While researching overuse of the “crisis” label (literally everything is now a crisis), I ran across a Google News linked web site whose own description largely labels itself as a propaganda mill. Yet this is what passes for “news”?
It’s propaganda all the time now: “The only way to hold a viewer’s attention is to continually ratchet up the emotional stakes. It’s not enough to connect passionately to a picture or a video clip; the audience also expects a fierce attachment to news anchors and reporters — they want to see journalists emote, which is embraced as a more reliable truth than the facts and figures being reported.”
Snopes goes off the rails with a recent “fact check” of violence in Portland. What was Snopes thinking by writing this bizarre fact check? Mind boggling.
The Daily Beast makes up a completely false claim for their pretend news report. The media desperately needs to stop engaging in this self destructive behavior.
The story about cell phones causing young people to grown “horns” was fake, with those claims made up by the reporter.
The way to respond to accusations of fictional news reporting is to double down on accuracy, objectivity and remaining calm. Unfortunately, the news industry continues to harm itself through self destructive behavior typical of middle school drama, such as this fiasco from the NY Times.
Three glaring errors seen in main stream media over about a 24 hour span. Embarrassing. None of these examples should have occurred.
Journalism today: “If you want your story to be well placed and if you want to be professionally rewarded, you have to generate page views — you have to incite social media. The way to do that is to reinforce the prejudices of your readers.”
Social media is the new battleground. It’s being used to push people over the edge, to threaten violence against others, and in some cases, leading to actual violence. A controversial video clip that spread online in the past day was pushed by what appears to have been a fake account.
In 2012, an editor for The Oregonian newspaper died of a heart attack. The paper printed his obituary citing his wonderful career, awards and track record. Left out of the story was the married editor died in the arms of his prostitute, a fact which another editor deliberately covered up.
CNN botches percentages and numbers. Big time.
USA Today publishes a headline saying the world’s oceans are “boiling”. Seriously?
Bloomberg news makes up a false headline news claim (based on zero evidence) and then uses their own fake news headline to justify banning all hobbyist model aircraft. Bloomberg is a fake news service based in the United States.
British media went crazy this past week, and doxxed a falsely accused innocent couple of flying drones over Gatwick Airport. Piers Morgan and The Mail both called the innocent couple “morons”. Journalism stoops to new lows the same week as Der Spiegel admitted its four time Reporter of the Year recipient had made up perhaps all of his stories or major parts of his stories. It’s fictional news all the way down …