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Things You Notice When You Quit the News

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Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole FUD campaign regarding "Fake News" is comically hypocritical in my opinion. Glenn Greenwald has an excellent article calling them out for it: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/a-clinton-fan-manufactur... Edit: Ironically, that post was doing great until it got flagged. Edit 2: It has been unflagged Edit 3: Flagged again.

Greenwald's "excellent" piece is itself fake news. It deliberately misrepresents the reporting done by Kurt Eichenwald about the leaked emails. We know it's deliberate because he's distorted the story the same way in the past and it's been pointed out to him. Eichenwald did not claim that the leaked information was false, but showed, to a high degree of certainty, that Trump campaign staffers were working with Russia…

All news is fake news, we get it..

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#113
post #105

I haven't had a TV in the house for nearly 8 years now, and don't miss it at all. The biggest problem to me, seems to be the 24 hour news cycle for things like wars, elections and the like. I was visiting friends during a couple of major air accidents in the past couple of years (The MH370 and MH17 incidents in particular), and was astounded at the propensity for news stations on ALL channels to fill every minute of…

>Not only that, I used to be a commercial pilot, and I could not believe the amount of disinformation and outright ridiculous theories being bandied about by so called 'reputable' news sources. This is true every time there is a news story on about anything that somebody around me is an expert on. It's always "what the hell are they talking about!?" I've seen this directly, too. I've been on the local news quite a fe…

The media is shocked even after all newspapers and TV backed a single candidate, she lost. I speculate internally they blame alternative media, so now they run a campaign against 'fake news'. Of course it couldn't just have been the fact that most states and rural counties did not like Clinton much at all - the media's headquarters are all located in big cities so they were all blind. They are now blaming and accusing 'fake news' instead of taking a good look at themselves.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#114
post #105

I haven't had a TV in the house for nearly 8 years now, and don't miss it at all. The biggest problem to me, seems to be the 24 hour news cycle for things like wars, elections and the like. I was visiting friends during a couple of major air accidents in the past couple of years (The MH370 and MH17 incidents in particular), and was astounded at the propensity for news stations on ALL channels to fill every minute of…

>Not only that, I used to be a commercial pilot, and I could not believe the amount of disinformation and outright ridiculous theories being bandied about by so called 'reputable' news sources. This is true every time there is a news story on about anything that somebody around me is an expert on. It's always "what the hell are they talking about!?" I've seen this directly, too. I've been on the local news quite a fe…

It definitely is frightening at times. And frustrating at all other times too. I remember when news articles reported all the known facts up front, or they would do some research to post base facts. Talking about air accidents above, I remember when the first lines of a news article would contain the location, info on the airline as well as the aircraft type, departure and destination information etc.

But it appears that these days, the rush to post something that will get clicked on bypasses all the actual information that people might want to know.

Take the recent tragic crash in South America that wiped out a whole football team. When I heard about the scale of the accident, one of my first questions (as a former pilot, and knowing the carrying capacity and safety reputation of most aircraft) was "I wonder what aircraft model it was?".

I read through 3 articles on common news sites which didn't state this information at all. Two of them didn't even have the airline or carrier name published in their story. I ended up resorting to a pilot discussion forum, where I found out the information I wanted.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at recent events if you need further evidence of this. The term "fake news" has exploded in just under a month in the mainstream media. If my memory serves me, tabloids like The Enquirer have been sitting on news stands for as long as I can remember. So how did this fervor over "fake news" coalesce so quickly and uniformly? Mainstream outlets move in lockstep with each other and these are the final, desperate de…

Supermarket tabloids can't go viral, so their impact and and lucrative adsense payout isn't there. The president elect is a birther and anti-vaxxer. Bannon had a leadership role in Trumps campaign. His cabinet is a clown-car of conspiracy peddlers. Google and Facebook are taking action to squelch fake news. Fake news is a subject of interest to many influential individuals and organizations. If it weren't covered by…

I see, already falling for it..

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#116
post #12

5. You are being manipulated by mainstream news. You can learn Arabic or Russian and go to Ukraine or Syria or Iraq and inform yourself talking to the people there, both sides of the story, or you can let the TV media tell you what is happening. I have done it(I don't know much Arabic and a little Russian but I have traveled there) and it is quite an astonishment that what TV shows you has nothing to do with reality.…

>> both sides of the story That there is part of the problem. That is a very western phrase that reflects an ingrained system at the root of the problem. Binary is for silicon. There are multiple sides, or there is one. There is almost never exactly two. But we are trained to expect equal time for "both sides". It makes people think they are well-informed, when in reality if you are hearing exactly two stories you ar…

Both sides is not a marketing trick. And comparing this with weather forecasts is a false equivalence.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole FUD campaign regarding "Fake News" is comically hypocritical in my opinion. Glenn Greenwald has an excellent article calling them out for it: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/a-clinton-fan-manufactur... Edit: Ironically, that post was doing great until it got flagged. Edit 2: It has been unflagged Edit 3: Flagged again.

Greenwald's "excellent" piece is itself fake news. It deliberately misrepresents the reporting done by Kurt Eichenwald about the leaked emails. We know it's deliberate because he's distorted the story the same way in the past and it's been pointed out to him. Eichenwald did not claim that the leaked information was false, but showed, to a high degree of certainty, that Trump campaign staffers were working with Russia…

"showed, to a high degree of certainty, that Trump campaign staffers were working with Russian disinformation operatives."

Can you show me what warrants a high degree of certainty for that claim? Because as far as I know there is no evidence for this beyond the tenuous circumstantial nature of Clinton's dirty laundry helping Trump, and a Trump presidency is less likely to start a war with Russia.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#118
This is incredibly relevant to me rn. I recently cut the cord and quit FB. I legitimately do feel much happier. My FB feed was just a stream of things to get pissed about and MSNBC was just filling my head with other people's opinions.

Here's my daily routine:

skim thehill.com, politico.com, reddit.com/r/news for headlines

zerohedge.com when I want to see what's going on in right-wing land

newsblok.com if I want to see what the crazies are talking about without giving them clicks

thenation.com and theatlantic.com to see what liberals are pissed about today

slate.com for mainstream opinion pieces

verysmartbrotha.com for a laugh

salon.com and rawstory.com for the lulz

truthdig.com and counterpunch.org for neoliberal bashing essays

cnbc.com to check the markets

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#119
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend the following Planet Money episode if you want to know a bit of the economic background of fake news. They even got a fake news publisher to speak. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/02/504155809/episo...

I thought this episode was rather funny, because they found that a right wing fake news site was actually run by a liberal who wanted to prove there was right wing fake news (and that it would be shared on social media, which they ensured by spreading it themselves). It turned out to be rather profitable for him.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#120
post #105

I haven't had a TV in the house for nearly 8 years now, and don't miss it at all. The biggest problem to me, seems to be the 24 hour news cycle for things like wars, elections and the like. I was visiting friends during a couple of major air accidents in the past couple of years (The MH370 and MH17 incidents in particular), and was astounded at the propensity for news stations on ALL channels to fill every minute of…

>Not only that, I used to be a commercial pilot, and I could not believe the amount of disinformation and outright ridiculous theories being bandied about by so called 'reputable' news sources. This is true every time there is a news story on about anything that somebody around me is an expert on. It's always "what the hell are they talking about!?" I've seen this directly, too. I've been on the local news quite a fe…

> is now being talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are somehow the only source of "real" news.

I believe that was the intent all along.

Blocking the bad ones and blessing the good ones are two sides of the same coin. We seem to think as long as government isn't doing it, it's not "censorship" and no problem. But we learn that time and time again, various governments major tech firms are actively working together.

Even more fun.. where did you hear the term "fake news" or where do you hear it regularly? Is it the same people who claim they're the "real news"?

Whether you agree or not, if you ask any suspect if they're guilty, the answer is "No!"

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