Fake News - what it is, what it isn't....

[Coyote]

Fake news isn't the media "getting it wrong".
Fake news isn't making a mistake and printing a retraction.
Fake news isn't making wrong predictions.

All of the above are part and parcel of the media business.

Fake news is a story that is completely false.

What is interesting isn't that it's something new, it isn't, but social media has given it an engine and the mainstream public doesn't seem to have the tools to untangle truth from fiction yet. The media is also behind the ball in taking responsibility, fact checking before a story is passed on and also - taking fake news to task and dissecting the story. The reason fake news has become such a player recently may be as simple as economics (earning money through ad click revenue) combined with the rather lawless playing field of social media and the lack of will to factcheck material that confirms with one's own preconceptions or bias.

What's interesting about fake news however, is not the story itself but what lies beneath the surface....

Craig Silverman was interviewed on Fresh Air this evening.

Our guest, Craig Silverman, has spent much of his career as a journalist writing about issues of accuracy in media. He wrote a column for the Poynter Institute called Regret the Error and later a book of the same name on the harm done by erroneous reporting. He also launched a web-based startup called Emergent devoted to crowdsourcing the fact-checking of fake news.


He's now the media editor for the website BuzzFeed, and he spent much of this year writing about fake news, rumors and conspiracy theories that gained currency in the presidential campaign - where they came from, why they got so much engagement on social media and what should be done to reduce their impact on public discourse.
​

Fascinating interview. Some of the main points covered:

Fake election news outperformed real news sites in social media such as facebook - significantly so 3 months and closer to election. 9 months and 6 months prior to the election, real news sites performed better. What is interesting is he provides the data: BuzzFeed News: Election content engagement and everyone of those fake news articles was a thread in Politics here on USMB. Less then half of the real news articles were.


Here's How Fake Election News Outperformed Real Election News On Facebook

Of the 20 top-performing false election stories identified in the analysis, all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton. Two of the biggest false hits were a story claiming Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming the pope endorsed Trump, which the site removed after publication of this article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against Trump’s interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama, a false report that Ireland was accepting American “refugees” fleeing Trump, and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by Trump.​

...These developments follow a study by BuzzFeed News that revealed hyperpartisan Facebook pages and their websites were publishing false or misleading content at an alarming rate — and generating significant Facebook engagement in the process. The same was true for the more than 100 US politics websites BuzzFeed News found being run out of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

...All the false news stories identified in BuzzFeed News’ analysis came from either fake news websites that only publish hoaxes or from hyperpartisan websites that present themselves as publishing real news. The research turned up only one viral false election story from a hyperpartisan left-wing site. The story from Winning Democrats claimed Ireland was accepting anti-Trump “refugees” from the US. It received over 810,000 Facebook engagements, and was debunked by an Irish publication. (There was also one post from an LGBTQ site that used a false quote from Trump in its headline.)​

Now, that leads to another point - WTF - Macedonia? The other point it found was these sites were overwelmingly pro-Trump. What interest or knowledge does a small town in Macedonia (and a large number of those sites are run out of one town) have in American Politics?

Back to the Silverman interview on Fresh Air.

The Guardian months earlier had pointed to over a hundred websites about U.S. politics in this small town of Veles. So we did our own research and we turned up a number of 140 sites...And as I filled out the spreadsheet it became very clear that they were overwhelmingly pro-Trump. And as I visited the websites and read their content, I saw that a lot of the stuff that they were pushing was misleading, was to the extreme of partisanship and also occasionally was false. And so we dug in even more and realized that among the top shared articles from, you know, these range of sites, the majority of, like, the top five were actually completely false. So at that point, once we understood the content that they were publishing and how many there were, we really wanted to understand so who are the people behind these sites?​

These sites came out of a Veles, a town in Macedonia. The owners were mostly young people - teens and early twenties, and college students. They weren't driven by ideology but by econonics. They could earn money directing traffic to their sites through Google AdSense and they were "using Facebook to drive the traffic to the websites where they had ads from Google and where they would earn money from that traffic" They don't create the content - they find it elsewhere, but they copy it and proliferate it.



The article goes into a lot more, including what should be done or shouldn't be done to combat it, but this statement was particularly compelling because we're all susceptable to it:

Silverman:

We shouldn't think of this as just being something for people who are very partisan. We love to hear things that confirm what we think and what we feel and what we already believe. It's - it makes us feel good to get information that aligns with what we already believe or what we want to hear.

And on the other side of that is when we're confronted with information that contradicts what we think and what we feel, the reaction isn't to kind of sit back and consider it. The reaction is often to double down on our existing beliefs. So if you're feeding people information that basically just tells them what they want to hear, they're probably going to react strongly to that. And the other layer that these pages are very good at is they bring in emotion into it, anger or hate or surprise or, you know, joy. And so if you combine information that aligns with their beliefs, if you can make it something that strikes an emotion in them, then that gets them to react.​

I find it problematic that Fresh Air spent so much time finding a "fake news factory" in Macedonia, but didnt' seem to include any examples of its products that I or You might have consumed. I'm not AWARE of any fake news originating in Macedonia -- therefore I DOUBT it had the type of effect as what you see DAILY TODAY on CNN on the pages of the NYTimes...

Overseas, fake news is a form of recreation and entertainment. Because the govt sources suck at anything objective. So I'm not surprised to find folks with that "hobby" in the Balkans or Russia, because there is a glorious history of trying to figure out what's REALLY happening when you are fed Govt propaganda for your entire life.

We are in DANGER of that. If the juvenile behavior of the American press continues. It's a true embarrassment.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean...so I may be missing the point in attempting to answer this reply.

The problem with Macedonia is not so much that they create fake news - that it originates there - but they spread it massively.

The second thing is - where do people get most of their news?

According to Pew - 6 in 10 Americans get their news from social media with Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter being the main sources.

I am concerned about the lack of factchecking going on in mainstream news like CNN, NYT, Fox etc but there is more accountability there then there is on the internet.

Why didn't the journalist point to SPECIFIC EXAMPLES coming out of this "fake news factory"? It always concerns me when folks get all wound up about something and you have NO IDEA what wound them up.. Was this "fake news" tabloid quality? Was it IMPORTANT to the election? Was it based in ANY truth at all.

My beef here is that Fresh Air DECIDED that FOR YOU and made it important enough to spend the majority of the interview on.. That's not REPORTING --- that's story-telling. Which is what NPR is excellent at. Journalism is the Who, What, Why, When, and How of a story... So maybe this is fake in itself. I can't decide if they didn't commit journalism in telling the story...

Did you read the OP though?

Fresh Air was interviewing Silverman - about an article he wrote, where he tracked down all this stuff and analyzed it. So even if the interview didn't go into specific examples - I linked to Silverman's article that they were discussing and pulled some actual fake news examples. The interview was less about electoral consequences then the effect and spread of fake news in general.

Were those examples from the "factory" in Macedonia? If not -- I fail to see the relevance of allowing Silverman to judge the importance of whateverthehell came out of a foreign country without providing examples that would be FAMILIAR to folks who follow election news...

This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook
This new analysis of election content found two false election stories from a Macedonian sites that made the top-10 list in terms of Facebook engagement int he final three months. Conservative State published a story that falsely quoted Hillary Clinton as saying, “I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office; they’re honest and can’t be bought.” The story generated over 481,000 engagements on Facebook. A second false story from a Macedonia site falsely claimed that Clinton was about to be indicted. It received 149,000 engagements on Facebook.

How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News
Sample stories from US Politics sites run by Macedonians

 

[flacaltenn]

Fake news isn't the media "getting it wrong".
Fake news isn't making a mistake and printing a retraction.
Fake news isn't making wrong predictions.

All of the above are part and parcel of the media business.

Fake news is a story that is completely false.

What is interesting isn't that it's something new, it isn't, but social media has given it an engine and the mainstream public doesn't seem to have the tools to untangle truth from fiction yet. The media is also behind the ball in taking responsibility, fact checking before a story is passed on and also - taking fake news to task and dissecting the story. The reason fake news has become such a player recently may be as simple as economics (earning money through ad click revenue) combined with the rather lawless playing field of social media and the lack of will to factcheck material that confirms with one's own preconceptions or bias.

What's interesting about fake news however, is not the story itself but what lies beneath the surface....

Craig Silverman was interviewed on Fresh Air this evening.

Our guest, Craig Silverman, has spent much of his career as a journalist writing about issues of accuracy in media. He wrote a column for the Poynter Institute called Regret the Error and later a book of the same name on the harm done by erroneous reporting. He also launched a web-based startup called Emergent devoted to crowdsourcing the fact-checking of fake news.


He's now the media editor for the website BuzzFeed, and he spent much of this year writing about fake news, rumors and conspiracy theories that gained currency in the presidential campaign - where they came from, why they got so much engagement on social media and what should be done to reduce their impact on public discourse.
​

Fascinating interview. Some of the main points covered:

Fake election news outperformed real news sites in social media such as facebook - significantly so 3 months and closer to election. 9 months and 6 months prior to the election, real news sites performed better. What is interesting is he provides the data: BuzzFeed News: Election content engagement and everyone of those fake news articles was a thread in Politics here on USMB. Less then half of the real news articles were.


Here's How Fake Election News Outperformed Real Election News On Facebook

Of the 20 top-performing false election stories identified in the analysis, all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton. Two of the biggest false hits were a story claiming Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming the pope endorsed Trump, which the site removed after publication of this article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against Trump’s interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama, a false report that Ireland was accepting American “refugees” fleeing Trump, and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by Trump.​

...These developments follow a study by BuzzFeed News that revealed hyperpartisan Facebook pages and their websites were publishing false or misleading content at an alarming rate — and generating significant Facebook engagement in the process. The same was true for the more than 100 US politics websites BuzzFeed News found being run out of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

...All the false news stories identified in BuzzFeed News’ analysis came from either fake news websites that only publish hoaxes or from hyperpartisan websites that present themselves as publishing real news. The research turned up only one viral false election story from a hyperpartisan left-wing site. The story from Winning Democrats claimed Ireland was accepting anti-Trump “refugees” from the US. It received over 810,000 Facebook engagements, and was debunked by an Irish publication. (There was also one post from an LGBTQ site that used a false quote from Trump in its headline.)​

Now, that leads to another point - WTF - Macedonia? The other point it found was these sites were overwelmingly pro-Trump. What interest or knowledge does a small town in Macedonia (and a large number of those sites are run out of one town) have in American Politics?

Back to the Silverman interview on Fresh Air.

The Guardian months earlier had pointed to over a hundred websites about U.S. politics in this small town of Veles. So we did our own research and we turned up a number of 140 sites...And as I filled out the spreadsheet it became very clear that they were overwhelmingly pro-Trump. And as I visited the websites and read their content, I saw that a lot of the stuff that they were pushing was misleading, was to the extreme of partisanship and also occasionally was false. And so we dug in even more and realized that among the top shared articles from, you know, these range of sites, the majority of, like, the top five were actually completely false. So at that point, once we understood the content that they were publishing and how many there were, we really wanted to understand so who are the people behind these sites?​

These sites came out of a Veles, a town in Macedonia. The owners were mostly young people - teens and early twenties, and college students. They weren't driven by ideology but by econonics. They could earn money directing traffic to their sites through Google AdSense and they were "using Facebook to drive the traffic to the websites where they had ads from Google and where they would earn money from that traffic" They don't create the content - they find it elsewhere, but they copy it and proliferate it.



The article goes into a lot more, including what should be done or shouldn't be done to combat it, but this statement was particularly compelling because we're all susceptable to it:

Silverman:

We shouldn't think of this as just being something for people who are very partisan. We love to hear things that confirm what we think and what we feel and what we already believe. It's - it makes us feel good to get information that aligns with what we already believe or what we want to hear.

And on the other side of that is when we're confronted with information that contradicts what we think and what we feel, the reaction isn't to kind of sit back and consider it. The reaction is often to double down on our existing beliefs. So if you're feeding people information that basically just tells them what they want to hear, they're probably going to react strongly to that. And the other layer that these pages are very good at is they bring in emotion into it, anger or hate or surprise or, you know, joy. And so if you combine information that aligns with their beliefs, if you can make it something that strikes an emotion in them, then that gets them to react.​

I find it problematic that Fresh Air spent so much time finding a "fake news factory" in Macedonia, but didnt' seem to include any examples of its products that I or You might have consumed. I'm not AWARE of any fake news originating in Macedonia -- therefore I DOUBT it had the type of effect as what you see DAILY TODAY on CNN on the pages of the NYTimes...

Overseas, fake news is a form of recreation and entertainment. Because the govt sources suck at anything objective. So I'm not surprised to find folks with that "hobby" in the Balkans or Russia, because there is a glorious history of trying to figure out what's REALLY happening when you are fed Govt propaganda for your entire life.

We are in DANGER of that. If the juvenile behavior of the American press continues. It's a true embarrassment.

FCC needs to lay down the law. The integrity of journalism is circling the drain.

To put into perspective: I've run across 4 pieces of actual journalism within the past 6 months.

The most recent was on a C130 pilot that was supporting a Chinook full of Navy seals a few years back.

Not a fan of fact-checkers or govt intervention. If you cannot trust WH press corps or LEGACY media, you WILL eventually listen to other sources. Not so much because of "fake news", but simply because of the stories that the PARTISAN side of the media refuse to cover. That's like "Negative News" or something different.

Agree on gov't intervention in news but fact-checking I like. There is a need for it.

But I don't think people go to alternative sites because they trust them any more than other sites but because it's tailored to what they WANT to hear. An echo chamber.

Those alt-sites are NOT raw principal journalism. MOST of what appears comes from other media. They serve simply as "librarians" to lead you to stories that the MAJORS fail to carry (or BURY deep in the back pages) because of their partisan bent. Face it, you're just as ill-informed if you are a CNN watcher or Fox Watcher. If you read Nat. Review but not Mother Jones. BOTH of those magazines do an EXCELLENT job it what they choose to cover. But they severely limit the scope of what they cover to the priorities and predilections of their partisan readers..

Fact checkers SUCK. It often becomes a spin job just to reach a verdict. I'll use Snopes occasionally to check my self-derived fact-checking. But the closer it gets to PARTISAN issues, the less reliable they ALL become..

These alt-sites (on both sides) are typically DAYS or WEEKS ahead of the "news cycle". Because there is this other Media issue of BIAS in WHAT get the headlines and the time on air...

 

[Coyote]

Fake news isn't the media "getting it wrong".
Fake news isn't making a mistake and printing a retraction.
Fake news isn't making wrong predictions.

All of the above are part and parcel of the media business.

Fake news is a story that is completely false.

What is interesting isn't that it's something new, it isn't, but social media has given it an engine and the mainstream public doesn't seem to have the tools to untangle truth from fiction yet. The media is also behind the ball in taking responsibility, fact checking before a story is passed on and also - taking fake news to task and dissecting the story. The reason fake news has become such a player recently may be as simple as economics (earning money through ad click revenue) combined with the rather lawless playing field of social media and the lack of will to factcheck material that confirms with one's own preconceptions or bias.

What's interesting about fake news however, is not the story itself but what lies beneath the surface....

Craig Silverman was interviewed on Fresh Air this evening.

Our guest, Craig Silverman, has spent much of his career as a journalist writing about issues of accuracy in media. He wrote a column for the Poynter Institute called Regret the Error and later a book of the same name on the harm done by erroneous reporting. He also launched a web-based startup called Emergent devoted to crowdsourcing the fact-checking of fake news.


He's now the media editor for the website BuzzFeed, and he spent much of this year writing about fake news, rumors and conspiracy theories that gained currency in the presidential campaign - where they came from, why they got so much engagement on social media and what should be done to reduce their impact on public discourse.
​

Fascinating interview. Some of the main points covered:

Fake election news outperformed real news sites in social media such as facebook - significantly so 3 months and closer to election. 9 months and 6 months prior to the election, real news sites performed better. What is interesting is he provides the data: BuzzFeed News: Election content engagement and everyone of those fake news articles was a thread in Politics here on USMB. Less then half of the real news articles were.


Here's How Fake Election News Outperformed Real Election News On Facebook

Of the 20 top-performing false election stories identified in the analysis, all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton. Two of the biggest false hits were a story claiming Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming the pope endorsed Trump, which the site removed after publication of this article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against Trump’s interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama, a false report that Ireland was accepting American “refugees” fleeing Trump, and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by Trump.​

...These developments follow a study by BuzzFeed News that revealed hyperpartisan Facebook pages and their websites were publishing false or misleading content at an alarming rate — and generating significant Facebook engagement in the process. The same was true for the more than 100 US politics websites BuzzFeed News found being run out of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

...All the false news stories identified in BuzzFeed News’ analysis came from either fake news websites that only publish hoaxes or from hyperpartisan websites that present themselves as publishing real news. The research turned up only one viral false election story from a hyperpartisan left-wing site. The story from Winning Democrats claimed Ireland was accepting anti-Trump “refugees” from the US. It received over 810,000 Facebook engagements, and was debunked by an Irish publication. (There was also one post from an LGBTQ site that used a false quote from Trump in its headline.)​

Now, that leads to another point - WTF - Macedonia? The other point it found was these sites were overwelmingly pro-Trump. What interest or knowledge does a small town in Macedonia (and a large number of those sites are run out of one town) have in American Politics?

Back to the Silverman interview on Fresh Air.

The Guardian months earlier had pointed to over a hundred websites about U.S. politics in this small town of Veles. So we did our own research and we turned up a number of 140 sites...And as I filled out the spreadsheet it became very clear that they were overwhelmingly pro-Trump. And as I visited the websites and read their content, I saw that a lot of the stuff that they were pushing was misleading, was to the extreme of partisanship and also occasionally was false. And so we dug in even more and realized that among the top shared articles from, you know, these range of sites, the majority of, like, the top five were actually completely false. So at that point, once we understood the content that they were publishing and how many there were, we really wanted to understand so who are the people behind these sites?​

These sites came out of a Veles, a town in Macedonia. The owners were mostly young people - teens and early twenties, and college students. They weren't driven by ideology but by econonics. They could earn money directing traffic to their sites through Google AdSense and they were "using Facebook to drive the traffic to the websites where they had ads from Google and where they would earn money from that traffic" They don't create the content - they find it elsewhere, but they copy it and proliferate it.



The article goes into a lot more, including what should be done or shouldn't be done to combat it, but this statement was particularly compelling because we're all susceptable to it:

Silverman:

We shouldn't think of this as just being something for people who are very partisan. We love to hear things that confirm what we think and what we feel and what we already believe. It's - it makes us feel good to get information that aligns with what we already believe or what we want to hear.

And on the other side of that is when we're confronted with information that contradicts what we think and what we feel, the reaction isn't to kind of sit back and consider it. The reaction is often to double down on our existing beliefs. So if you're feeding people information that basically just tells them what they want to hear, they're probably going to react strongly to that. And the other layer that these pages are very good at is they bring in emotion into it, anger or hate or surprise or, you know, joy. And so if you combine information that aligns with their beliefs, if you can make it something that strikes an emotion in them, then that gets them to react.​

I find it problematic that Fresh Air spent so much time finding a "fake news factory" in Macedonia, but didnt' seem to include any examples of its products that I or You might have consumed. I'm not AWARE of any fake news originating in Macedonia -- therefore I DOUBT it had the type of effect as what you see DAILY TODAY on CNN on the pages of the NYTimes...

Overseas, fake news is a form of recreation and entertainment. Because the govt sources suck at anything objective. So I'm not surprised to find folks with that "hobby" in the Balkans or Russia, because there is a glorious history of trying to figure out what's REALLY happening when you are fed Govt propaganda for your entire life.

We are in DANGER of that. If the juvenile behavior of the American press continues. It's a true embarrassment.

FCC needs to lay down the law. The integrity of journalism is circling the drain.

To put into perspective: I've run across 4 pieces of actual journalism within the past 6 months.

The most recent was on a C130 pilot that was supporting a Chinook full of Navy seals a few years back.

Not a fan of fact-checkers or govt intervention. If you cannot trust WH press corps or LEGACY media, you WILL eventually listen to other sources. Not so much because of "fake news", but simply because of the stories that the PARTISAN side of the media refuse to cover. That's like "Negative News" or something different.

Agree on gov't intervention in news but fact-checking I like. There is a need for it.

But I don't think people go to alternative sites because they trust them any more than other sites but because it's tailored to what they WANT to hear. An echo chamber.

Those alt-sites are NOT raw principal journalism. MOST of what appears comes from other media. They serve simply as "librarians" to lead you to stories that the MAJORS fail to carry (or BURY deep in the back pages) because of their partisan bent. Face it, you're just as ill-informed if you are a CNN watcher or Fox Watcher. If you read Nat. Review but not Mother Jones. BOTH of those magazines do an EXCELLENT job it what they choose to cover. But they severely limit the scope of what they cover to the priorities and predilections of their partisan readers..

Yes, I agree and in fact that was also pointed out in the OP articles - they don't usually generate their own content. But I disagree on whether they serve as "librarians". In some cases they serve more as sewers collecting run off from storm water, farm off, sewage, and litter and it's up to you, the reader, to determine the value and accuracy of the material that bobs to the surface or gets caught on your hook.

I don't consider Nat. Review and Mother Jones to be in those categories - yes, they have their particular slant or bias, but like you say they do an excellent job at covering what they choose to cover. That's not the same as the sites referred to in these articles - sites like Brietbart for example, and their leftwing counterparts.

Some stuff isn't covered because it's bs, not because it's partisan.

Fact checkers SUCK. It often becomes a spin job just to reach a verdict. I'll use Snopes occasionally to check my self-derived fact-checking. But the closer it gets to PARTISAN issues, the less reliable they ALL become..

These alt-sites (on both sides) are typically DAYS or WEEKS ahead of the "news cycle". Because there is this other Media issue of BIAS in WHAT get the headlines and the time on air...

I use fact checkers I trust - like Snopes - to begin my fact checking because they usually post sources that I can then work out from. It's easier to sift the true BS out that way and then concentrate on more substantive stuff.

 

[flacaltenn]

I find it problematic that Fresh Air spent so much time finding a "fake news factory" in Macedonia, but didnt' seem to include any examples of its products that I or You might have consumed. I'm not AWARE of any fake news originating in Macedonia -- therefore I DOUBT it had the type of effect as what you see DAILY TODAY on CNN on the pages of the NYTimes...

Overseas, fake news is a form of recreation and entertainment. Because the govt sources suck at anything objective. So I'm not surprised to find folks with that "hobby" in the Balkans or Russia, because there is a glorious history of trying to figure out what's REALLY happening when you are fed Govt propaganda for your entire life.

We are in DANGER of that. If the juvenile behavior of the American press continues. It's a true embarrassment.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean...so I may be missing the point in attempting to answer this reply.

The problem with Macedonia is not so much that they create fake news - that it originates there - but they spread it massively.

The second thing is - where do people get most of their news?

According to Pew - 6 in 10 Americans get their news from social media with Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter being the main sources.

I am concerned about the lack of factchecking going on in mainstream news like CNN, NYT, Fox etc but there is more accountability there then there is on the internet.

Why didn't the journalist point to SPECIFIC EXAMPLES coming out of this "fake news factory"? It always concerns me when folks get all wound up about something and you have NO IDEA what wound them up.. Was this "fake news" tabloid quality? Was it IMPORTANT to the election? Was it based in ANY truth at all.

My beef here is that Fresh Air DECIDED that FOR YOU and made it important enough to spend the majority of the interview on.. That's not REPORTING --- that's story-telling. Which is what NPR is excellent at. Journalism is the Who, What, Why, When, and How of a story... So maybe this is fake in itself. I can't decide if they didn't commit journalism in telling the story...

Did you read the OP though?

Fresh Air was interviewing Silverman - about an article he wrote, where he tracked down all this stuff and analyzed it. So even if the interview didn't go into specific examples - I linked to Silverman's article that they were discussing and pulled some actual fake news examples. The interview was less about electoral consequences then the effect and spread of fake news in general.

Were those examples from the "factory" in Macedonia? If not -- I fail to see the relevance of allowing Silverman to judge the importance of whateverthehell came out of a foreign country without providing examples that would be FAMILIAR to folks who follow election news...

This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook
This new analysis of election content found two false election stories from a Macedonian sites that made the top-10 list in terms of Facebook engagement int he final three months. Conservative State published a story that falsely quoted Hillary Clinton as saying, “I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office; they’re honest and can’t be bought.” The story generated over 481,000 engagements on Facebook. A second false story from a Macedonia site falsely claimed that Clinton was about to be indicted. It received 149,000 engagements on Facebook.

How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News
Sample stories from US Politics sites run by Macedonians

Don't get your news from Facebook. Where ELSE did these Macedonia stories appear? Some of them are just laughable and fodder for morons. In fact, the upper left is a SPOOF of Fox News graphics. OBVIOUS fraud.

Now if they got served on Google news or Yahoo feeds --- I might be concerned.
Because I ASSUME they at least vet the source.

You say they ripped from Macedonian "sites". What are the LINKS to these? Are they still up? And what idiots would GO there?

I'm much more concerned about the dishonest and unprofessional WEEKS of speculation about how Trump didn't pay any taxes that CONSUMED the main stream media during the election. They speculated based on a HUGE write-off that he took that he paid no taxes for up to 12 YEARS!!! And there were headlines and 1 hour panels on TV POUNDING this talking point.

But anyone MILDLY familiar with the Tax Code and Alt Min Tax rules -- that this was COMPLETE Bullshit. As the newly found Rachel Maddow tax info points out. Even WITH continuing deductions from a posted loss, the Alt Min Tax is an appreciable penalty preventing folks like Trump from "paying no taxes" for 12 years. THis is just inexcusable ignorance or dishonesty on the part of the media. It IS Fake News either way.

 

[flacaltenn]

I find it problematic that Fresh Air spent so much time finding a "fake news factory" in Macedonia, but didnt' seem to include any examples of its products that I or You might have consumed. I'm not AWARE of any fake news originating in Macedonia -- therefore I DOUBT it had the type of effect as what you see DAILY TODAY on CNN on the pages of the NYTimes...

Overseas, fake news is a form of recreation and entertainment. Because the govt sources suck at anything objective. So I'm not surprised to find folks with that "hobby" in the Balkans or Russia, because there is a glorious history of trying to figure out what's REALLY happening when you are fed Govt propaganda for your entire life.

We are in DANGER of that. If the juvenile behavior of the American press continues. It's a true embarrassment.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean...so I may be missing the point in attempting to answer this reply.

The problem with Macedonia is not so much that they create fake news - that it originates there - but they spread it massively.

The second thing is - where do people get most of their news?

According to Pew - 6 in 10 Americans get their news from social media with Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter being the main sources.

I am concerned about the lack of factchecking going on in mainstream news like CNN, NYT, Fox etc but there is more accountability there then there is on the internet.

Why didn't the journalist point to SPECIFIC EXAMPLES coming out of this "fake news factory"? It always concerns me when folks get all wound up about something and you have NO IDEA what wound them up.. Was this "fake news" tabloid quality? Was it IMPORTANT to the election? Was it based in ANY truth at all.

My beef here is that Fresh Air DECIDED that FOR YOU and made it important enough to spend the majority of the interview on.. That's not REPORTING --- that's story-telling. Which is what NPR is excellent at. Journalism is the Who, What, Why, When, and How of a story... So maybe this is fake in itself. I can't decide if they didn't commit journalism in telling the story...

Did you read the OP though?

Fresh Air was interviewing Silverman - about an article he wrote, where he tracked down all this stuff and analyzed it. So even if the interview didn't go into specific examples - I linked to Silverman's article that they were discussing and pulled some actual fake news examples. The interview was less about electoral consequences then the effect and spread of fake news in general.

Were those examples from the "factory" in Macedonia? If not -- I fail to see the relevance of allowing Silverman to judge the importance of whateverthehell came out of a foreign country without providing examples that would be FAMILIAR to folks who follow election news...

This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook
This new analysis of election content found two false election stories from a Macedonian sites that made the top-10 list in terms of Facebook engagement int he final three months. Conservative State published a story that falsely quoted Hillary Clinton as saying, “I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office; they’re honest and can’t be bought.” The story generated over 481,000 engagements on Facebook. A second false story from a Macedonia site falsely claimed that Clinton was about to be indicted. It received 149,000 engagements on Facebook.

How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News
Sample stories from US Politics sites run by Macedonians

From the BuzzFeed link you gave...

Their reasons for launching these sites are purely financial, according to the Macedonians with whom BuzzFeed News spoke.

"I started the site for a easy way to make money," said a 17-year-old who runs a site with four other people. "In Macedonia the economy is very weak and teenagers are not allowed to work, so we need to find creative ways to make some money. I'm a musician but I can't afford music gear. Here in Macedonia the revenue from a small site is enough to afford many things."

Most of the posts on these sites are aggregated, or completely plagiarized, from fringe and right-wing sites in the US. The Macedonians see a story elsewhere, write a sensationalized headline, and quickly post it to their site. Then they share it on Facebook to try and generate traffic. The more people who click through from Facebook, the more money they earn from ads on their website.

Teenage survival in the Balkans. Need that new game station. No political agenda. No shady sponsors. ALTHOUGH -- I wonder who's taking ADS on their site. Because that's where the 2nd World survival pocket change is coming from...

If we can't defend ourselves from juvenile scam artists in the Balkans -- perhaps we ought to stop RELYING on any particular news sources and defend ourselves from this awesome Macedonian threat to our freedom and liberty...

 

[Coyote]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean...so I may be missing the point in attempting to answer this reply.

The problem with Macedonia is not so much that they create fake news - that it originates there - but they spread it massively.

The second thing is - where do people get most of their news?

According to Pew - 6 in 10 Americans get their news from social media with Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter being the main sources.

I am concerned about the lack of factchecking going on in mainstream news like CNN, NYT, Fox etc but there is more accountability there then there is on the internet.

Why didn't the journalist point to SPECIFIC EXAMPLES coming out of this "fake news factory"? It always concerns me when folks get all wound up about something and you have NO IDEA what wound them up.. Was this "fake news" tabloid quality? Was it IMPORTANT to the election? Was it based in ANY truth at all.

My beef here is that Fresh Air DECIDED that FOR YOU and made it important enough to spend the majority of the interview on.. That's not REPORTING --- that's story-telling. Which is what NPR is excellent at. Journalism is the Who, What, Why, When, and How of a story... So maybe this is fake in itself. I can't decide if they didn't commit journalism in telling the story...

Did you read the OP though?

Fresh Air was interviewing Silverman - about an article he wrote, where he tracked down all this stuff and analyzed it. So even if the interview didn't go into specific examples - I linked to Silverman's article that they were discussing and pulled some actual fake news examples. The interview was less about electoral consequences then the effect and spread of fake news in general.

Were those examples from the "factory" in Macedonia? If not -- I fail to see the relevance of allowing Silverman to judge the importance of whateverthehell came out of a foreign country without providing examples that would be FAMILIAR to folks who follow election news...

This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook
This new analysis of election content found two false election stories from a Macedonian sites that made the top-10 list in terms of Facebook engagement int he final three months. Conservative State published a story that falsely quoted Hillary Clinton as saying, “I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office; they’re honest and can’t be bought.” The story generated over 481,000 engagements on Facebook. A second false story from a Macedonia site falsely claimed that Clinton was about to be indicted. It received 149,000 engagements on Facebook.

How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News
Sample stories from US Politics sites run by Macedonians

Don't get your news from Facebook. Where ELSE did these Macedonia stories appear? Some of them are just laughable and fodder for morons. In fact, the upper left is a SPOOF of Fox News graphics. OBVIOUS fraud.

I don't get my news from FB, but a lot of people apparently do get their news through social media feeds that are algorythmacally tailored to feed them what it thinks they want. And - many of those stories are top performing in terms of engagement. People believe this stuff (evidence is right here in USMB )

Now if they got served on Google news or Yahoo feeds --- I might be concerned.
Because I ASSUME they at least vet the source.

A quick search would seem to indicate Google has the same problems and like FB, seeking to find ways of fighting it:
Facebook and Google Are Testing Tools to Fight Fake News – Adweek

You say they ripped from Macedonian "sites". What are the LINKS to these? Are they still up? And what idiots would GO there?

The impression I get is it is an automated harvesting process

I'm much more concerned about the dishonest and unprofessional WEEKS of speculation about how Trump didn't pay any taxes that CONSUMED the main stream media during the election. They speculated based on a HUGE write-off that he took that he paid no taxes for up to 12 YEARS!!! And there were headlines and 1 hour panels on TV POUNDING this talking point.

But anyone MILDLY familiar with the Tax Code and Alt Min Tax rules -- that this was COMPLETE Bullshit. As the newly found Rachel Maddow tax info points out. Even WITH continuing deductions from a posted loss, the Alt Min Tax is an appreciable penalty preventing folks like Trump from "paying no taxes" for 12 years. THis is just inexcusable ignorance or dishonesty on the part of the media. It IS Fake News either way.

That pretty much summed up most of the pre-election coverage on both Trump and Clinton, with a pathetic amount on actual issues and policies.

 

[Coyote]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean...so I may be missing the point in attempting to answer this reply.

The problem with Macedonia is not so much that they create fake news - that it originates there - but they spread it massively.

The second thing is - where do people get most of their news?

According to Pew - 6 in 10 Americans get their news from social media with Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter being the main sources.

I am concerned about the lack of factchecking going on in mainstream news like CNN, NYT, Fox etc but there is more accountability there then there is on the internet.

Why didn't the journalist point to SPECIFIC EXAMPLES coming out of this "fake news factory"? It always concerns me when folks get all wound up about something and you have NO IDEA what wound them up.. Was this "fake news" tabloid quality? Was it IMPORTANT to the election? Was it based in ANY truth at all.

My beef here is that Fresh Air DECIDED that FOR YOU and made it important enough to spend the majority of the interview on.. That's not REPORTING --- that's story-telling. Which is what NPR is excellent at. Journalism is the Who, What, Why, When, and How of a story... So maybe this is fake in itself. I can't decide if they didn't commit journalism in telling the story...

Did you read the OP though?

Fresh Air was interviewing Silverman - about an article he wrote, where he tracked down all this stuff and analyzed it. So even if the interview didn't go into specific examples - I linked to Silverman's article that they were discussing and pulled some actual fake news examples. The interview was less about electoral consequences then the effect and spread of fake news in general.

Were those examples from the "factory" in Macedonia? If not -- I fail to see the relevance of allowing Silverman to judge the importance of whateverthehell came out of a foreign country without providing examples that would be FAMILIAR to folks who follow election news...

This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook
This new analysis of election content found two false election stories from a Macedonian sites that made the top-10 list in terms of Facebook engagement int he final three months. Conservative State published a story that falsely quoted Hillary Clinton as saying, “I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office; they’re honest and can’t be bought.” The story generated over 481,000 engagements on Facebook. A second false story from a Macedonia site falsely claimed that Clinton was about to be indicted. It received 149,000 engagements on Facebook.

How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News
Sample stories from US Politics sites run by Macedonians

From the BuzzFeed link you gave...

Their reasons for launching these sites are purely financial, according to the Macedonians with whom BuzzFeed News spoke.

"I started the site for a easy way to make money," said a 17-year-old who runs a site with four other people. "In Macedonia the economy is very weak and teenagers are not allowed to work, so we need to find creative ways to make some money. I'm a musician but I can't afford music gear. Here in Macedonia the revenue from a small site is enough to afford many things."

Most of the posts on these sites are aggregated, or completely plagiarized, from fringe and right-wing sites in the US. The Macedonians see a story elsewhere, write a sensationalized headline, and quickly post it to their site. Then they share it on Facebook to try and generate traffic. The more people who click through from Facebook, the more money they earn from ads on their website.

Teenage survival in the Balkans. Need that new game station. No political agenda. No shady sponsors. ALTHOUGH -- I wonder who's taking ADS on their site. Because that's where the 2nd World survival pocket change is coming from...

If we can't defend ourselves from juvenile scam artists in the Balkans -- perhaps we ought to stop RELYING on any particular news sources and defend ourselves from this awesome Macedonian threat to our freedom and liberty...

Yup, it's for a financial purpose - not that they have any understanding or interest in American politics or even good English skills. The point of the article though isn't that it's from Macedonia or that we need to defend ourselves against Macedonia - that isn't the point at all. The point is how it's propogated and spread - it's actually a fascinating detective story, and pretty admirable journalism.

 

[Marion Morrison]

Fake news isn't the media "getting it wrong".
Fake news isn't making a mistake and printing a retraction.
Fake news isn't making wrong predictions.

All of the above are part and parcel of the media business.

Fake news is a story that is completely false.

What is interesting isn't that it's something new, it isn't, but social media has given it an engine and the mainstream public doesn't seem to have the tools to untangle truth from fiction yet. The media is also behind the ball in taking responsibility, fact checking before a story is passed on and also - taking fake news to task and dissecting the story. The reason fake news has become such a player recently may be as simple as economics (earning money through ad click revenue) combined with the rather lawless playing field of social media and the lack of will to factcheck material that confirms with one's own preconceptions or bias.

What's interesting about fake news however, is not the story itself but what lies beneath the surface....

Craig Silverman was interviewed on Fresh Air this evening.

Our guest, Craig Silverman, has spent much of his career as a journalist writing about issues of accuracy in media. He wrote a column for the Poynter Institute called Regret the Error and later a book of the same name on the harm done by erroneous reporting. He also launched a web-based startup called Emergent devoted to crowdsourcing the fact-checking of fake news.


He's now the media editor for the website BuzzFeed, and he spent much of this year writing about fake news, rumors and conspiracy theories that gained currency in the presidential campaign - where they came from, why they got so much engagement on social media and what should be done to reduce their impact on public discourse.
​

Fascinating interview. Some of the main points covered:

Fake election news outperformed real news sites in social media such as facebook - significantly so 3 months and closer to election. 9 months and 6 months prior to the election, real news sites performed better. What is interesting is he provides the data: BuzzFeed News: Election content engagement and everyone of those fake news articles was a thread in Politics here on USMB. Less then half of the real news articles were.


Here's How Fake Election News Outperformed Real Election News On Facebook

Of the 20 top-performing false election stories identified in the analysis, all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton. Two of the biggest false hits were a story claiming Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming the pope endorsed Trump, which the site removed after publication of this article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against Trump’s interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama, a false report that Ireland was accepting American “refugees” fleeing Trump, and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by Trump.​

...These developments follow a study by BuzzFeed News that revealed hyperpartisan Facebook pages and their websites were publishing false or misleading content at an alarming rate — and generating significant Facebook engagement in the process. The same was true for the more than 100 US politics websites BuzzFeed News found being run out of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

...All the false news stories identified in BuzzFeed News’ analysis came from either fake news websites that only publish hoaxes or from hyperpartisan websites that present themselves as publishing real news. The research turned up only one viral false election story from a hyperpartisan left-wing site. The story from Winning Democrats claimed Ireland was accepting anti-Trump “refugees” from the US. It received over 810,000 Facebook engagements, and was debunked by an Irish publication. (There was also one post from an LGBTQ site that used a false quote from Trump in its headline.)​

Now, that leads to another point - WTF - Macedonia? The other point it found was these sites were overwelmingly pro-Trump. What interest or knowledge does a small town in Macedonia (and a large number of those sites are run out of one town) have in American Politics?

Back to the Silverman interview on Fresh Air.

The Guardian months earlier had pointed to over a hundred websites about U.S. politics in this small town of Veles. So we did our own research and we turned up a number of 140 sites...And as I filled out the spreadsheet it became very clear that they were overwhelmingly pro-Trump. And as I visited the websites and read their content, I saw that a lot of the stuff that they were pushing was misleading, was to the extreme of partisanship and also occasionally was false. And so we dug in even more and realized that among the top shared articles from, you know, these range of sites, the majority of, like, the top five were actually completely false. So at that point, once we understood the content that they were publishing and how many there were, we really wanted to understand so who are the people behind these sites?​

These sites came out of a Veles, a town in Macedonia. The owners were mostly young people - teens and early twenties, and college students. They weren't driven by ideology but by econonics. They could earn money directing traffic to their sites through Google AdSense and they were "using Facebook to drive the traffic to the websites where they had ads from Google and where they would earn money from that traffic" They don't create the content - they find it elsewhere, but they copy it and proliferate it.



The article goes into a lot more, including what should be done or shouldn't be done to combat it, but this statement was particularly compelling because we're all susceptable to it:

Silverman:

We shouldn't think of this as just being something for people who are very partisan. We love to hear things that confirm what we think and what we feel and what we already believe. It's - it makes us feel good to get information that aligns with what we already believe or what we want to hear.

And on the other side of that is when we're confronted with information that contradicts what we think and what we feel, the reaction isn't to kind of sit back and consider it. The reaction is often to double down on our existing beliefs. So if you're feeding people information that basically just tells them what they want to hear, they're probably going to react strongly to that. And the other layer that these pages are very good at is they bring in emotion into it, anger or hate or surprise or, you know, joy. And so if you combine information that aligns with their beliefs, if you can make it something that strikes an emotion in them, then that gets them to react.​

I find it problematic that Fresh Air spent so much time finding a "fake news factory" in Macedonia, but didnt' seem to include any examples of its products that I or You might have consumed. I'm not AWARE of any fake news originating in Macedonia -- therefore I DOUBT it had the type of effect as what you see DAILY TODAY on CNN on the pages of the NYTimes...

Overseas, fake news is a form of recreation and entertainment. Because the govt sources suck at anything objective. So I'm not surprised to find folks with that "hobby" in the Balkans or Russia, because there is a glorious history of trying to figure out what's REALLY happening when you are fed Govt propaganda for your entire life.

We are in DANGER of that. If the juvenile behavior of the American press continues. It's a true embarrassment.

FCC needs to lay down the law. The integrity of journalism is circling the drain.

To put into perspective: I've run across 4 pieces of actual journalism within the past 6 months.

The most recent was on a C130 pilot that was supporting a Chinook full of Navy seals a few years back.

I agree, the integrity of journalism is going down but - I've seen a lot of good journalism also. More then 4 pieces.

Some links would be much appreciated if you have the time. I get tired of the sickeningly slanted stuff.

 

[Coyote]

Fake news isn't the media "getting it wrong".
Fake news isn't making a mistake and printing a retraction.
Fake news isn't making wrong predictions.

All of the above are part and parcel of the media business.

Fake news is a story that is completely false.

What is interesting isn't that it's something new, it isn't, but social media has given it an engine and the mainstream public doesn't seem to have the tools to untangle truth from fiction yet. The media is also behind the ball in taking responsibility, fact checking before a story is passed on and also - taking fake news to task and dissecting the story. The reason fake news has become such a player recently may be as simple as economics (earning money through ad click revenue) combined with the rather lawless playing field of social media and the lack of will to factcheck material that confirms with one's own preconceptions or bias.

What's interesting about fake news however, is not the story itself but what lies beneath the surface....

Craig Silverman was interviewed on Fresh Air this evening.

Our guest, Craig Silverman, has spent much of his career as a journalist writing about issues of accuracy in media. He wrote a column for the Poynter Institute called Regret the Error and later a book of the same name on the harm done by erroneous reporting. He also launched a web-based startup called Emergent devoted to crowdsourcing the fact-checking of fake news.


He's now the media editor for the website BuzzFeed, and he spent much of this year writing about fake news, rumors and conspiracy theories that gained currency in the presidential campaign - where they came from, why they got so much engagement on social media and what should be done to reduce their impact on public discourse.
​

Fascinating interview. Some of the main points covered:

Fake election news outperformed real news sites in social media such as facebook - significantly so 3 months and closer to election. 9 months and 6 months prior to the election, real news sites performed better. What is interesting is he provides the data: BuzzFeed News: Election content engagement and everyone of those fake news articles was a thread in Politics here on USMB. Less then half of the real news articles were.


Here's How Fake Election News Outperformed Real Election News On Facebook

Of the 20 top-performing false election stories identified in the analysis, all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton. Two of the biggest false hits were a story claiming Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming the pope endorsed Trump, which the site removed after publication of this article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against Trump’s interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama, a false report that Ireland was accepting American “refugees” fleeing Trump, and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by Trump.​

...These developments follow a study by BuzzFeed News that revealed hyperpartisan Facebook pages and their websites were publishing false or misleading content at an alarming rate — and generating significant Facebook engagement in the process. The same was true for the more than 100 US politics websites BuzzFeed News found being run out of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

...All the false news stories identified in BuzzFeed News’ analysis came from either fake news websites that only publish hoaxes or from hyperpartisan websites that present themselves as publishing real news. The research turned up only one viral false election story from a hyperpartisan left-wing site. The story from Winning Democrats claimed Ireland was accepting anti-Trump “refugees” from the US. It received over 810,000 Facebook engagements, and was debunked by an Irish publication. (There was also one post from an LGBTQ site that used a false quote from Trump in its headline.)​

Now, that leads to another point - WTF - Macedonia? The other point it found was these sites were overwelmingly pro-Trump. What interest or knowledge does a small town in Macedonia (and a large number of those sites are run out of one town) have in American Politics?

Back to the Silverman interview on Fresh Air.

The Guardian months earlier had pointed to over a hundred websites about U.S. politics in this small town of Veles. So we did our own research and we turned up a number of 140 sites...And as I filled out the spreadsheet it became very clear that they were overwhelmingly pro-Trump. And as I visited the websites and read their content, I saw that a lot of the stuff that they were pushing was misleading, was to the extreme of partisanship and also occasionally was false. And so we dug in even more and realized that among the top shared articles from, you know, these range of sites, the majority of, like, the top five were actually completely false. So at that point, once we understood the content that they were publishing and how many there were, we really wanted to understand so who are the people behind these sites?​

These sites came out of a Veles, a town in Macedonia. The owners were mostly young people - teens and early twenties, and college students. They weren't driven by ideology but by econonics. They could earn money directing traffic to their sites through Google AdSense and they were "using Facebook to drive the traffic to the websites where they had ads from Google and where they would earn money from that traffic" They don't create the content - they find it elsewhere, but they copy it and proliferate it.



The article goes into a lot more, including what should be done or shouldn't be done to combat it, but this statement was particularly compelling because we're all susceptable to it:

Silverman:

We shouldn't think of this as just being something for people who are very partisan. We love to hear things that confirm what we think and what we feel and what we already believe. It's - it makes us feel good to get information that aligns with what we already believe or what we want to hear.

And on the other side of that is when we're confronted with information that contradicts what we think and what we feel, the reaction isn't to kind of sit back and consider it. The reaction is often to double down on our existing beliefs. So if you're feeding people information that basically just tells them what they want to hear, they're probably going to react strongly to that. And the other layer that these pages are very good at is they bring in emotion into it, anger or hate or surprise or, you know, joy. And so if you combine information that aligns with their beliefs, if you can make it something that strikes an emotion in them, then that gets them to react.​

I find it problematic that Fresh Air spent so much time finding a "fake news factory" in Macedonia, but didnt' seem to include any examples of its products that I or You might have consumed. I'm not AWARE of any fake news originating in Macedonia -- therefore I DOUBT it had the type of effect as what you see DAILY TODAY on CNN on the pages of the NYTimes...

Overseas, fake news is a form of recreation and entertainment. Because the govt sources suck at anything objective. So I'm not surprised to find folks with that "hobby" in the Balkans or Russia, because there is a glorious history of trying to figure out what's REALLY happening when you are fed Govt propaganda for your entire life.

We are in DANGER of that. If the juvenile behavior of the American press continues. It's a true embarrassment.

FCC needs to lay down the law. The integrity of journalism is circling the drain.

To put into perspective: I've run across 4 pieces of actual journalism within the past 6 months.

The most recent was on a C130 pilot that was supporting a Chinook full of Navy seals a few years back.

I agree, the integrity of journalism is going down but - I've seen a lot of good journalism also. More then 4 pieces.

Some links would be much appreciated if you have the time. I get tired of the sickeningly slanted stuff.

These are just some examples. NPR WV has had some good local indepth coverage of issues that are important here.

1. The struggle to keep young people from leaving the state - both from the stand point of those struggling to stay, and attracting professionals.
The Struggle to Stay

2. Black Lung disease in WV
Advanced Black Lung Cases Surge In Appalachia

3. WV's Opiod crisis
Drug firms poured 780M painkillers into WV amid rise of overdoses
A Pulitzer-Winning Journalist's Advice And Why He Does A Monthly Night Shift

There's good journalism out there - it just doesn't get "rewarded" with the degree of attention tabloid crap gets.

Some other examples:

On campaign coverage - NPR did an excellant job going around the country, interviewing people and following them in critical areas - in depth, and with respect over a long period of time. Unlike some - they weren't seeking out the nuts and trying to present them as the norm, nor did they degrade anyone. It's impossible to link to all of it but here's a synopsis: NPR's Election Coverage: A Review And Wrap Up

I do tend to listen to NPR because I drive a lot and have the radio on, so those are ready and quick examples.

 

[Uncensored2008]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean...so I may be missing the point in attempting to answer this reply.

The problem with Macedonia is not so much that they create fake news - that it originates there - but they spread it massively.

The second thing is - where do people get most of their news?

According to Pew - 6 in 10 Americans get their news from social media with Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter being the main sources.

I am concerned about the lack of factchecking going on in mainstream news like CNN, NYT, Fox etc but there is more accountability there then there is on the internet.

You're not missing the point, you're just a hack.

Macedonia if they create "fake news" is nowhere near DailyKOS, ThinkProgress, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, or MSNBC.


Post some examples of "fake news" that came out of Macedonia?

I mean, you CAN do that, right?

 

[Uncensored2008]

Fake news isn't the media "getting it wrong".
Fake news isn't making a mistake and printing a retraction.
Fake news isn't making wrong predictions.

All of the above are part and parcel of the media business.

Fake news is a story that is completely false.

What is interesting isn't that it's something new, it isn't, but social media has given it an engine and the mainstream public doesn't seem to have the tools to untangle truth from fiction yet. The media is also behind the ball in taking responsibility, fact checking before a story is passed on and also - taking fake news to task and dissecting the story. The reason fake news has become such a player recently may be as simple as economics (earning money through ad click revenue) combined with the rather lawless playing field of social media and the lack of will to factcheck material that confirms with one's own preconceptions or bias.

What's interesting about fake news however, is not the story itself but what lies beneath the surface....

Craig Silverman was interviewed on Fresh Air this evening.

Our guest, Craig Silverman, has spent much of his career as a journalist writing about issues of accuracy in media. He wrote a column for the Poynter Institute called Regret the Error and later a book of the same name on the harm done by erroneous reporting. He also launched a web-based startup called Emergent devoted to crowdsourcing the fact-checking of fake news.


He's now the media editor for the website BuzzFeed, and he spent much of this year writing about fake news, rumors and conspiracy theories that gained currency in the presidential campaign - where they came from, why they got so much engagement on social media and what should be done to reduce their impact on public discourse.
​

Fascinating interview. Some of the main points covered:

Fake election news outperformed real news sites in social media such as facebook - significantly so 3 months and closer to election. 9 months and 6 months prior to the election, real news sites performed better. What is interesting is he provides the data: BuzzFeed News: Election content engagement and everyone of those fake news articles was a thread in Politics here on USMB. Less then half of the real news articles were.


Here's How Fake Election News Outperformed Real Election News On Facebook

Of the 20 top-performing false election stories identified in the analysis, all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton. Two of the biggest false hits were a story claiming Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming the pope endorsed Trump, which the site removed after publication of this article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against Trump’s interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama, a false report that Ireland was accepting American “refugees” fleeing Trump, and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by Trump.​

...These developments follow a study by BuzzFeed News that revealed hyperpartisan Facebook pages and their websites were publishing false or misleading content at an alarming rate — and generating significant Facebook engagement in the process. The same was true for the more than 100 US politics websites BuzzFeed News found being run out of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

...All the false news stories identified in BuzzFeed News’ analysis came from either fake news websites that only publish hoaxes or from hyperpartisan websites that present themselves as publishing real news. The research turned up only one viral false election story from a hyperpartisan left-wing site. The story from Winning Democrats claimed Ireland was accepting anti-Trump “refugees” from the US. It received over 810,000 Facebook engagements, and was debunked by an Irish publication. (There was also one post from an LGBTQ site that used a false quote from Trump in its headline.)​

Now, that leads to another point - WTF - Macedonia? The other point it found was these sites were overwelmingly pro-Trump. What interest or knowledge does a small town in Macedonia (and a large number of those sites are run out of one town) have in American Politics?

Back to the Silverman interview on Fresh Air.

The Guardian months earlier had pointed to over a hundred websites about U.S. politics in this small town of Veles. So we did our own research and we turned up a number of 140 sites...And as I filled out the spreadsheet it became very clear that they were overwhelmingly pro-Trump. And as I visited the websites and read their content, I saw that a lot of the stuff that they were pushing was misleading, was to the extreme of partisanship and also occasionally was false. And so we dug in even more and realized that among the top shared articles from, you know, these range of sites, the majority of, like, the top five were actually completely false. So at that point, once we understood the content that they were publishing and how many there were, we really wanted to understand so who are the people behind these sites?​

These sites came out of a Veles, a town in Macedonia. The owners were mostly young people - teens and early twenties, and college students. They weren't driven by ideology but by econonics. They could earn money directing traffic to their sites through Google AdSense and they were "using Facebook to drive the traffic to the websites where they had ads from Google and where they would earn money from that traffic" They don't create the content - they find it elsewhere, but they copy it and proliferate it.



The article goes into a lot more, including what should be done or shouldn't be done to combat it, but this statement was particularly compelling because we're all susceptable to it:

Silverman:

We shouldn't think of this as just being something for people who are very partisan. We love to hear things that confirm what we think and what we feel and what we already believe. It's - it makes us feel good to get information that aligns with what we already believe or what we want to hear.

And on the other side of that is when we're confronted with information that contradicts what we think and what we feel, the reaction isn't to kind of sit back and consider it. The reaction is often to double down on our existing beliefs. So if you're feeding people information that basically just tells them what they want to hear, they're probably going to react strongly to that. And the other layer that these pages are very good at is they bring in emotion into it, anger or hate or surprise or, you know, joy. And so if you combine information that aligns with their beliefs, if you can make it something that strikes an emotion in them, then that gets them to react.​

I find it problematic that Fresh Air spent so much time finding a "fake news factory" in Macedonia, but didnt' seem to include any examples of its products that I or You might have consumed. I'm not AWARE of any fake news originating in Macedonia -- therefore I DOUBT it had the type of effect as what you see DAILY TODAY on CNN on the pages of the NYTimes...

Overseas, fake news is a form of recreation and entertainment. Because the govt sources suck at anything objective. So I'm not surprised to find folks with that "hobby" in the Balkans or Russia, because there is a glorious history of trying to figure out what's REALLY happening when you are fed Govt propaganda for your entire life.

We are in DANGER of that. If the juvenile behavior of the American press continues. It's a true embarrassment.

FCC needs to lay down the law. The integrity of journalism is circling the drain.

To put into perspective: I've run across 4 pieces of actual journalism within the past 6 months.

The most recent was on a C130 pilot that was supporting a Chinook full of Navy seals a few years back.

I agree, the integrity of journalism is going down but - I've seen a lot of good journalism also. More then 4 pieces.

"Journalistic Integrity" is an oxymoron.

 

[Uncensored2008]

I find it problematic that Fresh Air spent so much time finding a "fake news factory" in Macedonia, but didnt' seem to include any examples of its products that I or You might have consumed. I'm not AWARE of any fake news originating in Macedonia -- therefore I DOUBT it had the type of effect as what you see DAILY TODAY on CNN on the pages of the NYTimes...

Overseas, fake news is a form of recreation and entertainment. Because the govt sources suck at anything objective. So I'm not surprised to find folks with that "hobby" in the Balkans or Russia, because there is a glorious history of trying to figure out what's REALLY happening when you are fed Govt propaganda for your entire life.

We are in DANGER of that. If the juvenile behavior of the American press continues. It's a true embarrassment.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean...so I may be missing the point in attempting to answer this reply.

The problem with Macedonia is not so much that they create fake news - that it originates there - but they spread it massively.

The second thing is - where do people get most of their news?

According to Pew - 6 in 10 Americans get their news from social media with Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter being the main sources.

I am concerned about the lack of factchecking going on in mainstream news like CNN, NYT, Fox etc but there is more accountability there then there is on the internet.

Why didn't the journalist point to SPECIFIC EXAMPLES coming out of this "fake news factory"? It always concerns me when folks get all wound up about something and you have NO IDEA what wound them up.. Was this "fake news" tabloid quality? Was it IMPORTANT to the election? Was it based in ANY truth at all.

My beef here is that Fresh Air DECIDED that FOR YOU and made it important enough to spend the majority of the interview on.. That's not REPORTING --- that's story-telling. Which is what NPR is excellent at. Journalism is the Who, What, Why, When, and How of a story... So maybe this is fake in itself. I can't decide if they didn't commit journalism in telling the story...

Did you read the OP though?

Fresh Air was interviewing Silverman - about an article he wrote, where he tracked down all this stuff and analyzed it. So even if the interview didn't go into specific examples - I linked to Silverman's article that they were discussing and pulled some actual fake news examples. The interview was less about electoral consequences then the effect and spread of fake news in general.

Were those examples from the "factory" in Macedonia? If not -- I fail to see the relevance of allowing Silverman to judge the importance of whateverthehell came out of a foreign country without providing examples that would be FAMILIAR to folks who follow election news...

This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook
This new analysis of election content found two false election stories from a Macedonian sites that made the top-10 list in terms of Facebook engagement int he final three months. Conservative State published a story that falsely quoted Hillary Clinton as saying, “I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office; they’re honest and can’t be bought.” The story generated over 481,000 engagements on Facebook. A second false story from a Macedonia site falsely claimed that Clinton was about to be indicted. It received 149,000 engagements on Facebook.

How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News
Sample stories from US Politics sites run by Macedonians

Here are some other stories from your oh so credible source site;

Talk about "fake news."

You fascist democrats have been doing this shit for decades. Even if Macedonia is doing it, they are way late to the party and nowhere as damaging as the fake news you fascists promote.

Sadly, there are a few people who still trust the lying fucks of the Washington Post. I doubt anyone believes some Macedonian site.

 

[flacaltenn]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean...so I may be missing the point in attempting to answer this reply.

The problem with Macedonia is not so much that they create fake news - that it originates there - but they spread it massively.

The second thing is - where do people get most of their news?

According to Pew - 6 in 10 Americans get their news from social media with Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter being the main sources.

I am concerned about the lack of factchecking going on in mainstream news like CNN, NYT, Fox etc but there is more accountability there then there is on the internet.

You're not missing the point, you're just a hack.

Macedonia if they create "fake news" is nowhere near DailyKOS, ThinkProgress, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, or MSNBC.


Post some examples of "fake news" that came out of Macedonia?

I mean, you CAN do that, right?

She gave examples in post #221. All tabloid nonsense that only the most dense partisans would use on USMB.. Made up by teenagers who simply want money for band equipment.

But she's correct -- We saw a LOT of this pure crap re-posted on USMB. Not nearly as effective as the long list of women that Trump abused - that got picked up in EVERY main stream left media source..

 

[Coyote]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean...so I may be missing the point in attempting to answer this reply.

The problem with Macedonia is not so much that they create fake news - that it originates there - but they spread it massively.

The second thing is - where do people get most of their news?

According to Pew - 6 in 10 Americans get their news from social media with Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter being the main sources.

I am concerned about the lack of factchecking going on in mainstream news like CNN, NYT, Fox etc but there is more accountability there then there is on the internet.

You're not missing the point, you're just a hack.

Macedonia if they create "fake news" is nowhere near DailyKOS, ThinkProgress, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, or MSNBC.


Post some examples of "fake news" that came out of Macedonia?

I mean, you CAN do that, right?

She gave examples in post #221. All tabloid nonsense that only the most dense partisans would use on USMB.. Made up by teenagers who simply want money for band equipment.

But she's correct -- We saw a LOT of this pure crap re-posted on USMB. Not nearly as effective as the long list of women that Trump abused - that got picked up in EVERY main stream left media source..

Sex always is far more effective for capturing the media. Look at Billy Boy Clinton and the rightwing media

 

[Coyote]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean...so I may be missing the point in attempting to answer this reply.

The problem with Macedonia is not so much that they create fake news - that it originates there - but they spread it massively.

The second thing is - where do people get most of their news?

According to Pew - 6 in 10 Americans get their news from social media with Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter being the main sources.

I am concerned about the lack of factchecking going on in mainstream news like CNN, NYT, Fox etc but there is more accountability there then there is on the internet.

Why didn't the journalist point to SPECIFIC EXAMPLES coming out of this "fake news factory"? It always concerns me when folks get all wound up about something and you have NO IDEA what wound them up.. Was this "fake news" tabloid quality? Was it IMPORTANT to the election? Was it based in ANY truth at all.

My beef here is that Fresh Air DECIDED that FOR YOU and made it important enough to spend the majority of the interview on.. That's not REPORTING --- that's story-telling. Which is what NPR is excellent at. Journalism is the Who, What, Why, When, and How of a story... So maybe this is fake in itself. I can't decide if they didn't commit journalism in telling the story...

Did you read the OP though?

Fresh Air was interviewing Silverman - about an article he wrote, where he tracked down all this stuff and analyzed it. So even if the interview didn't go into specific examples - I linked to Silverman's article that they were discussing and pulled some actual fake news examples. The interview was less about electoral consequences then the effect and spread of fake news in general.

Were those examples from the "factory" in Macedonia? If not -- I fail to see the relevance of allowing Silverman to judge the importance of whateverthehell came out of a foreign country without providing examples that would be FAMILIAR to folks who follow election news...

This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook
This new analysis of election content found two false election stories from a Macedonian sites that made the top-10 list in terms of Facebook engagement int he final three months. Conservative State published a story that falsely quoted Hillary Clinton as saying, “I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office; they’re honest and can’t be bought.” The story generated over 481,000 engagements on Facebook. A second false story from a Macedonia site falsely claimed that Clinton was about to be indicted. It received 149,000 engagements on Facebook.

How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News
Sample stories from US Politics sites run by Macedonians

Here are some other stories from your oh so credible source site;

View attachment 127142


Talk about "fake news."

You fascist democrats have been doing this shit for decades. Even if Macedonia is doing it, they are way late to the party and nowhere as damaging as the fake news you fascists promote.

Sadly, there are a few people who still trust the lying fucks of the Washington Post. I doubt anyone believes some Macedonian site.

What "oh so credible" source site are you talking about?

 

[Uncensored2008]

Why didn't the journalist point to SPECIFIC EXAMPLES coming out of this "fake news factory"? It always concerns me when folks get all wound up about something and you have NO IDEA what wound them up.. Was this "fake news" tabloid quality? Was it IMPORTANT to the election? Was it based in ANY truth at all.

My beef here is that Fresh Air DECIDED that FOR YOU and made it important enough to spend the majority of the interview on.. That's not REPORTING --- that's story-telling. Which is what NPR is excellent at. Journalism is the Who, What, Why, When, and How of a story... So maybe this is fake in itself. I can't decide if they didn't commit journalism in telling the story...

Did you read the OP though?

Fresh Air was interviewing Silverman - about an article he wrote, where he tracked down all this stuff and analyzed it. So even if the interview didn't go into specific examples - I linked to Silverman's article that they were discussing and pulled some actual fake news examples. The interview was less about electoral consequences then the effect and spread of fake news in general.

Were those examples from the "factory" in Macedonia? If not -- I fail to see the relevance of allowing Silverman to judge the importance of whateverthehell came out of a foreign country without providing examples that would be FAMILIAR to folks who follow election news...

This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook
This new analysis of election content found two false election stories from a Macedonian sites that made the top-10 list in terms of Facebook engagement int he final three months. Conservative State published a story that falsely quoted Hillary Clinton as saying, “I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office; they’re honest and can’t be bought.” The story generated over 481,000 engagements on Facebook. A second false story from a Macedonia site falsely claimed that Clinton was about to be indicted. It received 149,000 engagements on Facebook.

How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News
Sample stories from US Politics sites run by Macedonians

Here are some other stories from your oh so credible source site;

View attachment 127142


Talk about "fake news."

You fascist democrats have been doing this shit for decades. Even if Macedonia is doing it, they are way late to the party and nowhere as damaging as the fake news you fascists promote.

Sadly, there are a few people who still trust the lying fucks of the Washington Post. I doubt anyone believes some Macedonian site.

What "oh so credible" source site are you talking about?

You linked to "Buzzfeed" to support your claims. At least you linked to SOMETHING, better than most of your fellow fascists do.

But it is the most sleazy of tabloid sites on the web. Buzzfeed almost makes DailyKOS or even CNN look credible by contrast.

 

[Pogo]

Latest Fake News ....

REPORT: Driver in Virginia Car Attack Was Anti-Trump Protester – Joel Vangheluwe

Jim Hoft Aug 12th, 2017 4:21 pm 12 Comments

WOW!
DUDE HIT THE WRONG CROWD!​

This was a headline on Hateway Pundit --- which has since been taken down after being exposed as a hole so deep even Jim Hoft can't pull himself out of. A search for the page returns a "404" error.

But Google has the page cached here.

>> New development: Suspect in custody Joel VanGheluwe. Anti-Trump activist, may have confused Alt-Right with BLM/Antifa. #UniteTheRight pic.twitter.com/C04WaJnqI8 <<​

If that ain't fake news, there's no such thing. And it demonstrates, as if we needed yet another example, what element is trying to drive it, and which way.

Oh and this goes with it. Collect the whole set.

 

[Vandalshandle]

I used to think that shit like the above fake news was so blatantly ridiculous that even Trump supporters would shake their heads in dismay.

I have since learned that I had overestimated Trump supporters

 

[Pogo]

I used to think that shit like the above fake news was so blatantly ridiculous that even Trump supporters would shake their heads in dismay.

I have since learned that I had overestimated Trump supporters

Jim Hoft is a goldmine for this crapola ----

​

--- so badly photoshopped you can still see a piece of the original Obama arm in front of Melania.

---- except of course CNN did no such thing since they ran no photo at all.



Then there was ...........

​

--- except that's not a Rump event and it's not even Maine --- it's a Cleveland Cavaliers championship parade.


Of course Jim Hoft cannot and should not be considered a "news" source; the issue is that scores of Ignorami tragically born without critical thinking skills think it's news (and many of them trot it in here and present it as such). Ultimately what we have here is not a failure of journalism but a failure of simple critical thought.

And btw that fake story mentioned in 237 --- Jim Hoft is getting his ass sued for it. About damn time.