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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:14AM   Printer-friendly
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?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:35PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:35PM (#499309)

    That might just as well be caused by many of those who also check other sources to quickly stop including Fox News in their sources because they come to the conclusion that it provides nothing of value.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:41PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:41PM (#499311)

    Your theory does not account for the fact that Fox News is the most watched 24-hours news network in the country and has been for like a decade.
    What they are doing works. In total contradiction to the theory that "offering opinions" erodes trust, it not only has it built immense trust in Fox, it also appeals to a large number of people.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @03:38PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @03:38PM (#499334)

      They know how to work right-wing authoritarians.

      I can't give Altemeyer credit since The Authoritarians came after Faux News had been going for a while, but somebody must have figured it out. Then they went, "How do we build a media empire pandering to right-wing authoritarian followers?"

      Once you've established yourself as a right-wing authoritarian leader, it's a gravy train.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:50AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:50AM (#499724)

        Note, though, that Altemeyer wrote several books about the right-wing authoritarian personality trait years before the free online book you mention.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @03:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @03:59PM (#499349)

      Maybe the theory needs a slight rework. For those that are interested in getting actual news (defined here as actual facts about what is going on in the world), watching Fox will erode trust in Fox as so much of what Fox calls "news" is non-factual tabloid crap. For those that like tabloid crap, Fox news can happily become their sole source of whatever it is they spew. A lot of people like tabloid crap, Who Knew!. Sadly television "news", and particularly national televison, has become almost all tabloid because the people running the station like profits more than journalism. Actual journalism is expensive and contains news, facts about the world, that people are not going to like. Tabloid is cheap to make (after all, you just need to sit around and pull 'news' out of your orifice of choice), salacious and easily biased in whatever direction you feel like to appeal to your audience (hmm, more profit) or to lead them where you want them to go (hmm, more profits for the extremely wealthy, yum!).