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The battle over news and facts.

Aug 2, 2018, 11:22 AM

I read a Rolling Stone opinion piece today that did something that not enough opinion pieces do. It voiced concern over something that ostensibly it liked. Why did the the author voice concern over an event that he liked? Because he understands that it could easily lead to things that he did not like. Most people are extremely short-sighted and are susceptible to, in the effort of doing the "right thing," digging themselves into holes that lead to something extremely awful.

I will link the article below, but the thesis of the article is really the subject of my post. How do we define "fake news?" What do we do to limit it? Should we stop it? Can our actions to stop it lead to the further destruction of real news? Does real news even exist?

False dichotomy is something that people are very susceptible to. Because a black and white world is easier to comprehend and deal with, people make a subconscious (or conscious) effort to simplify stuff. Sometimes this is done out of laziness, but other times it is done out of self-preservation instinct. Some things are so complicated that in order to react you have to go on incomplete information. We are still cavemen, evolutionally speaking. We are not evolved to deal primarily with complicated economic issues or international political controversies. We are designed to survive and to react and to be decisive. So, we actually have to fight our nature in order to even get close to being able to navigate these extremely complicated situations that we have created for ourselves.

So, false dichotomy is one of the most common examples of this natural instinct trying to deal with a complicated problem that absolutely doesn't fit. for instance, it is obvious to the vast majority of rational people that InfoWars is some combination of pathological paranoia and disingenuousness. And most of us would agree that if someone is shaping their reality based on something pathologically paranoid and disingenuous, then that will lead to erroneous perceptions that will lead to "bad behavior." So, when we see a problem, our instinct is to fix it. So what do we do to fix it? The most obvious thing that people do to limit bad things is to ban them. Parents usually jump to this course of action. "A is bad, so you are not allowed to do A anymore."

But with news, it's not that simple. Especially if there are several sources of opposing fake news that cannot be agreed upon by a vast majority of society. For instance, as obvious as it is to many of you that Alex Jones is probably bad for the US, I believe that reliance on mainstream media is also extremely bad for the US. Though, due to human nature, the majority of people will likely never agree with that. What seems to be agreed upon by the majority is trusted for that reason alone. There are millions of people who believe FoxNews is centrist and fair and balanced. And there are others who do not believe CNN has a specific agenda and frames news dishonestly to pursue a specific agenda. Then, there are those who trust our government to usually tell the truth. So, people disagree on the sources of truth.

That means that our society can't actually regulate "fake news" without a tribal competition on who gets to decide the facts. With the facts comes great power. Economic, political, social, etc. At the end of the day, a group of people who strongly disagree with millions of other people will have to decide what qualifies as reality. Is that likely to lead to a good outcome? This is why many people blame Trump's popularity on the democrat party's conscious effort, through their allied media corporations, to control the facts and, instead of winning debates, disqualifying certain viewpoints as "illegitimate."

We see this sort of attitude prevalent on this message board. Efforts to avoid the specifics of an argument and instead try and delegitimize the existence of the debate in the first place. This is a trend that has been growing steadily over the last 30 years and it will only get worse. Critical thinkings is being replaced by the lessons from tribal politics. Don't fight a fair fight, rig the fight instead.

Censorship efforts that are ostensibly there to protect people from fake news are really battles over rigging the "truth." Just because YOU don't see it that way doesn't mean that the powers that be aren't co-opting it for that purpose. And to come full circle with false dichotomy, those who judge anything outside of the mainstream media to be conspiracy or paranoid, are every bit as delusional as an Alex Jones enthusiast. The only difference is that one delusion is more normal than the other.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/facebook-censor-alex-jones-705766/

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a distortion. Take hitchhiking for example. That's a very OLD example of the news shaping perception to the point everyone believes in a distorted reality. Newspapers decades and decades ago started reporting of the crimes and murders, etc. that happened when people hitchhiked. There were maybe 10-15 murders and crimes reported in a year. EVERY hitchhiking crime was suddenly reported by the media. People began to think that it was a very dangerous activity and that these crimes were a major problem. Everyone in the country knew about the latest hitchhiker murdered, etc.

In reality millions of people hitchhiked for decades. Sure, there were murders and robberies, rapes, etc. But the odds of dying in a car wreck while being transported while hitchhiking were higher than being killed or raped by the driver or hitchhiker. But that didn't register. What people remembered was the saturation of hitchhiking murders and rapes in the news.

You see this today in the news. The media covers a white cop shooting a black guy. Then another. Then another. Pretty soon everyone is riled up about racist cops killing black people. Fact is very few white cops had killed black people. And 100 times more black people had killed black people in the same area. But the media's selective saturation of the news with a single issue paints a distorted picture. It's not a lie. It's people being manipulated. It's an ignorance to relativity. The lack of a sense of relativity today is part and parcel of our media problems.

Any time an "issue" comes up in the media, racist cop shootings, violence against gays, or anything really, I always try and look at the figures, and ignore the narrative. You can create a narrative, selectively cover an "issue", and then paint a distorted picture. Goebels perfected this art in Nazi Germany for Hitler, btw. But if you take a skeptical look at hot-button issues, you often find the numbers do not validate the perceived breadth of the problem.

Take a look at this chart. It's numbers. Did you know the number of intentional homicides in the US are at levels not seen since Judy and Ward Cleaver and I Love Lucy were gracing our screens?

Relativity based on an educated perspective is something not being taught to children today. Heck, kids today don't even play outside anymore because their parents are scared they'll be kidnapped or raped or killed. And some have been. Adam Walsh. We all remember him. That marked the beginning of the end of kids playing outside. But then ask yourself, are kids today going to grow into respectable well-adjusted, successful adults sitting inside with their parents all day playing video games, etc? Would the decrease in personal interaction and socialization result in a worse adult when your child is grown, than if your child played with other children and had freedom enough to learn responsibility?

The battle over news and facts.

We are all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own

That is the rallying cry for the control over facts.

Re: That is the rallying cry for the control over facts.

I see they got you in line.

Re: I see they got you in line.

And Jon Stewart used to say nobody watched him for news.

Re: And Jon Stewart used to say nobody watched him for news.

Which is why our democracy will destroy itself.

Re: Which is why our democracy will destroy itself.

I agree with everything you just said.

What you are calling "skepticism" is also called "bias"

Skepticism and bias are definately not the same.

I didn't say they were the same thing.

No no no, way off. I'll clarify.

That's fair, but...

Because they posture themselves as a source of truth.

But that's how you are posture yourself too, right?

No. "Certain few topics" being the key difference.

why do you focus on the few topics?

You make it sound as if I am posturing myself as some sort

I'm not saying you are doing that

With all due respect, I think you are missing my point.

The posture as much as you are on this topic

They are not giving their opinion.

If you broaden out "opinion" everything is an opinion piece

The way they posture themselves as the source of

They posture as much as any other journalist based entity

Another important point...

That's a laughable assertion, imo

People need to narrow the scope of what is actually "news"

Now that it is part of the tribalist political strategy it

Exactly. It is incumbent upon the consumer to

Re: That is the rallying cry for the control over facts.

the problem is, we shouldn't have any trying to "protect"

Re: the problem is, we shouldn't have any trying to "protect"

We are also entitled to our opinions about all the facts...

I consider fake news basically as something that's

I agree with you but one of the big problems that nobody

True facts never add up to a lie. They can and do add up to

Facts can add up to a lie. Here's an example.

Ok.

I'm not saying they can trick you, specifically. I'm saying this

It's called spin.

And that's why I abstain***

fake news

Stopped at Rolling Stone.

And that makes you a waste of human flesh

Re: And that makes you a waste of human flesh

Thanks for the worthless response.***

There is no "news" anymore. And journalism is dead.

Re: There is no "news" anymore. And journalism is dead.

It's false advertising at least.

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