Fake news

Is this what Trump talks about, but doesn't realize Fox is fake as well. That's how I take fake news to mean, hidden agenda reporting, or lack of reporting, or censored reporting. By censored, by example, if a company owned by the media parent caused stomach cancer, they would just say it has been accused of causing stomach ailments and illnesses. By agendas, they report against a congressman that doesn't support their proposed bills. By lack of reporting, they don't talk about a billion dollar giveaway they're getting in Congress, and talk about Kim Kardashian "in the news today".

When Trump is talking about fake news he's talking about all the news he personally doesn't like.

Quote: gamerfreak

When Trump is talking about fake news he's talking about all the news he personally doesn't like.

You're right. The news is fake even if Trump is wrong or right for the wrong reason. One problem with the news, they don't report the rules they use to report the news, they must have them written somewhere.

Rule 21, dont blame high gas on lack of refineries, the people will want more refineries. Blame world demand now.

Rule 33, stop saying mass shooters were quiet, kept to themselves.

Rule 45, black guy commits a stereotypical crime, don't show his picture.

Rule 46, white guy commits stereotypical crime, show his picture.

Rule 7, if a major brand is part of a story, but not important, use a generic synonym or something similar instead.

Rule 137, if something is brought up that should not be brought up, pretend it didn't happen, move on.

Rule 138, if a major story won't go away, wait for something else, then all outlets preach the new story at the same time, forget about the embarrassing story that can open a can of worms.

Here's a fascinating article about how the orange man-baby that the GOP has let rule their party gets his news:

How Trump gets his fake news

Quote:

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus issued a stern warning at a recent senior staff meeting: Quit trying to secretly slip stuff to President Trump.

Just days earlier, K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser, had given Trump a printout of two Time magazine covers. One, supposedly from the 1970s, warned of a coming ice age; the other, from 2008, about surviving global warming, according to four White House officials familiar with the matter.

Trump quickly got lathered up about the media’s hypocrisy. But there was a problem. The 1970s cover was fake, part of an Internet hoax that’s circulated for years. Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it.

When Jimmy Kimmel first came on late night, he was given a lengthy censorship list of all things he was not allowed to say or do. He read some on the air, I distinctly remember him saying he could not use the phrase "as American as apple pie", I believe because ABC believed it discriminated based on country of origin. He made jokes about it, was shocked, but be assured it was real and lengthy.

I think part of the problem is people confusing, or networks obfuscating, the difference between news and political commentary.

Fox/CNN for example... the main anchors pretty much always stick to verifiably factual statements. But after they report a fact, they invariably turn to a panel of "political correspondents" who comment on the story. And commentary is inherently bias, in fact, bias is the entire purpose of commentary. Yet people on either side will take what these correspondsnts say as gospel, when its literally all opinion.

Same thing with internet "reporting" like Breitbart, that site is 100% commentary, yet people call it news and share it on Facebook and treat is as if it's news.

At some point news stopped becoming news, and became current event driven entertainment. Journalists stopped becoming journalists and started becoming entertainers.

Can you imagine if Walter Cronkite had ever reported Political news, and then proceeded to tell you how he personally felt about it?

Quote: gamerfreak

I think part of the problem is people confusing, or networks obfuscating, the difference between news and political commentary.

Fox/CNN for example... the main anchors pretty much always stick to verifiable factual statements. But after they report a fact, they invariably turn to a panel of "political correspondents" who comment on the story. And commentary is inherently bias, in fact, bias is the entire purpose of commentary. Yet people on either side will take what these correspondents say as gospel, when its literally all opinion.

Same thing with internet "reporting" like Breitbart, that site is 100% commentary, yet people call it news and share it on Facebook and treat is as if it's news.

At some point news stopped becoming news, and became current event driven entertainment. Journalists stopped becoming journalists and started becoming entertainers.

Can you imagine if Walter Cronkite had ever reported Political news, and then proceeded to tell you how he personally felt about it?

Nope, sure can't. Cronkite only gave his opinion one time in all the years he was on the air and was begged not to. That was regarding Vietnam. You are dead right on all your points. I trust no media and make it a rule to always look up opposing viewpoints if I ever see something that interests me. I actually would prefer to hear directly from a source and then I'll make up my own mind (don't need the NY Times or Fox to tell me how to think). And I suspect more and more people are of that opinion. The news media is one of the least trusted of all professions.

Uncle Walt gave some thought to running for VP on John Anderson's Independent bid for President in 1980.
He decided against it for personal reasons.

Quote: billryan

Uncle Walt gave some thought to running for VP on John Anderson's Independent bid for President in 1980.
He decided against it for personal reasons.

Great tidbit. We loved John Anderson in our house. My mom was his campaign chair for Iowa before he lost the nomination to Reagan.

There was a movie called Broadcast News in the 80's that discussed extensively the change from straight news to entertainment, the ethics, and the repercussions. It's amazing how prescient they were, and it's more pertinent now than when it was made. Worth watching, with a great cast,.if you haven't seen it. (I'm guessing you, billryan, have, but a lot of the guys on here will have been too young at the time. )

I worked for Anderson in the primaries, traveling to Connecticut several weekends and then was co- chair in Nassau County of the effort to get him on the ballot in NY as an Independent. Unfortunately, once the Fall came along , I was too busy with school to do much.
I did organize a fundraiser for him showing a filming of Bedtime for Bonzo. It was pretty lightly attended and barely covered the expenses of renting the film and projector, but it was fun.

Another Cronkite tidbit.
About three years ago, I was approached to buy a large comic collection. I passed on it but brokered the sale to another, much larger dealer.
The seller turned out to be Walter Cronkite the Third. Had I known that, I might have done it differently. I'd have loved to have spent time with him.

Quote: beachbumbabs

There was a movie called Broadcast News in the 80's that discussed extensively the change from straight news to entertainment, the ethics, and the repercussions. It's amazing how prescient they were, and it's more pertinent now than when it was made.

My favorite movie about reporters and news organizations with "backbone" is Good Night, and Good Luck (nominated for 6 Oscars in 2005), about Edward R. Murrow. To avoid lawsuits by the family of Senator Joseph McCarthy, they had to film the whole movie in black and white so they could avoid an actor "playing" the senator. Instead they used newsreel footage of the senator speaking his commie-this and commie-that babble, and it really made the movie. Another of the "more pertinent now" movies IMHO.

Quote: gamerfreak

I think part of the problem is people confusing, or networks obfuscating, the difference between news and political commentary.

Fox/CNN for example... the main anchors pretty much always stick to verifiably factual statements. But after they report a fact, they invariably turn to a panel of "political correspondents" who comment on the story. And commentary is inherently bias, in fact, bias is the entire purpose of commentary. Yet people on either side will take what these correspondsnts say as gospel, when its literally all opinion.

Same thing with internet "reporting" like Breitbart, that site is 100% commentary, yet people call it news and share it on Facebook and treat is as if it's news.

At some point news stopped becoming news, and became current event driven entertainment. Journalists stopped becoming journalists and started becoming entertainers.

Can you imagine if Walter Cronkite had ever reported Political news, and then proceeded to tell you how he personally felt about it?

The whole "fake news" thing, I think, has been spreading more and more since social media has really moved forward and there are many different places now. With social media becoming more popular, it's also easier for websites to get very popular very quickly. You see more and more of these websites that have no credibility or sources....and when/if they do have a source, the source is another similar website. GWAE just posted a link to some article saying "Rounders 2" is coming out, which is clearly a fake news website. Another site is The Onion. I can't remember some of the others, but they post stuff that is purposely wrong. Then you got websites like buzzfeed, which I'm pretty sure is run by a group of 16-19 year old girls.

I'm all for free-speech, but I honestly don't think a website or group/corporation/etc. should be able to make stuff up on purpose. I'm not talking about stating an opinion, I'm talking about making made up and unsubstantiated claims.

The Onion is satire and is hilarious comedic entertainment. To my knowledge they have NEVER claimed to be "real news," especially if someone is gullible enough to actually believe some of the articles they put out. In anything, they're a fantastic resource for teaching people to CHECK THE SOURCES on the information they find on the internet. I remember when The Onion came out and people on my friends list were like "OMG Obama beats baby seals!!!" then they promptly got made fun of by 100 other people for not realizing it was satire (i.e. not checking the source). It's made people like that do a double check to see if it's a satire site, at least.

Past that though, as long as people "claim" it's a news site (which 99% of them are as you described, jokes that aren't real news and just political commentary/discussion) it's depressing to see people post the dumbest stuff that's completely unsupported by anything tangible. Then again, not a lot of people know about nor practice the scientific method.

Quote:

A class action lawsuit alleging the Democratic National Committee worked in conjunction with Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign to keep Bernie Sanders out of the White House has been raging on in the courtrooms for months on end–and yet, most people have no idea of its existence, in large part thanks to the mainstream media's total lack of coverage.

http://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-rigged-hillary-clinton-dnc-lawsuit-donald-trump-president-609582

I think everything else going on now has simply overshadowed it.

The Trump University lawsuit is still going on (appeal filed), and that hardly has any mainstream coverage, either.

As for fake news, there is satire, and there is trying to pass off lies and half-truths as factual and accurate.

Quote: Romes

The Onion is satire and is hilarious comedic entertainment. To my knowledge they have NEVER claimed to be "real news," especially if someone is gullible enough to actually believe some of the articles they put out. In anything, they're a fantastic resource for teaching people to CHECK THE SOURCES on the information they find on the internet. I remember when The Onion came out and people on my friends list were like "OMG Obama beats baby seals!!!" then they promptly got made fun of by 100 other people for not realizing it was satire (i.e. not checking the source). It's made people like that do a double check to see if it's a satire site, at least.

Past that though, as long as people "claim" it's a news site (which 99% of them are as you described, jokes that aren't real news and just political commentary/discussion) it's depressing to see people post the dumbest stuff that's completely unsupported by anything tangible. Then again, not a lot of people know about nor practice the scientific method.

The onion has been around since the 80's.

I am more concerned about this now more than ever. Fake news is real and our minds are the target. Being interested in stocks now put me on notice about it. What the public sees is how they react.

Not only this, but there is HFT(high frequency trading), that analyzes all the news and instantly makes stock decisions based on it. Today on CNBC, a man speaking was wondering what happned when the stocks started falling fast. I don't even remember exactly the impetus he mentioned, but he said it was out at 310PM and at 310PM the stocks started falling. So, in his mind, he knows the instant news breaks, the reaction is instaneous. Human beings aren't capable of reading an article and making a decision this fast in dollars that matter for the entire market. I think censorship by companies like Youtube and Facebook are partly because of this. They want to control what we hear and see, and all the reasons are bs. If there is something they don't want us knowing or thinking about, it's out of sight and out of your mind. You will not act on it, you won't even know what you're not supposed to even act on.

Second example: googling stock futures. All these days I want to see chaos, another day the articles say stocks rise bc of blah, blah, blah. Or stocks jump. or stocks react rallying. So depending on when you look the numbers change, and the titles and content changes a little or not at all. Just based on the title, the readers are reading all of the article, and it's human nature to see the content from the perspective of what the title was which made them want to read the article over another in the first place. Today, the latest headline was "stocks futures little changed following losses from the previous session". So earlier, this wasn't very true, and now it is.

Yeah everything is priced in, everything is looking forward, but there is Nancy Pelosi last night with her red lipstick on talking about stimulus after the markets fell 2% and 1% after-hours. What are they trying to do pump the stocks long enough for their pre-planned sell orders can be executed? So now, you have fake news, you know the market should not be so enthusiastic, people are even saying the fed is buying stocks, and they have to be long, and you can't act against it confidently. Lots of possible positive headlines on the RH homepage today, I'm not so sure the markets will drop 10% this week. I'm digressing. I'll just say, the internet is not free.

Quote: onenickelmiracle

Not only this, but there is HFT(high frequency trading), that analyzes all the news and instantly makes stock decisions based on it. Today on CNBC, a man speaking was wondering what happned when the stocks started falling fast. I don't even remember exactly the impetus he mentioned, but he said it was out at 310PM and at 310PM the stocks started falling. So, in his mind, he knows the instant news breaks, the reaction is instaneous. Human beings aren't capable of reading an article and making a decision this fast in dollars that matter for the entire market. I think censorship by companies like Youtube and Facebook are partly because of this. They want to control what we hear and see, and all the reasons are bs. If there is something they don't want us knowing or thinking about, it's out of sight and out of your mind. You will not act on it, you won't even know what you're not supposed to even act on.

Maybe. Two examples I have seen.

I answered a want-ad for "trader." I kind of knew it was not a job but it both sounded interesting and I subscribe to the idea that when job searching check some of these kinds of thing out to both practice your interview skills as well as you might learn about something. Better than staying home watching TV even if Maria Bartiromo was on.

Anyhow it was a day trading firm. Wanted you to use your funds to day trade. Taught mostly "scalping" a few cents by jumping ahead of the Level II quotes. If I get cash one day I might try it for a few months why not. But while they had the expected CNBC on the TV (FOX Business had not gone on the air yet) they had a thing called "newsreader" playing. It was just a voice announcing news releases. I remember I was watching a few oil stocks on the demo, oil stocks were recommended as one to trade, and they announced some kind of oil output increase from some OPEC country. The oil stock started instantly moving.

Another time was in IIRC 2009 or 2010. I was wanting to learn to trade Forex. Watching USD vs Swiss Franc. Those charts are hard to watch, tic, tic, tic. So many traders it is hard to move it. Obama was giving a speech which means it was just after 9 ET. As soon as he got going the USD started tanking. I never saw anything like how the chart moved so fast. But after just a few minutes it leveled.

Was it people? Was it a computer? You be the judge, but there are live traders who have all sorts of things on while they trade.


NOTE: Mention of Obama is NOT a political statement, it is an example.

Quote: bodyforlife

Nope, sure can't. Cronkite only gave his opinion one time in all the years he was on the air and was begged not to. That was regarding Vietnam. You are dead right on all your points. I trust no media and make it a rule to always look up opposing viewpoints if I ever see something that interests me. I actually would prefer to hear directly from a source and then I'll make up my own mind (don't need the NY Times or Fox to tell me how to think). And I suspect more and more people are of that opinion. The news media is one of the least trusted of all professions.

The media is not trusted because they have been caught in lies too many times. GM Trucks on fire. Changing 9-1-1 tapes. Fake documents. Or it not lies caught in bias. CNN used vulgar filenames for pics of Bush after winning in 2004. The people who make the lies do not seem to get fired like you or I would, They get some nice, sweet severance deal.

Best idea I ever heard was go to the British model. Have outlets make no bones about which side they slant to. In the USA we all know but there is this "pretend thing" about it still being real journalism. There is some subtle code. For example, I was told in college that any outlet that had "Review" in it's name tended to lean right. Let it be in the open.

Just because you are paranoid, that doesn't mean you don't have a balrog in your woodpile.

Whatever happened to listening to the news or opinions on news sites and then evaluating what you heard?

Quote: rsactuary

Whatever happened to listening to the news or opinions on news sites and then evaluating what you heard?

It's so much easier to let people tell you what you just heard.

Quote: marketwatch

Dow Jones Futures Rise On Cisco Earnings, Mastercard 'Normalization' After Coronavirus Stock Market Rally Sick Day

Sick day? Does this have to be more obvious? Even though I have my long game plan outlook, it;s enough to scare me.




Added: Do you see how the news influences things?
You can say we already knew, and we did. Except I don't think people drive the markets, it's the computers. The HFT computer algorithms see this and immediately have a plan once it breaks. Then the HFT reacts to the people reacting. It's sick IMO.

Quote: Yahoo Finance

Stock market news live updates: Stocks fall after Powell warns of 'lasting damage' due to coronavirus

Emily McCormick
Reporter
Yahoo FinanceMay 13, 2020

Nobody even knows who is really investing in the stock market buying these stocks. As I said, this drives me nuts. Video explaining the idea nobody knows who is buying stocks and he thinks it's "fishy".

MSNBC used to spend far too much time reacting to the blowhards on Fox News. I'm glad they've stopped doing that for the most part and did their own research. (Just heard a shoutout for a nearby big city on MSNBC and the sound cut out for a minute. That's usually what happens during coverage of nuclear accidents.)

I'm surprised Wired now is asking for a paid subscription, the internet isn't going to be what it used to be. Too many sources want money, and too much money imo. Now the newspapers are finally disappearing they are pulling the trigger. $4 a month doesn't seem like much, but you can only really get so much out of it. I'd rather have a broad ala carte system where anyone can participate to provide content. That never worked though, think it was called micro-pricing where this web page costs $.01, etc.

Quote: rsactuary

Whatever happened to listening to the news or opinions on news sites and then evaluating what you heard?

This is a power you think you have but you actually do not. Psychology and money are way against you.

Quote: onenickelmiracle

I'm surprised Wired now is asking for a paid subscription, the internet isn't going to be what it used to be. Too many sources want money, and too much money imo. Now the newspapers are finally disappearing they are pulling the trigger. $4 a month doesn't seem like much, but you can only really get so much out of it. I'd rather have a broad ala carte system where anyone can participate to provide content. That never worked though, think it was called micro-pricing where this web page costs $.01, etc.

The news sites have to decide if they want to go subscription and lose 95%+ of their traffic or use the advertising model. Newspapers really did it on advertising. What killed the newspapers was not news on the internet but Craigslist, Monster, and all the other sites that killed their classified ad sections. Think back to the late 1990s. Each help wanted ad ran $300-1500+. How many ads per page and how many pages? That was the dirty little secret of the business.

IMHO you will always have plenty of free sources if for no other reason that the more paid sites the more free ones will pop up. Same as we left cable TV for free entertainment elsewhere.