The American "Fake News"

Just wanted to start a thread getting your opinions of the American "Fake News" agenda. This is also something broader than just the Presidency thread

Maybe False Narratives or Confirmation Biases are better ways to phrase it, but I'm American, gotta stick to the simplest explanation

Having not consumed too much news outside of the US, I can only speak to the few examples I've seen since getting into politics.

Yes, the US media is heavily focused on appeasing their viewers with what they want to hear. It should be as simple as just state the news, and let people come to their conclusions. We don't work like that. There needs to be entertainment thrown into the mix. It isn't just politics, as sports and the arts are also thrown into the blender that is the on going culture war. Part of what got me into politics was the dumbing down of media to just WWE style promos.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good wrestling promo, but these talking heads don't hold a candle to the best on the mic

We as a society do suffer since not all of us are able to parse reality from fiction. We tend to want to believe what we believe without digging too far into the weeds

We've seen lots of these in the last few months.

Do the American TV channels not have fact checking, or is it just the vulpine channel who go along with the White House's narrative.
The BBC has a whole department checking facts and figures.

(29-03-2025 20:01 )Charlemagne Wrote:  We've seen lots of these in the last few months.

Do the American TV channels not have fact checking, or is it just the vulpine channel who go along with the made up rantings from the White House. The BBC has a whole department checking facts and figures.

There is fact checking, but it's woeful compared to other Countries.
The Dominion lawsuit against Fox proves you can't just go out there and make baseless claims. Since it's news stories followed by thoughts and opinions on the stories, that's where the problem lies. It's more about pleasing an audience instead of informing an audience.

Fact Checking leads to team sports mentality. During the Debate, I saw a lot of conservatives online complain that it doesn't go both ways with the fact checking. So "they're eating the dogs" too them was okay cause Kamala wasn't entirely truthful.
That's the sort of childish arguments we have over here

Also being outnumbered during panel discussions plays well
CNN vs the Republicans
Piers Morgan vs the Evil Left

Way too many similarities to Wrestling

No surprise that this US administration seem hell bent against fact checking on the basis that it would expose pretty much everything Trump says as an outright lie .

You need a staff for fact checking, which they are okay cutting costs on
I've seen during sports broadcasts false stats get reported from social media. Stats even I know are false without having to do a search, just from hearing them you know that doesn't add up
That's just the game, someone brings up some poll, or study, or survey and concluded it must be true.
History should be a concrete area. Events happened and they were documented. Instead it's about creating a narrative about misremembered history (or just outright lies)
The machine of misinformation is chewing us up and spitting us out.
Some basic civics courses, or media literacy can help a little bit

"It’s not a lie, if you believe it" George Costanza

My non-expert view on all this, based on observation…

I spent 10 years in the states as a kid. Back then (80’s / early 90s), you got two doses of TV news (at 6pm and 11pm) on three networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS). That was all wedged in between syndicated comedies by day, prime time entertainment in the evenings, and late night talk shows.

Looking back … it was paradise.

Yes, we talked about current affairs, but (a) we were all working from the same fact set, and (b) we didn’t define ourselves by our politics.

There was a liberal bias to the extent that the major networks were all based in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. So all the editors, researchers, and reporters probably shared a coastal, urban, educated mentality. On reflection, this may have been irritating to someone in rural Kentucky, but as the news didn’t dominate our lives, it was annoying but not existential.

Then CNN came along. Still very much a moderate, middle-of-the-road, journalistic outfit, but it was feeding this mildly left-leaning bias to the masses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The reaction to that was Fox News in the mid-1990s — a right-leaning response to CNN. Fox News was a near instant success, prompting MSNBC to replicate its business model: all-liberal, all the time.

That’s when the fractures started to form and our separate ‘tribes’ started to coalesce. We missed the danger signs though, because we still had the old reliable voices of Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather on the network news shows.

The Internet was already beginning its insidious march to dominance, but I think the transformation of news to entertainment actually began with radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Ed Schultz. They seemed less threatening on radio, but they were the ‘proof of concept’ — they showed there was a bigger appetite for firebrand opinion than there was for mundane “news”.

Then the Internet really exploded and the fractures became chasms. Early adopters abandoned TV news altogether for blogs and social media where they found the dopamine hit of whatever opinion they favoured. But even late-adopters who were still watching TV news felt the effect. With the media market fragmenting, objective fact-based cable “news” was marginalised in favour of subjective opinion shows on “cable news channels”.

News became entertainment on both sides of the fence. For every Sean Hannity on the right, there’s a Chris Cuomo on the left. A Laura Ingrahem begets a Don Lemmon. A Jesse Waters on Fox begets a Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. It’s an arms race of outrage.

But the mess that I think we are now in is as much mathematical as it is sociological. It’s the damn algorithms. It’s the hyper-precision with which we can efficiently foment the most outrage. Because outrage equals clicks, and clicks equal dollars.

Is it any better in other countries?

Maybe, but not much. Canada and most of Western Europe still have respected, mostly balanced public TV channels, which I think has tempered this a little. Say what you like about The BBC, but it is still the source “of record” for much of our news.

(30-03-2025 17:52 )Goodfella3041 Wrote:  My non-expert view on all this, based on observation…

Because outrage equals clicks, and clicks equal dollars.

That pretty much sums it all up

That's been the deflating reality that's infected pop culture, gaming and sports for me. I know shit talking has always been lucrative business, but it is the over arching narrative over everything now

"Alternative Media" and I use that term very loosely, is now the truth for a lot of people.
The spirit may be there, but it's a lot easier to manipulate. The Tenet Media fiasco proves how easy it is. Sadly a lot of people over here are perfectly fine just taking easy money and hoping not to get caught, or make as much as you can before you get caught. Getting caught can be a plus.
“Any publicity is good publicity.”

I don't totally buy into that slogan. I do believe that the cream rises to the top. The vacuum is there for some person to become the dignified voice of the news. Just need the right staff around them to avoid the bullshit