Labeling fact-check articles in Google News
blog.google
blog.google
Expect copious amounts of this: http://i.imgur.com/1Y0sN6b.png
Just use ClaimReview and my-agenda-is-the-truth.com can be put in front of the eyes of millions of people who only read the title.
They're not saying "Other Opinions", they're saying "Fact Check".
The need for sites like snopes and all the other fact checking sites shows that most people do in fact believe everything they read on the Internet, especially if it aligns with their existing biases.
That's one of the reasons why the Coen brothers included the "this is a true story" thing - they wondered how many people would believe it the film was true if they put a simple bit of text at the beginning.
The Claim: Trump says Clinton 'acid washed' her email server.
The Truth: Clinton's team used an app called BleachBit;
she did not use a corrosive chemical.Trump: "Hillary washed her money."
Media: "Wrong! Hillary laundered her money."
And Donald Trump himself clearly did believe that. This comment[0] from yesterday has his full quotes explaining it all, so I won't bother repeating it here.
But then you notice a trend of similar things happening over and over and over and over and over...
1. on the one hand, official reports suggested that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction
2. on the other hand, those reports were fabricated or based on false evidence
Any 'fact checking' is limited by the information currently available to everyone. Further, not all evidence is presented equally well.
I suppose until 2015 it would have worked the same way fact-checking anything else classified usually does: badly.
For answers to the first question, I suggest you read Tetlock's masterwork on prediction, "Superforecasting". I am still unsure what the answer is to the second question.
Specifically, they used an informant (Curveball[0]) who was later discredited.
However, this still supports my argument that Google's "fact-checking" algorithm will not tell us what's true or not, it will tell us what the prevailing belief is. But that's not what people want -- they want the truth.
I am not sure that people actually want to know what is the truth; maybe one or two percent of the voters want to know the truth, but I very much doubt the number is much higher than that. People probably want to be told that what they believe is the truth when they go to these websites. There is a great deal of work on the subject of political ignorance (and self-deception), but I recommend the recent (and very readable) book "Against Democracy" by Jason Brennan for its summary of current evidence, and a proposed solution.
The first is that some of the intel those agencies were acting on wasn't baseless. (See Operafion Avarice.)
The other is that Hussein's deliberate strategy was to make the world believe he was in possession of WMDs. (Specifically Iran.)
True or not, it worked. So whether it was suicide by cop using a real weapon or a realistic looking fake, it was ultimately still suicide by cop on a global scale. And the more we learn as things become declassified, the more it's looking like his position wasn't entirely a bluff.
(Leaving aside the extraordinary incompetence displayed by SECDEF Rumsfeld, the WH, and numerous other senior officials.)
In the 2000's, we were told that Saddam still had WMD's and was still using them. Today the evidence suggests these claims were false.
I would venture to say that the majority of 'Fact Check' articles are more biased than average articles, as they were specifically written to push or to punish a point of view.
I wonder which sources Google will bless with this new trust symbol? Just kidding! We all know.
Enough of this nonsense. Try reading the actual blog post:
> Publishers who create fact-checks and would like to see it appear with the “Fact check” tag should use that markup in fact-check articles.
Perhaps you should go and check your own "facts" first.
You know they won't, but fake outrage is proven effective, isn't it?
http://web.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-hillary...
This makes me wonder, would it be possible for a group of fact-checkers to successfully sue politicians based on their statements?
Political maneuvering and pivots are one thing, but dredging up UFO type conspiracy theories is really dangerous.
I was puzzled by their tactic for long time until I found answer in Russian book for FSB newcomers: they use massive campaigns of FUD to break trust in victim country (their troll tasks are labeled like «inspire more suspects about government [in target country]», etc.) and to quickly hire agents in enemy organizations. Even USA cannot protect their own citizens from Russian «propaganda» (see case of John Demianuk[2]).
[1]: http://cepa.org/reports/winning-the-Information-War [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk
The corporate media in the west is a lustily willing tool of neocon and neoliberal propaganda itself, no Russians needed. If you have ignored that fact for the last four decades, I wonder how you continue to ignore it in the face of the contents of the daily WikiLeaks dumps?
There is – conspiracy theories notwithstanding – no such group in the west. Sure, there's propaganda, but they can't write the article themselves. They have to work journalists using the same methods as corporate PR instead of faxing over the article they'd like to see.
Are most journalists supporters of the status quo? Yes, of course – because they're a product of that status quo, i. e. society. If you grow up in a western country nowadays, and you get some perspective and your mother didn't drink too much while pregnant, you can't escape the conclusion that despite all flaws, the current system is pretty much the best we've had.
journalists don't ask "the big questions" in every article because we've achieved a level of stability and safety where "asking the big questions" is a losing proposition: Just like I would not agree to have 10% of my genome scrambled, I don't take anyone serious who wants major changes in "the system": the system is sufficiently optimized to make entropy more of a risk than a chance, and even if we may be caught in a local maximum, I'd rather try a bit of hill climbing than subjecting my life to a risky exploration of state space.
Personally, I think we're being slowly boiled.
That just distracts from the actual causes of problems, and actual ways to solve them. It mistakes failures on outcome for flaws in the system. An example: I am fundamentally opposed to the PATRIOT act and warrantless wiretapping. But I don't think it was passed because the Military-Industrial complex controls congress. I believe it was passed in a completely legitimate way by democratically elected politicians voting for something they actually believed in. I also believe that at the time the PATRIOT act would have received overwhelming support from the public. I just think those congressmen are idiots, and the american public is largely idiotic enough to deserve them.
So it doesn't help screaming obscenities at NYT and WSJ reporters. You have to make your actual case to actual people to change anything.
IMHO, you are mismatching regular propaganda with Russian propaganda (AKA Informational War). Please, read linked book above, it contains in depth explanation of the topic by European Union.
As for your other link. I did look at it. Here's a paragraph talking about Russian Television News.
The underlying message is simple: the United States is engaged in a selfish, ruthless bid for world
domination. By implication, anything Russia or any other country can do to resist this is commendable
and justified. It portrays the foundations of modern Euro-Atlantic security—including NATO enlargement
to former communist countries and Western support for Ukraine—as hypocritical and unjust.
[1]: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4056137,00.html
And yes, they are Nukes. They were moved there after the Turkish 'coup'.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/us-moves...