On Second Thought …
After reading this article in today’s NYT detailing how things unfolded in the theater before, during and after the Hamilton performance on Friday evening, I’ve concluded the obvious: that the cast and crew members and the overwhelming number of audience members are paid, professional protesters.
Some are speculating that Trump/Pence were trolling to obscure news of the Trump University case settlement. They might be right. It certainly didn’t get much prominence in news coverage.
“Fake news” and no mention of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s masterpiece published by Rolling Stone?
Be careful how you write your “fake news” because thanks to defamation laws under certain conditions the perpetrators can be sued into bankruptcy.
Wow. You seriously don’t know the difference between fake and wrong? Okay, here it is: Fake means fabricated. Wrong means erroneous, inaccurate. So all fake news is erroneous—wrong—but not all erroneous, inaccurate news was faked. And not all people who pass along fabricated news know that they’re passing along fabricated news. Which is the point about Facebook and fake news.
Erdely believed someone who told her a fabricated story. That person herself fabricated the story, just as the original source of the fabricated news on Facebook provided. Erdely reported the fake news, believing it was true; believing it was true, she allowed this person to undermine her basic journalistic practices in investigating thoroughly. Just as most people who pass along fake news on Facebook believe they are passing along accurate information. Again: That’s the problem with fake news spread on Facebook.
So here’s a question: In the last few years there have been a good number of people whose criminal convictions were overturned, based on DNA evidence. Presumably, you would characterize the trial prosecutors as having offered fake evidence, fake news, to the jury. And that those prosecutors are in the same category as prosecutors who put witnesses on the stand who they know are lying, or offering lab evidence that they know is fake or wrong. Right?
One thing that’s become really clear from comments in comments threads on this blog and in comments to articles on regular news media is that many, many angry conservatives—most of them men, all of them radiating arrogance and condescension—who make fake analogies. The difference between fake news and inadvertently erroneous news, and the fake analogies that your ilk offer, is that the fake analogies are transparently wrong.
I’m certainly no fan of false allegations of sexual assault and the near-irrebuttable presumption that the allegations are true, and I’ve written about that here at this blog. But why you analogize that to deliberately fake news put on Facebook for the purpose of skewing an election, or for any other purpose, knowing how gullible so much of the public is, I wouldn’t know. I’m guessing that your analogy is, in the true sense, fake—that you know it’s absurd but think most readers won’t recognize that it is.
But all this helps make another point: that the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement as a matter of course seek to manipulate election outcomes. It’s routine strategy on your side of the political spectrum. It is not, on my side, although I guess your silly attempt at analogy is supposed to suggest that it is. Or something. False equivalence is standard operating procedure for you all, after all.
Everybody knows that Facebook is not a new reporting agency, nor is Twitter. So why would anyone thing that everything tweeted or blogged even at this blog is factual?. I feel that the Main Stream News Media outlets have a duty and responsibility to report the news as fair and balanced and as accurately as possible.Also they are registered as with the FCC to do this. The cable news outlets on the other hand have the same duty and responsibility but are registered as Entertainment News Media outlets with the FCC. Thus able to provide more subjectivity and flair in new reporting . Does giving fair and equal time in news reporting mean being or staying fair and objective? Seems to me that the many one sided reporting by the MSNM threw that out the window of bias in news reporting that to this day is not being held accountable for their biased reporting. What ever happened to equal time or telling both sides of the story when reporting?
Journalism has become the world’s laziest profession. Why research anything if you can copy from twitter or repost a story you saw somewhere else ? Right out in front of my house there are 3 town road workers filling in a single pothole , the 2 guys leaning on push brooms smoking cigarettes are working harder than 99% of the members of the media.
All the major media is awash in fake news , its like a giant dog chasing its own tail , CBS copies MSNBC which references the wall street journal which quotes a source that read something in a tweet. A lot of these idiots are getting paid though. Must be nice .
Bronco
i don’t know what’s going on in front of your house. but when i worked on the road sometimes we had to get off the road to let traffic go by. while waiting to get back on the road, some of us leaned on our shovels. maybe even smoked a cigarette.
i don’t live in Alabama, so what I saw on the road was always honest, often hard work, and sometimes very dangerous.
i suspect you don’t know what you are talking about.
Beverely:
Maybe you ought to read what the Columbia Journalism School had to say about Erdely’s conduct. The only possible explanation for that story getting printed is that the writer / editors wanted an outcome (before even starting) and was willing to print anything to support the point. That is on par with your “fake news”.
Your DNA example is false equivalency so long as the error was not the result of outright fraud but instead was an honest mistake.
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-what-went-wrong-20150405