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Comment by gydfi | Hacker News Reader

Because the term "fake news" is about two months old, and no sooner was it invented than people started abusing it well beyond its original definition.

The term was made up to describe completely and deliberately made-up news stories created for lulz or clicks, but immediately expanded to also include news that isn't deliberately falsified but might just be biased, distorted, true yet deceptively phrased, or non-deliberately inaccurate -- and from there used as a general catch-all term for criticising any news source you don't like, whether that's Breitbart or CNN.

There is very little objective news left, and very few unbiased umpires remaining to judge it. I don't think any of us should trust facebook, of all places, to set itself up as the arbiter of what is "fake" and should be censored, as the company's own political views are well known and I don't believe they are likely to be capable of applying consistent standards to both sides.

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There is very little objective news left, and very few unbiased umpires remaining to judge it.

I think part of this comes from the idea that there ever was objective news, which is a myth. Not in the sense that it's all biased editorial pieces, but that there is going to be bias in every story, just from the fact that it's written by a human. What people should keep in mind is how hard the journalist is working against that bias to be objective.

Once people are poisoned with the idea that any bias is bad, coupled with their own biases as readers, varying levels of critical reading skills, and partisans charging the atmosphere, people can be too quick to dismiss everything, rather than being encouraged to read critically and get what they can from news sources.

Similarly, the idea of unbiased umpires. Again, everyone's going to have biases, including those held up as umpires. Those same umpires are likely to hold political opinions as well. Is it even fair to think they don't or shouldn't? What's important is to see how their political beliefs influence their work.

Perhaps I'm too naïve, but I still believe people can do good, unslanted work while holding political beliefs. I'd like to think I can, and I extend that benefit of the doubt to others until they prove to me that it's undeserved. Similar to news sources, I think people have been encouraged to think that this is separation of work product from personal politics is impossible in others.

I think both of these are very real problems, and I'm personally trying to work to improve this as much as I can.

>whether that's Breitbart or CNN.

Wow. CNN is now regarded as being on the end of a political spectrum. What a world we live in. I mean, attempting to be impartial is now a political act. That's crazy.

I don't see the GP making any claims about where they are on the political spectrum, however. If anything, that looks like a list of unreliable news sources to me.

Lest we forget, CNN's credibility came into focus when their role in rigging the debates was discovered. There was an attempt to divert that by claiming nebulously that the emails had been 'altered', but then it was established that they were DKIM validated. CNN's Cuomo also told us that reading Wikileaks is "illegal" only to be contradicted by far more reputable lawyers at Popehat. Incidentally, Cuomo is an attorney and he should know better.

>I don't see the GP making any claims about where they are on the political spectrum, however.

True. It wasn't meant like that. It was more of an observation on how the frame of public debate has shifted.

That's some out-of-context quoting, right there.

Your post's parent's point, in the bit you quoted, is how "Fake news" has become — or is perhaps more accurately a thing certain people are trying to make into — a way of dismissing news sources you don't like.

I don't read any endorsement or disparagement of either source in that post, or even an implication that they're "of a kind", except insofar as some people have painted both with a "fake news" brush, or that "objective" reporting is hard to find, anywhere.

Neither of those claims should be particularly controversial.

I think this is more allusion to the Prez calling CNN FAKE NEWS all the time rather than a value judgement by GP.

There's an argument to be made that CNN smells blood since January 21st and is looking to be the ones that make the kill. The fact that news orgs have to choose coverage priorities is, in itself, political.

Even if the coverage itself is impartial, would 24/7 coverage of Trump be non-political?

Yes. A lot of media critiques try to discern bias in the content. However, bias exists prior to that. What and who is covered is bias. Ignoring a topic could be bias not how the topic is covered.

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