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 .
The problem with the news media is that they all have an ulterior motive. They want to sell advertising or increase ratings. So they construct stories and headlines to get you to consume their news services. That means they use psychology to mess with your head. They are not producing news because they want you to be well informed, successful, and happy. They want to push their political agenda on you, sell advertising, and advance their careers.
 
"Fake news" is fake news.

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016...n-fake-news-propaganda-campaign-started-left/

Sharyl Attkisson said fake news is a “propaganda campaign” to censor truth started by politicians like President Barack Obama and Clinton ally the founder of Media Matters Democratic operative David Brock.

Attkisson said, “Before about September 13, if you searched the news you won’t find many or any mentions of fake news. But as soon as there was, in my view, a propaganda campaign to put this on the plate of the American public, the news media and politicians including President Obama went hog wild with the term and it started making headlines every day. It wasn’t a new invention.”

“And yes, fake news exists but the idea that there is this huge campaign behind it to controversialize certain reports and censor, in my view, certain views is a propaganda campaign,” she continued. “And I think when David Brock, Hillary Clinton’s ally from Media Matters, announced that he would be the arbitrator, or help be the arbitrator, of so called fake news, that sort of sealed the deal that the whole thing is a propaganda effort and a political effort, not really an honest effort to seek out facts, but more to determine for other people what truth they should hear.”


 
"Fake news" is fake news.

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016...n-fake-news-propaganda-campaign-started-left/

Sharyl Attkisson said fake news is a “propaganda campaign” to censor truth started by politicians like President Barack Obama and Clinton ally the founder of Media Matters Democratic operative David Brock.

Attkisson said, “Before about September 13, if you searched the news you won’t find many or any mentions of fake news. But as soon as there was, in my view, a propaganda campaign to put this on the plate of the American public, the news media and politicians including President Obama went hog wild with the term and it started making headlines every day. It wasn’t a new invention.”

“And yes, fake news exists but the idea that there is this huge campaign behind it to controversialize certain reports and censor, in my view, certain views is a propaganda campaign,” she continued. “And I think when David Brock, Hillary Clinton’s ally from Media Matters, announced that he would be the arbitrator, or help be the arbitrator, of so called fake news, that sort of sealed the deal that the whole thing is a propaganda effort and a political effort, not really an honest effort to seek out facts, but more to determine for other people what truth they should hear.”



And here is Sharyl Attkisson's brilliant critique of the heavily biased and badly distorted in mainstream news reporting of the scientific controversy about possible vaccines-autism link.
 
Just to give this a pov from a different perspective:
Theres currently a huge discussion going on in germany about fake news. Politicians are scared that fake news could influence the upcoming elections next year. Especially the established CDU of Merkel is concerned by that. And of course, the public opinion is that the internet (e.g. facebook and others) are the real problem when it comes to fake news - established media channels like newspapers or TV programs dont get mentioned as much as them, even though they are propably just as guilty. The whole discussion is getting linked to the ongoing debate in the USA. It seems that this whole thing is spreading on a global scale.
 
I think the elites are playing up the fake news scare in order to give their own version of the news precedence and to suppress other points of view. There have always been alternate points of view, in the past they were mostly newspapers and books and they could influence elections. What has changed in the modern era is the development of cable news which led to a 24/7 news cycle and then the development of the internet which took the power to determine what was "news" away from the elite and which gave more people access to alternate points of view.

The mainstream news was never objective, but the 24/7 cycle led to greater sensationalization (a form of fakery) because the news organizations, to attract viewers around the clock and to cope with competitors, had to increase the level of fear, anger, and hate they generated. The elites liked this because the increase distress gave them more control over people. If you can control someone's emotions, you can control their behavior.

But then the internet came along and threatened that control. Drudge is often credited with taking the initiative in determining what is news away from the mainstream sources when he broke the Monica Lewinski story that the mainstream sources were suppressing. That opened pandora's box. The elite lost control of what were considered the important topics of the day. The fake news scare is an effort by the elite to regain control of what is considered news by suppressing alternative points of view. It is not really about suppressing fake news, mainstream sources are also largely fake - stories are biased, sensationalized, and twisted to push a political agenda, while other stories are suppressed. The fake news scare is about giving the elite's version of fake news precedence over alternative points of view.
 
Last edited:
It will be interesting to see how Facebook's plan to test a system of fact checking news stories works out. They are planning to add warning labels to disputed stories, you can click on the label to see why it is disputed.

Ideally this will show how fake the mainstream news is. If they don't label the news fairly, hopefully it will create a sufficient debate to wake up people to the problem of bias. Maybe the 3rd party fact checkers will get educated too.

Interestingly, the recent story about a boy dying in a Santa's arms was originally posted as true, then it was thought a hoax, then it was verified as true. Good luck with that Facebook. They are going to be surprised how often this happens.

What about stories based on "unnamed sources"? On what basis will they judge them?

I also wonder how will they treat news on paranormal phenomena?

And people will start testing their methods with stories, real and fake, designed to show flaws in the system.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/12/15/facebook-introduce-warning-labels-stories-deemed-fake-news/

In the announcement, Facebook confirmed that it will be working alongside organizations that are signatories of “Poynter’s International Fact Checking Code of Principles.”

Business Insider reports that these organisations will include the likes of Snopes, ABC, Politifact, and FactCheck.org, all of which have records of left-wing partisanship — particularly throughout the 2016 election.

They have been suppressing fake news for some time already:

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061
Historically, we have relied on our community to help us understand what is fake and what is not. Anyone on Facebook can report any link as false, and we use signals from those reports along with a number of others -- like people sharing links to myth-busting sites such as Snopes -- to understand which stories we can confidently classify as misinformation. Similar to clickbait, spam and scams, we penalize this content in News Feed so it's much less likely to spread.

When snopes was wrong
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=when+snopes+was+wrong&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
 
Last edited:
I watched the Channel 4 news last night, they have been ranking Aleppo high on their priorities. There was a film about 'victims' in a hospital looking well beaten up, there was blood everywhere on the floor and the victims. But something smelled wrong. The Ch4 voiceover was spewing pure 'sad stories' about them, all it needed was some sad classical music to go with it. This morning I've seen a post on Facebook claiming that some of the 'victims' are followers of the rebels, with thousands of social media followers! Fucks sake!!!!Somethings seriously wrong with our media. Either Ch4 are naive idiots or there's an agenda. Which is it????
 
Fake news would be something that doesn't happen. I don't think any of the above report fake news, though I suspect what gets reported is biased in some fashion or another.
 
My instinct tells me otherwise Sci.

What I mean is fake news would be deliberate attempts to report on things that don't happen, where the publisher of said news knows it's a lie.

I don't think any of the listed groups does this. OTOH, my guess is many groups commit themselves to unstated fallacies and stop following the sources of a story (or just delete a story sometimes) that doesn't go inline with the reality tunnel the news appeals to. So we have continuous reconfirmation of particular worldviews + advancement of political agendas + financial stakes.

Was talking to a friend about this at a recent happy hour, on how this relates to two core philosophical tenets we discuss on the forum in terms of post-mortem survival - the idea of the One from whom the Many come versus the core I-self of the individual as transcendental. There's a needle's eye to be threaded here if the goal is news that commits itself to reporting from, as Nagel calls it, the "View from Nowhere".
 
An interesting tidbit: Facebook is planning to deal with "fake news" by having its own users flag/label the content as spurious... That won't end well. Majorities are usually composed of a mass of people that are incapable of fully understanding advanced concepts and a fair share of outright idiots. It's very predictable that various groups, especially political groups, will try to use this to get rid of the news published by the opposition.
 
Was talking to a friend about this at a recent happy hour, on how this relates to two core philosophical tenets we discuss on the forum in terms of post-mortem survival - the idea of the One from whom the Many come versus the core I-self of the individual. There's a needle's eye to be threaded here if the goal is news that commits itself to reporting from, as Nagel calls it, the "View from Nowhere".

Que?

Haha I don't follow a word of that. ;)

I'm a simple guy. To me, filming fake victims and fake? dead people with dust covering them all and blood (fake?) too, is what I call fake news. :)
 
Que?

Haha I don't follow a word of that. ;)

I'm a simple guy. To me, filming fake victims and fake? dead people with dust covering them all and blood (fake?) too, is what I call fake news. :)

Sorry Steve I was responding to the OP. Can you give me some links about this fake victims and fake dead people story?

On the quoted part I mean news is confirmation for one's world view, which in turn has become part of the assumed foundation of one's being. I think if news' goal is the "View from Nowhere", meaning the place that attempts to transcend bias it will be necessary to think about both our unity with all things as well as the fact that the I-self can survive any of us confronting news that threatens our world views.

Our blight is ideologies - they are the long-expected Antichrist!

-CG Jung
 
Note the email asking if the CIA was "responsible" for, meaning responsible for fabricating, the story about Assad's wife buying a fondue set off Amazon. "If this is you guys, nice work. If it's real, even better."

A reporter with the L.A. Times who lets the CIA edit and approve his stories is telling them they did a good job by (as far as he knows) completely making shit up and passing it off as "news."

What should this casual comment tell us regarding fake news?

https://theintercept.com/2014/09/04...ail&utm_term=0_575dd19741-65486746dc-41948209
 
Last edited:
Just smells fishy to me.

Even if I'm wrong and these are tragic victims, the video still stinks of hypocrisy and bias. I used to think Ch4 was ok as an alternative to BBC, but I honestly feel sickened by this bias and so called sympathy for this group of 'victims' this video symbolises.They could produce such a video every night about different sad victims from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan Yemen, Syria and many more. I detest the syrupy sweet sickly voiceover that just begs our hearts to cry for these individuals. I refuse to cry crocodile tears on demand from film which has no genuine heart behind it, and also possibly in front of the camera too.

Intent is everything. This video is poison even if they are genuine victims.
 
Back
Top