• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

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
My preferred news sources: Radio 4 and bbc.co.uk seem to be following the 'Terrible Disaster: Thousands Dead—But Only Two Britons Lightly Bruised' formula.

It's almost as if they're pre-emptively answering the accusing question: "Why are you telling us about these Mickey Mouse countries?"

I don't like it at all.
 
Yes, but is there anybody on this list who's not more cornerned with the safety of their spouse or sweetheart returning to them along treacherously icy roads than they are about the safety of bauxite miners in Upper Drumghoulla?

And might not those Drumghoullian miners be more concerned about the safety of THEIR spouses or sweethearts in a neighborhood flood than they are about Americans or Brits?

It's called being human and news is compiled and reported by human beings.
 
Where Does the News Come From?

One episode of the circa 1980 Canadian horror drama radio series NIGHTFALL is entitled "Where Does the News Come From?"

The story fully answers the question - news departments simply.... make....it....up.

Pray for the innocent young thing television news reader who eventually realizes that she's reported the same major airliner crash several times before, with exactly the same film footage and nothing changed in the text other than the date, the location, and the names and nationalities of the dead.

No survivors, of course.

Especially not the news reader.
 
I'd say there's a fair amount o' BS been pilin' up since News began.
 
Over a ten-month period, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) documented television newsrooms' use of 36 video news releases (VNRs)—a small sample of the thousands produced each year. CMD identified 77 television stations, from those in the largest to the smallest markets, that aired these VNRs or related satellite media tours(SMTs) in 98 separate instances, without disclosure to viewers. Collectively, these 77 stations reach more than half of the U.S. population. The VNRs and SMTs whose broadcast CMD documented were produced by three broadcast PR firms for 49 different clients, including General Motors, Intel, Pfizer and Capital One. In each case, these 77 television stations actively disguised the sponsored content to make it appear to be their own reporting. In almost all cases, stations failed to balance the clients' messages with independently-gathered footage or basic journalistic research. More than one-third of the time, stations aired the pre-packaged VNR in its entirety.

Report highlights include:
  • KOKH-25 in Oklahoma City, OK, a FOX station owned by Sinclair, aired six of the VNRs tracked by CMD, making it this report's top repeat offender. Consistently, KOKH-25 failed to provide any disclosure to news audiences. The station also aired five of the six VNRs in their entirety, and kept the publicist's original narration each time.
  • In three instances, TV stations not only aired entire VNRs without disclosure, but had local anchors and reporters read directly from the script prepared by the broadcast PR firm. KTVI-2 in St. Louis, MO, had their anchor introduce, and their reporter re-voice, a VNR produced for Masterfoods and 1-800 Flowers, following the script nearly verbatim. WBFS-33 in Miami, FL, did the same with a VNR produced for the "professional services firm" Towers Perrin. And Ohio News Network did likewise with a VNR produced for Siemens.
  • WSJV-28 in South Bend, IN, introduced a VNR produced for General Motors as being from "FOX's Andrew Schmertz," implying that Schmertz was a reporter for the local station or the FOX network. In reality, he is a publicist at the largest U.S. broadcast PR firm, Medialink Worldwide. Another Medialink publicist, Kate Brookes, was presented as an on-air reporter by four TV stations airing a VNR produced for Siemens.
  • Two stations whose previous use of government VNRs was documented by the New York Times, WCIA-3 in Champaign, IL, and WHBQ-13 in Memphis, TN, also airedVNRs tracked by CMD. The March 2005 Times article reported that WHBQ's vice president for news "could not explain how his station came to broadcast" a State Department VNR, while WCIA's news director said that Agriculture Department VNRs "meet our journalistic standards."

Summary​

Although the number of media formats and outlets has exploded in recent years, television remains the dominant news source in the United States. More than three-quarters of U.S. adults rely on local TV news, and more than 70 percent turn to network TV or cable news on a daily or near-daily basis, according to a January 2006 Harris Poll. The quality and integrity of television reporting thus significantly impacts the public's ability to evaluate everything from consumer products to medical services to government policies.

To reach this audience—and to add a veneer of credibility to clients' messages—the public relations industry uses video news releases (VNRs). VNRs are pre-packaged "news" segments and additional footage created by broadcast PR firms, or by publicists within corporations or government agencies. VNRs are designed to be seamlessly integrated into newscasts, and are freely provided to TV stations. Although the accompanying information sent to TV stations identifies the clients behind the VNRs, nothing in the material for broadcast does. Without strong disclosure requirements and the attention and action of TV station personnel, viewers cannot know when the news segment they're watching was bought and paid for by the very subjects of that "report."

In recent years, the U.S. Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, journalism professors, reporters and members of the general public have expressed concern about VNRs. In response, public relations executives and broadcaster groups have vigorously defended the status quo, claiming there is no problem with current practices. In June 2005, the president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), Barbara Cochran, told a reporter that VNRs were "kind of like the Loch Ness Monster. Everyone talks about it, but not many people have actually seen it."

To inform this debate, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) conducted a ten-month study of selected VNRs and their use by television stations, tracking 36 VNRs issued by three broadcast PR firms. Key findings include:

  • VNR use is widespread. CMD found 69 TV stations that aired at least one VNR from June 2005 to March 2006—a significant number, given that CMD was only able to track a small percentage of the VNRs streaming into newsrooms during that time. Collectively, these 69 stations broadcast to 52.7 percent of the U.S. population, according to Nielsen Media figures. Syndicated and network-distributed segments sometimes included VNRs, further broadening their reach.
  • VNRs are aired in TV markets of all sizes. TV stations often use VNRs to limit the costs associated with producing, filming and editing their own reports. However, VNR usage is not limited to small-town stations with shoestring budgets. Nearly two-thirds of the VNRs that CMD tracked were aired by stations in a Top 50 Nielsen market area, such as Detroit, Pittsburgh or Cincinnati. Thirteen VNRs were broadcast in the ten largest markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston.
  • TV stations don't disclose VNRs to viewers. Of the 87 VNR broadcasts that CMD documented, not once did the TV station disclose the client(s) behind the VNR to the news audience. Only one station, WHSV-3 in Harrisonburg, VA, provided partial disclosure, identifying the broadcast PR firm that created the VNR, but not the client, DaimlerChrysler. WHSV-3 aired soundbites from a Chrysler representative and directed viewers to websites associated with Chrysler, without disclosing the company's role in the "report."
  • TV stations disguise VNRs as their own reporting. In every VNR broadcast that CMD documented, the TV station altered the VNR's appearance. Newsrooms added station-branded graphics and overlays, to make VNRs indistinguishable from reports that genuinely originated from their station. A station reporter or anchor re-voiced the VNR in more than 60 percent of the VNR broadcasts, sometimes repeating the publicist's original narration word-for-word.
  • TV stations don't supplement VNR footage or verify VNR claims. While TV stations often edit VNRs for length, in only seven of the 87 VNR broadcasts documented by CMD did stations add any independently-gathered footage or information to the segment. In all other cases, the entire aired "report" was derived from a VNR and its accompanying script. In 31 of the 87 VNR broadcasts, the entire aired "report" was the entire pre-packaged VNR. Three stations (WCPO-9 in Cincinnati, OH; WSYR-9 in Syracuse, NY; and WYTV-33 in Youngstown, OH) removed safety warnings from a VNR touting a newly-approved prescription skin cream. WSYR-9 also aired a VNR heraldinga "major health breakthrough" for arthritis sufferers—a supplement that a widely-reported government study had found to be little better than a placebo.
  • The vast majority of VNRs are produced for corporate clients. Of the hundreds of VNRs that CMD reviewed for potential tracking, only a few came from government agencies or non-profit organizations. Corporations have consistently been the dominant purveyors of VNRs, though the increased scrutiny of government-funded VNRs in recent years may have decreased their use by TV newsrooms. Of the VNRs that CMD tracked, 47 of the 49 clients behind them were corporations that stood to benefit financially from the favorable "news" coverage.
  • Satellite media tours may accompany VNRs. Broadcast PR firms sometimes produce both VNRs and satellite media tours (SMTs) for clients. SMTs are actual interviews with TV stations, but their focus and scope are determined by the clients. In effect, SMTs are live recitations of VNR scripts. CMD identified 10 different TV stations that aired SMTs for 17 different clients with related VNRs. In only one instance was there partial disclosure to viewers. An anchor at WLTX-19 in Columbia, SC, said after the segment, "This interview ... was provided by vendors at the consumer trade show," but did not name the four corporate clients behind the SMT.
In sum, television newscasts—the most popular news source in the United States—frequently air VNRs without disclosure to viewers, without conducting their own reporting, and even without fact checking the claims made in the VNRs. VNRs are overwhelmingly produced for corporations, as part of larger public relations campaigns to sell products, burnish their image, or promote policies or actions beneficial to the corporation.

More Details:
http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It used to be the case that journalists were told they needed three independent sources before a story could be run. Newspapers were awash with "unprintable" stuff that might leak out to less fussy organs such as Private Eye. The Eye would regularly run kite-flying exercises in which broad hints were dropped of the kind of powder-kegs they knew were buried under certain public figures, without naming names.

I don't suppose there was ever a golden age but I have read a lot of pieces in which journalists have lamented the gradual lowering of the barriers. It started before the Web arrived; competition drove down the old rules so that it was just a calculated risk of who could sue and for how much. As most lives were laid open to scrutiny, the highest in the land made sure they were as remote as possible - the higher you are up the chain, the greater the number of little fish you can feed to your own potential preditors.

Now we have the Blogosphere in which any number of amateurs can make monkeys out of the professionals. This is happening daily on the Guardian website, where they have opened up the Comment columnists to ripostes by readers. Anyone who read the recent blistering comments on a Polly Toynbee piece in which she had defended politicians will get a wholly different view of what Guardian Readers are like! I note that her most recent piece seems to have been removed from this pillory-situation.

The Blogosphere does however resemble a tank of piranhas, with enough teeth to devastate anything thrown into the pool. It does not solve the question of what gets thrown into the pool or why.

For all our delusions of openness, we will be kept too busy with what we're thrown to drag ourselves out of the slime. :(


Last night I watched the old conspiracy thriller Defence of the Realm. It dates from 1985 and its picture of old Fleet Street was already nostalgic - at one point our hero joins in a traditional celebration in which the metal type-setters bang an employee out with a percussive ritual! Seems like another world. Yet the story stands up very well. A journalist is fed stories which result in the disgrace of a politician. It turns out that his investigative journalism has served to distract attention from a more disturbing agenda. Well I guess there's been nothing new since Macchiavelli. :(
 
As I come from Newcastle, I remember the local paper, the Evening Chronicle would always try and make news local.
You'd see the headline 'Sumatra Earthquake - Tyneside Man Involved'.

Honestly, we get everywhere.
 
The local paper where I come from is awful! You can pretty much bet that whatever you read in it has maybe a small grain of truth somewhere but that's it. They don't check up on any sources; people get interviewed making these outrageous claims, like they're a registered nurse or they play football for some college--and those who know them can tell you they are not in any way based on reality. You can literally be Joe Nobody walking up at the moment and say "yes I'm a lawyer and I saw the whole thing" and they'll take your word for it.
 
MagusPerde said:
The local paper where I come from is awful! You can pretty much bet that whatever you read in it has maybe a small grain of truth somewhere but that's it. They don't check up on any sources; people get interviewed making these outrageous claims, like they're a registered nurse or they play football for some college--and those who know them can tell you they are not in any way based on reality. You can literally be Joe Nobody walking up at the moment and say "yes I'm a lawyer and I saw the whole thing" and they'll take your word for it.
Click to expand...

i expect that's not too different from national press it's just more likely that with a localised news story you'll have more backround knowledge.
 
jimv1 said:
As I come from Newcastle, I remember the local paper, the Evening Chronicle would always try and make news local.
You'd see the headline 'Sumatra Earthquake - Tyneside Man Involved'.

Honestly, we get everywhere.
Click to expand...

that's a bit like the reputation that the aberdeen press & journal had. although untrue the myth still persists that the paper ran a story with the headline 'Local Man Drowns At Sea'. the story was of the sinking of the titanic.
 
Just spotted this in the ForteanTimes breaking news section;

American TV stations in 'fake news' inquiry

11:20am Monday May 29, 2006
By Andrew Buncombe


WASHINGTON - Federal authorities are investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news.

Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs).

Not one told viewers who had produced the items.
Click to expand...


NZ Herald article
 
Isn't that just what Fox News does every day?
 
Who was more accurate in predicting the way the Internet would play out with regard to 'fake news'.

Terry Pratchett or Bill Gates? [Interview from 1996]

D7qg9Q_W4AAYq2Z.jpeg
 
Remarkably prescient thread title!

Here's an interesting long piece about College Daily, apparently the major news source for Mainland Chinese students abroad and no stranger to making up stories.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/c...re-chinese-students-in-america-get-their-news

“Politics in China is largely behind the scenes,” Fang said. “When there is low transparency, people tend to believe in conspiracy theories and fake news.”

In a recent post, Fang wrote, “The weirder the conspiracy theory, the more widely it circulates. Many WeChat public accounts are becoming mills for conspiracy theories. It is not necessarily that they hate American politicians so much; it’s just that such articles are likely to reach the threshold of a hundred thousand clicks.”

Lin, for his part, has been open about his contempt for traditional journalism. He once wrote on his WeChat account that “the worst mistake I ever made was to pin hopes on people who hold onto journalism ideals.” In 2016, he said in an interview, “This gang of people only have their ideals, and produce no news.” He said, “Journalism majors tend to spend lots of time on one piece, but in the age of new media, we want reporting and editing to work seamlessly and emphasize our appeal to our readers—we can’t just wait for news to happen to do stories.”
Click to expand...
 
The more important question is - "Is there ever such a thing as entirely true news?" Deception by omission not permitted.

Is there really such a thing as a 'Fact' that is absolute?

You may wriggle and wruggle but the answer to both is 'No' and - furthermore - you all know it :)
 
Agreeing that specific instances, if they are political, have no place on this thread or elsewhere on these forums.

Frideswide
 
Don’t get me started. You have now idea how much I’m bottling it all in at the moment.
Other than saying you never get the full picture from the media, I’ll give this thread a swerve now.
 
ramonmercado said:
Post 45 above.
Click to expand...

To my eye that's a descriptive piece about a particular source of fake news and its broader implications. It's more about cross-cultural differences in the context for fake news rather than the politics per se.
 
EnolaGaia said:
To my eye that's a descriptive piece about a particular source of fake news and its broader implications. It's more about cross-cultural differences in the context for fake news rather than the politics per se.
Click to expand...

I see similarities.

A headline posted during the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign read “Using a Double? Changing Leaders? Might Not Have Long to Live? Hillary’s Campaign May End Early.” More recently, a headline proclaimed, “Trump Dodged a Bullet! ‘Russian Collusion’ Investigation Over, and He’s Safe. . . .” Others have ranged from “Farewell, isis! The Last isis Group Will Be Exterminated, and They Beg the World to Forgive” to “Hollywood Sexy Asian Goddess, First Love Was Daniel Wu, Bewitched Hot Men All Over the World” (about the actress Maggie Q). When College Daily, after weeks of silence, finally weighed in on the protests in Hong Kong, in August, it toed the government line, uncritically publishing a headline that used the phrase “I Support the Hong Kong Police”—a saying that has been popularized by the People’s Daily, an official organ of the Chinese Communist Party.
 
We can stick with the er... er... gentleperson's agreements about following the rules. Or we can remove more topics for discussion. :(

This hasn't been the sort of place that goes in for the nitpickery creating more problems. I suggest that we really don't need to go down that route.

Please keep this thread on track - discussion of rules can go in General Queries or in PM to any Mod. Am happy to talk about it in Pm with anyone. Although... that does mean I'm happy to talk about the rules, and not about whatever the forbidden area is. And yes, I'm a very political animal; if I can work within the rules then anyone can.

Frides
 
Frideswide said:
We can stick with the er... er... gentleperson's agreements about following the rules. Or we can remove more topics for discussion. :(

This hasn't been the sort of place that goes in for the nitpickery creating more problems. I suggest that we really don't need to go down that route.

Please keep this thread on track - discussion of rules can go in General Queries or in PM to any Mod. Am happy to talk about it in Pm with anyone. Although... that does mean I'm happy to talk about the rules, and not about whatever the forbidden area is. And yes, I'm a very political animal; if I can work within the rules then anyone can.

Frides
Click to expand...

I merely responded to a nonmodish post by Enola in which he asked questions, which was in response to a post of mine in which I accepted the points you both made.

I don't wish to nitpick.
 
I found the Wikipedia entry very enlightening: Fake News. It is especially good to see an article with 383 footnotes.

As to the growth in Fake News, well, apart from the political polarization of news reportage with zero consequences for spreading falsehood, there is also the issue that sensationalism sells. Add to this the increasing global adoption of the Russian Model of disinformation, which has been so effective at silencing opposition to Putin, and the steep increase in social media's reach into people's lives, and I think we can account for the level of garbage news we are receiving.

Incidentally, the poll for this forum topic seems broken.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top