How Big Is The Fake News Problem?
Discussion
Derek Smith said:
Is this a genuine post? Clinton won more votes of 'the people. while Trump got in via the electoral college - surely more establishment than popular. Hardly a landslide in any case, as fewer than a quarter of the electorate voted for Trump.
Am I due a parrot?
The electoral college IS the way that the president is decided and candidates campaign to win the college, not the popular vote. Had it been a campaign for the popular vote, the election would have been contested by both candidates using a different strategy.Am I due a parrot?
Trump won the overall college of all the states in a landslide and if you look at how various parts of the US voted, Trump was more popular across huge swathes of the continent whereas Clinton won big in the cities on the East and West coasts and in Chicago/Detroit.
i.e. Clinton had close to a 2 million majority on the national popular vote - but in California alone, she had more than a four and a half million majority. [EDIT: Correction, just under four and a half million: http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/californi... ]
If you had believed the mainstream media, trump had a really small share of the vote and virtually nowhere of any consequence was going to vote for him. In fact, on the whole Trump was the more popular candidate in more of the states.
Analysis published shortly after the election here: http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/popular-vote-results...
There are probably more detailed and accurate ones available now but it shows very clearly how utterly wrong the media were in hyping a Clinton victory.
Edited by Lucas Ayde on Wednesday 18th January 12:07
dudleybloke said:
With regards to the mainstream media, its not that fake news is a big problem, more that the omission of stories that don't match this weeks agenda are pushing people to look elsewhere
Yes. For example, what IS happening in Mosul, anyway? Given the wall to wall level of largely made-up coverage devoted to Aleppo, I'd have thought we'd be seeing an equal volume of reports from Mosul yet it's all been strangely quiet from our esteemed free and fair press.
Lucas Ayde said:
Derek Smith said:
Is this a genuine post? Clinton won more votes of 'the people. while Trump got in via the electoral college - surely more establishment than popular. Hardly a landslide in any case, as fewer than a quarter of the electorate voted for Trump.
Am I due a parrot?
The electoral college IS the way that the president is decided and candidates campaign to win the college, not the popular vote. Had it been a campaign for the popular vote, the election would have been contested by both candidates using a different strategy.Am I due a parrot?
Trump won the overall college of all the states in a landslide and if you look at how various parts of the US voted, Trump was more popular across huge swathes of the continent whereas Clinton won big in the cities on the East and West coasts and in Chicago/Detroit.
i.e. Clinton had close to a 2 million majority on the national popular vote - but in California alone, she had more than a four and a half million majority.
If you had believed the mainstream media, trump had a really small share of the vote and virtually nowhere of any consequence was going to vote for him. In fact, on the whole Trump was the more popular candidate in more of the states.
Analysis published shortly after the election here: http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/popular-vote-results...
There are probably more detailed and accurate ones available now but it shows very clearly how utterly wrong the media were in hyping a Clinton victory.
Jinx said:
Check the pressure of the Venus atmosphere and determine that at 1 atmosphere there is no "runaway warming" . Look at the physics and determine that IR radiation at 15 micron levels is unable to change the kinetic energy of gaseous CO2 (temperature of a gas is its kinetic energy and not its vibration energy).
Look at the geology properly and determine the temperature has been higher before, CO2 has been higher before and the rate of change is nothing special (heck no different than the rate of change early last century before any CO2 effect was even theoretically possible) .
Look at GW theory - see that without the proven non-existant "positive" feed-backs the maximum temperature change of doubling CO2 is 1 degree, then you see that there is no CAGW and the AGW if measurable would be a benefit to life on earth.
It is no longer 1988 and James Hansen has been proven wrong.
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=354&p=4Look at the geology properly and determine the temperature has been higher before, CO2 has been higher before and the rate of change is nothing special (heck no different than the rate of change early last century before any CO2 effect was even theoretically possible) .
Look at GW theory - see that without the proven non-existant "positive" feed-backs the maximum temperature change of doubling CO2 is 1 degree, then you see that there is no CAGW and the AGW if measurable would be a benefit to life on earth.
It is no longer 1988 and James Hansen has been proven wrong.
Countdown said:
http://presentations.copernicus.org/EPSC2014-573_presentation.pdfJury on Venus is still out.
Banning publication and fines for any story which doesn't fit the official government version of 'the truth' seems like a very slippery slope to me. I'd far rather we stuck with what we have a wide array of news sources all with their own bias and agenda, that way we can read them all and infer a reasonable idea of what 'the truth' might actually be.
propagandanews narrative would be a little to Orwellian for my liking.
- We know the BBC will try their hardest to be objective but being the London public school arts major bubble that they are will inevitably have a disconnect from the general public living on planet earth. Also they are probably the worst for ridiculous political correctness.
- We know the Guardian etc will take the most PC, morally superior, deliberately blinkered champagne socialist viewpoint on events.
- We know the Torygraph will follow the official party line whatever it might be.
- We know Breitbart etc will take a somewhat hysterical and exagerated attitude towards immigration.
- We know the Sun and the Daily Mail will report complete garbage and most of the facts will be wrong.
The Don of Croy said:
Would Jeremy Corbin's train-seat-debacle count as fake news?
And that photo of all the EU leaders with thousands of supporters in Paris which was taken from an angle that disguised the fact that there were only about 20 people there.
How much of Project Fear was Fake News?
Politicians launching an inquiry into propaganda and untruths. 
MPs are launching a parliamentary inquiry into the "growing phenomenon of fake news". The Culture, Media and Sport Committee said it would investigate concerns about the public being swayed by propaganda and untruths.
MPs are launching a parliamentary inquiry into the "growing phenomenon of fake news". The Culture, Media and Sport Committee said it would investigate concerns about the public being swayed by propaganda and untruths.
grumbledoak said:
"... concerns about the public being swayed by the wrong propaganda and actual truths." more like.
I don't think so. I'm not sure how big a problem it is, but social media is awash with total bulls
t. Everything from Trump saying repubs are gullible morons to Michelle Obama running in the next election. It gets thousands of likes and shares so presumably noone thinks to fact check anything these days.glazbagun said:
grumbledoak said:
"... concerns about the public being swayed by the wrong propaganda and actual truths." more like.
I don't think so. I'm not sure how big a problem it is, but social media is awash with total bullst. Everything from Trump saying repubs are gullible morons to Michelle Obama running in the next election. It gets thousands of likes and shares so presumably noone thinks to fact check anything these days.t.It IS a problem. People believe this stuff. And then do evil based on it.
FredClogs said:
There is no way around this, unfortunately, tackling it with states sponsored education or even state sponsored journalism would only fuel the nonsense coming from those too afraid to seek and sort of intellectual rigor or employ the slightest cognitive dissonance.
Never be afraid to employ your cognitive dissonance Freddy.Edited by anonymous-user on Monday 30th January 15:21
matsoc said:
I don't think it is a big issue. News should always be considered partially fake if you ask me. The few times something reported in the news was describing an event I knew becuase I was personally involved in some way I noticed that the report was inaccurate or totally wrong or false.
Agree with this. All news has at least someone's presentation choice applied to it. Didn't we all learn at school in History to consider sources and their potential for bias? Humans have opinions which inevitably add their slant to everything they perceive and say.Had a couple of Facebook feeds come up today that purport to show a Trump logo with a hidden Swastika in it.
Yep that's true. Because in all the time he has been a major player in US finance, let alone what has happened in the last 18 months no one would have ever managed to pick that one up.
Yep that's true. Because in all the time he has been a major player in US finance, let alone what has happened in the last 18 months no one would have ever managed to pick that one up.
The Hypno-Toad said:
Had a couple of Facebook feeds come up today that purport to show a Trump logo with a hidden Swastika in it.
Yep that's true. Because in all the time he has been a major player in US finance, let alone what has happened in the last 18 months no one would have ever managed to pick that one up.
A major player in us finance? He's a real estate developer.Yep that's true. Because in all the time he has been a major player in US finance, let alone what has happened in the last 18 months no one would have ever managed to pick that one up.
The Hypno-Toad said:
Had a couple of Facebook feeds come up today that purport to show a Trump logo with a hidden Swastika in it.
Yep that's true. Because in all the time he has been a major player in US finance, let alone what has happened in the last 18 months no one would have ever managed to pick that one up.
Yeah, that's what you'd do if you were a closet Nazi about to be made President, hide a swastika on your logo.Yep that's true. Because in all the time he has been a major player in US finance, let alone what has happened in the last 18 months no one would have ever managed to pick that one up.
Sheesh, people are pretty dumb, no wonder the media get away with subtler drivel if that's the level of critical thinking. I suppose once you form a view you embrace anything which supports it, drivel or not; it's difficult for one to admit one is an idiot.
Gandahar said:
Well the Main Stream Media, or MSM, in the USA have been pretty beaten up in the last 12 to 18 months, but at least they have some sort of editorial control. The websites attacking them such as Breibart have their own issues, as this shows, but they are not on the back foot at the moment and raking in the $$ after criticising long term news establishments.
They have less checks and balances on what they can put up on a whim. So they have more chance of getting it wrong. Sometimes badly.
Problem is with these new newsfeeds is that people who read them just want bias confirmation. Does this agree with my world view? Yes it does. This is completely right. Any other source is wrong.
That's a very bad way to get your information. New should be neutral and give you enough information to give you new insights and perhaps challenge what you thought was right.
There needs to be a Journalistic revolution of sorts which sees Journalism back to its roots of reporting facts and not setting narratives. Here the time is ripe for such a news source to establish itself in the center of the nation (literally as well as figuratively)and do just that, report facts. Let the opinions be confined to the opinion segments.
They have less checks and balances on what they can put up on a whim. So they have more chance of getting it wrong. Sometimes badly.
Problem is with these new newsfeeds is that people who read them just want bias confirmation. Does this agree with my world view? Yes it does. This is completely right. Any other source is wrong.
That's a very bad way to get your information. New should be neutral and give you enough information to give you new insights and perhaps challenge what you thought was right.
There needs to be a Journalistic revolution of sorts which sees Journalism back to its roots of reporting facts and not setting narratives. Here the time is ripe for such a news source to establish itself in the center of the nation (literally as well as figuratively)and do just that, report facts. Let the opinions be confined to the opinion segments.
Its a massive problem. Yesterday radio 4 was interviewing the editor of buzzfeed about this. Were they saying that he was partly to blame? No he was there as one of the good guys publishing credible news apparently. Either i missed the sarcasm of the issues is much bigger than i thought for that pile of st click-bait website to be 'credible news'
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