The NY Times’ fake fake news
No, that doubling of “fake” is not a typo. Irony, they name is NY Times.
On Saturday the Times published a story entitled “Is Facebook’s Campbell Brown a Force to Be Reckoned With? Or Is She Fake News?”. The story has quite a few swipes at Brown which seem to amount to “she has conservative ties.” For example:
Others see her as a more insidious figure ”” a telegenic personality with close ties to conservative figures who can offer Facebook’s outreach the veneer of journalistic credibility.
And:
Ms. Brown, who became a school-choice activist with close ties to conservative politics after her TV career, is emerging as a fiery negotiator for her vision of Facebook as a publishing platform,
Here is another bit from the article, as it reads now:
…Ms. Brown wants to use Facebook’s existing Watch product ”” a service introduced in 2017 as a premium product with more curation that has nonetheless been flooded with far-right conspiracy programming ”” to be a breaking news destination.
But originally, that sentence had also contained an actual example of the sort of “far-right conspiracy programming” that has been “flooding” Watch. Originally it read like this:
…Ms. Brown wants to use Facebook’s existing Watch product ”“ a service introduced in 2017 as a premium product with more curation that has nonetheless been flooded with far-right conspiracy programming like “Palestinians Pay $400 million Pensions For Terrorist Families” ”“ to be a breaking news destination.
Well, guess what? That type of programming is—get ready—true. And it’s been known to be true for a long, long time.
And although the idea of truth may be mutable in the post-modern relativistic world of the university, the newspaper world is still at least somewhat subject to fact-checking. That means that the Times was ultimately forced to issue the following retraction, which you can find if you scroll down to the end of the very long article:
Correction: April 23, 2018
An earlier version of this article erroneously included a reference to Palestinian actions as an example of the sort of far-right conspiracy stories that have plagued Facebook. In fact, Palestinian officials have acknowledged providing payments to the families of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks on Israelis or convicted of terrorist acts and imprisoned in Israel; that is not a conspiracy theory.
But never fear, the Times soldiers on with the “far-right conspiracy programming” accusation about Watch, even though it can no longer seem to offer a single example of the fake news it wants to spotlight. But I would wager that the vast majority of its readers don’t require examples and take the Times’ authority on faith.
In Allan Bloom’s book “The Closing of the American Mind” he points out that the students are big believers that truth is relative, whatever that means. I suspect it’s like the Greek Sophists who believed that reality was just a matter of perception.
This article appeared in Der Spiegel a couple of years ago.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/far-right-misinformation-stokes-anti-refugee-sentiment-a-1070413.html
The article was a compilation of “far-right” fake news in Der Spiegel, the most important magazine in Germany. Out of curiosity, I checked a few stories in some so-called “far-right” main websites, like GatesOfVienna or JihadWatch… and nothing.
Quite interestingly, those “far-right” fake news discovered by Der Spiegel… were absent from the “far-right” media or websites. After a bit of checking, those fake news that justified some in-depth report in the main German magazine ended up being stuff like some anonymous posted in some forum with no repercussion (except in Der Spiegel). And who knows if posted by the very same Der Spiegel journalist…
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With regard to the Palestinian salaries and how it was denounced as fake news…
The Palestinian salaries to terrorists has been systematically censored in every mainstream media for a long time. So it’s likely happening that the very same journalist have problems to tell apart between reality and propaganda.
For example, this is a website that covers fake news ONLY from the BBC, and ONLY about Israel. And this is the tag for articles (fake news in the BBC) regarding terrorist salaries. Quite a few:
https://bbcwatch.org/tag/salaries-terrorists/
Well, aren’t they the “paper of record” with “all the news fit to print”? What greater expertise could there be in determining the fake from the real? Sarc/off
As I’ve commented here several times and in several ways–with examples, the “news,” the supposed “truth” we are being fed by the MSM and by other media as well, is increasingly some form or other of almost invariably Leftist propaganda–sometimes a total lie, sometimes with the crucial facts needed to get at the real truth of something omitted, sometimes “facts” twisted in a way to make us come to a particular conclusion that will “nudge” us to think what the Left wants us to think, and/or to take the action that the Left wants us to take.
Another technique used very often by the MSM is simply to “spike” a story, and just not report on it at all so that, in effect, it never happened.
We are being deliberately led down the wrong path and/or deliberately blinded to the truth.
Bottom line, the MSM has completely discredited itself, and can no longer be considered in any way a reliable source of real “news,” and certainly not of truth.
And unless we are suspicious, have access to other sources of information on the Internet, or to a good library, we will never find out that we are being lied to and manipulated.
The first time I heard it was “Faux News”. Basically a French wannabe haute culture poke at Swift boat vets vs John Fing Kerry.
The NBC CNN usual AP networks were somewhat jealous that Fox News could report on the Swift Boat vets, while the usual MSM people were ordered to bury the story. So FN could only be “Faux News”, cause otherwise people might be wondering why the MSM was not reporting on swift boats vs Kerry.
Yep, no reason to believe a word that is printed in any newspaper.
No reason at all.
Which is unfortunate and a problem.
But that’s how it is.
The idea of “fake news” is, laughably, either any news that the MSM does not publish because it does not want anyone to know about, or news that the MSM itself either doctors or totally misrepresents so that you believe something that’s either untrue or partially true but with the aim of misleading you to either despise what the MSM considers the “right wing” or approve of what the MSM considers the good guys (the Left or even extreme Left).
And, of course, everyone had to go out and buy their copies of “1984” when Trump, somehow—in spite of all this systematic lying—got elected….
The situation is putrid and untenable for any society that wishes to remain free.
Didn’t Mark Twain say if you don’t read a paper you are uninformed, if you read one, you are misinformed..
( wish we could have his genius here today )
Ray:
See this.
And it never, ever stops:
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/384757-us-falls-to-45th-on-press-freedom-index-trump-labeled-media-bashing-enthusiast
Nope, no one is permitted to tell the media that they’re naked preeners.
As I have also commented on other threads here, over the last several years, practically every major governmental institution in our supposed “democratic Republic”–be they Legislative, Executive, or Judicial–has demonstrated by word and deed that it is corrupt (and quite often incompetent at the same time), and–no matter how hard they try to disguise it–no friend to democracy, to our Republic and it’s Constitution, to the Rule of Law and Equal Justice under it, and certainly not to us citizens, our sovereignty over our country and government, our Rights, and our ability to remain Free and independent; citizens, not serfs.
And, unfortunately, the same can be said of our other major civil and cultural institutions as well–starting with Academe.
In reality there is just one institution left standing, one whose culture has not yet been fatally corrupted, one that many of our citizens still have some measure of confidence in, and that is our Military.
Obama tried to purge our military of war fighting officers, and those who did not go along with his Leftist ideology and agenda, replacing them with like minded people, his toadies.
God help us all if Obama succeeded, and our Military, too, has become fatally corrupt.
@ SOP, I give you. Adm. Mike Rogers
It’s the toilet paper of record.
In the NYT (I think) news synopsis I receive daily via email, a bit of fake news (fake by near omission). The “toilet paper of record” praised the actions of the Toronto cop who confronted the driver of the van without shooting him, proffering him as the exemplar of PC police action. See? We diverse Canadian cops know how to do it.
Only if you followed the link to the original article and scrolled way down would you learn that the driver had no gun. It’s easy to arrest someone without firing a shot when the perp is unarmed.
What are the chances of the NYT ever printing something like this?:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/trump-russia-probe-michael-caputo-witness-faces-financial-ruin/
The arrogant partisanship of those who were in power—and believe they should still be in power (so that everything justifies them in trying to retake power)—is tearing the country apart.
This is a case of the pot calling the kettle corroded, which makes me wonder why WaPo even drew attention to the NYT lying (it was not an error, as is made clear in every story about the fake story).
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/04/25/problem-corrections-nowadays-nyt-wapo-etc/
“Yesterday the Washington Post carried a refreshingly candid story under the headline “NYT Issues Correction after Labeling Palestinian Support for Terrorists Fake News.” The article, which goes into considerable detail about the Times’s gaffe, reads almost like a mea culpa by the Post – which is appropriate.
Both of these highly influential dailies have run corrections in recent years that go well beyond the miscaptioning of a photo.”
What the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, enthusiastically abetted by the MSM—and perpetuated by all-too-many so-called “liberals” throughout the land—have wrought:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/trump-russia-investigation-guilty-until-proven-innocent-new-standard/
It was hard to convince Americans that they were on a train going past the no return point to CW2. Hussein helped in convincing people, but I got the impression that a lot of people thought the instability in the US was entirely due to ex President Hussein.
No, no, no. The problem of America is a spiritual problem with the people. Even if every single Leftist on the face of the world is killed tomorrow, the American problem will still persist.
The people are corrupt and decadent. If it was just the government, then yes killing and purging everybody would work. It is not.
The Leftist alliance has thousands of megalomaniac totalitarian dictators worse than Hussein to replace him. This was before people went crazy over HRC vs Trum.
“It’s easy to arrest someone without firing a shot when the perp is unarmed.”
Amadou Diallo was unavailable for comment.
And, of course, he wasn’t even the perp…
@ Ray: “I suspect it’s like the Greek Sophists who believed that reality was just a matter of perception.”
If you enter the helping field this is the rule that one must abide by when dealing with solo therapy sessions. In fact, few of my texts (written by social workers) and a couple of professors adhere to relativism, at least to an extent when it comes to truth. Usually this had to deal with morality and ethics (either leaning towards amorality or to a modern thought of ethics).