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Fake news is everywhere. The power of the press is said to be waning. And because the nation's most famous populist—the man with his sights on the presidency—can't trust the lying media, he says, he has no option but to be a publisher himself.
Oh yeah, and the year is 1896.
The would-be president in question is William Jennings Bryan. In an era before the internet, television, or radio, the best way to reach the masses is with newsprint. So, without the option of tweeting his grievances after losing the election to William McKinley, what does Bryan do? He starts his own newspaper. And he uses it to rail against "fake news."
I don't need to tell you a lot of this sounds weirdly familiar.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/the-fake-news-crisis-120-years-ago/513710/
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29 2017, @08:31AM
The difference being TRUMP WON. So much butthurt.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday January 29 2017, @09:15AM
The method is the same though the goal is different. It is to delegitimize our leader.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29 2017, @09:34PM
This is America! We don't have "Leaders" (Original German: "Der Furher"), we have a President. His is supposed to serve, not lead. (Original Italian: "il Duce") Take you authoritarian Nazi Fascist butt back to where you were first hurt, try to live through the experience as an adult in control of your own destiny, and perhaps you will finally see you have been mislead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29 2017, @10:23AM
Of course Trump won. And so the Democrats are going to start their own newspaper.
Oh wait... Democrats already have their own newspapers.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Sunday January 29 2017, @10:40AM
"Stupid commoners. They don't know what's best for them to believe."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29 2017, @01:06PM
It doesn't matter all that much "who won" and who didn't. The fact that he won, the fact that there is broad public approval for his actions (let's just suppose for a moment ...) _still_ does not make everything he does OK.
In some backwater parts of the world there is broad public approval for "marrying" girls aged less then fourteen, then having sex with them even if they very much do not want to "consume the marriage" (a.k.a.: they rape the girls). There have even been public votes on the issue there, and the vote's majority result was "That's OK like that".
Do you consider these rapes barbaric, or are they totally legitimate?
If you consider "He won!" a sufficient reason for Trump to do anything he wants, then the same reasoning must lead to your acceptance of these rapes as totally normal.
If you think that these rapes are barbaric, then you also need something better than "He won" to justify his measures.
I'm actually interested in your point of view and your reasoning :-/
Or is the discussion in the US already down to the level of "My people good, other people bad, shut up or we kill you!" ? Now here's for a scary thought ... a nuclear power with pre-stone-age morals ...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday January 29 2017, @07:09PM
Especially since almost three million people voted against him instead of for him. As you pointed out, any mandate is imaginary. American voters sisn;t elect Trump, the Electoral College did.
And people still think this is a democracy...
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 29 2017, @10:06PM
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Monday January 30 2017, @05:52AM
Bullshit. That is just him making excuses because his ego is extremely wounded by not winning the popular vote as well.
He keeps making claims about voter fraud, but can never produce the evidence of it.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 30 2017, @08:12AM
Bullshit. That is just him making excuses because his ego is extremely wounded by not winning the popular vote as well.
He is correct no matter how wounded his ego is here. It is misleading to claim Clinton should have won because of the popular vote, when no one was trying to win the popular vote.
(Score: 2) by nukkel on Sunday January 29 2017, @09:33PM
Equating "my guy didn't win" to rape is a slap in the face of every rape victim in the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29 2017, @07:52PM
I FIGURED IT OUT!
The reason all the Trump supporters (or anti-lib crowd who might have voted for someone else) are so bent out of shape is because they know they lost the popular vote. They all KNOW that Democracy has become a sham, and they desperately want to be seen as legitimate. The tide is against you all, hopefully the baby doesn't get thrown out with the bathwater and we can take the good parts of modern conservatism and mix them with the good parts of progressive policies.
But until then, enjoy your false victory and false sense of security. Bigoted and generally nasty attitudes will not magically be accepted just because we elected a president with the emotional level of a 5 year old. All the nasty shit that will be done in the next four years will hopefully just accelerate the evolution of the conservative base once they see what their wishes actually do when they meet reality.
Keep raging, keeping calling everyone else butthurt, your bullshit won't look any different in the morning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29 2017, @11:21PM
Right, right, because this totally never happened before in living memory.
Except, you know, 2000.
The tide is against .... whom exactly? I mean, look at some of the whitewash elections we've seen over the last 100 years. They've gone to the republicans, to the democrats, and guess what? The great tide of history ebbed and flowed.
If anyone's illustrating sadness, rage and butthurt, I'd have to say it's you.
And I don't even like Trump. I didn't vote for him. I didn't want him.