Fake News

[Dill]

(11-26-2016, 06:05 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: So what do you think about the prevalence of fake news? For the most part we have done a good job of calling it out around here, but how much have you seen around your friends and family on social media? I just found this whole thing interesting. I don't think it influenced the election, those that fall for these things were going to vote the way they did with or without the fake news, but it's still concerning.

Here was an interesting story based on an interview with someone behind the fake news. http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs

The bigger issue here, as the fake news publisher points out, is that there was already a large population of media illiterati  created long before the recent election. This I very much agree with, and that is the main reason the election went Trump's way.

The constant undermining of the "lame stream media" to enhance the credibility of news organizations and commentators with much lower standards who report the world as their audience wants it--full of liberal hypocrisy, black thugs, a war on Christmas and police, "feckless" Obama foreign policy, criminal immigrants and Clinton corruption--has created a political divide in the country now almost as deep as it was in the 60s.

Right wing media are not the only player here, though. There are think tanks, foundations, and political organizations like ALEC whose express purpose is to push US politics to the right by coordinating across a number of fronts--pushing Gerrymandering and voter id laws, along with privatization of public schools, prisons, and the military, while denying climate change, opposing gay rights, equal pay for equal work, affirmative action, abortion, and the theory of evolution, etc.  They've been at work since the early 80s and their political values and beliefs require them to undermine other sources of social authority, like science and secular scholarship (especially history), secular universities and, of course, "big government," thereby complementing and supporting the right wing media undermining of the mainstream press.