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SoylentNews is people

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

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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @06:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @06:59AM (#450636)

    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.