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from the honesty-is-the-absence-of-the-intent-to-deceive dept.
[...] what exactly is "fake news" and what effect is it having globally?
"I think there is a fundamental problem that fake news became a catch-all term to mean anything that we don't particularly like to read," explained Alexios Mantzarlis, who heads the international fact-checking network at the Poynter Institute.
[...] Renate Schroeder, director of the European Federation of Journalists, said countries "should be extremely prudent" and seek to balance freedom of expression and freedom of the press with combating hate speech and fake news.
Any effort to regulate social media should not go too far, either, since it can lead to censorship, she said.
"Our view is [that] to fight such propaganda, to fight such fake news, we need to invest in journalism. We need to invest in media pluralism. We need to invest in media literacy," Schroeder told Al Jazeera.
[...] Only 32 percent of people in the US said they had a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in the media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly" in 2016, according to a Gallup poll. That is the lowest level recorded in Gallup polling history – the question has been asked annually since 1997 – and eight points lower than in 2015.
Trust in media declined overall across all EU countries in 2015, a European Broadcasting Union survey also reported.
Mantzarlis of the Poynter Institute said that to fight the fake news phenomenon, journalists should promote greater transparency in their work, and develop a robust corrections policy when mistakes do occur.
That may include "making [corrections] more detailed, explaining why the error was made, who made it within the newsroom, and how exactly the existing procedures failed," he said.
Schroeder added that the focus on fake news could potentially serve as a catalyst to reinvigorate the field of journalism.
Idea #3: Stop helping politicians cheat at debates. Idea #4: Stop reprinting corporate press releases as 'news.' Idea #5: Stop shilling.
Your ideas, Soylent?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 25 2017, @01:41PM (5 children)
The first thing everyone should bear in mind when reading anything that claims to be non-fiction is "This could be a bunch of malarkey." That's why you look for independent corroboration, ways of verifying facts, logical fallacies, and so forth. Training people in these techniques used to be a standard part of education, and the same techniques that work for news articles also work for academic literature and other kinds of non-fiction writing.
That said, there are 4 kinds of dishonesty that commonly find their way into the news:
1. Dishonest sources: The source says something, and rather than going through the "could this be malarkey?" process (which is slow) the reporter dutifully writes it down and types up the story to get it out as quickly as possible. Sometimes reporters intentionally don't look too carefully, because not questioning a source makes it more likely that source will talk to that reporter again, and having a collection of sources that will talk to you is very valuable for a reporters' career. They can also fall victim to prank callers [slate.com] and even prank organizations [youtube.com].
2. Dishonest reporters: The sources are honest, but the reporter is intentionally misrepresenting what they said to match the reporters' own biases. Or, in some cases, the reporter makes up sources that agree with them, put words in the mouths of other people, and otherwise create an impression that was never true. This can happen without the knowledge or approval of the editors. For example, Judith Miller's completely false reporting related to Iraq's WMDs.
3. Dishonest editors: The reporter did their job well and wrote a good story solidly based on evidence. The editor then changed the story to be dishonest to match the editors' own biases. Here's an example from the New York Times [salon.com].
4. Dishonest organizations: In this case, not only are none of the reporters honest, the editors / managers know it and expect it. Reporters who attempt to actually write honest reports get stifled and/or fired. That sort of thing is standard practice for Cosmopolitan, for example.
There are also of course honest mistakes, too. It's entirely possible that Pons & Fleischmann actually thought they had working cold fusion, for example.
The recent complaints about "Fake News" were originally so-called "mainstream" organizations calling out dishonest organizations (their motivations were suspect, since it's not like they were entirely honest either). But since the term was coined, it provided a convenient cop-out to anyone wanting to discount any information not matching their preconceptions, what it now usually means is "I'm resolving my cognitive dissonance by discarding this source of information without any kind of serious consideration."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @05:03PM
3. Dishonest editors: The reporter did their job well and wrote a good story solidly based on evidence. The editor then changed the story to be dishonest to match the editors' own biases. Here's an example from the New York Times [salon.com].
Surely you realize your example is weak tea, right?
Reading your own link makes it clear that all of the changes were to pure opinions - replacing one set of opinions with another. That's not about "evidence" at all.
How about an example that matches your rhetoric? Actual dishonesty about facts rather than disagreements of opinion?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @05:14PM (3 children)
You misspelled Fox News. No need to thank me and you're welcome.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bradley13 on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:56PM (2 children)
Fox News? Fun to pick on them, sure, because they do this. biasing stories toward the right. Most other news organizations do exactly the same thing, only in the opposite direction.
Here's an example that most people will know: Remember Trayvon Martin [biography.com]. Follow that link, look at the picture. That's the picture that was all over the news at the time. Of course, that's a picture from when he was 12, not 17. Why? Because a 17-year-old black guy wearing a hoodie [spin.com] isn't cute, in fact, looks a lot more threatening. Virtually the entire MSM was united in their effort to drum up sympathy for Trayvon, and using a picture of him as a cute kid was part of that. Truth was not of interest, it was all about drumming up racial outrage.
So, yeah, Fox News integrates bias into their reporting. So does ABC, CBS, CNN, Reuters, the NY times, the Washington Post, and the entire rest of the media establishment. I don't trust any of them to present facts neutrally.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @07:18PM (1 child)
You are complaining about the one time a black victim doesn't get the least flattering photo used in all the reporting about him.
Just how fragile in your whiteness are you? [twitter.com]
> Virtually the entire MSM was united in their effort to drum up sympathy for Trayvon, and using a picture of him as a cute kid was part of that.
Versus the alternate media which used alternate photos of entirely different people. [christandpopculture.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:59AM
He picked a racial one. But the whole media is full of that shit. I have come to the conclusion you can not figure out what they are saying unless you know their pre-bias they are going to spin it with. Hell one station had a 'no spin zone'. I think they could have powered the entire state of california from the spin out of that show.
Make no mistake. None of the news orgs are in it to tell you the truth. They are telling you 'their narrative' (their words, not mine). Last year was Christmas for the news orgs. Now they need to make sure you are properly outraged so you do not tune out. Notice how fox kicked out its highest rated dude? Over what? The advertisers said 'he needs to go'. You are not paying the bills the advertisers are. The stations are making sure you are properly outraged to sell you shit in commercials every 15 mins. The easy one is a cheesy joke from the 80s 'found out after commercial break'. Berma shave.