[mscasts]

The news has become so bad today so every news source is basically fake news. In my country for example, the national television is so obviously biased it's ridicolous.

They are spreading more fake news than most of their alternative media competitors. Basically everyone I know trust these alternative media way more than the mainstream media. I don't know about the US but in Sweden the mainstream media is the one responsible for the overwhelming majority of fake news.

There is a difference though. When these "troll sites" or alternative media sites spreads fake news it's often outright lies but when mainstream media spreads fake news it's mostly about leaving important details out and not disclosing events and information that is relevant. They are experts in taking things out of context and paint the picture they want to paint. They seldom lie but they are still not telling the truth.

I'll even give you an example, Dagens Nyheter (https://dn.se) is one of the biggest media outlets in Sweden. They had an ad bought by China that spread fake news about the Hong Kong protests and pro-China content.

Like, how are people supposed to believe anything they say about such things as foreign affairs (for example) when they are funded partly by fucking China?

[chime]

> The news has become so bad today so every news source is basically fake news. In my country for example, the national television is so obviously biased it's ridicolous.

Bias and fake news are two separate things. Every news source will be biased and it is impossible to separate the bias from the reporters, editors, or any humans involved in presenting the news. Bias is favoring one side over another, leaving out facts that hurt your case etc.

Fake News is an entirely different thing. Fake News is making up real-looking websites that claim Elon Musk is running as a Libertarian candidate for 2020.

BBC has had a few incidents lately which screamed 'fake news!' to me too. So I totally get where you're coming from. But conflating bias with fake news has hurt trust in the media more than the actual fake news itself. And that's the actual reason for spreading fake news. Because I'm fairly certain you wouldn't believe in outright conspiracy theories. But if you start to treat actual news sources like AP or Reuters just like fake random-city-ledger.com websites, then the fake news sites are succeeding.

Personally, I look for motivations regardless of the source of media - who benefits from this story if it was true vs. false? Is Bernie really going to charge 95% tax to everyone making 100k or above? If it's remotely true, then obviously it would hurt everyone who works hard. However, if that story is false, which it most likely is, who does that benefit?

[FussyZeus]

> Every news source will be biased

Can I just rant for a moment here about how sick and tired I am of news outlets being expected to be completely without bias? Bias is human. As long as people are writing the news, it's going to be fucking biased. In days of Yore, in the golden age of television and written news, the people presenting said news almost always had biases, but despite that, they presented all the facts of a given story, and then usually would editorialize a little towards the end of whatever piece.

I have ZERO issue with this, and in fact, would strongly prefer it to the current norm in most (at least US) news outlets, where they bend over backwards to present both sides of any given story as having legitimate points in the name of "balanced" coverage. Fuck that. In plenty of scenarios, yes, there are points to both sides. In certain scenarios, one side is just wrong. WRONG. Outright, completely, and irrefutably incorrect. And I get so tired of watching news anchors entertaining these nitwits as though they're to be taken seriously. They are not. They are worthy of derision, mockery, and laughter.

And I don't think I'm alone, either. The surge forward of support for various comedians who do news-esque broadcasts I think is a strong indicator people do not want and are sick to death of news presenters pandering to this both sides shit. Again, in those situations where it's merited, where you have two or more groups all with legitimate points to be made and nuance to be communicated, absolutely. Get that out there. We have a lot of issues especially socially where that applies. There are other ones, however, where it's bluntly obvious to those reading it that one side is actual people with an actual thing to say, and the other side is one of a few or possibly more than one things: Corporate astroturfing, political think tanks, lobbyists, or random assholes on twitter. These things are not equal and presenting them as equal is harmful for everyone who consumes that piece of news.

Rant over.

[chime]

I agree with you completely. I almost wrote the same thing about bias is human. I also don’t mind innate biases - those just define where the author comes from. Not sure why I was downvoted but we are on the same page.

[mscasts]

Well, it's not me that claims alternative media as fake news. It is mainstream media so that is why I am on the defense of them.

I am not talking about obviously fake sites that is just up to spread one idea or lie. I am talking about regular news sites that operates as smaller teams.

Where I am from, at least, these are considered by mainstream media to be fake news. The government has pressured companies like Facebook to stop their content etc etc.

I think the main issue is that "fake news" is not really a clear definition for anyone and is currently used to surpress opinion rather than anything else.

[davidw]

> The news has become so bad today so every news source is basically fake news. In my country for example, the national television is so obviously biased it's ridicolous.

"It's all fake news" is cover for propaganda outlets, and while mainstream news gets things wrong occasionally, they get a lot right, and also they course correct and offer corrections when they get things wrong.

There's a huge difference.

[malvosenior]

The MSM in the US is almost entirely corrupt. It's proven time and time again that it will push agendas, hide facts, kill stories, make things up...

If you doubt what I say I suggest you spend some time looking into MSM coverage of Epstein and Weinstein. Just recently it was leaked that ABC news killed an Epstein story for political reasons then tracked the whistleblower down at their new job at CBS and got CBS to fire them.

I suggest reading Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill to get an accurate take on the current state of journalism:

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

[davidw]

No one doubts there are serious problems here and there, but "almost entirely corrupt" is hyperbole. Everything is imperfect and can be improved, but that doesn't mean you need to throw the whole thing out and start from scratch, in most cases.

Can you point to something that actually functions better?

[malvosenior]

Well when the press works in coordination to hide a pedophile ring involving two presidents, a prince, Bill Gates and tons of media and business leaders, then yes I don't think "almost entirely corrupt" is an inaccurate statement.

> Can you point to something that actually functions better?

I think Wikileaks is a good model. Get raw information out there. We don't need filters and narrative in the way of figuring out what's going on. Social media helps too, especially when the long form of highly edited videos becomes available. The whole thing with the Covington teens is a great example.

[davidw]

Raw info dumps are a horrible alternative.

City council meetings where I live regularly run on for 2/3/4 hours. Trying to process the video of that myself, rather than have a reporter there who can synthesize would be a colossal waste of my time. And that's just one source of information. County, state, national, and international news are also important to some degree.

And that's without even going into Wikileaks' connection with Russian intelligence agencies, or whatever the heck went on.

[malvosenior]

I don't think you should do it yourself. The community will do it and the original source material will be there to reference.

[organsnyder]

> I think Wikileaks is a good model. Get raw information out there. We don't need filters and narrative in the way of figuring out what's going on.

I don't see how anyone can conflate Wikileaks with "raw information", given their history of timing info dumps to inflict maximum damage in political campaigns.

[mc32]

What’s the difference between that and “swift-boats” and many other critical “explosive” news that have sunk many candidates? The news orgs which have produced those items don’t release the expose of whatever as soon as confirmed —or not in Dan Rather’s case. They release them when they feel they’ll have impact.

[chime]

Yes to all of that but that is still 100x better than a completely fabricated story about Politician X dying when they are in fact living published on houston-star-ledger-journal.com. That's fake news. The examples you stated are not fake, but examples of yellow journalism and other fourth-estate power grabs.

[malvosenior]

I'm not sure it is 100X better. The tabloids have always published clear fictions. I think the danger is that people take ABC and the New York Times way more seriously than houston-star-ledger-journal.com.

They're both problems but I think the mainstream media version is much more dangerous and powerful.

[taborj]

Completely fabricated, eh? The big outlets don't do that, eh?

https://twitter.com/JessicaGKwong/status/1200208471599321089

[davidw]

She got fired. What happens to "reporters" at propaganda outlets that post "news" that they know is fake?

[mc32]

And what happened to Dan Rather after “rathergate”?

They could “afford” to fire a little known reporter.

And then there is the phenomenon of entertainment disguised as news which many people take for news which infuse enormous amounts of opinion and bias in their reporting.

The only ones which make a decent attempt at impartiality is PBS with their national news. Their local news tends to have intrusions where news is colored with opinion and bias, unfortunately.

[mscasts]

Well they don't though. They don't correct themselves. At least not in Sweden.

I have seen alternative news sources correct themselves way more often than mainstream media. That could be because I mainly read those news sources but still, it is a fairly new thing.

[Fellshard]

In the US, they correct themselves in small letters at the end without changing the text, or they equivocate that it essentially doesn't matter that much, or try to memory-hole the article. The original claims supercede the reach of the correction by several orders of magnitude.

[reaperducer]

In the US, they correct themselves in small letters at the end without changing the text

There is no such thing as "In the US..." as if there is an established standard, or a requirement that you describe. It sounds like you're just gushing hyperbole.

For example, in print, the New York Times publishes its corrections on page two in the same type as the regular stories.

Online, it changes the actual text of the story and then explains at the end what was changed and why. There is no difference in font size.

[Fellshard]

Online, people do not go back and re-read the article to see it changed. The misinformation sticks by anchor bias and lack of ability to correct. This is, I believe, a critical failing in the electronic vs. physical distribution method as it stands, though I'm certain models could be developed for distribution of corrections as first-order material if these organizations truly wished.

[Fellshard]

Lots of silent downvotes. Can anyone tell me where I'm mistaken? Let me know if I'm spreading misinformation myself.

[davidw]

That is mostly correct. However, the alternative is...?

[Fellshard]

Headline. Massive block letters at the top of the article. Front-page notice. Put retractions and changes front and center. Make it clear that that's part and parcel of the process of reporting and journalism - that not all mistakes, intentional or otherwise, can be prevented, but that they can at least be corrected transparently. Without that, there is even less reason to trust that their intentions will lead to accurate reporting.

[davidw]

And do you think you're more likely to get that from, say, the Washington Post, or Breitbart?

[freeflight]

> they course correct and offer corrections when they get things wrong.

I have yet to see this actually happen with any topic of international relevance. To this day most US media consider themselves completely innocent in peddling Iraq WMDs and "Saddam involved with 9/11!" lies.

They just repeat what "anonymous government sources" supposedly "leak" to them and then act like it must be truth manifest.

This is also in their own interest: Being too critical of these "anonymous government sources" can result in being locked out of this special access, which is something no journalist or news agency can afford.

For a more concrete, and relevant, example just take a look at the Bloomberg "The Big Hack" story [0].

One year later and still nobody could produce an actual sample of such a chip, and even national security agencies, like the DHS, could not confirm the story and had no reason to doubt the involved companies' statements [1].

Yet to this day Bloomberg stands by that story [2], no correction, no admission of having gotten anything wrong.

But it did a good enough job of further spreading the "China spying on everybody even worse than FiveEyes!" FUD.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

[1] https://www.dhs.gov/news/2018/10/06/statement-dhs-press-secr...

[2] https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/04/editorial-a-year-...

[iudqnolq]

Actually the (egregiously aweful) WMD stories were retracted

For example:

> Daniel Okrent, then-public editor of the The New York Times, went further in his column on the paper's mea culpa. His summary could have applied to many other media outlets: "Some of the Times coverage in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq was credulous; much of it was inappropriately italicized by lavish front-page display and heavy-breathing headlines; and several fine articles ... that challenged information in the faulty stories were played as quietly as a lullaby."

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/part1/wmd.h...

[houndpoundround]

Mainstream news is still far from accurate enough to gain a real understanding of the topic. At best it's a way of seeing what powerful people or groups are talking about but that's still far from actually being informative which is what the general public assumes the media to be. It's hard to see how useless news is more helpful than fake news.

[ohithereyou]

All ad supported journalism is by definition propaganda, as is state run news like the BBC or RT.

Being 'mainstream' has little to do with it.

Edit: Taking ad dollars constrains your ability to say things that your advetisers don't like. You can claim 'separation of church and state' and say that the ad department isn't telling the journalists what they can and can't say, but journalists don't work in a vacuum and editors and executives won't run pieces that they know will cause them to lose sponsors.

State run media is obviously not going to report on embarassments to the country in an open an honest manner. Look how hard the BBC tried to kill off the Jimmy Savile and Prince Andrew/Epstein angles.

[reaperducer]

You can claim 'separation of church and state' and say that the ad department isn't telling the journalists what they can and can't say, but journalists don't work in a vacuum and editors and executives won't run pieces that they know will cause them to lose sponsors.

Citation needed.

Primarily because I've worked in a number of newsrooms, and there was most certainly a separation between editorial and advertising. Sales people weren't even allowed in the same wing or on the same floors as the reporters.

Contrary to your tinfoil hat suppositions, the reporting and advertising departments aren't all buddy-buddy. In all the years I worked in newsrooms with 15-200 people, I never once knew, spoke to, or could even name someone in the advertising department.

I will admit that's not true for very small outlets under 15 reporters, but that simply happens because you share a bathroom, lunchroom, hallway, parking lot, etc... with everyone on staff.

[Mirioron]

I don't really agree with the parent poster, but you don't really need someone to tell journalists what they can and can't write to get them to push your agenda. What you can do instead is to hire people who share the ideas you want to push. This way they'll write what you want them to write without you having to tell them.

[ixtli]

This is true, and further it has ALWAYS been true. Media is always unwilling to publish things that will upset the cohorts their advertisers are trying to reach. We frame this discussion entirely wrong in this way: for-profit media platforms exist to give advertisers access to consumer attention, and they get mad when the media platforms burn the groups they're trying to sell to.