Do you believe fake news?

[Mrmarvingardens]

Reference is made to Neil Postmans 1985 book. "Amusing Ourselves To Death".
Also, credit Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" which provides more insight in how the media shapes public perception of the news.
While academic in nature Chomsky provides insight into how the government, with the complicity of the media shapes the news of important events.

[two]

Unfortunately with the state of news and social media today there's a risk that the public will of lose the freedom to sort things out for themselves: meaning we'll have to deal with censors and / or algorithms to do it for us.

BTW the film I posted is about critical media education, and I think it does a pretty good job as a teaching tool.

Thank you for the link

Teaching more critical thinking as a core education in primary and secondary schooling would go along way... algorithmic censoring is bad since they usually share the same prejudice as their creators. Censorship is wrong.

[Mrmarvingardens]

Important news on the radio this morning!(I am not making this up)
AM radio aired a story that I am sure got many listeners attention:
"If you eat hotdogs, it can shorten your life by 25 minutes"
Missing, as usual from noteworthy stories is how many hotdogs you must eat to create this health malfunction.
And, whether they are to be eaten all at once or at prescribed intervals

[ferri]

Important news on the radio this morning!(I am not making this up)
AM radio aired a story that I am sure got many listeners attention:
"If you eat hotdogs, it can shorten your life by 25 minutes"
Missing, as usual from noteworthy stories is how many hotdogs you must eat to create this health malfunction.
And, whether they are to be eaten all at once or at prescribed intervals

That just reminded me of when I was a little kid, watching Walter Cronkite News and he said a new study showed that if you ate 15 tubes of red lipstick a year it would give you cancer. (I think it was 15 tubes, i was only around 5 or 6 so it's a little foggy) even though I was a child it made me wonder who the heck eats lipstick?

[Bsuds]

Same as when they claimed that drinking diet pop with (I think) Aspartame would give you cancer.

Then it came out that you had to drink the equivalent of 10,000,000 (exaggeration but close) cans a day.

[ferri]

You've got to have something to wash that lipstick down!

[two]

Thank you for the link

Teaching more critical thinking as a core education in primary and secondary schooling would go along way... algorithmic censoring is bad since they usually share the same prejudice as their creators. Censorship is wrong.

You're welcome, and thanks for noticing.

Love adbusters to I subscribed a few times.. currently I am lacking my subscription.

Have you read a book written in the 50s by a once famous psychologist Joost Meraloo which examines mass psychosis, titled "The rape of the mind" ? here is the free ebook in a link
https://archive.org/details/TheRapeOfTh ... 1/mode/2up

[Ka-El]

Anyone with 1/2 a brain knows that media/news is almost always sensationalized and a horrible source of information REGARDLESS of where it comes from. Left, Right, foreign, Bi, straight - you name it - it's all sensationalized and manipulated. Media agencies create content to attract views and earn advertising revenue - not to properly educate the audience.

It's not perfect but our mainstream media is lightyears ahead of basement bloggers and conspiracy theorists when it comes to credibility. At some point people need to take some responsibility in critically reflecting on the news - recognizing and acknowledging sensationalism, for example - but simply dismissing it out of hand to be replaced with completely unaccountable and outlandish sources does not make anyone look smarter than the average person. Quite the opposite.

[TylerM4]

It's not perfect but our mainstream media is lightyears ahead of basement bloggers and conspiracy theorists when it comes to credibility. At some point people need to take some responsibility in critically reflecting on the news - recognizing and acknowledging sensationalism, for example - but simply dismissing it out of hand to be replaced with completely unaccountable and outlandish sources does not make anyone look smarter than the average person. Quite the opposite.

You've got a good point. Tho I do think mainstream media in Canada can be pretty biased and sensationalized at times, it's certainly better than the trash you see on Facebook for example - and there are far worse examples than facebook.

[two]

Back in the day I worked on a couple of project with "Adbusters" co-founder Bill Schmalz. Currently the magazine is billed as a top Canadian export to Europe, but it was recently pulled from our Shoppers Drug Mart shelves.

"The Magazine That Birthed ‘Occupy’ Removed From All 1,300 Shoppers Drug Marts in Canada"

https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/5468729 ... -in-canada

Also, no I haven't read, The Rape of the Mind, so thanks for the link. I've downloaded the PDF to my laptop as well as the epub to my e-reader.

Your welcome for the link, I recently bought the book, fantastic reading, took me a long time cause I kept staring off at the trees in contemplation of what was said. The topic is relevant as ever I also guess time has progressed and these techniques evolve.
Do you know where I can find a copy of occupy ? :)
Please tell me about your feral green lifestyle.

[two]

Have you read a book written in the 50s by a once famous psychologist Joost Meraloo which examines mass psychosis, titled "The rape of the mind" ? here is the free ebook in a link
https://archive.org/details/TheRapeOfTh ... 1/mode/2up

Your welcome for the link, I recently bought the book, fantastic reading, took me a long time cause I kept staring off at the trees in contemplation of what was said. The topic is relevant as ever I also guess time has progressed and these techniques evolve.

Brilliant to post this! The Rape of the Mind is a chilling and foretelling manuscript that should be rededicated to our times.

Two, no wonder it caused you pause and contemplation.

Again, thank you for providing all of us with an opportunity to read it.

And it will long remain on my bookshelf.

All the best to you,

Sept

It is chilling.. Thanks for the green Barbarian book suggestion I ordered I copy.
Id like to get my hands on the occupy edition of adbusters for the collection.

[d0nb]

People who scored low on a test of cognitive ability continued to be influenced by damaging information about the person even after they were explicitly told the information was false.

But you can protect yourself from the fake news;

A recommendation that follows from research on the illusion of truth effect is to serve as your own fact checker. If you are convinced that some claim is true, ask yourself why. Is it because you have credible evidence that the claim is true, or is it just because you’ve encountered the claim over and over? Also ask yourself if you know of any evidence that refutes the claim. (You just might be surprised to find that you do.)

Just thought some people on this forum needed some encouragement to fact check.

Old posts never really die.

Aside from sheer laziness, or the old X-Files “I Want to Believe,” there’s really no excuse for being duped by fake news; the truth is usually just a few key-strokes away. Engage your brain, do your research and try not to allow prejudice to cloud your judgment.

In essence, fake news (gossip by another name) simply consists of stories that play to the prejudices of an intended audience. That’s why so many were willing to believe the “Russian collusion” nonsense, or take seriously a letter allegedly signed by 50 former intelligence officials (at least one of them says that his name was added even though he had never even seen the letter) that suggested that the damning evidence of the pay-for-play schemes found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was part of an elaborate disinformation scheme hatched by the “Russians,” of course.

To his/her credit, at least one of those asked to sign the letter took the time to consider the possibility that it was just a politically motivated distraction:

A former national security official who was asked to sign the letter but declined to do so told the Washington Examiner that Brennan’s involvement with the letter was problematic because of his anti-Trump commentary and repeated claims of Trump-Russia collusion, and Brennan’s name on the letter made it look like he was running a “rear guard action” as a favor to Biden to push back against a problematic story for the Biden campaign just before an election, saying Brennan was “too political” to be involved with a letter like this. The former official said Brennan “has Biden’s ear” and it looked like Brennan worked to get his favored people in place once Biden won, including Brennan’s former deputies ending up as deputy CIA director and director of national intelligence.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... -BB1gzgSq
In this example, the former official's rational assessment of the likely intent of the letter spared them the embarrassment of endorsing a cheesy ploy to limit public acceptance of information that voters now say would have changed their decision to vote for Joe Biden.

[samsquench07]

Fake news has been happening for years

Love him or hate him. Donald Trump was one to openly start selling out the media

Media constantly published headlines that are misleading

Just yesterday I saw on Castanet “mans sister dies of Covid, and urged people to get the vaccine before it’s fatal to them”
I took the time to read it. And in one little tiny spot it mentions the sister had underlying health conditions. Isn’t that an important fact? (Not when your in the fake news scare pandemic technique)

[my5cents]

The OP is posing the question to a world in which 45% world wide believe in some form of supreme being (god).

I guess it could be said it's in our DNA to believe "fake news" / "fake information".

[my5cents]

Fake news has been happening for years

Love him or hate him. Donald Trump was one to openly start selling out the media

Media constantly published headlines that are misleading

Just yesterday I saw on Castanet “mans sister dies of Covid, and urged people to get the vaccine before it’s fatal to them”
I took the time to read it. And in one little tiny spot it mentions the sister had underlying health conditions. Isn’t that an important fact? (Not when your in the fake news scare pandemic technique)

Calling what Donald Trump did as "selling out the media", in other words claiming to be pointing out fake news, is a stretch ? He was just more prolific at lying and told bigger lies than the media.

As an example: For some it's astounding that the Catholic church would lie about their staff being involved in pedophilia,,, "how could the church lie to us". Ah, it's an organization who's only product is telling people about an invisible god, who created heaven and earth in 6 days and one day will come and judge everyone one earth, who lives and who has ever lived.

Right wrong or otherwise, the media gets people talking and thinking. What happens in repressive regimes ? Control of what the media says, be that political or religious.

I wonder what percentage of "fake" news, especially locally, is because of lack of ability/intelligence on the part of the media verse intentional misleading information that is believed by the less intelligent.