I wouldn’t call this fake news, but it’s also not good journalism.

And yes, Fox News and MSNBC have been doing this for years. But this form of bias now seems to permeate everything, including formerly trusted titans like NPR and the NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/us/black-hebrew-israelite...

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/20/beyond-buzzfeed-the-10-w...

If there is collusion with Russia, at least wait until there is proof of it before running with the story as if there were. I just roll my eyes now. Maybe focus on some of the other things Trump is doing, goodness knows, there is enough. All the media is doing by constantly doing this is seem like they're constantly crying wolf and supporting the narrative on Trump's side that the media is simply out to get him because of their bias.

34 people have been indicted, including the president's campaign chairman (Paul Manafort), campaign manager (Rick Gates), lawyer (Michael Cohen), and national security advisor (Michael Flynn). Just today Roger Stone was indicted. Many of these people have pled guilty.

Roger Stone was indicted because he tried to dig up the "emails" and for witness tampering. That's unethical/illegal but not collusion with Russia.

"They found no Russian collusion or they would have charged him with it," Smith said. Jay Sekulow, an attorney for the President, told CNN in a statement: "The indictment today does not allege Russian collusion by Roger Stone or anyone else. Rather, the indictment focuses on alleged false statements Mr. Stone made to Congress."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/25/politics/roger-stone-arrested...

The media insinuates it has to do with Russia, and thus you believe it does and there is something to all this talk of Russia, which is disingenuous, because none of the charges have anything to do with that. This is almost like a media backed conspiracy theory. The willful ignorance isn't on my side. I at least read the article.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/18/politics/mueller-statement-bu...

Again, they run the headlines at the top, then issue the retractions quietly, and nothing happens. Public opinion is changed, but no one goes to jail (for collusion) because they so far, don't actually have anything.

Democrats were running a false flag operation during the last election to make it look like Russian bots were supporting Moore so they can say, "Hey look, the Russians want you to vote for this guy" and the media reported on it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jon...

All I'm saying is, the next bombshell you hear about Russians, wait a month and see if anything happens with it, otherwise, you're just being manipulated. Stick to what Trump is actually doing that's bad.

See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinoviev_letter

...Which was 95 years ago.

The difference now that is the rhetoric is often more obviously slanted and more likely to be nakedly inflammatory.

The 50s/60s/70s had more of a tradition of restrained debate. But the politeness was always superficial. Politics was at least as murderous and corrupt as it is now. But the more measured tone, and the superficial respect for critique and analysis, made it appear more civilised.

Now the tone is more likely to be extreme, which creates the illusion that obviously manipulative "fake news" is more the rule than the exception - and that this is historically different, when in fact it isn't at all.

Nah. The difference is that fact-checking and reading multiple sources is way easier these days.

    By the time [Joseph Pulitzer] actually composed his thoughts for the North American Review, his bed chart included rheumatism, dyspepsia, catarrh and a bad case of shame for the Spanish atrocities in Cuba deliberately invented by his reporters to goose the circulation of his newspapers. - Michael Lewis (1)

[1] Michael Lewis, "J School Confidential", 1993 [2] David R. Spencer, "The Yellow Journalism", 2007

Perhaps, but surely the media used to be less biased, and it’s worth striving to get back to that place.

"If their interaction with the Catholic students seemed like an expression of bigotry toward white people, some of their most vile language is reserved for black people in the communities where they preach."

"The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, categorized at least 80 groups nationwide that follow Hebrew Israelite theology as hate groups."

Would you rather that NY Times not report on confrontations like this?

This is a group on par with the Westboro Baptist Church, possibly worse. That NYTs article tries to play it neutral, and that is itself a form of bias when you're talking about a group like this. If the NYTs finished off an article about the WBC with a quote from somebody willing to call the WBC a "harmless part of our community," I think you'd see people accusing the NYTs article of being overly sympathetic in that hypothetical too.

(If you think this group is harmless, just look at the comment section of that video and see what kind of people are praising and adoring the Black Hebrews.)

Because it went on after that to blame Trump for it. "We live in these dangerous times so expect people to do more of this, don't blame them...". Then something to the effect of "let's not judge too much their verbal assaults as it's just their preaching style".

I think that's the kind of spin people complain about and call NYT "Fake News". They narrate a story based on an agenda. Try doing a mental experiment and switch sides. Imagine it was the kids with the red hats yelling things these people were yelling at passers by. Take your pick between homophobic rants, c*unt, the n-word etc, and then imagine NYT covering it and saying. "This is a hate group however these are dangerous times we live in and it's just a way for these groups to express their frustration. They use an unorthodox style, and the community doesn't mind it too much, there are far worse things to worry about".

Would you call that a "flattering" report of red hat wearing teenagers? Yeah, I would too. That's the point I think the OP was making here.

>But what Mr. Yasharahla might view as great, others call something else: hate. >But Ms. Beirich said that groups like Hebrew Israelites were also anti-gay, anti-white and anti-Semitic.

Confirmation bias is fake news. Because you only pick up the details that fit your narrative, shutting down everything else.

A true neutral viewpoint would share all aspects of the story from the get go.

That's a pretty weak strawman.

As a non-US citizen who never set foot near the US, I found the MAGA story to be a pretty blatant example of fake news that was clearly pushed in spite of any fact check or impartiality.

When I first saw the video pushed by US's media corporations my first reaction was to have a very negative opinion about the kid in particular and the whole political movement in general.

But afterwards I had the opportunity to see the whole video, without being subjected to the blatant manipulation, and the real story is radically different than the narrative that was pushed by the media.

Any journalist and specially editors who had access to the video clearly knew they were blatantly lying to the public and were intentionally misrepresenting the events, but they did so to push their agenda. This has nothing to do with confirmation bias.

I'm pointing a clear example where there was a general push for a falsified news report to push a narrative. There is no way around this.

Other examples also exist, but they fly under the radar or aren't so eggregious.

Are you nuts? The kids were standing there exercising their very american right to peacefully assemble and exercise their free speech. Then the counterprotesters crashed the kids' gathering and started chanting right in the face of those kids trying to draw a reaction specifically for the cameras. The only reaction that the activists managed to draw were grins from a random kid and somehow that's enough for the media to cherry-pick footage to vilify a political movement that is supported by the majority of americans and in the process ruin a kid's life.

In who's mind is this ok?

> about abortion rights and wore MAGA hats because they knew it would be inflammatory.

Whether you like it or not, a large number of americans (if not the majority) do hold those opinions, and if you expect to live in a free and open democracy you don't get to fabricate hit pieces in the form of fake news to vilify those who don't share your opinion.

The Media Botched the Covington Story: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/media-must...

I Failed the Coving On Catholic Test: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/julie-irwi...

Muddling the Covington Catholic Student Video: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2019/01/mudd...

That sort of soul-searching does not happen, indeed it wouldn’t fit into even a 24h-channel, at Fox News.

(That's a serious question, I don't watch them and I'd like to know if they really are as bad as people say or if people just hate them because they don't agree.)

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/31/fox-news-laura...

1) Fox didn't say it; it was one host's personal Twitter comment.

2) David Hogg made himself a national media figure voluntarily

3) Criticising someone's GPA and college acceptance rate is not comparable to the hateful commentary about the Covington students.

The main thing I wonder about after reading that story is the aftermath. If eleven advertisers dropped Ingraham over that comment, how many have dropped the liberal media over their attacks on the Convington high school students?

They did so with no evidence, even though the accusation is far more specific and easily testable than it is in the Covington case. And even after being called out on it, they continued to repeat the smear against better knowledge. The difference is as clear as night & day.

https://duck.com/?q=site%3Afoxnews.com+david+hogg+paid+actor

https://duck.com/?q=site%3Afoxnews.com+david+hogg+crisis+act...

https://duck.com/?q=site%3Afoxnews.com+david+hogg+antifa

I know some crazy people said things like that, but I can't find any evidence that Fox News did.

- Supports the idea that racism/nationalism/xenophobia is increasing cause of Trump/Brexit/whatever

And the 'right wing' versions often means something similar about immigration and increased crime or political correctness. If a story fits those beats, then they'll often buy it without question, foregoing the basic background research needed in the process.

That's why the Covington Catholic school kids thing got publicised so much; it fit very nicely (at first glance) with the idea that Trump voters are racist/horrible people, seemingly showed a confrontation between them and a native American tribesperson and helped the narrative many organisations wanted to push.

Same with the case of that guy being 'thrown off a plane for speaking Arabic'. He wasn't, but the story fit the whole 'hate against Muslims increased after Trump election' narrative.

Any fact checking at all would debunk these stories and the 'message' being pushed on social media sites, yet it wasn't done until way later.

Same goes with another story I saw about a trans eSports team supposedly getting banned from a gender specific tournament. Team didn't actually exist and the story was a troll job meant to rile up one side, but media sympathetic to said side bought it hook, line and sinker.

Honestly, a good journalist needs to be more skeptical about stories they agree with than disagree with (or at least equally so), and it's clear that most today aren't like that at all.

Link please?

Sometimes I feel like I must live under a rock.

When a brown person is doing a mass shooting, there is almost almost always a narrative about terrorism and how obviously the person must have been a terrorist and we just need to somehow find the link, even if the person has no clear link to anything.

The WaPo is pretty balanced on this front. But dont pretend the NYT is unbaised here. WSJ is certainly biased.

An agenda is much more than a bias. It's a set of goals and a strategy for pursuing them. A systematic bias can be a big part of that strategy. But the goals and their origin are far more interesting.

Is that new?

People are people of course, so it’s impossible to be completely unbiased.

Feels a bit rich to link to any media as a source now, but here you go: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/german-reporter-stripped-cn...

Actually there was another problem at Der Spiegel, cultural again; anybody who questioned the rockstars had their career thrown on the rocks. When Juan Moreno questioned the integrity of the fraud Class Relotius, Der Spiegel's editors didn't believe him, and thought he was just jealous of Relotius. So again, not a problem caused by understaffing.

People reviewing pull requests at our company also have to assume that programmers aren't being deliberately deceptive.

So what? Almost all of our working relationship, heck relationships period, are based on trust.

Do you really need me to answer this for you? Did you miss the part where it failed in spectacular fashion and will haunt Der Spiegel's reputation for years to come? Not to mention god knows how many innocent people were defamed by this fraud over the years he was allowed to run wild by Der Spiegel's fact checkers.

This guy was publishing "too good to be true" articles for years and none of Der Spiegel's famed fact checkers noticed it. He was eventually uncovered by another reporter, not a fact checker, so to suggest that understaffing in the fact checking department is to blame is farcical.

It's impossible to defend against, you have to trust your coworkers, or we'd be living in a police state where nothing can get done.

And yes I know of the other high profile cases at the NyTimes NewYorker etc.

Sure, but people distrust things for irrational reasons all the time.

Of course he's going to win awards.

The rest of the journalists, who have to confine themselves to the much more difficult task of developing sources and researching facts, won't be able to compete with someone who just makes up fantastical stories out of thin air.

He was caught in the end, so what's the problem?

Yes, he got caught in the end. But he shouldn't have been able to publish such obvious nonsense for years on end. It's quite clear that Der Spiegel didn't catch him because he was telling them what they wanted to hear.

> as having completely fabricated the majority of the articles

This is about as fake news propaganda driven as it gets. Your source says "numerous articles" are having issues, not "the majority". The summary on his DE wiki page[0] so far indicates way less than half (aka "majority"). Also your claim those problematic articles are "completely fabricated" seems quite excessive as well. Feels a bit like you intentionally try to bend facts to fit your narrative...

I know journalism has its problems, but it is the best we have to keep the powerful in check.

Bias is a problem that can interfere with the output of people who think they are doing good-faith journalism. But anyone with a blog can write what other people will mistake for news, and if they're good, can make it go viral. No relationship with the truth, not even an attempted one, is involved.

Conservative slant headline: Hero CCW Bystander Stops Mass Shooting.

Liberal slant headline: Mass Shooting Underscores the Need for Gun Control Now.

Fake news headline: New Proof That Lizard Men Hired Crisis Actors in Plot to Take Your Guns.

That might be how you use the term, but that might more correctly called "false news". In common parlance, "fake news" refers to an overall pattern of filtering and narrative-pushing such that consuming lots of these stories (possibly each of them factual) will leave the reader with gross misapprehensions about the world.

[0] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/majority-americans-we...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/50...

It's useful for non-controversial stuff. I love to peruse it, I love to quote from it. But it can't possibly be trusted for anything as topical as "Fake News".

I love the Michael Scott comment:

Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information.

(For those who aren't familiar with the US version of The Office: Michael Scott is not meant to be taken literally).

being reasonable, means some audience will leave to go to the more addicting outrage.

This is my hypothesis only.

[1]https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/letter-response-jan-17-article...

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/23/how-conserva...

[3]https://twitter.com/globaldan/status/1088570101283110915?s=2...

These newspapers are useless. I'm interested in increased resolution of reporting on my immediate environment, I want to know about the backstabbing and backroom deals local politicians do, the local murderers and the town rapists, the crimes refugees do or don't, exact breakdowns of economical utility of refugees, exact numbers on town expenditures and big land sales. I want statistics and news on things that matter and change my immediate environment.

All this is missing from national editions. All of this is missing from local newspapers dealing with local trivia only and have the same content anyway because they are owned by the same conglomerate. I have to look up all of it myself if the information is publicly available, if not then the newspapers don't do their job in unlocking it.

Daily newspapers are competing with other outlets and weekly editions and radio and TV in reporting the big, everyday occurrences. They don't have a pitch.

That's a very charitable way of seeing things when you know a lot of these organizations are politically oriented.

For me it's not important, if the news is a lie or that they just build the distorted model of reality by omission of the facts. Withdrawing the fact is equivalent to lying, although it may have a different name.

I think the problem is that media was always mostly a way to spread government propaganda. "We are the best, other countries are either clueless or evil." Because there was no internet, there were no big issues with it, because it was hard to check if it's true or not.

Now, there's internet, so, for example, people can read media of other countries (still difficult because of different languages, but possible). In order to fight the threat to the mental model "we're great, others are evil", somebody invented the term "fake news". Now, everything that contradicts "official" point of view can be simply called "fake news".

IDK if that is fake news, propaganda or whatever. Its certainly a symptom of something bad that is happening there.

They go far deeper than this. Anyone that follows any polarizing issue is well aware that pushing a narrative via omission of key details (or not covering a story at all because it doesn't fit their narrative) is rampant among the established media. Sure the stuff they write about usually actually happened but you have no idea which particular articles are being spun and which way they're being spun (though you can take an educated guess).

It's hard to tell if they're intentionally spinning a narrative of if they're woefully ignorant of their own cognitive bias and go around confirming their bias.

In any case, if the NYY, WaPo or WSJ is publishing half truths and half the story I don't see that as being categorically different from Fake News(TM) because the affect on the population at scale is similar.

First about the Bernie campaign and then about the Trump campaign. I don't pay the news to bullshit me. For a period of six months I read both the NYT and the WSJ. The WSJ editorials are clearly written by morons but otherwise their news had higher predictive value.

I agree entirely with you. It's no wonder people reading the NYT were constantly surprised. My fault entirely after Judith Miller but no longer. Purged them from my rotation.

> And yes, they have biases, because there is no such thing as an entirely unbiased news report

And it’s not really addressing what people mean when they talk about media bias. The media appears to be more biased than it used to. Specifically it represents fewer viewpoints on certain (typically political) issues. It would be interesting IMHO if we talked about this when we talked about media bias. “Completely avoiding bias is impossible” misses the point and isn’t very interesting.

Waiting for the retraction of the Covington story based on the full video? To be given the same prominence, not buried in the small print on page 16.

Also waiting for the blue-ticked accounts on Twitter who called for violence or doxxing of those boys to be banned.