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Fixing Fake News

posted by on Saturday January 07 2017, @02:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the let's-keep-the-onion dept.

BK writes:

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.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @03:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @03:50AM (#450590)

    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?

    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.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @04:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @04:43AM (#450612)

    > 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.