Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Why is social media getting all the flak? What about all the fake news on Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNN, Fox News, et al?


All of the organizations you listed employ fact checkers who are responsible for checking articles for accuracy and facts. Sure, they make mistakes from time to time, they're human. Disagreeing with the slant of an article doesn't mean it's fake news.


How far can "slant" go before the news is "fake"? "Fake" isn't exactly a scientific definition. It's not like paragraphs of text have a binary value of "true" or "false".

Have you seen this?

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/08/washington-post...

In fact, "fake" news from these big outlets is even more insidious, because they have agendas from their powerful owners (Bezos in this case), a huge audience, and they have people's (like you) trust, because they supposedly employee fact checkers.


In my mind fake news and biased news are two different concepts. All news should be taken with skepticism, because every bit of it from every news outlet is subject to potential bias. I'm aware that many news outlets published biased news against Sanders (and Trump and Clinton), and I'm aware that Bezos owns media outlets that may be biased. But organizations that employ fact checkers don't make up news stories out of thin air.


So making a political candidate seem like he said and meant things that he didn't isn't "fake"? I'm afraid your definition of what is fake and what is not is arbitrary and vague. And no, you don't get an "A" for effort with supposed fact checkers - all that matters is the final product.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: