Fake news: an insidious trend that's fast becoming a global problem
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The war on "fake news" bothers me. The Ron Paul Institute & Wikileaks, both won a badge of honor by being claimed to be "Fake News" and "Russian Propaganda" in the Washington Post's "news" section.
Sources: [Article in question](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-prop...)
[The Source that Article Cites](http://www.propornot.com/p/the-list.html)
Truly shameful journalism by the Washington Post.
"Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media."
And this disclaimer at the bottom.
Sure, I agree with you, it's a problem - actually, the article I linked to doesn't deny that. In fact, it actually says that in the title.
From the article I linked:
> WikiLeaks emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta implicated several mainstream media journalists in colluding with the Clinton campaign.
> In 1983, 50 corporations controlled most of the media in the United States. By 2000, that number had dropped to six corporations
What's scary is the US media is trying to marginalize independent media, for reasons of erroneous reporting, however they're also guilty and have been caught red handed of "fake news."
The increasing monopoly on disseminating information to the public, along with declining press freedoms, declining freedom of speech and evidence the US Gov't is engaging in propaganda inside the US is all a very scary and disturbing trend.
Technology won't matter too much anymore if our civil liberties are gone.
These are good points @wallace_f.
"Technology won't matter too much anymore if our civil liberties are gone."
Yes.
It really makes it hard to know what to believe. I mean, if you read a post from the "Denver Tribune" you know that's fake, since there is no such outlet. But if you read something on CNN or MSNBC, why would you believe it when you know about the various shady schemes going on where journalists and politicians conspire with each other behind the scenes, etc? Or if a paper reports "numbers" (jobs data, climate data, etc.) from the government, why believe those number are real?
The more you think about it, the harder it is to take anything at face value. In the end, it takes a lot of work, that most people probably aren't willing to do, to try and filter this stuff out. I mean, you can read/watch/listen to news from multiple sources, and look for the commonalities, or analyze news with an eye for known existing biases, etc. Or if you're equipped to do so, you can do you own statistical analysis on the numbers your given and see if they make sense. But realistically, how many people are going to expend all that effort?
Good point. This is why knowing who writes the articles and knowing sources matter. When a serious news article is written, journalists cross-check the facts. In the Watergate scandal, Woodwood/Bernstein used three different sources for each assertion. [0] The source, "Deep Throat" who remained anonymous for many years was the deputy director of the FBI at the time.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Role_of_the_...