Today's problem is that Trump is using the #fakenews label to attack reputable sources that call him out on his lies. This is an attempt to establish a false equivalence, and it's the core issue. It's extremely damaging to American democracy.
As many reputable news organizations (including the BBC) have pointed out, Trump is taking the same approach as Hitler, Mao and other dictators, and going directly against the line that previous US presidents have taken (at least, in public).
Who you're trying to reach is up to you. I believe that using the term "fake news" is very unhelpful. At this point it's effectively without definition except as a perjorative dismissal, so you'll nearly always be discussing something with a different meaning for each party unless care is taken to define it upfront. If you're anti-Trump, you're continuing a meme used effectively by Trump himself. This meme is being used to further polarize, every side pointing to the others as being at fault.
Edit to add: Please don't misinterpret this to mean I don't think critical reading of news and calling out misrepresentation of facts or outright lies is important. This is very important. Doing so under the banner of fake news distracts so much from this effort that it works against it.
True, but it's the term Donald Trump uses to try to discredit sources that are not fake news. This is a matter of fact.
> At this point it's effectively without definition except as a perjorative dismissal
No. Fake news is completely made up news that is designed to look like real news in order to deceive readers, usually for profit. Examples: Trump was born in Pakistan, Pizzagate, George Soros paid protesters etc.
This is also a matter of fact.
I fear I'm in a similar situation with respect to this argument; at least in terms of my presentation, so I'll leave it at that. My sincere best wishes.
QUOTE:
Fake news is made-up stuff, masterfully manipulated to look like credible journalistic reports that are easily spread online to large audiences willing to believe the fictions and spread the word. In 2016, the prevalence of political fact abuse – promulgated by the words of two polarizing presidential candidates and their passionate supporters – gave rise to a spreading of fake news with unprecedented impunity. Fake news: Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a pizza shop. Fake news: Democrats want to impose Islamic law in Florida. Fake news: Thousands of people at a Donald Trump rally in Manhattan chanted, "We hate Muslims, we hate blacks, we want our great country back." None of those stories – and there are so many more like them – is remotely true.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/dec/13/...
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/02/trump-4-politi...
Note that there are many such examples. Another exceedingly silly piece:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jan/...
It's almost like a child wrote it. It "fact-checks" a reasonable guess.
National Review certainly has a political bias, but they're generally pretty good with keeping contact with reality, factually. The fact that they arrive at different conclusions is no reason to try to blacklist them.
I read through the NR article, and while the attempts to contact the authors of the fact check was lacking, I don't see the problem in the fact check itself.
ACA was basically saying you can't discriminate against any state licensed and certified health practitioner.
While I think homeopathy is bullshit, I don't see how else to do it, and claiming it gives "elevated legitimacy to alternative medicine" is misleading at best.
It's really far fetched as an attempt to show politifacts questionability.
I'm more inclined by the lack of evidence to the contrary to consider them generally trustworthy.