At long last, the unforgiving light of public anger has been shone upon the ubiquitous problem of "fake news." The American people are finally speaking out about the injustice of the media knowingly filling the Internet with blatant lies, a practice perfected by several unpopular news outlets that one might come across on the Internet. Work has been done to fight this epidemic of "fake news;" Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has even introduced a service to the social networking site that allows users to identify what news is considered untruthful. This way, headlines like "Pope Francis Endorses Donald Trump For President" will be flagged with small labels that tell the reader that the article is unreliable.
This is a good thing.
I was unfortunate enough to misunderstand the conflict at very first glance when "fake news" started making the news. Upon seeing headlines about Facebook's new tool against "fake news," my mind read "Facebook will start identifying which news articles are one-sided and biased." Said articles refer not to the 100% fake ones that Facebook is identifying. They refer to the other 99% of the news media that people actually take time out of their day to pay attention to. News outlets that Republicans love, but Democrats can't stand and refuse to give credibility to, like Fox News, The Blaze, Breitbart News, Rush Limbaugh's radio show, and the New York Post. News outlets that Democrats flock to, but Republicans have similar angry feelings toward, like MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, Salon.com, and the Huffington Post. Why do people of one party have true, passionate hatred toward certain news outlets, while the other party can't seem to get enough of them?
It all goes back to a deeper question about human nature and our relationship with the news: Do we pay attention to the world around us so we can become informed and form opinions based on our learnings, or do we pay attention so we can make ourselves feel correct and, therefore, smart? It surely seems to be the latter. It seems that we like to surround ourselves with people who are paid to agree with us instead of people who inform us. This type of journalism might be attributable to the divide our country is feeling so intensely.
Let's take a sadly common example of a news story: an African-American teenager is shot by a white policeman. Let's assume no backstory, no character development, no details, nothing. For all the public knows, the victim could be anything from a criminal attacking the policeman to an innocent high school valedictorian helping an old lady cross the street. The same goes for the policeman, who could either be a Neo-Nazi or the president of the local NAACP chapter. The public knows nothing yet, as no details have been released from the incident. What headline will the Huffington Post make about this incident? Probably something along the lines of "White cop murders unarmed black youth in cold blood." The article itself would quickly paint the cop as a racist in order to feed the Democratic Party's "White people are racist" narrative, which has ever so clearly caused a racial divide in this country.
And how would Fox News report on this tragedy? Well, Sean Hannity would probably introduce the story by attacking the liberal media for its attempts to paint cops as racists, and would use it as an example of how the Democratic media is encouraging a "War on Cops." Republicans watching Hannity's Fox show would, in turn, gain more fuel for their contempt toward the Democratic Party.
Democrats would then call Hannity and all of his viewers racist for defending "racist" cops and their murderous ways, and Republicans would fight back by accusing the media of inciting resentment toward not just cops but all white people, and it goes back, and forth, and back, and forth. In the end, everybody ends up somebody's enemy. It's like a brother and sister giving each other wet willies and pulling each others' hair and tattling on each other to their parents. Both sides are waving "Black Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" flags, to symbolize how the opposing side is one of murderer-apologists.
This is what we call the news. And it's all because of ratings. The truth is that news doesn't get ratings. Propaganda does.
These one-sided news networks get the highest ratings in journalism because they tell Americans exactly what they want to hear. They turn news stories into reasons why Republicans and Democrats can think they're correct in their political affiliations. They give us something to retweet, which is the common millennial's way of saying "I told you so!" to all of his or her Twitter followers who disagree with them. All of the highest-rated news sources in America (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.) lean toward a political party, in varying degrees of bias. When the New York Times publishes an article endorsing Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, or when the New York Post publishes an article endorsing Donald Trump's campaign, can we be so sure that, when we read those papers, we're reading the news, and not propaganda?
How can we be so sure that we're making informed decisions in the voting booth when the person who writes the news we read wants us to think a certain way? What does it say about our values when we the people care more about feeling smart than making the right choices? Why are we tackling "fake news," but zipping our lips about the everyday propaganda that actually influences the American voter? And, perhaps most importantly... Why do we so gleefully drink the Kool-Aid we're served? Do we even care?
Probably not, in the cases of most people. The idea of political discussion is one that is perverted into something more materialistic than intellectual. We read the news to look smart, not to be smart.
How do we know someone was killed?
Incredulous Sarcasm - Because they said it happened. :)
Maybe the media isn't really controlled by right wing or left wing or centrists, have you ever thought it is controlled by those who just want to keep people divided?
You've heard "United we stand divided we fall"? Well right now I know of no country in the world which isn't divided either by politics, religion or race issues. There is no strentgh in that. For example in Latin America you can see right wing and left wing both wanting to make re election lawful in spite of the constitution and the funny thing is where there is a left wing leader the right wing is totally against it and where there is a right wing leader the left is totally against it. Better said these people don't know what they want they are just being led. They are just being pushed to want what the other side doesn't want.
Perhaps the global elites want it this way, having us arguing and fighting while they are moving towards their goals without us even knowing it.
That I believe is likely the case. Though @ashlyns is correct that this stuff likely helps with their ratings. Also right in a lot of people seek confirmation bias from sources that will agree with them so they can look smart, feel smart, and "feel" informed. Going to sources that say something other than the narrative they wish to believe messes with this "feel" good goal.
Today "feelings" are more important than truth. (sarcasm)
Though I've been aware of this long enough I've watched people start paying attention to bills and things and then suddenly the news begins pounding relentlessly on some mindless topic, or speaking against a group (religious, racist, or just plain old bigotry) and successfully distracting the public.
So yes... "divide and conquer", "divided we fall"
The narrative to me today looks like frantic scrambling to find out why their narrative that has always worked before to get what they want is failing.
Nice article. I believe you hit the nail on the head for the vast majority of people. I don't really care about looking smart, but I did go through that stage when I was younger. I also can see bias in 99.99% of the "news" I read today regardless of the source. I will say the places blasting the "fake news" label tend to publish more fake news than some of the places they end up listing.
For example: Wikileaks. They've actually never been shown to have released fake or untrue news. Not a single time that I am aware of. Yet, they tend to make the list. The list of fake news is more an attempt to force people to only listen to approved "propaganda" outlets.
Why, is this suddenly a cry?
The Propaganda outlets failed in their mission to elect Hillary. They (and me) were certain she would win. I was pretty sure she'd been decided on at the very beginning (many months before the election).
I was pleasantly surprised she lost. I was not happy because I endorse Trump. I voted third party. I was happy, because it was apparent by the reaction (and the reaction still today) that things did not play out like the propaganda institutions had planned.
So since there is so much bias, I try to read the news from many different sources (including propaganda outlets) and treat them like big puzzle boxes that have some pieces from the actual puzzle I am looking for mixed in with their own picture.
If I dump out enough boxes I might find the puzzle pieces. It doesn't always work out that way. I have a pet peeve with hypocrisy and I am seeing so much of that these days that I am virtually always frustrated and angry when reading the news.
Good article... resteemed.
Your right, Wikileaks hasn't released fake news that I'm aware of, but they haven't given us the real news either.
Wikileaks is working with the MSM, need I say more? There is a lot of news that they aren't telling us. Wikileaks is controlled opposition, as is Snowden and just about everyone that you care to take a look at.
I wrote the following post 3 months ago and I now know a lot more. Assange is a diversion and fraud.
Controlled Opposition - Your Friend Might Be Your Enemy
Alt-media has been addressing the falsities in mainstream media already for years, but now the "fake news" is a buzz word hype that is more talked about and gets more coverage. It's also being used to target alt-media. These are two factors which make it appropriate to talk about as it has the most visibility, and importance to alt-media as well.
I was just reading this: http://www.businessinsider.com/hackers-ddos-drudge-report-2017-1
Drudge Reports is an Aggregator service. Meaning it links to news articles all over the place.
Yet according to that article it is being called a Russian News service.
I don't actually EVER recall reading a news article written by Drudge Reports. As far as I can tell they simple scour the internet for news articles and list them. They might create click bait titles for them on their main page, but as far as I can tell that is all they do, and have ever done.
Not sure how that could be Russian news...
A DDOS of this level it is probable is coming from a nation state as opposed to a hacking group. A hacking group doing this I could only see one motive, someone with a big enough network of compromised machines getting a nice payday/bounty to do it. Yet even then there has been no evidence of a bot net that big operating on the internet.
The best thing would be to give the people the knowledge and common sense to distinguish a fake new from a true (or at least very plausible one). Censorship is never a good thing!