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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: 2) by zocalo on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:34PM (1 child)

    by zocalo (302) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:34PM (#499643)
    No, my "complaint" is that the line between reporting the facts and presenting opinions as such has been blurred to the point that it's becoming harder for people to tell where one ends and the other starts, basically, what I'm suggesting is that MSM needs to reinforce the line between journalism and editorialism again. By all means have the editorials (they're often a useful way to gain insights into what parties with a different point of view are thinking after all), but make it clearer that's what they are - a point of view - and where that point of view is coming from. Wherever possible they should also present multiple points of view and give them equal space to help remove potential for bias; what does a representative of each main involved faction have to say?

    To re-use the example of my different slants on the Vinson carrier group's redeployment, it's the difference between explaining what various terms might mean to help understanding vs. presenting the facts from a single specific viewpoint to the exclusion of others, and possibly even just one faction within that party. The issue isn't with going into background such as what a carrier group actually is and does (or what anerobic nitrogen fixing is, in your example), it's the way they are presenting the facts to reinforce a given agenda, without presenting alternative points of view on equal terms - or at all.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:13PM (#499674)

    > To re-use the example of my different slants on the Vinson carrier group's redeployment,

    It isn't much of an example since you haven't actually provided any ... examples.
    You claim this "blurring" not only exists but is so common that its difficult for people to even discern it.
    So actual examples must abound. Lets see a couple.