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. Here, an online magazine staged their photos to accompany an interview, down to providing the clothing worn by the subject being interviewed.
Weather Channel actor Mike Siedel, who plays the role of a journalist and meteorologist, is shown faking a live TV shot. Former NBC News actress Michelle Kosinski, who played the role of a journalist on NBC News is caught canoeing in a flooded street – having just inches of water. Journalism is dead due to death by self inflicted wounds. Sadly, there is no way for a news consumer to know if their news source is reliable or trustworthy as all major news outlets have been caught making significant errors.
NY Times largely retracts an article by Gardiner Harris as it was literally a fictional hit piece that would earn an F in a college class (but probably an A in creative journalism school). In the end, the egg is on his own face.
Numerous “news” outlets botch a new story saying a 17-year student pilot made a successful emergency landing on her “first solo flight”. In reality, her first solo flight was a year ago. However, this erroneous report was repeated by numerous news stories, nation wide. When they cannot get even the simplest of facts correct, should we trust anything in the news?
The news media uses a photo to illustrate an article, but selects a photo having nothing to do with the subject. The photo is from a festival at a horse race in Great Britain on “dress up” day.
Google Image search was used to research the photo. However, Google misinterprets the photo and falsely adds “richest 1 percent of Americans”. That happened because this photo has been used, repeatedly, by U.S. media outlets to illustrate “wealth” and “richest 1%”. Google’s search algorithms then incorrectly associate “richest 1%” with this photo; Google then reinforces that incorrect conclusion by automatically adding “richest 1 percent of americans” to a search for this photo.
We learn from this that reporters and editors routinely use fake photos to illustrate “news” reports in what appears to be intentional propaganda messaging. Then we learn how Google’s artificial stupidity algorithms incorporate fake photos and textual analysis in to computational propaganda messaging.
KGW TV caught using a faked photo?
How the New York Times turned a college student intern into a “federal analyst”, “senior adviser” and host of other titles, in a single front page news story. Title inflation makes a news report more persuasive through use of an “appeal to authority”. Citing an anonymous college student intern does not sound as good as citing an anonymous “senior adviser”. Unfortunately, the news media frequently uses both title inflation and anonymous sources to persuade you to adopt their agenda.
BBC – multiple errors in a single sentence: “One of the drivers for extreme inflation is soaring demand – in Venezuela there are far more people trying to buy goods from shops than there are goods out on the shelves.”
“Officials in Chemnitz said fake news items spread on social media fueled the riots. “
The long time thesis of this blog is that social media is a frictionless platform for the spread of propaganda. In the “good old days”, propaganda required owning a printing press or broadcast license. Today, anyone can become a propagandist by posting an appropriate meme on social media and watch it shared thousands or millions of times. Journalists frequently use their personal accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (but especially Twitter) to share items of interest to themselves. Due to…
I ran across a link to an old CNN Money financial news report from October 24, 2016. Every speculation made in this news report was wrong and illustrates how much “news” is not really reporting on events but is speculation about the future. One week before the 2016 Presidential election, CNN Money’s report is titled A Trump win would sink stocks. What about Clinton? by Heather Long @byHeatherLong Key points: If Donald Trump wins, U.S. stocks – and likely…
Dave Weigel is a politics reporter for the Washington Post. Recently he posted a photo of a mostly empty arena that was used for an event with the President, with the caption “Packed to the rafters” showing that the arena was not very full. He neglected to note that the photo was taken hours before the event was to begin. The event, in fact, had 1,000+ more attendees than seats in the arena and was filled. Weigel may have suffered…
This may be the first of several posts on the degeneration of “news” into speculative, gossip-focused, entertaining drivel. They – and you – pretend you are being informed when in reality you are being entertained. At best your time is distracted from learning meaningful information and at worse you have become prey for propaganda messaging. Visit the web pages of various news sites and note the majority of their “headlines” are entertaining gossip stories. Yahoo News: “Vonn: Backlash shows ‘how…
The next morning, my comment remains shadow banned by the Oregonian. Here is the description of the shadow ban, from last night with a screen capture of how the ban appears. Here, I present the full text of the shadow banned comment plus the supplementary information for how I obtained the facts presented in the comment. Here are actual price quotes from HealthCare.gov. The first quotes are for a 64 year old married couple earning pre-tax income of $65,000 per…