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An Increase In Fake News? Debate

Is there an increase in fake news?

  • Yes

    Votes: 11 84.6%

  • No

    Votes: 2 15.4%

  • Other

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    13
A

Anonymous

Guest
Do the forum members think that there has been an increase in media organisations "selling"/ presenting Fake news has legitimate?
This includes 9/11 , Iraq, Northern Ireland, Dr David Kelly and general manipulation of government information . Do you think the news organisations have lost the will to report genuine fact due to the close links the government has created with the organisations?

And if so,why has this happened?
And if not ,why am i wrong?
 
what close links? What fake news? Tarring all the "news organisations" or "the media" with the same broad conspiracist brush? You'll have to provide more specific examples -

-
 
I do not think the news is fake news or anything like that.

I still hold by my humble opinion (or not so humble) that news is business and that like any business it must make money.

That means they have to sell stories to people and make it interesting enough for people to watch or read and that means that certain things are reported and some things not, and that which is reported is edited - that is what editors are for.
 
Did anybody see (a year or more ago) the Ch 4 documentary 'The War You Didn't See (or something similar)?

The footage from the toppling of Saddam's statue (an iconic moment) was shown from a rather dramatic new angle: further back. It showed certainly less than a hundred Iraqis, where the impression given by the contemporaneously broadcast close-ups was that there were far more involved.

What's more, those dozens were nearly outnumbered by the world's press for whom they were clearly performing.

I questioned at the time why Ch 4 toed the line and used the same images as the other news-providers when they were sitting on more telling footage.

It came across as a kind of after-the-fact apology to their viewers...
 
Seems to me that comes under cold elephants' selective editing rather than out-and-out fakery. ALthough it depends how you define 'fake' of course.

Call me naive but one might hope for rather better from a news organisation like C4. But hey, what do I know.
 
IMHO there is MUCH more "fake news" now than at any time in the history of repotage. A fair amount of it can be attributed to lazy Journos who trawl the Internet for news reather than getting off their lazy backsides to do some proper journalism.
 
imho theres always been fake news but its now called history
the victors write history unfortunatly the facts are an inocent bystander
 
News Hounds: Fox Asks White House: Are "We Getting [Your] Message Out?"
Reported by Melanie - April 07, 2006

The highly esteemed British journalist, Robert Fisk of the London Independent, recently wrote that the U.S. media is so quick to report "news" based solely on what "U.S. officials say," that it should simply call itself, "U.S. Officials Say."

It's one thing that our media is so unreserved about quoting "U.S. officials" or "American officials," or "White House officials," or "a Bush administration official," but it's another when one of its members sends a reporter to the White House begging to know if it is "getting the [White House] message out," or "telling the whole [White House] story." Yet that is precisely what Fox News did today (April 7, 2006).

...

Link:
News Hounds: Fox Asks White House: Are "We Getting [Your] Message Out?"
Click to expand...
 
If there's more fake news around, IMO it's only because there's more news around.

Leaking fake damaging stuff on your oppenents and its blind acceptance by the newspapers that support your viewport and can't be bothered to check, has a pretty long and dishonourable history. Off the cuff, the Zinoviev letter that's partly credited with bring down the first Labour goverment....published by the Daily Mail (surprise!).
 
wowsah156 said:
Do you think the news organisations have lost the will to report genuine fact due to the close links the government has created with the organisations?
Click to expand...

Given the fact that every single newspaper, even those traditionally associated with the Left, seems to now be openly hostile - certainly to Blair and, more often than not, his entire government - it's beyond me what evidence there is for this suggestion. ITV news is now the broadcasting equivalent of the Daily Mail and its attitudes to Blair and Labour apparently identical to that publication. And the BBC has been locked in an ongoing struggle with the government (although not just this one) of varying intensity for years.

I'd agree with ArthurACII - there is more fake news but its mostly down to lazy journalism rather than anything more sinister. Rather than fake news what annoys me is the existence of so much news that isn't news at all and the fact that the news media has somewhat disappeared up its own arse over the last decade and seems to have decided that creating the agenda is now more important than reporting the facts.

Rrose-Selavy said:
what close links? What fake news? Tarring all the "news organisations" or "the media" with the same broad conspiracist brush? You'll have to provide more specific examples -
Click to expand...

Precisely!
 
Timble2 said:
If there's more fake news around, IMO it's only because there's more news around.

Leaking fake damaging stuff on your oppenents and its blind acceptance by the newspapers that support your viewport and can't be bothered to check, has a pretty long and dishonourable history. Off the cuff, the Zinoviev letter that's partly credited with bring down the first Labour goverment....published by the Daily Mail (surprise!).
Click to expand...

this was also manipulated by the likes of mccarthy. he gave the reporters the headlines and they wrote them down. at that time american news journalism was more concerned with reporting the "just the facts, maam" and covering the statements of public figures without checking their veracity, hence the reaction of 'new journalism' in the following years.
 
Wouldn't know about fake, but there does seem to be a fair amount of biased and lazy reporting, especially as governments etc. are geting very good at manipulating the media.

Also seems to be a fair amount of filler too. News items similar to cat stuck up tree stories taking precedence over what most folks would consider far more important topics. Just an observation though.
 
For my money the record for false news stories still belongs to the combatants of World War One. And this fantasy-news was issued by ALL sides, very much including the most advanced democracies.
 
How do know if any news is reported correctly unless your actually there to witness it yourself. What is correct anyway, its just a matter of perception. Its impossible to give a unbiased report of anything.
 
One of the slightly bizarre trends in reporting is the nation-centric nature of disaster reporting.

3000 people believed killed in earth quake in (fill in Third World Country here) buried deep in the news just before the 'And Finally' article. Have ten people from that nation killed in the same disaster and it rockets to the front page.
 
And the headlines once again,

...One Briton was killed instantly while waterskiing in the holiday resort of Ibiza...

...and finally, the entire population of South Africa has drowned due to a hugh tidal wave. No Britons were killed...

...And now the weather...
 
This is something Spitting Image lampooned many moons ago :D
 
- Yes news priorities are often suspect and I would agree that there has been more meaningless filler stuff - partly because of the expansion of the 24 hour news channels. Private Eye has also made a lot of useless "Going Live" from our reporter on the scene who hasn't anything to report.

Personally I'm sick also of the vox pop - email/text your comments or answer our poll - Should there be a no fly zone around the British Isles for wild birds ? blah blah -

-
 
...Our latest phone poll indicates that 78% of the general public have voted 'yes' to on the spot executions with no trial.

Of course this isn't legally binding, unless proposition 172 is passed, which we all hope will be...


taken from the Simpsons. Not word for word but you get the idea!
 
One of my pet peeves is the increasing use of "end of the world"-type rhetoric to describe, say, a thunderstorm.

"The thunderstorms which are attacking the City today are the most violent we've experienced....for....for....for fully TWENTY years!! What does it MEAN?"

Since the world didn't end during those even-worse storms 20 years back I doubt that it's going to end today either.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
One of my pet peeves is the increasing use of "end of the world"-type rhetoric to describe, say, a thunderstorm.

"The thunderstorms which are attacking the City today are the most violent we've experienced....for....for....for fully TWENTY years!! What does it MEAN?"

Since the world didn't end during those even-worse storms 20 years back I doubt that it's going to end today either.
Click to expand...

Baring in mind that 20 years is but an instant here on Mount Olympus, a considerably longer time span would need to be taken into account. :roll:
 
OldTimeRadio said:
One of my pet peeves is the increasing use of "end of the world"-type rhetoric to describe, say, a thunderstorm.

"The thunderstorms which are attacking the City today are the most violent we've experienced....for....for....for fully TWENTY years!! What does it MEAN?"

Since the world didn't end during those even-worse storms 20 years back I doubt that it's going to end today either.
Click to expand...

...or the use of a 'breaking news' ticker to mark the birth of moses martin-paltrow. :roll:
 
Heckler20 said:
3000 people believed killed in earth quake in (fill in Third World Country here) buried deep in the news just before the 'And Finally' article. Have ten people from that nation killed in the same disaster and it rockets to the front page.
Click to expand...

News outlets in pretty much all countries do that tho'. After all, they have to play to their domestic market first.
 
Jerry_B said:
News outlets in pretty much all countries do that tho'. After all, they have to play to their domestic market first.
Click to expand...

That is true, but it does rather give a weird nation-centric weighting to mortality doesn't it?
 
Jerry_B said:
Heckler20 said:
3000 people believed killed in earth quake in (fill in Third World Country here) buried deep in the news just before the 'And Finally' article. Have ten people from that nation killed in the same disaster and it rockets to the front page.
Click to expand...

News outlets in pretty much all countries do that tho'. After all, they have to play to their domestic market first.
Click to expand...

there is still a hierarchy, though. mining disasters in america receive infinitely more coverage in the uk than similar disasters in china. likewise, most people could tell you the name of the hurricane that lashed new orleans a few months after the event but would struggle to name the one that killed a larger number of people in guatemala the same length of time after it happened.

i think, though, this has got many more more angles to it. first and foremost, america (and most developed countries with a free press) have extensive news coverage available to an international audience more readily than countries less technologically developed or culturally more obscure. also, when a natural or industrial disaster occurs in these countries it generates more headlines because it's not something we expect in our developed world. that increases the human interest angle because we can identify with the lifestyles of the victims and see the potential for something similar happening to ourselves.
 
ted_bloody_maul said:
"first and foremost, america (and most developed countries with a free press) have extensive news coverage available to an international audience more readily than countries less technologically developed or culturally more obscure." {/quote]

Agreed, but this doesn't explain why United States newspaper readers and TV/radio news audiences received absolutely no news (that I ever saw at any rate) concerning Fred and Rosemary West and their crimes, while we followed the Moors Murders and the tragedy of young James Bulger (foir just two examples) in mid-numbing detail.

Some MAJOR news stories just don't make it across the Atlantic, for reasons I've never yet quite figured out.

P. S. I've since filled at least four floppy discs with materials on that lovely couple, the Wests. Lucky me.
Click to expand...
 
ted_bloody_maul said:
"...or the use of a 'breaking news' ticker to mark the birth of moses martin-paltrow. :roll:"
Click to expand...

I can explain how that started, at least here in the United States.

Back in the very early 1930s American newspapers became increasingly concerned about the inroads radio news reporting was making into newspaper circulation.

The newspapers decided to forge a "news agreement" with the radio networks.

The network executives at that time were mostly pretty callow youths who fell for the newspaper proposal the tradiitonal "hook, line and sinker."

The resultant "Biltmore Hotel Agreement" worked one hundred percent in favor of the PRINT media. Radio stations could not broadcast any news items until AFTER they'd appeared in the newspapers.

It didn't take Radio long to realize that it had been had.

But a closer reading of the contract gave Radio two outs:

1. They COULD report "breaking news" which they themselves uncovered. Thus "Flash! President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was heard to SNEEZE today. For opinions on what this may mean we're switching you you to our Washington, D. C., affiliate." (And it of course lead to the development of the great newwork radio news bureaus to uncover news stories BEFORE the newspapers did.)

2. Radio networks and stations were also free to talk ABOUT the news. This lead to the birth of the great radio news COMMENTATORS - Lowell Thomas, Raymond Gram Swing, Upton Close, H. R. Baukhage, Wilmar Shirer, Gabriel Heatter, Boake Carter and so on.

Ultimately, the newspapers had outsmarted themselves.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
ted_bloody_maul said:
"first and foremost, america (and most developed countries with a free press) have extensive news coverage available to an international audience more readily than countries less technologically developed or culturally more obscure." {/quote]

Agreed, but this doesn't explain why United States newspaper readers and TV/radio news audiences received absolutely no news (that I ever saw at any rate) concerning Fred and Rosemary West and their crimes, while we followed the Moors Murders and the tragedy of young James Bulger (foir just two examples) in mid-numbing detail.

Some MAJOR news stories just don't make it across the Atlantic, for reasons I've never yet quite figured out.

P. S. I've since filled at least four floppy discs with materials on that lovely couple, the Wests. Lucky me.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

i think this would be because the US is self-sufficient in news stories. by comparison i would offer the example of something outwith the south east corner of the country, including london, tending to get less publicity than stories from within that region. i had long maintained that the citizens of that corner of the UK had a propensity for psychopathic and sexual violence that far outweighed the rest of britain but with hindsight it would now appear that it's simply a case of receiving greater news coverage. arguably, this also applies to drug-related deaths of middle class teenage girls in southern english villages as compared with drug fatalities of provincial urbanised and lower class twenty something males. america, due to its enormous worldwide cultural influence, tends to see itself more as the centre of events in the same way that london does in a UK context.
 
Rubyait said:
" ...Our latest phone poll indicates that 78% of the general public have voted 'yes' to on the spot executions with no trial."
Click to expand...

I've always much preferred the system expoused by the old mountain sheriff, who revealed that he felt himself duty-. honor-, morally- and legally-bound to "give all my cap'tal crimes dee-fendents a real fa'r 'n' squar trial AFORE I hang 'em." <g>
 
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