Fake News Poll

What is Fake News?

  • Washington Post

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • New York Times

    Votes: 3 30.0%

  • Washington Times

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Fox News

    Votes: 1 10.0%

  • Breitbart

    Votes: 1 10.0%

  • ABC

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Zero Hedge

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Associated Press

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Huffington Post

    Votes: 1 10.0%

  • Infowars

    Votes: 4 40.0%
  • Total voters
    10
  • Poll closed .
What are reliable sources of real news?

I first heard "the Daily Show" characterize itself as fake news. But it would often demonstrate the falsity of MSM.

Various interests have always molded news stories.
 
Infowars is pretty much clickbait, but I would hardly recommend taking anything said in the others at face value. You must be aware of their respective biases when reading any of their articles, otherwise they will try to (usually subtly, but they do get blunt) influence your opinion.
 
Jim_Smith said:
Some sites use a variety of sources some reputable some not. What I try to do is, when possible, click through to get as close to the original source as possible. Then I see if I can find other reliable corroborating sources. Then I go see what the other side says and check their sources and corroborations etc. This sounds hard but with google it isn't too bad. In the end you have to use your own judgment. Of course determining if a source is reliable is not always easy. Often the mainstream media insert their bias in subtle ways or repeat canards that have been debunked long ago. I am always suspicious when they seem to be quoting someone but don't actually use quotation marks.

The most reliable sources, in my opinion, are experts who blog that I have read for a while and have come to trust. By experts I mean people who have a career, like a lawyer who blogs about law, or a scientist who blogs about his specialty. The political bloggers and the news commentators I do not find to be reliable. And you should be most suspicious about stories that agree with your bias since you will be less likely to think critically about them.

On sites like infowars, zerohenge, corbett, I always make sure I understand their sources. Sometimes they are okay, sometimes I don't really trust them.

One thing I find dangerous is scanning headlines without looking at the articles because often the headlines are misleading or the articles are not from reliable sources. Drudge is often bad this way although I do look at the site.
Click to expand...
 
Jim_Smith said:
http://observer.com/2016/11/the-kremlin-didnt-sink-hillary-obama-did/

Democratic panic about Russian disinformation neglects to mention that it was the White House that refused to stop it
...
Nearly a year ago, the State Department created a Counter-Disinformation Team, inside its Bureau of International Information Programs, as a small, start-up effort to resist Russian disinformation. Consisting of only a handful of staffers, it was supposed to expose the most laughable Moscow lies about America and the West that are disseminated regularly via RT and other outlets. They created a beta website and prepared to wage the struggle for truth online.

Alas, their website never went live. Recently the State Department shut down the tiny Counter-Disinformation Team and any efforts by the Obama administration to resist Putin’s propaganda can now be considered dead before birth. Intelligence Community sources tell me that it was closed out of a deep desire inside the White House “not to upset the Russians.”​
Click to expand...
 
The news situation reminds me of Nassim Taleb comparing banks to restaurants. He points out that banks don't/can't pop up organically . . . like you see restaurants do (despite the fact that they're almost always fated for failure statistically) . . . and that this is a bad thing, in the end, for bank options. The MSM here is like the banks. Youtube video-ers and all the smaller news sites remind me more of restaurants: popping up and dying off more often. This is healthy, of course. The hegemony of the MSM is a cancer. Even those with conspiratorial slants that I don't buy into at least get you to look at events in a fresher and more challenging way.
 
Last edited:
Actually, I'm little interested in the concept of 'fake' news.

Much more interesting is: what is 'news'? What one person considers newsworthy may be of no interest whatsoever to another person. Just because certain topics are pushed forward and hence become a de facto definition of what is news, doesn't make it so. The topics which are not even mentioned, not faked, just ignored, may be the real news.
 
Typoz said:
Actually, I'm little interested in the concept of 'fake' news.

Much more interesting is: what is 'news'? What one person considers newsworthy may be of no interest whatsoever to another person. Just because certain topics are pushed forward and hence become a de facto definition of what is news, doesn't make it so. The topics which are not even mentioned, not faked, just ignored, may be the real news.
Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more. Great point. I hardly ever watch "the news" (whatever that is or means) and I don't read much from newspapers now (I used to). I refuse to be wound up and I feel better for it. I'm fed up with whole media pulp machine and the crap it churns out. I don't give a damn what David Beckhams doing, whether Andy Murray has got through to another final or what Stephen Hawking (bless him) thinks is going to happen to the universe. It'd be nice to head up into the hills like Ethan T and leave it all behind. Rant over.

EDIT : I don't suppose my post is much help to Doppelganger but that's how I feel.
 
Last edited:
tim said:
I hardly ever watch "the news" (whatever that is or means) and I don't read much from newspapers now (I used to). I refuse to be wound up and I feel better for it.
Click to expand...
I remember when I was in my late teens I found the news very disturbing and hardly ever watched/listened to/read it. Some years later I felt it (following the news) was almost a 'grown up' sort of thing to do. But nowadays I'm almost back where I started, I hardly follow the news apart from fragments here and there, but I do so for different reasons. If I'm going to invest my time and energy into something, I want to consciously choose what that will be, not abandon responsibility for what I'm absorbing. This is analogous to choosing what food to include in my diet.
 
Last edited:
Typoz said:
Actually, I'm little interested in the concept of 'fake' news.

Much more interesting is: what is 'news'? What one person considers newsworthy may be of no interest whatsoever to another person. Just because certain topics are pushed forward and hence become a de facto definition of what is news, doesn't make it so. The topics which are not even mentioned, not faked, just ignored, may be the real news.
Click to expand...


Before the 2014 midterm election, the white house and state department computers were hacked. The media kept quiet about it to protect the democrats in the elections. Now in 2016, when it can help the democrats, the media is all over the story that the democrats were hacked before the 2016 election. The media were happy trying to influence the elections themselves by suppressing a story in 2014, but are outraged by a story about hackers influencing the election in 2016. Whatever it takes to help the democrats is fine with them. Its all faked news, the news you hear missing suppressed stories, and the news you hear with faked stories.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archiv...ussians-hacked-the-white-houses-computers.php
"REMEMBER WHEN THE RUSSIANS HACKED THE WHITE HOUSE’S COMPUTERS?"
 
Last edited:
New York Times, Before the election:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/u...election-donald-trump.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1


Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and STEVEN LEE MYERSOCT. 31, 2016

WASHINGTON — For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.

Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.​

New York Times, After the Election:

Russia’s Hand in America’s Election
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD DEC. 11, 2016
...
In recent days, the scope and intent of Russia’s suspected involvement in the election has come into sharper focus. New disclosures by American officials now reveal that intelligence agencies concluded with “high confidence” that a desire to undermine American faith in the electoral system morphed into an effort to hurt Mrs. Clinton’s chances. One critical piece of evidence for this assessment was that suspected Russian hackers broke into the computer networks of both the Republican and Democratic national committees, but only leaked damaging emails from the latter.
​

(I posted elsewhere that the reason dirt on republicans wasn't circulated was because there was no dirt.)
Jim_Smith said:
Republican e-mails were hacked and posted on-line. Why was all the dirt on republicans suppressed? There was no dirt.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/291317-gop-emails-leaked-on-site-connected-to-russian-hackers
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top