I'm sure this will be used for censoring political groups, and alternative media. As mainstream news sources become less popular / reputable they have really started pushing for methods to censor their opposition.
Except they did not leak it to Buzzfeed, it was not compiled by any of the intelligence agencies, multiple media companies were in possession of the report and the report was not confidential in any way either. While there at least yet is no concrete proof about the claims, the intelligence agencies took it seriously enough to look into it and brief the current and upcoming presidents.
So tell me again how they lost credibility by reporting the story as it is.
The mainstream media did a fine job. Your criticism is completely misplaced.
The New York Times, CNN, Guardian etc all reported the verified facts. Which is that a report was produced by an ex-MI6 spy looking into allegations that Russia had amongst others compromising video involving prostitutes/golden showers and President Elect Trump. This report was obtained by John McCain and passed to the FBI for verification. They didn't publish the report. They didn't publish the allegations. The presence and gist of the report is newsworthy because the spy in question has by all accounts impeccable credentials which McCain and the CIA/FBI made statements about. That is all they reported.
BuzzFeed were the ones who decided to publish the report and all of the above organisations heavily criticised them for it afterwards questioning their ethics etc.
Compare 'peegate' with 'pizzagate'. On the latter, the mainstream media wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole (rightly so), because so much was pure speculation from internet neckbeards and trolls (to use affectionate terms).
With the former, we have the press doing the job of internet trolls, shoveling serious allegations with absolutely zero evidence given.
Through a political lens it makes perfect sense, it's very sad, and I can't trust anything the main stream media tells me anymore. They've lost me forever unless there's a serious 'come to jesus' moment and they confess their bias and rectify it.
I don't see why Buzzfeed are being criticised for it either, because they only reported verified facts - that the report was going around, that it was neither verified or falsified, that it contained errors and falsehoods. I imagine the others are just annoyed Buzzfeed jumped first when they all had it so they're criticising them.
"By some definition", sure. I have no idea what the definition of fake news is (I just made a comment saying I have no idea what it is at this point), but I expect that some definitions being used would include buzzfeed yep.
The fact that mainstream journalists are caught letting political operatives write their articles for them doesn't help their credibility either. Oh, and they're of course silent when it comes to reporting on their own corruption.
It reminds me of that clip of CNN saying that we could only get the Wikileaks emails through their interpretation, and we shouldn't be reading them ourselves.
...turns out it was because they were implicated in them.
Their most egregious breach of ethics to date: On October 31, 2016, the New York Times reported: "CNN has severed ties with the Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, after hacked emails from WikiLeaks showed that she shared questions for CNN-sponsored candidate events in advance with friends on Hillary Clinton's campaign." CNN said it had accepted her formal resignation on October 14, adding: "We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor."
To be fair, it wasn't just Brazile. CNN is caught multiple times in the leaked emails collaborating directly with the DNC. Examples include asking for questions from the DNC to ask during the Republican debate, vetting Wolf Blizter's questions for Trump through the DNC. Brazile was just setup to take the fall since she had feet in both CNN and the DNC.
If this was an isolated case I'd give them the benefit of the doubt, but then there's also stuff like this, where they literally say it's illegal for you to possess the leaked emails but it's OK for the media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DcATG9Qy_A
You are talking in such generalities it makes absolutely no sense. The media is not a single company.
You can't just say everyone is corrupt simply because on one specific day from one specific publication they failed to report their own corrupt behaviour.
Why are you lot so reflexively opposed to anything related to journalism, even when explicitly aimed to help alternative media? It certainly doesn't make it look like you just want people to get news from more sources.
People, and hackers especially, generally don't "trust" Facebook to provide them with a platform to publish anymore. And why would they? Facebook will never open source the software responsible for determining what, when, and how people see news articles.
How is Facebook, known to be biased[1] is going to "help alternative media"? This looks like a power play to regain smeared credibility under the guise of "people's platform".
I could ask how you draw the line between "mainstream media" and "lies" just as easily and just as poignantly. The answer is easy in both cases. When they lie, it's a lie. When they don't, it's not.
because "mainstream media" like nyt and wapo have well respected, educated journalists working around the clock to research stories and find evidence whereas "alternative media" is a guy in his moms basement making up stories. just as with science, people only dispute it when it goes against their own interests.
Sometimes "alternative media" is something like the Intercept, full of pulitzer-prize winning journalists who present a view contrary to the political establishment and are adversarial with respect to those in power, in sharp contrast to the "mainstream" NYT and wapo who are essentially government stenographers when it comes to much of their coverage -- they tell us what "a government source" has told them to tell the public without a critical eye or examination. If they dared print real criticism, they would lose their access or funding.
Sometimes it's Democracy Now!, a long-running counterculture mainstay that again presents an adversarial view and touches on subjects the mainstream media never would -- finding out about the Dakota Access Pipeline issue and reporting in depth months before the mainstream media deigned to grace it with even a moment of coverage.
Sometimes it's Breitbart. In those cases you are correct but 'alternative media' is an umbrella term that just means 'any group of people who do not behave as a mouthpiece for the political and economic elites'.
After the Telecommunications act of 1996 media has massively consolidated. At this point the 'mainstream media' refers to the media owned by those same 6 extremely powerful megacorporations that control all 'approved' 'serious' discussion. Alternative media means any alternate view.
That's quite an oversimplification. Your characterization of the alternative media is sometimes right (except that they're usually not making up stories -- they're usually summarizing stories produced by regular journalists, often with an editorial overlay). But there are also alternative media sources doing real research and investigative journalism, like Democracy Now! and the Intercept.
On the other hand, the biggest, most respected of the mainstream publications, the NYT and the WaPo, have permanently tainted themselves by acting as stenographers for US government disinformation campaigns -- most notably in the run-up to the Iraq war, when they consistently promoted the fake WMD story.
So the idea that they should still after all this time be permanently tainted is ridiculous and frankly is just an excuse by those who have different political persuasions.
Maybe a decade seems like a long time to you; not to me. I may just be old. But I also never saw any documentation about those internal reviews and substantive changes -- I would like to see them. From an outsider's perspective, however, it doesn't look like anything has changed.
Cokie Roberts is still employed, for example /snark
perhaps, but in today's political climate i think its a fair simplification. the vast majority of people take argue your side to mean that PizzaGate is real and that NYT stories critical of trump are all fake.
You shouldn't censor lies. You should prove that they are lies.
[EDIT] (just to add something to my post)
If you delete/ommit/censor lies youd end up with:
a) If every lie is removed, maybe everything that was removed is a lie. Which is not true.
b) You end up with a "cry wolf situation", which may blow up hardly on facebook. You don't "cry wolf". You show that the wolf is there. Otherwise, the first time you screw up, you will lose all credibility.
But people don't believe proof that a lie is a lie - see the entire Trump phenomena. All he has to do is Tweet "fake news," and people won't believe any attempts to rationalize.
There's this old saying: "You can't prove a negative". It's wrong in that you often can indeed prove a negative, but the idea is still useful. Example: What would it take to conclusively proof that I never killed anybody vs. that I did? For the former, you'd basically need a continuous video feed from my birth.
(b) "hardly" means something other than what you're thinking. No worries, many Russians make that mistake when speaking english.
Comments
I'm sure this will be used for censoring political groups, and alternative media. As mainstream news sources become less popular / reputable they have really started pushing for methods to censor their opposition.
Exactly. Yesterday was a great example of mainstream sources losing credibility.
They were all over the (as far as I know) totally unverified document that an intelligence agency decided to leak to Buzzfeed for some reason.
They wonder why no one trusts them anymore...
Except they did not leak it to Buzzfeed, it was not compiled by any of the intelligence agencies, multiple media companies were in possession of the report and the report was not confidential in any way either. While there at least yet is no concrete proof about the claims, the intelligence agencies took it seriously enough to look into it and brief the current and upcoming presidents.
So tell me again how they lost credibility by reporting the story as it is.
The mainstream media did a fine job. Your criticism is completely misplaced.
The New York Times, CNN, Guardian etc all reported the verified facts. Which is that a report was produced by an ex-MI6 spy looking into allegations that Russia had amongst others compromising video involving prostitutes/golden showers and President Elect Trump. This report was obtained by John McCain and passed to the FBI for verification. They didn't publish the report. They didn't publish the allegations. The presence and gist of the report is newsworthy because the spy in question has by all accounts impeccable credentials which McCain and the CIA/FBI made statements about. That is all they reported.
BuzzFeed were the ones who decided to publish the report and all of the above organisations heavily criticised them for it afterwards questioning their ethics etc.
Compare 'peegate' with 'pizzagate'. On the latter, the mainstream media wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole (rightly so), because so much was pure speculation from internet neckbeards and trolls (to use affectionate terms).
With the former, we have the press doing the job of internet trolls, shoveling serious allegations with absolutely zero evidence given.
Through a political lens it makes perfect sense, it's very sad, and I can't trust anything the main stream media tells me anymore. They've lost me forever unless there's a serious 'come to jesus' moment and they confess their bias and rectify it.
That just makes it worse, doesn't it? The actual allegations are so insane it's obvious they're fake. By hiding them, they make it appear credible.
Wait, what?
So if they do publish the report (ie, Buzzfeed) then they get blamed for publishing false news.
If they report that the report was published, they get blamed for making it appear credible
I'll also point out that if they don't report things they get accused of being involved in a cover up.
What do you propose here exactly?
I don't see why Buzzfeed are being criticised for it either, because they only reported verified facts - that the report was going around, that it was neither verified or falsified, that it contained errors and falsehoods. I imagine the others are just annoyed Buzzfeed jumped first when they all had it so they're criticising them.
Wouldn't pushing a story that was "neither verified or falsified", be considered "fake news", by some definition?
"By some definition", sure. I have no idea what the definition of fake news is (I just made a comment saying I have no idea what it is at this point), but I expect that some definitions being used would include buzzfeed yep.
Fake news means that the story was deliberately made up. Nobody did that in this case.
The report was verified to be written by the ex-MI6 spy. The claims in the report are what are yet to be verified.
The fact that mainstream journalists are caught letting political operatives write their articles for them doesn't help their credibility either. Oh, and they're of course silent when it comes to reporting on their own corruption.
It reminds me of that clip of CNN saying that we could only get the Wikileaks emails through their interpretation, and we shouldn't be reading them ourselves.
...turns out it was because they were implicated in them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DcATG9Qy_A
CNN is so corrupt it looks like a parody network.
Their most egregious breach of ethics to date: On October 31, 2016, the New York Times reported: "CNN has severed ties with the Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, after hacked emails from WikiLeaks showed that she shared questions for CNN-sponsored candidate events in advance with friends on Hillary Clinton's campaign." CNN said it had accepted her formal resignation on October 14, adding: "We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor."
Donna Brazile shared questions with the candidates and CNN promptly terminated her position.
What exactly did CNN do wrong here ? By your definition every company that has a employee who makes an egregious mistake is corrupt.
To be fair, it wasn't just Brazile. CNN is caught multiple times in the leaked emails collaborating directly with the DNC. Examples include asking for questions from the DNC to ask during the Republican debate, vetting Wolf Blizter's questions for Trump through the DNC. Brazile was just setup to take the fall since she had feet in both CNN and the DNC.
If this was an isolated case I'd give them the benefit of the doubt, but then there's also stuff like this, where they literally say it's illegal for you to possess the leaked emails but it's OK for the media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DcATG9Qy_A
You are talking in such generalities it makes absolutely no sense. The media is not a single company.
You can't just say everyone is corrupt simply because on one specific day from one specific publication they failed to report their own corrupt behaviour.
Why are you lot so reflexively opposed to anything related to journalism, even when explicitly aimed to help alternative media? It certainly doesn't make it look like you just want people to get news from more sources.
People, and hackers especially, generally don't "trust" Facebook to provide them with a platform to publish anymore. And why would they? Facebook will never open source the software responsible for determining what, when, and how people see news articles.
How is Facebook, known to be biased[1] is going to "help alternative media"? This looks like a power play to regain smeared credibility under the guise of "people's platform".
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/09/fo...
How do you draw the line between "alternative media" and "lies"?
I could ask how you draw the line between "mainstream media" and "lies" just as easily and just as poignantly. The answer is easy in both cases. When they lie, it's a lie. When they don't, it's not.
because "mainstream media" like nyt and wapo have well respected, educated journalists working around the clock to research stories and find evidence whereas "alternative media" is a guy in his moms basement making up stories. just as with science, people only dispute it when it goes against their own interests.
Sometimes "alternative media" is something like the Intercept, full of pulitzer-prize winning journalists who present a view contrary to the political establishment and are adversarial with respect to those in power, in sharp contrast to the "mainstream" NYT and wapo who are essentially government stenographers when it comes to much of their coverage -- they tell us what "a government source" has told them to tell the public without a critical eye or examination. If they dared print real criticism, they would lose their access or funding.
Sometimes it's Democracy Now!, a long-running counterculture mainstay that again presents an adversarial view and touches on subjects the mainstream media never would -- finding out about the Dakota Access Pipeline issue and reporting in depth months before the mainstream media deigned to grace it with even a moment of coverage.
Sometimes it's Breitbart. In those cases you are correct but 'alternative media' is an umbrella term that just means 'any group of people who do not behave as a mouthpiece for the political and economic elites'.
After the Telecommunications act of 1996 media has massively consolidated. At this point the 'mainstream media' refers to the media owned by those same 6 extremely powerful megacorporations that control all 'approved' 'serious' discussion. Alternative media means any alternate view.
That's quite an oversimplification. Your characterization of the alternative media is sometimes right (except that they're usually not making up stories -- they're usually summarizing stories produced by regular journalists, often with an editorial overlay). But there are also alternative media sources doing real research and investigative journalism, like Democracy Now! and the Intercept.
On the other hand, the biggest, most respected of the mainstream publications, the NYT and the WaPo, have permanently tainted themselves by acting as stenographers for US government disinformation campaigns -- most notably in the run-up to the Iraq war, when they consistently promoted the fake WMD story.
The Iraq War happened well over a decade ago. And the New York Times et al all did internal reviews of their behaviour and made substantive changes.
From Morning Joe, this morning, you can already see that the New York Times has learnt lessons from that era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaI0u0ZdpMg
So the idea that they should still after all this time be permanently tainted is ridiculous and frankly is just an excuse by those who have different political persuasions.
Maybe a decade seems like a long time to you; not to me. I may just be old. But I also never saw any documentation about those internal reviews and substantive changes -- I would like to see them. From an outsider's perspective, however, it doesn't look like anything has changed.
Cokie Roberts is still employed, for example /snark
perhaps, but in today's political climate i think its a fair simplification. the vast majority of people take argue your side to mean that PizzaGate is real and that NYT stories critical of trump are all fake.
You shouldn't censor lies. You should prove that they are lies.
[EDIT] (just to add something to my post)
If you delete/ommit/censor lies youd end up with:
a) If every lie is removed, maybe everything that was removed is a lie. Which is not true.
b) You end up with a "cry wolf situation", which may blow up hardly on facebook. You don't "cry wolf". You show that the wolf is there. Otherwise, the first time you screw up, you will lose all credibility.
But people don't believe proof that a lie is a lie - see the entire Trump phenomena. All he has to do is Tweet "fake news," and people won't believe any attempts to rationalize.
Just because it doesn't work perfectly it doesn't mean we shouldn't do the right thing.
To me, the ends don't justify the means.
There's this old saying: "You can't prove a negative". It's wrong in that you often can indeed prove a negative, but the idea is still useful. Example: What would it take to conclusively proof that I never killed anybody vs. that I did? For the former, you'd basically need a continuous video feed from my birth.
(b) "hardly" means something other than what you're thinking. No worries, many Russians make that mistake when speaking english.
It's simple! If you want to believe it, it's "alternative media," and if you don't it's a filthy lie.
To borrow the sentiment from Tim Minchin: if alternate news media was news it would just be called news.
"Fake News" put some egg on their face and they're scrambling to find a way to censor alternative news.