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Fake News Challenge

fakenewschallenge.org

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Re: Fake News Challenge

#131

Post by enraged_camel »

enknamel wrote: post #107
enraged_camel wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Depending on where you get your news you were told there was a Muslim ban... According to Rudy Giuliani, when Trump first announced it, he called it a Muslim ban, so... https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/30/headlines/trump_favor...

I'm not arguing for or against the executive order. It's just a very recent and big example of news organizations shaping how the population thinks. Every news organization is spinning this to fit their narrative.

There is no spin as far as I can tell. I read New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate and Salon. They are simply reporting the facts, along with how the EO is affecting travelers.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#132

Post by davidivadavid »

jacquesm wrote: post #115
rdtsc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The day we stop calling the side we don't agree with fascists just because we don't agree with them is the day we might start winning.

A long quote from wikipedia: "Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete, and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to f…

> Unfortunately usually the opposite happens and instead the recipient will wall themselves off from the provider of the message.

Probably because it often feels like that's the intent of people name-calling others "fascists."

The best quote about fascism is and remains: "In Italy, fascists divide themselves into two categories: fascists and antifascists."

Re: Fake News Challenge

#133

Post by garanduss »

wybiral wrote: post #110
digler999 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A significant portion of the electorate has been drinking from the well and cannot be reached. How is that any different than people in the Bible Belt who believe the earth was made in 7 days ? Or elderly people who become vulnerable and fall prey to exploitation (because they believe phone scams, or sob stories from strangers, etc) ? (Edit: or young people who think they're going to grow up and be an astronaut or…

> How is that any different than people in the Bible Belt who believe the earth was made in 7 days ? I see no difference there but I'm not sure that I get the point. > I really didn't appreciate how they pushed the "Russia HACKED the election" narrative. I never got the impression that those news orgs were saying that actual voting counts were being hacked. But the emails were hacked and leaked. They jumped the gun o…

The point is that "election hacking" is an intentionally misleading phrase. A Pew poll found that, after this media circus, half of Hillary voters believed that Russia had tampered with vote tallies.

The NYT and WaPo (among others) are incredibly biased, and much of the problem is that their support base is too sheltered to understand how. I've said more on this in previous comments.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#134

Post by Kenji »

padseeker wrote: post #53

The problem is not "fake news". The problem is people are treating the news like a product in the capitalist paradigm. If you don't like the way your local bakery makes their bread you go somewhere else. Now if the media reports on something you don't like someone else will tell you what you want to hear. This issue happens on both sides of the political spectrum BUT it does seem to be a lot worse on the conservative…

Now if the media reports on something you don't like someone else will tell you what you want to hear.

I don't see the problem. I don't want to hear lies, therefore I create a demand for true news. I don't need a nanny facebook/google/state telling me what news I like, and neither does the rest of the population.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#135

Post by wybiral »

garanduss wrote: post #133
wybiral wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is that any different than people in the Bible Belt who believe the earth was made in 7 days ? I see no difference there but I'm not sure that I get the point. > I really didn't appreciate how they pushed the "Russia HACKED the election" narrative. I never got the impression that those news orgs were saying that actual voting counts were being hacked. But the emails were hacked and leaked. They jumped the gun o…

The point is that "election hacking" is an intentionally misleading phrase. A Pew poll found that, after this media circus, half of Hillary voters believed that Russia had tampered with vote tallies. The NYT and WaPo (among others) are incredibly biased, and much of the problem is that their support base is too sheltered to understand how. I've said more on this in previous comments.

I found the Pew poll regarding Russian involvement in the email hack but not one involving direct hacking of tallies. Do you have a link?

I followed the election from a variety of sources (WaPo and NYT included) and never got that impression. But I agree that it was a circus from all angles.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#136

Post by untog »

woah wrote: post #102
MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want to make you accept their interpretation of the facts. Please, describe to me how someone can convey pure unadulterated facts in language, without imposing an "interpretation" on them. It's an absurd fantasy. There's no possibility for a disembodied, perfectly objective voice conveying facts. So yes, in a sense, every news org favors a certain interpretation of the facts. But these subtle variations used t…

I'm personally opposed to almost everything Trump is trying to do, but don't act like it's only a problem on the right. Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the left wing newspapers were reporting wild unsubstantiated rumors of a full-on Moscow piss orgy?

> Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the left wing newspapers were reporting wild unsubstantiated rumors of a full-on Moscow piss orgy?

Well, that's actually a pretty interesting example to look at. For one, the dossier concerned contained a lot of accusations to do with members of Trump's team travelling to Eastern Europe to meet with Russian contacts, suspect financial transactions and the like - you yourself are doing it a disservice by describing it only as rumours of a "piss orgy".

But irrespective of that, the dossier had been known about for months. But the media organisations didn't report on it, specifically because they couldn't verify the information contained within it. But then Buzzfeed decided to publish it anyway, and at that point any responsible news organisation is left in a pretty impossible position - either don't report on the thing everyone is talking about, or report unsubstantiated accusations.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#137

Post by untog »

enraged_camel wrote: post #96
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the parent but I began reading the New York Times every morning at the age of 12, wondering to myself "why is there so much speculation going on around Iraq and WMDs? We haven't found anything so why does everybody want to invade?" I still like the Times to an extent, but they like many other papers get it wrong from time to time. Doesn't mean I should leave and never look back, but instead I have taken…

The difference is that when NYTimes gets something wrong, it is not out of sheer malice and desire to mislead people. It's because their sources were wrong and the journalists didn't do a good enough job verifying the information. Fake news on the other hand are literally made up lies. The overwhelming majority of fake news articles have no basis in reality, period. They tend to be written by people who want nothing…

You're getting downvoted for this and I don't think you should be. The recent flood of fake news is very different to honest reporting that fails, and even very different to opinion-led reporting that presents a side. It is deliberately factually incorrect news, created and promoted simply to get clicks and profit from advertising. There is absolutely no journalistic merit to it.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#138

Post by fullshark »

JacobJans wrote: post #113

You'll notice so many posts here that deny the existence of fake news, or attempt to redefine it as "bias." Frankly, I find it disturbing that so many well educated people aren't able to objectively think about an actually objective problem. The fake news that started the concept of "fake news" is not a subjective problem. The problem is literal invention of facts not even related to reality, combined with the mass d…

I think the issue is a lot of the complaints about fake news are not of the objectively false stuff, but of the kind where you report what some crackpot analyst says. It's objectively true that "PERSON X THINKS THIS" but it used to be journalists wouldn't print that because it was nonsense. For an example of this consider the Trump intelligence report or the Pizzagate analysis. In the internet age a lot of these analysts are getting a voice and people with agendas are listening/promoting those voices.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#139

Post by skc »

So it seems logical to me that someone could become very, very, very rich if they built a news platform that was effectively "fake news" free.

Even if all the platform did was accept "news stories" and transparently verify it's authenticity I think people would clamor for it.

Of course the devil is in the details because that would require proper investigative journalism, which may be prohibitively expensive.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#140

Post by MikeGale »

From my observation the majority of news media manipulate much of what they report in significant ways. When they're reporting on politicians they're generally slanting something already manipulated.

Where the facts lie in many subjects is not immediately obvious.

Algorithms like this are a good idea provided that they're used wisely. I expect them to detect conflicts between treatments (with false + and false -), which would be useful to humans making their own judgements. Inflicting their results, without a chance of additional vetting, would not be a good idea.

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