This. I used to think "fake news" was far-right baloney, but I've come to lose all faith in the journalistic integrity of the New York Times and WaPo. This recent piece for the NYT was a bizarrely flattering story about an anti-gay, anti-Semitic hate group is a good example. They have a narrative to push and will push it with any available facts and information.

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

It's not just that, but the media's Russia narrative, despite two years of investigations and coming up dry is looking worse than the far right constantly harping on Clinton's emails. Every week it seems there is a new bombshell that turns out to come up empty because there isn't any evidence.

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.

The idea that the investigation is coming up dry, or that there's no evidence, seems like willful ignorance.

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.

Indicted, yes, but for things unrelated to collusion with Russia. They've been going after them for other things, because they can't produce evidence of the Russian collusion, just a lot of unethical stuff.

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.

The Buzzfeed News article was debunked and denied by Mueller himself, its part of the Intercept article I linked and what prompted it. The fact you still believe that proves the point.

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.

There hasn't been a time when the media haven't been biased and often knowingly dishonest.

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.

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

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

Yup. It was arguably even worse before. Pulitzer himself ran fake news about the Spanish in Cuba as propaganda to support the Spanish-American War:

    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)

It was a part of the news culture of the time, too. It wasn't just restricted to Pulitzer. (2)

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

> There hasn't been a time when the media haven't been biased and often knowingly dishonest.

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

When?

In my lifetime less the last decade. For instance, during the Iraq war, it wasn't uncommon for NYT or other publications to take a moderate right-wing perspective. Now that's virtually unheard of outside of the opinion section, and even there it's only token "conservatives" (quotes because "conservative" means a lot of different things to different people in the era of Trump).

That was a bizarre article they do mention these people spout out terrible insults and threats and are categorized as a hate group but it turns around and excuses that because it's well, Trump's fault of course, and it's not all that bad because they see it as "preaching".

How do you consider this flattering?

"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?

That article describes their hateful rants as 'street sermons.' To describe this activity (https://youtu.be/Eg3OihbIaig?t=167) as 'street sermons' is flattering.

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.)

> How do you consider this flattering?

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.

straight up, you don't know how to read.

>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.

> and they are always on the lookout for facts to back up those narratives

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.

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

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 interpreted the OP as agreeing with you. I think you might be misunderstanding each other or I’m misunderstanding someone.

You are talking about one story. I'm talking about news in general. I don't think most journalists are deliberately lying most of the time, but it's much more likely they suffer from confirmation bias - that's something we are all subject to, by the way. But journalists should go the extra mile, it'S their job after all: they are not supposed to be activists.

> You are talking about one story. I'm talking about news in general.

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.

They also feed off themselves on Twitter and it becomes the cyclical thing where the only viewpoint they see is their own.

The MAGA story wasn't fake news. The kids were there to stir up controversy about abortion rights and wore MAGA hats because they knew it would be inflammatory. They also told the native American that "stealing land is just how it's done" and were very obviously making comments at him. Yes the Black Israelites were terrible people making terrible comments, but let's not hold the kids or especially the school blameless. This is the same school that used to think dressing in blackface, black painted faces with pink or white lips, was okay (there's no problem dressing in all black without the paint). This school knowingly sent kids into a political arena and this is the fallout. Perhaps the school should avoid using children as political props in the future.

> The MAGA story wasn't fake news. The kids were there to stir up controversy

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.

I don't have a problem with protesting, free speech, or even speech I disagree with. Civil discourse is important, kind of like we're having here. Claiming these kids were innocent victims of media is just as disingenuous as claiming the first story was completely accurate. The fact is the kids did go there to create controversy and didn't like it when it came with media attention, good or bad. It's like showing up to a WWE match and claiming surprise when someone uses a weapon in the ring.I go back to my original stance of don't use kids as political props and they won't be treated like it.

Why do you think the kids were there to create controversy vs supporting a cause they believed in? They were after all just waiting for a bus after attending an entirely different march. It’s not like they put themselves in this position on purpose.

Fuck the school, but those kids are people and the press slandering them was wrong. Don't let partisan tribalism blind you to the individuals. Kids do not deserve to be slandered because of the school they attend, because they disagree with you about abortion, because they wore dumb hats, or for any other reason you could possibly come up with.

This sums it up well. Either news agencies have more strongly pushed an agenda lately or I’ve become more sensitive to it. Either way, it’s impossible to ignore now and it annoys the hell out of me.

There are multiple stories about the mistakes that were made with the story you are alluding to in every major reputable news source, I. e. for The Atlantic:

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.

Yet we have scores more journalists deleting their tweets going after the kids because it reinforced their biases: https://www.mediaite.com/online/journalists-and-celebs-rush-...

Has Fox News ever led a national media lynching of a high school student?

(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.)

One person that immediately comes to mind is David Hogg. They certainly never held back criticism of him because he's a minor, and a host made a strange attack on him via social media:

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

That fails to convince me for at least three reasons:

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?

Ahh, yes? They regularly denounced the Florida High School students protesting gun violence as “paid actors”, ANTIFA anarchists, etc.

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.

Do you have a link? I can't find one with these searches:

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.

Yeah, this is a thing that's been a problem for a while now, and not just with the NYT and WaPo. Media organisations will basically not fact check anything that fits in with their worldview, which for the 'left wing' versions usually means:

- 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.

> we learned that the NYT and WaPo both have pre-existing narratives they want to tell

Link please?

Sometimes I feel like I must live under a rock.

What's the rent like under there? Asking for a friend.

Easy, just look at reporting on mass shootings. What there is a white person doing a mass shooting (e.g., 3 days ago in Florida) the entire paper is about "senseless violence", "deeply disturbed individuals" and unexplained pain and suffering.

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.

These papers' reporting biases have been well known for years. But the GP makes it sound like a particular story aired last week that focused specifically on an AGENDA the papers are pursuing.

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.

> It seems this past week we learned that the NYT and WaPo both have pre-existing narratives they want to tell

Is that new?

In my memory they used to try to tell all perspectives in their own terms. That stopped in the last decade, IMO.

Reuters is still pretty decent.

Reuters also rarely reports on local news, which is the crisis outlined in the post.

All news is local news, unless Reuters reports it.

Why are you throwing NPR into that mix? NPR remains one of the few news sources that goes out of its way to try and get unbiased reporting in the US.

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

I'm still baffled how NPR screwed up their story on Trump Jr supposedly lying to Congress so badly, though. If you didn't see it, they took his replies to questions about whether any other negotiations to build in Russia were going on at the same time as Cohen's ones, quoted them without context, pretended he was saying Cohen wasn't negotiating in Russia then in contradiction to Cohen's court testimony, and used this to make it look like Trump Jr had lied to Congress. Any fact checker, editor or reporter who'd bothered to check the quotes the story relied on should've caught this. It's the kind of thing I'd expect from a shady conspiracy theory peddler. (The original version: http://archive.is/ozzmb )

That's used to be true but in the past two years they've gotten quite bad. For instance, during the child separation story they called it "President Trump's child separation policy," when describing it. Only weeks later did they call it "the increase of child separations due to President Trump's zero tolerance policy." It was known the day the story broke that he didn't enact the policy.

That used to be true but in the past two years they've gotten quite bad. For instance, during the child separation story they called it "President Trump's child separation policy," when describing it. Only weeks later did they call it "the increase of child separations due to President Trump's zero tolerance policy." It was known the day the story broke that he didn't enact the policy.