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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: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 29 2017, @10:35AM
It looks like your browser is unable to display ads …
Fek 'em. I open in another browser, which also blocks ads, and voila'!
Anyway - this quote:
“For all that, they are making a mistake. They can fool some of the people all of the time, but the number will diminish as exposures multiply. Truth will win in the long run, and the papers that seek the best sources of information and give the most accurate information possible, ignoring fakes and discrediting doubtful stories, will always be the ones trusted by a majority of the reading public.”
And, that is precisely what did Hillary in.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday January 29 2017, @11:30AM
In the UK, the majority of the reading public trusted the Daily Mail, Express and Telegraph for the past 40 years.
Just sayin'...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29 2017, @05:05PM
Meanwhile the Mirror and the News of the World were doing the real investigative journalism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 30 2017, @08:10AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29 2017, @07:59PM
No, what did Hillary in was being a cutthroat politician with zero ability to connect with the average person, along with the nasty tactics used to give Bernie the boot. Obama at least had charisma, Clinton was known to be a corporate shill but without the charisma to sell herself.
The fake news and other bullshit only polarized conservatives into rabidly supporting Trump, and the fake news and mud slinging at Trump was unable to swing many votes to Clinton.
Even with all of that Clinton still won the popular vote, so what REALLY did her in was the lack of true Democracy in the US. I'll take the tyranny of the majority over tyranny of the minority. Most evil shit comes from a minority of the population, the electoral college only makes it easier for the minority to game the system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29 2017, @11:26PM
Fine. Then split the country.
Come on, let's get it over with. There's no prospect (you're deluding yourself if you think otherwise) of Wyoming thinking that New York is the right set of thought leaders for the country. They might as well leave if they know damn well they're politically screwed, now and forever.
Let's just split it. We'll draw big blue blobs around major cities (Chicago, Seattle/Tacoma, Greater LA, Portland, Austin, NYC, Miami/Fort Lauderdale ...) and carve them off, and they can be the United Cities of America, and the rest of the country can be Buttfuckers United of America.
Because that's really the endgame of telling the red zones to bend and spread 'em for NYC, DC and Boston.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29 2017, @09:21PM
how long is the long run to you?
long run to me means after a series of exposures and bad episodes, people finally learn how to come to terms that what they want to believe isn't true just because skywriters on some blog put it in writing in the cloud.
i thought people knew the enquirer and the star and stuff were fake and were read for entertainment purposes. but it looks like if the place carrying the news isn't a known source of absurd fake stuff, people believe what they want to believe and this stuff gets past the filters.
i guess it works for native advertising too on a lot of people... it makes me doubt my fellow man.
anyway no doubt this affected the election, but i don't believe the fake news of a purely political sort had been a problem up until facebook and google started to exert control over what people read. it used to be people have to go to some crank website--but now it comes to the people, under the guise of legitamacy because our masters are profiting from its distribution and they wouldn't push fake stuff to us, now would they?
i guess we know the answer