[royjacobs]

Except everyone has been conditioned over the latest ~100 years to assume that everything they see in a video is real. That is: unless explicitly contextualised as fake, like when watching a movie.

Your premise that everyone should just "apply some critical thinking" directly contradicts the events of the last couple of years, not just in the field of video but within any form of media.

[Senderman]

It sounds like you're agreeing with the original comment, but I think you might be paraphrasing it to highlight the absurdity.

And it does seem absurd, but it's true: almost everyone has been conditioned to accept news footage as 'pure' truth, something at the other end of a reality-scale from, say, movies.

I think it's hard to remember is that the majority of video is tailored with intent to evoke specific a response: To some degree, your reaction and emotions are at the mercy of the video producer - just like in a movie. Except in a movie, you have the safety switch of remembering it's "not real" - I think the lack of a corresponding mental failsafe with news causes subtle hysteria, confusion, and frustration.

Contrary to a lot of conspiracy, I don't think it's malicious (mostly), and I believe fundamentally journalism has noble goals - but I don't see it as deniable that "news" as a whole is under pressure to be compelling, and that, albeit subtly, twists what we're exposed to.

Crying "be more sceptical" isn't very helpful - it certainly wouldn't have helped me. I think more knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes of newsmaking might be more along the lines of what would help people, but I don't really know.

"Fake" almost isn't the right word. "Disconnected from reality" - subtly - that's the phenomenon causing trouble, in my view. But anything that's disconnected from reality, taken as truth, is open to manipulation; scepticism is appropriate.

[icebraining]

Eh, I'm not sure. People have been skeptical of video forever, as long as they feel they have a reason to be. Hell, even the Moon landing videos are doubted by a non-insignificant number of people.

I think the "trust in video" is more a reflection of trust in the establishment, since those were the people who could really broadcast it. People who didn't have that trust in the establishment (e.g. anti-capitalists in the West) already doubted videos as well.

For example, where I'm from there's a significant number of people who are skeptical of the recent videos of the chemical attack in Syria.