Why is Mail Online going after the fact checkers?

From New Statesman

http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/12/man-who-hates-libe...

> In the files of the Press Complaints Commission, you will find records of 687 complaints against the Mail which led either to a PCC adjudication or to a resolution negotiated, at least partially, after the PCC’s intervention. The number far exceeds that for any other British newspaper: the files show 394 complaints against the Sun, 221 against the Daily Telegraph, 115 against the Guardian. The complaints will serve as a charge sheet against the Mail and its editor.

> This year, [2014] the Mail reported that disabled people are exempt from the bedroom tax; that asylum-seekers had “targeted” Scotland; that disabled babies were being euthanised under the Liverpool Care Pathway; that a Kenyan asylum-seeker had committed murders in his home country; that 878,000 recipients of Employment Support Allowance had stopped claiming “rather than face a fresh medical”; that a Portsmouth primary school had denied pupils water on the hottest day of the year because it was Ramadan; that wolves would soon return to Britain; that nearly half the electricity produced by windfarms was discarded. All these reports were false.

Here's another example: A columnist accused a muslim family of being extremists. That was libel. She tweeted her apology at 2am.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/katie-hopkins-twitt...

I think the apology for incorrect claims should take as much space as the original claim. If you print a 92point headline on the front page that's libellous you should print the apology in 92 point on the front page.

EDIT: And about libel in England. You need to be able to prove what you say is true. In the context of "false news" that doesn't seem to burdensome for newspapers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law

> Allowable defences are justification (i.e. the truth of the statement), fair comment (i.e., whether the statement was a view that a reasonable person could have held), and privilege (i.e., whether the statements were made in Parliament or in court, or whether they were fair reports of allegations in the public interest). An offer of amends is a barrier to litigation. A defamatory statement is presumed to be false, unless the defendant can prove its truth. Furthermore, to collect compensatory damages, a public official or public figure must prove actual malice (knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth). A private individual must only prove negligence (not exercising due care) to collect compensatory damages. In order to collect punitive damages, all individuals must prove actual malice.

When they print headlines such as "Hurrah for the blackshirts" (1934) or "German Jews pouring into this country" (1939) it's easy to see their fascist history, but that continues today. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between Nazi cartoons and modern day DM cartoons.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/british-media-has-sunk-to-an-al...

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/offended-by-the-daily-ma...

It's unsettling how readily their audience accepts their claims that snopes et al are liberal rags. I've done some due diligence in the past on snopes, and afaik any bias is well within the margin of error from zero.

The narrative is that fact checking is a "globalist"-orchestrated move to suppress what they call the "independent media" in favor of the "MSM" (mainstream media).

I argue that whenever someone spends more time defaming their critics than defending their stances and claims, readers ought to run away. But following these news sources, it seems like most readers are completely trapped in an unfalsifiable narrative. It's really disheartening to think that our current best weapon against this sort of charlatinism is screening content thru fact-checkers. But I do think these platforms are obligated here, and indeed long overdue.

Tom Friedman makes a compelling argument about platforms' responsibilities here: 'Facebook et al want the NYT readership, the NYT page views, but none of the NYT overhead that comes with being accountable for the information they share. And that's bullshit.'

The reality is that Facebook - responding to consumer demand - is partnering up with several commercial fact-checking outfits, in addition to tweaking its algorithm to select from something other than sensational content that generates lots of reactions (not an easy problem). IF those research/fact-checking service suppliers don't do a good job, market theory suggests they'll be displaced by a competitor.

divides people into two classes: 1. people who are allowed to think for themselves and check facts, and 2. everybody else, who must, for their own safety and well-being, have the first class filter what they read.

How does some 'possibly fake' tag on a shared article on social media prevent anyone from thinking for themselves or checking facts? They can still do that by choosing to ignore the 'possibly fake' tag and clicking through to the source and researching it further. You're crafting a narrative here in which people in group 1 restrict the freedom of people in group 2, but that's not actually happening because in reality nobody is being forced or has to give up any options. I'm oddly reminded of the meat industry objecting to country-of-origin labels on the grounds that consumers don't need to know that stuff.

You adopted a very high handed tone to the poster above, saying that you would fact-check their fact-checking, but then you made multiple misrepresentations of that poster's argument, interspersed with groundless claims of your own.