The Reason For "Fake" News

[Acadia]

Yep. I made a poll thread on here once a long time ago asking if people caused politicians to go to the extremes or if politicians caused people to go to the extremes. It was kind of interesting and voters indicated that the question was very hard if you really think about it. I think the poll results were in the mid range. But, we have degenerated into a society where both voters and politicians are staking out and defending their corners. We are now a winner take all society where if someone or party wins an election 50.5% to 49.5% then the winning side takes it as a mandate and crams their values down everyone's throat until the next 50.5% to 49.5% election.

The scorched earth policies and fixed-pie mentality are not serving us well.

 

[Mustachio]

First of all, I hate it when Trump refers to it as "Fake News". It is not the correct terminology. For the most part the news isn't literally fake, it is just extremely biased to the left and it was extremely biased before Trump ever came into the picture. Of course it has gotten much worse since Trump became president. He should refer to it as "Biased News" because most all media are biased to the left and have a left leaning agenda and therefore carefully pick out the stories they want to report in order to achieve and fulfill their left leaning agenda. Anyway, I digress. This thread is actually about the reason for "Fake News" or "Biased News".

I got to thinking that in the past newsprint media was a big part of the news media and ever since the internet and, in particular, social media have come into the picture newsprint media have been having a harder and harder time making a profit, with several even going belly up. We've also had an explosion in the number of media overall, cutting the size of the pie slices down for everyone. It is my opinion that due to these things, the media have been trying to make up their lost revenue by reporting more and more sensationalist headlines and hyping up everything they can possibly hype up to the hilt. I'm not talking about just politics and Trump. I'm talking about a number of things, such as hyping up shootings of blacks by whites when there are actually more shootings of whites by blacks. And of course we have the MeToo movement. Anything and everything they can hype up to get a bigger slice of the media pie they do. To them it is either create sensationalist story after story after story or lose marketshare or even worse. Of course this is what their mission has always been but my argument is that it is much more pronounced now due to these factors.

Please don't make this a tit for tat back and forth about Trump. I'm interested in member's opinions about the subject in general.

It's all about money. The immediacy of alternative news has turned journalism into an echo chamber where whoever says something first is presumed to be correct and it ripples into the media even if it's garbage. The alt-right is keen on confirmation bias and they can't get enough conspiracy theories about the Clintons murdering people and Obama spying on Trump. The far-left is keen on the emotional stories but (this is really generalizing on both sides) they want one story over and over again. So you have the symbols of "liberals" like hashtag metoo or hand's up don't shoot and never ending strings of crap that "conservatives" love. Seriously, every day it's a new non-story.

What you want to see is now on your phone, on your browser's home page, it's on people's watches! Trump's tweet coming up on my watch? I will never allow that. That brings it back to what I said in the beginning - it's about the immediacy. This happened, they know who wants to read it, the algorithms play out, we never hear what the other person has to say.

90% of people are happier that way than sitting down and reading a long, nuanced article that portrays events accurately and objectively. Even liberals drown out the BBC news hour. And that is my nuanced an incomplete analysis of the reason for "fake news." I sincerely believe it is not "if it bleeds it leads" anymore. Because nothing leads.

 

[CriticalThought]

Actually, if you dissect Fox News, you will see some very left tilting things. Shepard Smith is very lefty and there are others as well, not to mention lefty contributors. And, even the righties have been attacking Trump lately. Fox News is not all Hannity, Ingrahm, and Carlson as the left would have you believe. Still, Fox is pretty much the bottom of the barrel, quality wise.

Token liberal.

 

[OscarLevant]

First of all, I hate it when Trump refers to it as "Fake News". It is not the correct terminology. For the most part the news isn't literally fake, it is just extremely biased to the left and it was extremely biased before Trump ever came into the picture. Of course it has gotten much worse since Trump became president. He should refer to it as "Biased News" because most all media are biased to the left and have a left leaning agenda and therefore carefully pick out the stories they want to report in order to achieve and fulfill their left leaning agenda. Anyway, I digress. This thread is actually about the reason for "Fake News" or "Biased News".

I got to thinking that in the past newsprint media was a big part of the news media and ever since the internet and, in particular, social media have come into the picture newsprint media have been having a harder and harder time making a profit, with several even going belly up. We've also had an explosion in the number of media overall, cutting the size of the pie slices down for everyone. It is my opinion that due to these things, the media have been trying to make up their lost revenue by reporting more and more sensationalist headlines and hyping up everything they can possibly hype up to the hilt. I'm not talking about just politics and Trump. I'm talking about a number of things, such as hyping up shootings of blacks by whites when there are actually more shootings of whites by blacks. And of course we have the MeToo movement. Anything and everything they can hype up to get a bigger slice of the media pie they do. To them it is either create sensationalist story after story after story or lose marketshare or even worse. Of course this is what their mission has always been but my argument is that it is much more pronounced now due to these factors.

Please don't make this a tit for tat back and forth about Trump. I'm interested in member's opinions about the subject in general.

You know the old saying, "Truth/reality, etc. has a liberal bias".


I think there is some truth to that saying.

 

[poweRob]

For me it’s a generational thing; I grew up with newspapers. My first few jobs were serving papers in a large city. I was opining about telephone books last week and another poster expressed wonder that anyone would get/read a newspaper. I think the papers will eventually pass into history as younger generations get their news from different sources.

As has been noted by many posters, a consumer of news must show some initiative as to where and what sources are used to inform themselves.

Same as a land-line telephone. If we gave that up, then we would have to give out the mobile number. I am loathe to surrender either my e-mail address or call number. We recently got new LL handsets and there was a sweet feature; it will allow us to block 250 numbers. Once blocked, if they call again the phone only rings once and ID’s the call as “blocked.”

I have a Project Fi phone. It is the cell phone service by Google (It's in the process of changing name to Google Fi). I can opt to block any number and report it as spam. No limit on that. I also have the option to screen call. So instead of swiping one way to answer, I can swipe another way to screen the call before answering. It's a great option for all the recording spammers. Then block/report them.

 

[Grim17]

First of all, I hate it when Trump refers to it as "Fake News". It is not the correct terminology. For the most part the news isn't literally fake, it is just extremely biased to the left and it was extremely biased before Trump ever came into the picture. Of course it has gotten much worse since Trump became president. He should refer to it as "Biased News" because most all media are biased to the left and have a left leaning agenda and therefore carefully pick out the stories they want to report in order to achieve and fulfill their left leaning agenda. Anyway, I digress. This thread is actually about the reason for "Fake News" or "Biased News".

I got to thinking that in the past newsprint media was a big part of the news media and ever since the internet and, in particular, social media have come into the picture newsprint media have been having a harder and harder time making a profit, with several even going belly up. We've also had an explosion in the number of media overall, cutting the size of the pie slices down for everyone. It is my opinion that due to these things, the media have been trying to make up their lost revenue by reporting more and more sensationalist headlines and hyping up everything they can possibly hype up to the hilt. I'm not talking about just politics and Trump. I'm talking about a number of things, such as hyping up shootings of blacks by whites when there are actually more shootings of whites by blacks. And of course we have the MeToo movement. Anything and everything they can hype up to get a bigger slice of the media pie they do. To them it is either create sensationalist story after story after story or lose marketshare or even worse. Of course this is what their mission has always been but my argument is that it is much more pronounced now due to these factors.

Please don't make this a tit for tat back and forth about Trump. I'm interested in member's opinions about the subject in general.

Even going back to the days before the internet when most people got their news from the nightly news programs on ABC, NBC and CBS, there was a liberal bias, but nothing even close to the level of bias we're seeing today. Along with those 3, we have CNN, MSNBC and Fox News today. Keep in mind I'm not talking about political opinion shows like Hannity, Maddow or Anderson Cooper, I'm talking about hard news shows like for instance Special Report on Fox News.

The term "fake news" is too over the top and doesn't set well with me either, but calling it "biased news" just doesn't seem strong enough anymore. From the 80's through 2008, the level of liberal bias from the mainstream news media didn't change all that much. It had times periods when it was more biased than normal, but it seemed to come in phases. In the lead up to the 2008 presidential election, I noticed a very distinct shift farther to the left by the networks as well as cable. For the last 10 years it has gotten progressively worse and I agree that since the 2016 election the mainstream news media has hit a level of one-sided coverage that they should no longer be allowed to call themselves "news" anymore.

I really believed that the internet would be the cure for politically biased news outlets, but I was very, very wrong. I thought that when the liberal bias was exposed for all to see, this would be source of embarrassment for the networks and create a credibility issue that would result in an earnest effort on their parts to eliminate the bias and produce a more balanced, opinion-free presentation... but that's not what happened. It seems the more their bias was exposed, the more they pushed back and the more left-leaning and unbalanced they have become.

I'm sorry to have to say this, but real news in America no longer exists. I take that back... If you truly want a middle of the road hard news program that goes to great lengths to give balanced coverage of the news with a balanced perspective of the stories of the day, Special Report on Fox News is the best you'll find on the networks or cable. If anyone cares to dispute this, then please link me to an episode of Special Report and point out the story you feel was reported in a one-sided way.

 

[TheParser]

It is my opinion that due to these things, the media have been trying to make up their lost revenue by reporting more and more sensationalist headlines and hyping up everything they can possibly hype up to the hilt.

You have hit the nail on the head.

*****


In the past, headlines were used to tell the reader the topic of the article.

Today they are liberal-leaning mini-editorials.

*****

When President Trump leaves the White House in January, 2021 (or maybe tomorrow, if the deep state has its way), we all know that the headlines will all be on the order of "Our nightmare is over."

The media will have big pictures of President Biden/O'Rourke/Castro/H. Clinton greeting and hugging sweet little children as they cross the border from Mexico. The headlines will be on the order of "Humanity returns to our country."

*****

There is one silver lining to all of this: Once the Democrats take control of the White House and the Congress and eventually even the Supreme Court, hopefully, the New York Times will wither and close down, having lost its role as the media leader of the Resistance.