Overwhelming Majority of Americans Think Mainstream Media Report 'Fake News'

[ChinaSoc]

Well they do. Not necessarily by outright lying, but at least by spinning things to fit a narrative.

The coordinated effort to paint Russia as an aggressor comes to mind and it's not exclusive from the US media, the supposedly unbiased and trusted BBC had this pic on the background of one of their programmes.


NATO is conducting huge military exercises at the russian border and extremely frustrated that Putin has ruined their plan to install puppet islamists in Syria (how dare does evil Bashar Al Assad doesn't want to face the same fsce of Gaddafi and see this state become a place where people are being sold as slaves?).

Western media has basically abandoned any domestic issues concerning their countries to talk about Russia (and, if there is any time left, China or DPRK)

[Associate Justice PiT]

Well they do. Not necessarily by outright lying, but at least by spinning things to fit a narrative.

     One of the worst aspects of the dialogue concerning fake news is the concept pushed by many that reporting real things absolves one of culpability in this matter. It is far too easy to selectively report facts that suit a particular narrative. Getting your news from multiple sources across the political spectrum is critical now more than ever if you want a complete picture of what is happening.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Did everyone forget that "fake news" refers to made up stories that are not sourced or factual in the least bit? Perhaps some media companies have reported these stories at some point but if a report is based on at least some fact, no matter how misleading or spun it is, it is not fake. Media companies will make mistakes and should be held accountable for them but it doesn't mean they are straight out making things up. I'm not endorsing it, but discerning between these definitions is important. Trump was very successful at muddling the definitions as this poll, and some responses in this thread, demonstrate.

[Green Line]

Yeah, I know most Americans - they're the worst.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Did everyone forget that "fake news" refers to made up stories that are not sourced or factual in the least bit? Perhaps some media companies have reported these stories at some point but if a report is based on at least some fact, no matter how misleading or spun it is, it is not fake. Media companies will make mistakes and should be held accountable for them but it doesn't mean they are straight out making things up. I'm not endorsing it, but discerning between these definitions is important. Trump was very successful at muddling the definitions as this poll, and some responses in this thread, demonstrate.

     The term need not be and often is not understood in the strictly literal sense, nor is it most useful if employed as such. Substantially misleading reporting can be just as poisonous as outright falsified stories, in that it promotes a grave misunderstanding of the events underlying the news cycle. To exclude the former from the umbrella of "fake news" is to promote a distinction without a difference.

[Meclazine for Israel]

This is old news. People started thinking this in 1998.

Trump is the only President to take the media on at their own game.

Very confrontational style.

[Cold War Liberal]

The press is just horrible at covering most things.  I don't think there is some giant agenda run by some cabal of journalists, I just think that caring more about eyeballs than truth or objectivity has made them really really bad at their jobs.

A little hyperbolic but I generally agree that bias towards sensationalism is worse than partisan bias, and is fundamental to the business model of all 24/7 cable news (and, to a lesser extent, print news on and offline), which means that I have largely stopped watching unless there is a specific event or interview I want to see.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Did everyone forget that "fake news" refers to made up stories that are not sourced or factual in the least bit? Perhaps some media companies have reported these stories at some point but if a report is based on at least some fact, no matter how misleading or spun it is, it is not fake. Media companies will make mistakes and should be held accountable for them but it doesn't mean they are straight out making things up. I'm not endorsing it, but discerning between these definitions is important. Trump was very successful at muddling the definitions as this poll, and some responses in this thread, demonstrate.

     The term need not be and often is not understood in the strictly literal sense, nor is it most useful if employed as such. Substantially misleading reporting can be just as poisonous as outright falsified stories, in that it promotes a grave misunderstanding of the events underlying the news cycle. To exclude the former from the umbrella of "fake news" is to promote a distinction without a difference.

Um, no. There is a huge difference between being biased but basically reporting facts, and straight-out making things up. It is impossible to be completely unbiased, no matter how hard one tries (and most mainstream outlets try very hard, despite the decades-long right-wing smear campaign), and it does a huge disservice to draw an equivalency between CNN and those outright made-up stories the term referred to before Trump hijacked it (And I say this as someone who doesn't like CNN much at all.).

     Supposing that these mainstream outlets are not utterly consumed by sensationalism. Sure it might be ethically better, but the 24-hour news cycle, the growth of social media, and the shrinking of journalism as an industry have precipitated some negative trends (both a fall in the quality of mainstream journalism and actually fake news) that must not be tolerated. That these negative trends have become a partisan football is actually a very serious problem, because it means that realistically no improvement will occur.

[Mr. Smith]

Ad-hominem argument.

[HillGoose]

I think there is a lot of hypocrisy when it comes to modern day mainstream journalism. I mean, you have a pornstar and a gay man on 60 Minutes talking about morality.

Think about that for a second...

what's immoral about being gay?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I think there is a lot of hypocrisy when it comes to modern day mainstream journalism. I mean, you have a pornstar and a gay man on 60 Minutes talking about morality.

Think about that for a second...

The Republican nightmare: a complete lack of underage women being sexually assaulted.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Did everyone forget that "fake news" refers to made up stories that are not sourced or factual in the least bit? Perhaps some media companies have reported these stories at some point but if a report is based on at least some fact, no matter how misleading or spun it is, it is not fake. Media companies will make mistakes and should be held accountable for them but it doesn't mean they are straight out making things up. I'm not endorsing it, but discerning between these definitions is important. Trump was very successful at muddling the definitions as this poll, and some responses in this thread, demonstrate.

     The term need not be and often is not understood in the strictly literal sense, nor is it most useful if employed as such. Substantially misleading reporting can be just as poisonous as outright falsified stories, in that it promotes a grave misunderstanding of the events underlying the news cycle. To exclude the former from the umbrella of "fake news" is to promote a distinction without a difference.

Um, no. There is a huge difference between being biased but basically reporting facts, and straight-out making things up. It is impossible to be completely unbiased, no matter how hard one tries (and most mainstream outlets try very hard, despite the decades-long right-wing smear campaign), and it does a huge disservice to draw an equivalency between CNN and those outright made-up stories the term referred to before Trump hijacked it (And I say this as someone who doesn't like CNN much at all.).

     Supposing that these mainstream outlets are not utterly consumed by sensationalism. Sure it might be ethically better, but the 24-hour news cycle, the growth of social media, and the shrinking of journalism as an industry have precipitated some negative trends (both a fall in the quality of mainstream journalism and actually fake news) that must not be tolerated. That these negative trends have become a partisan football is actually a very serious problem, because it means that realistically no improvement will occur.

I mostly agree with this, but I think sensationalism is a better term to use than fake news when talking about these issues. I'm also wary of the term fake news because I think it's mainly used to discredit reporting the person using the term finds ideologically inconvenient,without really determining whether it's accurate or not. I guess I just wish people would stop dismissing sources whose politics they disagree with (I'll admit I've been guilty of this myself many times.).

     I totally agree. The sheer ease with which political partisans decide the trustworthiness of a source based on its politics (I've done this too) is a major factor in why I have become disenchanted with politics as of late. It seems impossible for partisanship to de-escalate and for cooler heads to prevail when almost every story that comes out is readily interpreted through the lens of political spin.