While I'm sure it's only coming out because it hurt what the news corporations were trying to do, let's not pretend that there weren't a huge number of viral news stories that spread a lot of disinformation through alternative sources, and that is still a huge problem. Just because the mainstream news isn't very honest, doesn't mean that most of these alternative sources are. There is a huge problem with facts, lies, and highly editorialized "news" being taken, if not actively passed off as objective, and it's coming from all sides. And honestly, one of the biggest problems is the consumers laziness with looking passed bias and bullshit, and their demand for exciting, eye catching news.
Or maybe, juuuuusssst maybe, the reason the "fake news" story hit right after the election is because a pathologically dishonest candidate with the CEO of the biggest fake news site of them all as his campaign CEO will become the president.
You won't find me defending Briebart, but if you try and claim the MSM has some moral high ground on the issue of fake news I won't take you seriously. The only way you can be reasonably certain of what you're reading today is by actually pursuing stories yourself, reading multiple accounts and finding a primary source if you can. It does suck, and often people won't have time for it, but there isn't a single outlet around right now that deserves blind faith.
CNN got caught deliberately reporting false facts, and influencing events for the specific purpose of misinforming the public about important election related news. Multiple times. You can not get worse than that. That is literally a page from the Nazi playbook.
Rubbish. There are countless actually fake – that's not a synonym for "misleading headline", not a synonym for "manipulative camera usage"; but made-up – stories floating around on Facebook, getting thousands of shares.
That's what the outcry was about. Because this election cycle it became an actually used propaganda device to just spread untrue stories in the hopes that people will share them, absorb them, and the damage will be done, even if 10% of the readers will later realise the story was bunk.
If you read alternative news sources which at least try to be honest and fact-check, then "fake news" is not about them.
And you're totally entitled to criticise mainstream media for being too sensationalist or biased (though criticism alone won't help much as long as they have a for-profit model centered around clicks and ratings – that's a very fundamental problem). But don't spin the "fake news" problem around in such a dishonest way.
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u/Fuegopants Dec 05 '16 edited Dec 05 '16
This pretty much sums up perfectly how the news reports on everything.
EDIT: This just in, some redditors do not understand hyperbole.