AM
Methinks you have an odd definition of "fake news". According to CNN, the report on US election hacking publicly released by the US intel community concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an "influence campaign" aimed at hurting Hillary Clinton and helping Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. [cnn.com] Note that this is a reporting of the bare facts of what are in the report. Do you really consider that to be "fake news"? While I don't consider that to be fake news, I must admit to being of two minds on this story. While I don't like having the Russians meddling in our election, I must admit that what they did at most only marginally influenced this election. They released some embarrassing emails from the Clinton campaign? So what? The Democrats really did deserve to be publicly depantsed in front of the entire world for what they did. Even so, I still got to weigh the facts and decide for myself what influence that information had on my vote. Maybe next election they can release the private emails of the Republicans? With any luck, we could have two major political parties in this country that are suitably chastened before I die.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @04:43AM
> While I don't like having the Russians meddling in our election, I must admit that what they did at most only marginally influenced this election.
In practical terms, clinton lost the election by just 80,000 votes across those three swing states. That's a margin of less than 1%.
I think it is not a stretch to at least argue that putin's disinformation campaign (it wasn't just the email dumps, there was a lot of propaganda) was enough to move 80,000 votes out of a couple of million.
> The Democrats really did deserve to be publicly depantsed in front of the entire world for what they did.
What did they do? There was a lot of breathless exaggeration by, frankly, useful idiots, about the content of the emails. But the two worst things were a bunch of DNC aides talking shit about bernie, without any evidence of actions taken, and donna brazile sending clinton's team a CNN debate question that was never actually used. All things considered that's about as tame as a puppy dog.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:19AM
What was all of this supposed 'lot of propaganda'? I'm still waiting for specifics.
The bits we know are that Hillary used a non-government email account for government business, and her helldesk IT guy was an absolute idiot [theverge.com] for telling John Podesta the spear phishing email he got was legitimate.
Simply receiving a phishing email is not a reason to change one's password so I am not buying this "very unfortunate typo" garbage. It sounds like an MCSE wasn't sure and overreacted to what should have been ignored and forgotten. It's not like others hadn't already been targeted by these attempts.
The goals of the run of "fake news" stories are to discredit President Trump before he's even in office, discredit non-MSM sources, and to deflect, ignore, and excuse the pitiful candidate and campaign ran by the Democratic Party.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @03:56PM
> What was all of this supposed 'lot of propaganda'? I'm still waiting for specifics.
Here's one prominent example. [thedailybeast.com]
And more:
https://www.rt.com/usa/355447-clinton-emails-state-department-foundation/ [rt.com]
https://www.rt.com/usa/355216-benghazi-hillary-clinton-sued/ [rt.com]
https://www.rt.com/usa/355047-clinton-stairs-health-problem/ [rt.com]
https://www.rt.com/usa/355407-clinton-trump-russia-putin/ [rt.com]
https://www.rt.com/usa/355302-hiroshima-nagasaki-democrats-history/ [rt.com]
http://sputniknews.com/politics/20160806/1044009769/clinton-obama-trum-election.html [sputniknews.com]
http://sputniknews.com/us/20160806/1043989721/khan-gried-exploited-war-ignored.html [sputniknews.com]
http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160804/1043937453/hillary-clinton-war-queen.html [sputniknews.com]
> Simply receiving a phishing email is not a reason to change one's password
What a stupid thing to say.
You might as well say "when someone tries to con you that's not a reason to get conned!"
I really want to know what is going on in your head that you think what you wrote was sensible?
Its like you have no critical thinking ability at all. Why is your logic so impaired when it comes to this topic?
Really, have you no self awareness? What is going on in there? Should I just assume that this quality of reasoning is behind everything you post?