Industry, academic partners team up to fight fake news

Campbell Brown, a former NBC and CNN journalist hired early this year to head the Facebook news partnerships team

dude those are the two BIGGEST culprits!

I am very skeptical that this is ever going to work. Journalism as a profession has been rotting upstream and downstream too much for too long.

Let's start in the middle. Journalists nowadays are not the best or brightest at anything. Sarah Palin was a "communications" major who failed out of something like three community colleges before "earning" her degree. She is no Woodward or Bernstein or Cronkite. This is the profession someone would go into if they could not hack it in Political Science or any kind of science. Teaching requires some management skill and daily planning. Writing a book requires some creativity. Being a modern journalist requires absolutely nothing.

Because all they have to do is pick up a phone or log in to Wikipedia to get "real answers," right? Sure. There is a think tank willing to push its party line on any issue. And if it is "non-profit" well it can't be biased, right? And if it provides some statistics, well it must be right. Data don't lie, right? And then as long as a journalist provides an opposing viewpoint, well that is fair, right? Who can complain?

Editors are gone. Proofreaders are gone. Too expensive. Outsource it to the Philippines. And if writers ask for too much money, just steal your news from AP or UPI or Reuters.

And downstream? Readers are idiots. People who can use math don't read rags. What is left are the rabble who will believe any old thing. Just give them some snarky headlines that appeal to their confirmation bias, and you are good to go. Here are some that you can use any day of the week. "Fukushima to cause 100 deaths say sources." "Japanese firm caught in scandal." and "Foreigners involved in crime" And you can probably jigger some facts here and there to fit the story. A little snip here. A little quote there. Page views.

I remember when the newspapers complained about TV news taking over their schtick. Now they are both being gutted by the 24 hour internet news cycle. Fake news is pretty much all there is these days. Good luck "fighting" that. Your only solid strategy is to run and try to spend your life in more useful ways.

And now the two biggest nuclear nations the US and Russia have administrations that spread fake news

The situation is nearing impossible

My only real TV news source (here in Japan) is CNN. I would call myself "liberal" leaning...Howver, I can no longer bear to watch its biased (liberal) reporting. It borderlines on the absurd... Fox is no better with its Conservitive leaning. I wish there was a news network that just reported news instead of spoon feeding their political and ideological agendas to their viewers ...

The fact that we have people on here asserting CNN to be fake news on the basis of nothing more than a vague and unsubstantiated perception of bias is proof of the desperate need for news literacy in the general population.

You disliking what is said != fake news

You feeling like there is bias != fake news

An actual bias != fake news

I am not saying CNN is fake news. I am saying that most newtwork news is biased and presents a skewed version of events due to bias. To say this is not true is ridiculous. I have never seen CNN say one positive thing about Trump nor one negative thing about Clinton or Obama. Never. And they certainly make their personal opinions known. I have never seen Fox News say one positive thing about Clinton.... I am a Liberal btw...(through and through) but do not need my opinion handed to me and stuffed down my throat...

Journalists nowadays are not the best or brightest at anything.

Was it ever any different? As they used to say, those who can do, those who can't teach, and for those who can't teach, there's always journalism.

People who can use math don't read rags.

Careful now!

The WompAPR. 04, 2017 - 12:37AM JST I am not saying CNN is fake news.

And yet you bring up your allegations against CNN in an article about fake news as though your allegations were relevant to the discussion.

am saying that most newtwork news is biased and presents a skewed version of events due to bias. To say this is not true is ridiculous. I have never seen CNN say one positive thing about Trump nor one negative thing about Clinton or Obama.

So let's break down the multiple fallacies here:

First, you base your argument around what you've seen (or rather, what you claim to have seen), not a rigorous study of the network. For all anyone here knows, you barely watch any CNN at all. You've given us zero evidence your experience is actually representative of CNN's coverage overall.

Second, you've attached bias, a pre-conception, to your assessment of a final report, a post-conception. The fact that there is nothing good said about Trump is far more likely due to the fact that there is nothing good to say about Trump. Your argument is analogous to seeing that 97% of climate scientists say the research supports anthropogenic climate change from C02 and claiming a network is biased if they don't give the 3% who don't equal air time. News is about giving us facts, not giving "both sides" an equal voice.

Your third fallacy is you have dropped the old CNN-to-FOX false comparison. CNN is in many ways a terrible network, but can you provide evidence that it was founded explicitly to present news with a liberal bias? I bet you can't. With FOX News you can find heaps of evidence, from memos from executives demanding news reporting be subtly altered to fit their conservative agenda to on-air promotion of their network as conservative-friendly to literally manipulating photographs of rival ("liberal") network reporters to make them look less appealing. CNN merely looking liberal to a long-time viewer of FOX News doesn't make the network liberal, and the network actually being liberal does not mean there is a liberal bias. The claim that CNN is some kind of liberal foil to FOX is a long-standing FOX-promoted lie in order to give themselves the appearance of legitimacy with their viewers - by spreading the lie that "both sides do it", suddenly Fox's own egregious bias looks less egregious.

asserting CNN to be fake news on the basis of nothing

ask Donna Brasil

Katsu There is so much evidence of a CNN bias...please research it yourself. Here's a beauty tomget you started:

http://youtu.be/Nc5p5mD08D4

Sorry I don't have more time to rant like a lunatic but I do have a life...