The Daily show, though comedy, did not make up the news it reported. It riffed off it in comedic ways and definitely satirized it, but the basis was reaction to actual reports.
In a related vein, sites like the Onion, though “made up,” are unquestionably satire, and a discerning viewer/reader should be able to recognize this. Their articles make points in the time-honored vein of “A Modest Proposal.”
That’s different from the sites that make up and disseminate wholly fake news in an attempt to fool readers, foment rancor, and/or make a profit (read up on the Macedonian teens with fake US news sites, for instance.)
No doubt that there is fake news out there, and that people should avoid it, but I strongly question the real intention behind this “fake news” movement. I have to think it is a move to get younger people to get their news from more “established” mainstream sources, which tend to be more liberal.
Indeed. A few years ago, I had to help a 60-something neighbor get her money back because she apparent got scammed to the tune of nearly $10k because of one of those types of scams which has been known to law enforcement/FBI* for successfully scammed at least thousands of middle-aged and older adults.
That particular scam was one of several discussed by a friend's sibling who works for the Computer Crimes division of the FBI when the conversation came up over dinner about computer/phone scams and he found I lived in a building with a decent number of retirees a few years before the neighbor's encounter with it.
IME, the FB folks who tend to pass off Onion or other satire articles as real news tend to be older Gen Xers and older who either aren’t aware those are satirical newssites or those who have issues differentiating between real satire/fake news sites.
Often, they end up getting corrected by younger Gen Xers, millenials, and one time even a child of a FB friend who was in the midst of her first year of high school.
HUH?
the war against fake news is happening because people woke up to how much of the "news’ that is seen on social media is FAKE! And is being generated in many cases, by those who wish to PROFIT monetarily from it!
politics should have nothing to do with it. FAKE news is FAKE. I woluld hope that regardless of your political persuasion you believe that ALL adults should be worried when kids are unable to distinguish between the truth and lies???
Perhaps it should be called “click bait”. Cause that is what it is.
I agree with you, menloparkmom. My question has more to do with the timing of this fake news stuff than anything else. Why is it all of a sudden an issue AFTER the election? Fake news was a problem in the 2012 election and nobody said anything.
Oh, sorry @fractalmstr – my post #42 came after your post #41, but it was not a reply to what you had brought up in it. I just saw the video on Facebook and thought to post it here! Sorry for the confusion
I really dislike being forwarded fake news and take the trouble to go to snopes and show the sender it is fake news and that they need to be more discerning and stop forwarding it.
I never get fake news from either of my kids (27 & 29), but did get some from 70+ sisIL and my sis who is now over 60.
When I was at a recent medical conference, one of the sessions for patients was how to sort good news and info from fake. The medical librarian talked about knowing the source and especially favoring .gov and .edu websites over many of the others. It was a helpful refresher and folks in attendance were listening carefully. There’s especially a lot of fake medical info on the web, especially expensive fake treatments for stem cells that part many gullible from money they can’t afford to lose.
Today’s Paper has a big article on a business devastated by fake news about abusing kids. The owners got death threats. Can’t link at the moment. Maybe someone else can.
Fake news is not exactly a new thing. However, social media may help it spread more widely than it used to spread years ago.
Also, there is plenty of stuff that is true, but presented in a misleading (intentionally or otherwise) way. This includes:
Commercial advertising.
Political claims.
News media that intentionally gives a partisan tilt to the news.
News media that sensationalizes the news (at least the headline) to attract eyeballs.
News about complex topics that get simplified into short sound bites that do not tell the full story (possibly because the journalists do not know enough about the topic to understand what they are reporting, or because the viewers or readers do not want to make the mental effort to understand a complex topic).
Fox News is the only TV news that’s right of center, so it gets all of the right viewers. The rest, CNN/MSNBC/ABC/CBS/NBC, are all left of center and split the left viewers.
@ucbalumnus, check out the viewership numbers for the network news versus the cable channels. Although it is slowly changing, broadcast viewership dwarfs cable viewership several imes over So no, Fox is not the most “mainstream” news source.
I remember some jerks at Onion news published that solar panels drain Sun’s life, and solar panel sales plummeted. Fake-news writers should consider their reader’s average intelligence. That’s the price they pay to publish in the U.S.
According to http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/ , Fox’ viewers are much more to the right of the average respondent than the viewers of the other networks are to the left. Based on viewership alone, most of the others are only slightly left of center, while Fox is much more right of center.
However, viewership or readership alone may not be the only story. The Wall Street Journal has a slightly right of center readership, but some other ratings suggest that its news (as distinct from editorial) coverage is very left leaning. Previous ratings based on positive or negative coverage of candidates in the 2012 election suggested that CNN and the broadcast news were close to the center, while MSNBC was much more to the left and Fox much more to the right (and CNN more negative to both major candidates than the broadcast news).
In the past month I was shocked by how many adults couldn’t tell fake news from real. Then I realize that those who are active in scientific research (researchers) are not among them.
My big concern about the recent paranoia over fake news is the underlying message that news from “trusted” sources (which would depend on your particular political leanings) is somehow “true”, “accurate” and not misleading.
And before we get too critical of students, lets not forget that even the esteemed Pulitzer Committee couldn’t distinguish a real story from a fake one.
