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The guardian reports on a sobering event in Washington DC.
US police have arrested a man wielding an assault rifle who entered a pizza restaurant that was the target of fake news reports it was operating a child abuse ring led by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her top campaign aide.
[...] The suspect entered the restaurant and pointed a gun at a restaurant employee, who fled and notified authorities, police said. The man then discharged the weapon inside the restaurant. There were no injuries.
[...] [Police] said the suspect during an interview with investigators revealed that he came to the establishment to "self-investigate" Pizzagate, the police statement said. Pizzagate is a baseless conspiracy, which falsely claims Clinton and her campaign chief John Podesta were running a child sex ring from the restaurant's backrooms.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:07PM
Yeah, fake news is a real problem. So what do the readers here think are legitimate sources of real news?
Foxnews
CNN
MSNBC
RT
CBS
HuffPost
Drudge
Aljazeera
SmirkingChimp
TheRegister
BBC
DemocracyNow.org
???
Tell me where do I find the REAL news? (besides soylentnews.org)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:14PM
> Tell me where do I find the REAL news?
You find "real" news anywhere there are journalistic standards and ethics. [wikipedia.org]
No news publication is perfect because omniscience is impossible. And there is a wide range in how well different publishers hold themselves accountable to those standards. But the less those standards are applied, the less "real" their reporting should be considered.
There is a certain strain of political ideology that seeks to discredit the concept of journalistic standards. Don't let those people convince you to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Because once you do that, all that's left is fact-free partisanship.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:40PM
Fake news is NOT simply biased news. Fake news is NOT simply news that might be distorted slightly, or selectively reported to promote an agenda. That may be "propaganda" and it may have its own problems, but it is NOT "fake news."
Fake news is when someone reports something literally false which they know to be false so that it has the appearance of "true" news. Putting a liberal or conservative "spin" on an event doesn't count. Actually making up an event you know didn't happen does. (E.g., "Person A did action B in city C on date D" when you know that none of that exists.)
There are many reasons people write fake news:
(1) Satire or parody (e.g., the Onion)
(2) Commercial gain (e.g., the Balkan teens who figured out they could make more ad money by making up incendiary "news" stories than by rewriting real ones; little different from someone who sells fake watches or fake designer purses)
(3) Propaganda (e.g., making up stuff that didn't happen to get your friends with similar views fired up or outraged)
(4) Hoaxes (e.g., the people who have come forward in recent weeks saying they were really trying to troll political opponents by posting hoaxes and then "outing" them for trusting BS; except this didn't work, because most people never read the debunkings)
All of those things clearly fall under the traditional definition of "fake," where someone knowingly presents a false thing as if it were legitimate. You can criticize the sources you list all you want for being non-objective at times (nobody is perfectly objective), but many of them seem to abide by a general tenet that IF they find out something they published had LITERALLY and OBJECTIVELY false facts in it, they will issue a correction.
Actual "fake news" sources not only don't file corrections -- they themselves often make up the false facts!
Since you don't seem to understand what an actual fake news site looks like, here's one [cnn.com.de]. That site is NOT affiliated or associated with CNN in any way, but it's meant to look like it is. It publishes mostly made up BS (e.g., see this story [cnn.com.de]), which you could spot if you took a few seconds and realized almost all the content on the site is created by one or two "reporters" and there's a lot of ridiculous nonsense in many of the stories. (The clues in this particular story escalate -- first you get references to "Cubs third basemen Paul Horner," except Paul Horner is the hoax author of this site, who embeds his own name in most of his stories. But the story gets even more ridiculous as you keep reading -- eventually getting to quotes from "Fappy the Anti-Masturbation Dolphin.")
This site happens to fall into categories (1) and (4), along with (2). It's created by someone who wants to create hoaxes/satire and wants to make money off of them. But you can see how people who don't look too closely at this site (e.g., when someone sends you a link to a story on there on Facebook or Twitter or whatever) and don't read beyond the headline or first paragraph might think it's not only "legit" but even is CNN.
THAT'S fake news. Except this guy at least goes to the trouble of including clues that it's all BS. Some of the people trying to do (2) or (3) don't do that, so it appears completely legit.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:32PM
I hadn't seen that site before. I appreciate the distinction your making there. Obviously "Donald Trump says Earth is Flat" and "Why you should choose Microsoft over Linux" are preposterous headlines on that site. :-).
There is concern however that the mainstream media's sudden infatuation with "fake news" isn't necessarily aimed only at the types of sites your showing. I have heard that The Washington Post published a list of "fake news" sites (I haven't read it) which included some reliable sources.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:21PM
There is concern however that the mainstream media's sudden infatuation with "fake news" isn't necessarily aimed only at the types of sites your showing.
I agree that there is concern about that. And I too am concerned in all the discussion about Facebook and Google "stopping" fake news, perhaps with overzealous algorithms and "screeners" who might go beyond the actual "fake news" and start targeting sites that are merely slanted the "wrong" way politically or whatever.
But it seems like in many discussions online that everyone who is responding is assuming that sort of censorship is the only possible rationale for all the hubbub about "fake news." What's lost -- to my mind -- are the thousands of sites out there like the one I linked, many of which aren't merely hoaxes or parodies -- they're peddling made-up BS with no planted clues that they're just making it all up, either to get people "fired up" on one political side or the other, or even simply for commercial gain with no concern about the consequences of their actions.
Frankly, I think many who assume this is only about censorship or criticizing political sites don't have a clue about how much ACTUAL "fake news" is out there, and how much of it actually is being spread like wildfire on Facebook and Twitter. I too thought the same as you when I first started seeing these "fake news" headlines even before the election. Then I started actually reading the stories (I know, I know) rather than just reacting to what I assumed was a censorship movement... and I realized how big the actual "fake news" problem is getting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @07:50PM
> I have heard that The Washington Post published a list of "fake news" sites (I haven't read it) which included some reliable sources.
Why haven't you read it?
I am serious. You are going to the effort of citing an article you have not actually read as proof of your conclusions.
Why don't you think that's not fucked up?
Is your standard of proof now just hearsay?
Its exactly that kind of sloppy thinking which promulgates fake news.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday December 06 2016, @10:13PM
You know, that's what I thought was the definition of "fake news", as well: news that is fake.
I've been reading several comments on this story, and yours was the first one that made sense.
I've actually started wondering: "is there some new kind of definition of "fake news", that I'm not aware of???"
Many of the other comments are difficult to understand for me. Like I'm missing some kind of common background knowledge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @10:34PM
Many of the other comments are difficult to understand for me.
Like I'm missing some kind of common background knowledge.
There is a mindset that conflates mistakes and editorial perspective with deliberate lies.
I think it might be a defense mechanism to avoid an honest examination of how and why they've been suckered, a sort of "the liars I trust are no worse than the liars you trust" deflection. Its corrosive because it puts facts in the backseat to partisanship. I think it is psychologically more comfortable to tear down others than to do a honest self-examination of one's own failings, especially ideas that you have made significant personal investment in. Its almost like a defense of their personal identity.
(Score: 1) by Kalas on Saturday December 10 2016, @02:29AM
Surprisingly given the name, I find the Christian Science Monitor a great source of news written with little to no discernible bias either way.