[Pxtl]

Here's what I keep coming back to: when Dan Rather was hoodwinked into pushing a fake story about GWB's minimal military service, he was fired. When Keith Olbermann was similarly caught pushing a story he found and liked that turned out to be false, he was fired. When Brian Williams made up a BS story about an RPG firing at his chopper, be was suspended for 6 months.

What happens when Breitbart or HuffPo or various YouTubers and bloggers get caught in a lie? Nothing. Nobody's head is put in the noose.

News aggregators are to journalism what AliExpress is to shopping - they'll give you what you wanted at the price you wanted, but piled high with lies and crappy quality, and you'll never find the same company twice so their reputation doesn't matter.

[jacquesm]

Who went to jail for this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiftboating

[Asooka]

> What happens when Breitbart or HuffPo or various YouTubers and bloggers get caught in a lie? Nothing. Nobody's head is put in the noose.

You switch to a different information provider.

[Svexark]

It's not true that the people you mention in the first paragraph were punished after a single instance of fake news. The truth is that networks like NBC are as loose with the truth as Breitbart and have been for decades. Millenials won't remember what it was like flipping through the nightly news shows before the internet and seeing the same false stories reported on different networks with the same phrases and clips of the same "experts". The only difference now is that they have competition. Other organizations can call them out on their lies when they become too outrageous. But the news media has always been hyperpartisan and full of lies.

Edit: Yeah. Just downvote, cowards.

[iamdave]

Instead of calling downvoters cowards can you point to something that substantiates your argument? I was able to swiftly look for and find the exact story re: Rather and Olbermann mentioned in the parent comment.

What do you offer here to counter this that doesn't rely on me blindly taking your word for it?

[danielvf]

I belive the fundamental difference is that in the old system, someone could be incredibly selective in which facts they used, and slant those facts as much as they wanted, but the sacred line than could not be crossed was making up facts.

However, in this new thing, reputation free news, right and left, the baseline of facts is gone.

[sremani]

Fact is there are no good old days, in the gatekeeper era only a select few got to BS, now that BS vending is widespread. The Networks act certain way because remember they use the "airwaves" permitted to them by the public for common good. That is it.

As some one said, If Trump were to walk on Water, NYT would report, Trump cannot swim. We already know no positive headline would come out of NYT for a Republican president, so is it really "highly" credible? If we think these are the worst of the times, then we really do not have depth about what happened in the past.

The Press wants good old days, where they were demi-gods with access to contacts and info, and in this information age that bar has been lowered and Facebook is eating their "attention" lunch.

If looked objectively NYT is just being a whinny grumpy old man.

[dandersh]

Or the NYT would parrot his war machine propaganda (Judith Miller and Iraq war) and bury his illegal dragnet surveillance (NSA warrantless wiretapping).

The NYT (and MSM in general) do not have a liberal bias but an establishment bias...unless of course we're supposed to seriously believe that they buried Bernie and elevated Hillary because "he wasn't as liberal as Hillary"...

[sremani]

If the Past 8 years are any evidence, I would disagree with your analysis of "establishment" bias. Even with Snowden revelations its every body but Obama that was guilty.

edit: I m being specific to NYT.

[dandersh]

You can "disagree" with it all you want, but you just cited an example in support of it...Obama and the NSA (the establishment) wasn't the bad guy, Snowden (i.e. Emmanual Goldstein) was.

[sparkzilla]

There are many examples of the mainstream media manipulating the news to suit their preferred narrative. I have written about this a bit, using the example of how the New York Times, and their associated fact checkers, pushed the false narrative that Trump mocked a reporter's disability. [1] There are hundreds of other examples, but you have to make the effort to get out of your bubble to see them.

As for the topic: Traditional media is losing its distribution to social networks, so it's fighting back with what it sees as its market advantage: The Truth. However, the new distribution methods allow users to find the truth in a different way from before. Instead of Dan Rather telling you the one true news, people collect their news from multiple sources and make their minds up. As with distribution, the mainstream media is set to lose this next part of the battle.

[1] http://newslines.org/blog/lets-talk-about-fake-news/

[dandersh]

People don't "collect their news from multiple sources and make their minds up". Even if one is ignorant of the decades of substantial research on political ignorance (Phillip Converse, Ilya Somin, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse's "Stealth Democracy", etc.) that demonstrates this to be false, they need only have multiple interactions with other Americans to realize that in most cases they're dealing with parrots.

[Pxtl]

That is not fake news. Trump made a pallsy gesture when mocking a disabled reporter who actually crooks his arms like that. It's not the media's fault he's the kind of bloated jackass who makes pallsy gestures when mocking everybody.

They saw something that walked and talked like a duck and called it a duck. You supported a bloviating toddler for president, don't call it "fake news" when somebody notices.

That's not even what fake news even means. "Fake news" is yet another example of the right perverting a word to mock others for their own weaknesses. Fake news isn't slightly distorting the facts or lying by omission, it's making things up from whole cloth.

Obama birth certificate nonsense is "fake news". Pizzagate is fake news. Trump making pallsy gestures when mocking a disabled reporter is literally what happened. The only thing is some missing nuance that he does that to everybody because he's a dick.

[vixen99]

You can argue about the Trump gesture but at least he wasn't making a lot of money out of imitating a vulnerable person in public as did Trump's critic, Meryl Streep and company with the film 'Iron Lady'. Margaret Thatcher was still alive at that time suffering from dementia. Thatcher's biographer has noted that no one asked the family for their permission or views on portraying her at such a distressing time. Imagine the feelings of family members while film goers went to see an enactment of scenes undoubtedly akin to the reality.

[fatbird]

Ironically, when discussing the NYT and fake news, one might make a strong case with Judith Miller's reporting on Iraq, or Wen Ho Lee. There's lots of scandals where major outlets have pursued obviously agenda driven stories to the point of journalistic malpractice. But what Sparkzilla sees as fake news is the most literal reporting on the most straightforward example on which there's almost no disagreement by anyone else.

[sparkzilla]

See my answer above. It's fake news because it was a manipulation of the truth to suit a narrative. That the narrative is so strong is why I chose it. The facts are independent of whether one supports Trump or not.

[polloshermanos]

This is a truly pathetic take. Your best example of "Fake News" is NYT reported on Trump making a gesture suspiciously exactly what one might do if one wanted to mock someone with Serge Kovaleski's disability?

My god the fact that you can think this and think you're being reasonable makes me despondent. If a kid does this in school the teacher makes them apologize and doesn't let the kid weasel out by saying "but I do it to everyone!!!" Actions have consequences. NYT and others holding Trump to the moral standard of a grade schooler is not "Fake News".

[sparkzilla]

It's the best example because it shows how strong the narrative is. As you can see from the video and other evidence that has been presented by multiple sources, Trump did not actually mock Kovaleski's disability. He is an equal opportunity mocker, and has mocked non-disabled people in exactly the same way. Other evidence shows that Kovalestic doesn't even have the kind of motions Trump mocked.

The Times, and the fact checkers, clearly manipulated the incident to make the case that he specifically mocked his disability. The freeze frame is the most obvious trick, but the words and tone go a long way too. But the evidence shows their manipulations to be false, yet the narrative persists. Even the fact check admits he didn't mock the reporter's disability (yet it still gives him a negative rating). Instead of being despondent at me -- and shooting the messenger -- you should be angry at them for manipulating you.

[polloshermanos]

You have also invented a narrative for yourself and aren't responding to what I wrote. I'm talking about what he did, you're talking about a straw man who thinks that Trump for sure 100% in his heart of hearts knew how Serge Kovaleski looked and meant to mock that. I can't know 100% what's in Trump's mind. The idea of knowing is horrifying enough, so no thank you. Regardless it sounds like we agree that he did something exactly like what you'd do if you wanted to mock someone with Serge Kovaleski's disability.

It's not unfair to Trump or "Fake News" that he is such a jackass that he made fun of a guy who had a disability by doing a motion that looked like that disability. It's not "Fake News" to report on how he acted, how it looked, and how he refused to apologize or really give anyone a reason to think he wasn't making fun of the guy. Trump is lucky to have sleuths like you on the case though to clear his otherwise pristine name.

You say the contents of Trump's heart, and video evidence that he does this to everyone, somehow excuse this action. I say that's nonsense, and your attempts to cover for him, and to paint this as some kind of media bias, are both bizarre and disheartening.

I'm sorry, in 3rd grade and for the president, you have to apologize when you do something like this whether in your heart you meant to or not. Actions and consequences matter, and video evidence from your blog post, of Trump acting like a the bloated mean-spirited old pervert with the mind of an incurious 11 year old that he is a bunch of other times, is not some smoking gun that proves we're all under a delusion. But keep fighting the good fight buddy. Really glad to have you putting all this effort into something worthwhile.