On 12/07/2016 12:01 PM, jim bell wrote:
From: Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn@rushpost.com>
On 12/06/2016 10:46 PM, Razer wrote:
The folks at Weather.com have asked Breitbart to kindly stop using their data to create #FakeNews.
https://weather.com/news/news/breitbart-misleads-americans-climate-change
ROTF!
Good for them. We need more real news, and less fake news. We could agree with THAT, but I happen to believe that the main American sources of fake newsare ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, and many others, called the "MSM".
For sure. Lots of bullshit, there.
We saw in the recent election seasonthat these organizations were tending to avoid covering things that were negative to Hillary Clinton.This was particularly true once the Wikileaks leaks became heavy, a couple of months before theelection, especially. Sure, there's the "fake news" meme, but I don't recall a single email that camefrom the DNC/Podesta/Weiner camp that was claimed to have been "fake": By and large, eventuallythe MSM simply refused to publicize them.
True. And they went out of the way to marginalize Sanders, and to make fun of Trump. Lotta good that did them ;)
That's one big reason I blame the MSM itself for the "fake news" phenomenon. In prior election cycles, generally all the outlets covered all the stories...with a different slant and spin, of course. Anaverage person would have a good clue that a given story was fake if it came solely from a givensource, or 'side'. But in 2016 the public observed that the MSM was studiously limiting its coverage on those issues that happened to be negative to Hillary. I'm not saying that they entirely avoided them, but I think most people would agree that their coverage was completely stilted.
Fake news has always existed. Bias of MSM. Misleading and fake stories pushed by ad agencies. Good ol' fashioned propaganda. And genres devoted to inflammatory stuff of numerous persuasions, from politics to paranormal phenomena to gossip about famous people. What's changed is the Web. The potential reach of the weirdest shit has become mind-boggling. Seed Facebook through enough fake profiles, plus some Twitter, and BAM, your audience is larger than the NY Times'.
As a consequence, it became virtually "normal" for there to be apparently-quite-legitimate stories onone 'side', and not another. This meant that ordinary people no longer had this as a clue to tell themwhich thing to believe, and which not to.
You gotta read a wide range of reports, from independent sources, and think shit through for yourself. A good rule of thumb is asking what the source stands to gain by bullshitting you.
Jim Bell