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What is "fake news"?

atlkvb

atlkvb

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Feel free to add your own examples to this list. I'm sure it will grow to multiple pages. My examples are based solely on issues of "race" and how it's reported in the main News media.

All of the following are examples of "Fake News":

Any and all criticism of Barack Obama's legacy or his policies as "racist"

Only White people are "racists"(False, Black racists exist but are hardly ever reported on)

The majority of aborted babies in America are minority (True, but it's hardly ever reported as fact)

Black people don't support school choice vouchers (false, they do...overwhelmingly)

Black Lives Matter is for racial equality (false, they're not...they're Black Supremacists)

All Conservatives hate Black people (wrong)

There are no Black Conservatives (wrong, they're just not given a prominent speaking forum)

Black Churches support Gay rights and Homosexual Marriages (neither is true, they're against both...strongly)

Most Black people live in crime infested neighborhoods (wrong...in certain areas where Government programs provide most of the income this is true, but that's never reported)

Black people Hate Trump(false, he has plenty of support among Blacks but they are never shown)

Blacks don't vote for Republicans(many do, but they don't get reported)

The country is/or is not racially divided (depends on what the Media is trying to lie about each)

Blacks hate America(false, many are only portrayed as hating the country because it's racist)

Black people always face institutional racism(wrong, many Blacks are incompetent and blame racism for their failures)

All White people are racists(wrong, but the Media usually reports it as true when the Left charges it)

All White Christians hate Blacks(False, but Media never reports otherwise)

All White people are Evil(False, but the Media shows Whites as essentially segregationists who don't want Blacks anywhere around them)

All White Males are racists(False, see above)

Whites keep Blacks from equality, and don't believe they are equal(False, but Media always reports Blacks as being "oppressed" by White people)

The Media is fair to Blacks or treats them fairly without biased negative opinions or slanted negative images.(False...Media always shows Blacks as helpless victims of White racism)

ALL DAILY EXAMPLES OF FAKE NEWS ABOUT RACE
 
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WVex-pat in GA

WVex-pat in GA

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Dec 17, 2007
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O

Original Mountaineer1

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Aug 27, 2001
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atlkvb said:
Feel free to add your own examples to this list. I'm sure it will grow to multiple pages. My examples are based solely on issues of "race" and how it's reported in the main News media.

All of the following are examples of "Fake News":

Any and all criticism of Barack Obama's legacy or his policies as "racist"

Only White people are "racists"(False, Black racists exist but are hardly ever reported on)

The majority of aborted babies in America are minority (True, but it's hardly ever reported as fact)

Black people don't support school choice vouchers (false, they do...overwhelmingly)

Black Lives Matter is for racial equality (false, they're not...they're Black Supremacists)

All Conservatives hate Black people (wrong)

There are no Black Conservatives (wrong, they're just not given a prominent speaking forum)

Black Churches support Gay rights and Homosexual Marriages (neither is true, they're against both...strongly)

Most Black people live in crime infested neighborhoods (wrong...in certain areas where Government programs provide most of the income this is true, but that's never reported)

Black people Hate Trump(false, he has plenty of support among Blacks but they are never shown)

Blacks don't vote for Republicans(many do, but they don't get reported)

The country is/or is not racially divided (depends on what the Media is trying to lie about each)

Blacks hate America(false, many are only portrayed as hating the country because it's racist)

Black people always face institutional racism(wrong, many Blacks are incompetent and blame racism for their failures)

All White people are racists(wrong, but the Media usually reports it as true when the Left charges it)

All White Christians hate Blacks(False, but Media never reports otherwise)

All White people are Evil(False, but the Media shows Whites as essentially segregationists who don't want Blacks anywhere around them)

All White Males are racists(False, see above)

Whites keep Blacks from equality, and don't believe they are equal(False, but Media always reports Blacks as being "oppressed" by White people)

The Media is fair to Blacks or treats them fairly without biased negative opinions or slanted negative images.(False...Media always shows Blacks as helpless victims of White racism)

ALL DAILY EXAMPLES OF FAKE NEWS ABOUT RACE
Click to expand...

Damn ATL you are confusing opinion with fake news. There are a lot of researchers that believe the examples you listed are indeed factual. There are researchers that believe with all their heart in man-made global warming. I disagree but respect their professional opinion.

Fake news is Bowling Green, aliens partying in Montreal, and me banging Halle Berry.
 
O

op2

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Mar 16, 2014
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Original Mountaineer1 said:
Damn ATL you are confusing opinion with fake news. There are a lot of researchers that believe the examples you listed are indeed factual. There are researchers that believe with all their heart in man-made global warming. I disagree but respect their professional opinion.

Fake news is Bowling Green, aliens partying in Montreal, and me banging Halle Berry.
Click to expand...

I agree those three are examples of fake news for most people, although in my case it's only the first two.
 
W

WVUCOOPER

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Dec 10, 2002
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Original Mountaineer1 said:
Fake news is Bowling Green, aliens partying in Montreal, and me banging Halle Berry.
Click to expand...
I don't think Bowling Green was fake news, I think she just misspoke. The Alt-Right has bastardized the term FAKE NEWS, because that's what they do. They steal legit things and beat them in to oblivion.

True Fake News is what ex-pat posted in this thread, and yes, both left and right do it.
 
W

WVUCOOPER

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Dec 10, 2002
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Here is an NPR (FAKE NEWS!!!) article on the changing meaning of fake news.

Friday night, President Trump took to Twitter to deliver one of his favorite insults to journalists: "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" he wrote.


Follow
Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

4:48 PM - 17 Feb 2017


It's a phrase President Trump has now tweeted 15 times this month (10 times in all caps). He used the phrase seven times in his Thursday news conference.

Anyone who has followed the news knows this isn't what "fake news" meant just a few months ago. Back then, it meant lies posing as news, made up by people from Macedonian teenagers to a dad in the Los Angeles suburbs. The stories impacted the election to some unmeasurable degree, and they also presented a tangible threat when a gunman inspired by false stories fired shots inside Washington pizza restaurant Comet Ping Pong.


Now, Trump casts all unfavorable news coverage as fake news. In one tweet, he even went so far as to say that "any negative polls are fake news." And many of his supporters have picked up and run with his new definition.

The ability to reshape language — even a little — is an awesome power to have. According to language experts on both sides of the aisle, the rebranding of fake news could be a genuine threat to democracy.

The danger of the word "fake"

As a linguist, University of California, Berkeley professor George Lakoff is one of the few people in the world who can truthfully say things like "I've studied the word 'fake' in some detail."

Republicans in particular, along with some independents, hold journalists in low regard, according to several polls.

According to Luntz, though, it took Trump's political skills to capitalize on those trends.

"I've never seen anyone in politics with the potential communication capability of Donald Trump," said Luntz. He added, "He's certainly not a unifier, but boy is he powerful and is he credible to a segment of the population that feels forgotten and left behind."

Trump also arguably picked a great phrase to take advantage of: one that was both young (so perhaps more malleable) and powerful. The phrase "fake news" originally telegraphed a sense of danger about nefarious types intentionally sowing lies to influence the election. When Trump calls an unfavorable poll "fake news," he's borrowing some of the phrase's original power, even as he dilutes that power by reusing the phrase.

The result is a dizzying dichotomy, as Lakoff pointed out in an interview with NPR: "real fake news" (stories about "pizzagate" and a made-up endorsement from the pope) and "fake fake news" (claims that legitimate stories are made up).

But the speed with which Trump's messaging ricochets around the Internet worries Luntz, who fears that there is no accountability; technology helps unfiltered (and unchecked) ideas to spread quickly. That means that a phrase can be redefined in an entirely new way "within a matter of weeks," he said.

"In the case of fake news, the problem is that we are actually undermining the core principles of a democracy," he added, echoing Lakoff.

The phrase fake news itself is young, and Trump's abilities may be unique, but the fact that he is spinning language to his advantage is nothing new.

"If you think about rhetorical strategies — and i think it's something that Trump has been very good at — I think this is something that has happened time and again during presidencies," said Adam Berinsky, a political science professor at MIT, pointing to the ongoing tug of war during Barack Obama's presidency over what to call health care overhaul.

"Did we call health care reform 'ACA' or 'Obamacare'?" Berinsky said. "Similarly, Donald Trump being able to take the term fake news and turn it into basically an epithet for any media he doesn't like — it's a very effective strategy."

"So it's a new development, but it's a very familiar pattern," he concluded.

The definition changed ... but only for some people

Trump has not succeeded at changing the definition of fake news for everyone. Google the phrase or search it on Twitter, and it is used in two ways (sarcastic uses aside). One is the original sense. The other is to slam mainstream media organizations, often on behalf of right-leaning organizations.

The Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody, for example, flung the phrase at CNN's Jim Acosta, who criticized Trump for calling disproportionately on right-leaning outlets. It's a valid disagreement, but it doesn't mean Acosta's remark is fake news.

Likewise, conservative website The Federalist recently listed 16 stories that it classified as fake news. But many do not even approach the term's original meaning, as the Washington Post's Callum Borchers wrote. The author classifies a story that required a correction as fake news, for example (though by definition, a fake-news writer intending to deceive wouldn't try to correct a story). Other complaints are about perceived tone or framing. One can always argue that a story is poorly framed or biased. But that doesn't make it fake news.

Luntz — who himself perceives a left-leaning bias in many media organizations — explains that having problems with tone isn't the same as negating the truth.

"While I have differences from time to time with what people report and the tone that they take, I am an advocate of a vibrant, constructive media," he said. "When you start to suggest that there are alternative facts and you start to criticize your opponents for fake news, you're undermining the credibility of the one institution that holds all the others accountable."

One language for the right; another, for the left

It's not normally news when language shifts meanings — when the definitions of words like "decimate" or "literally" start to soften. Few (aside from copy editors and dictionary publishers) would call it a crisis.

But with fake news there are serious potential problems ... problems that go even beyond disputes over what is fact and what is fiction. The shifting definition of fake news may be a sign of a broader gap between right and left. In July, author George Saunders painted a picture of that gap:

"Intellectually and emotionally weakened by years of steadily degraded public discourse, we are now two separate ideological countries, LeftLand and RightLand, speaking different languages, the lines between us down. Not only do our two subcountries reason differently; they draw upon non-intersecting data sets and access entirely different mythological systems."

If it is indeed true that the term fake news has come to mean something different for a conservative than a liberal, it could be one more sign that the LeftLandian and RightLandian languages — and the people who speak them — have moved one more inch apart, into increasingly different realities.
 
atlkvb

atlkvb

All-Conference
Jul 9, 2004
80,033
1,972
113
Original Mountaineer1 said:
Damn ATL you are confusing opinion with fake news. There are a lot of researchers that believe the examples you listed are indeed factual. There are researchers that believe with all their heart in man-made global warming. I disagree but respect their professional opinion.

Fake news is Bowling Green, aliens partying in Montreal, and me banging Halle Berry.
Click to expand...


Your definitions aren't wrong OM, I just think they're too limited. I've often posted on here how the media "lies with the truth"...by that I mean they leave out strategic pieces of information on some stories that don't fit their agenda or spin on a story.

I posted the examples I did about Race because being Black, that's what I'm sensitive to. So I stand by my suggestions, because you don't hear the Media either reporting on or talking about those things I brought up in my OP.

I do agree with you and other posters in this thread that both sides do it (Left and Right) but I thought the Media was supposed to just report 'the facts', not make up sh*t or leave out important stuff?

So tell me OM, do you ever hear the media talking about Black racists? Remember that story recently about those Black kids in Chicago who tied up that poor mentally challenged kid, and tortured him?

There was hardly a mention of the fact those kids who did the kidnapping were Black. It wasn't reported as a "hate crime", and the Media virtually ignored the fact that those attackers were a bunch of hateful racists.

In fact they did everything they could to avoid the subject altogether. That's what I call "fake news".
 
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