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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

This right here is the problem:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-25/washington-post-nam...

When the idea of "fake news" is used to discredit sites like ZeroHedge and WikiLeaks as "Russian propaganda", you know it's not about fakeness/truth, but only about control - in other words, propaganda.

(I'm not saying that ZeroHedge is a quality site, far from it - but they've always been anti-establishment, pro-conspiracy theory, and they haven't changed their stance during this election campaign at all.)

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"Which is not to say readers should accept everything, or anything, at face value. Quite the contrary: as we have warned since the very start, our main intention, while informing readers, has been to make them think critically - to present a different side to things, even if it is ultimately dead wrong. For pete's sake, this a blog after all, not some established pillar of the fourth estate with editors, sub-editors, reporters, journalists, crossword puzzle makers, back office, and so forth. " http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-24/personal-note

No, it's not. It's a problem you have. It's not the same problem as fakenews, which is a form of webspam and has nothing to do with the case for Wikileaks being an instrument of Russia.

Clearly, "fakenews" is a problem only some people have - otherwise, it would be considered a "problem" even before the election!

It's very similar to "election fraud" - before the results, when Democrats were confident they'd win, Trump warning about election fraud was branded a lunatic, a threat to democracy, now we have the same situation on the other side but suddenly it's "the right thing to do" (smart and trustworthy people, e.g. Nate Silver, have dismissed the claims).

The bias is obvious for all neutral people. If a problem is only a problem when you have it, it's not a real problem, merely propaganda.

No. The story is about fakenews. It's not about whatever other problems you might have. Talking about a specific problem doesn't mean we're disposing of other problems. On the other hand, requiring us to talk about other problems before we discuss a specific problem is a form of censorship (or trolling, which often has censorship as its ultimate aim).

Yep, thats the strategy for msm to discredit independent and other news sources. Too bad they destroyed their brand during election.

It's clever branding I give them that, but I doubt it flies after election cycle meltdown.

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