I see no difference there but I'm not sure that I get the point.
> I really didn't appreciate how they pushed the "Russia HACKED the election" narrative.
I never got the impression that those news orgs were saying that actual voting counts were being hacked. But the emails were hacked and leaked.
They jumped the gun on blaming Russia, but that wasn't fake news (provided you believe prominent members of US intelligence).
Even Trump seemed to think it was plausible... At least plausible enough to publicly ask Russia to hack Hilary's emails [1].
The NYT and WaPo (among others) are incredibly biased, and much of the problem is that their support base is too sheltered to understand how. I've said more on this in previous comments.
I followed the election from a variety of sources (WaPo and NYT included) and never got that impression. But I agree that it was a circus from all angles.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/12/28/am...
Do you think it's mostly from misleading mainstream news stories? Or from smaller outlets (social media, celebrities, memes, etc)?
my point is that there have always legions of people who believe ridiculous things. They've been around for every single previous election. So we shouldn't be surprised when the scientific community says "civilization has changed the climate" but people still don't believe it (even when the claim is supported by evidence).
How is that any different than people in the Bible Belt who believe the earth was made in 7 days ? Or elderly people who become vulnerable and fall prey to exploitation (because they believe phone scams, or sob stories from strangers, etc) ? (Edit: or young people who think they're going to grow up and be an astronaut or NBA star). There will always be a sizable proportion of the population who believes wacky stories.
I know you weren't implying this, but NYT and WaPo's hands aren't clean either. I really didn't appreciate how they pushed the "Russia HACKED the election" narrative. That's predatory on the same level: take advantage of the nebulous word "hacking" and misapply it to something that doesn't even rely on computers, do some hand-waiving, and voila, there's some "fake news" to dish up to the masses [which is ironic when your other stories are about the spread of "fake news"].