Opposition to social media fact checking censorship gaining traction?
Bloomberg opinion: “The fiasco was the media’s propagation of the lie that the issue was settled and that anyone questioning it might be deemed an idiot or conspiracy theorist.”
Fake news headline of the day: “Infections are raging in India. Could U.S. be next?”
“Could U.S. be next?” is a click-bait question in a headline. The answer is “no”.
Media focuses on scary rises in Covid cases but ignores declines
Covid-19 cases have fallen dramatically in several states. The media, which gleefully reported the rising case counts, doing its best to create fear and hysteria, vanishes when cases start dropping. They move on to the next state to having rising case numbers. A consequence is readers only see constant bad, scary news – and never see the good news. This causes everyone to live in a constant state of anxiety.
Fake news: Most news outlets in Oregon ran with this headline…
Numerous Oregon news outlets ran fake news stories in the past day, leaving out CRITICAL CONTEXT to the state’s Covid-19 report.
Utterly fake news on Covid situation in Oregon
The media has done a spectacular job of fake news reporting on Covid-19. The news does not understand that Covid-19 daily body counts have nothing to do with the number of people who died in the past 24 hours. Instead, they report on the number of death reports received in the past 24 hours – the actual deaths occurred days, weeks even months earlier. Thus, the daily body count is a measure of data collection inefficiency – and has little to do with the disease itself. Today, this resulted in KOIN-TV running a completely fake news story about the post holiday surge.
38 of the 54 deaths reported yesterday were diagnosed BEFORE Christmas. Up through the 3rd week of December, the majority of deaths reported were diagnosed or occurred before the Thanksgiving weekend. The peak day of deaths in the state was Dec 9th, and the 2nd highest day was Nov 25th. But the media morons are too lazy to look at the actual data – instead, they just reprint the press releases without even bothering to think.
The many ways that social media companies censor users
Social media content companies actively engage in censorship using a wide variety of approaches. Their censorship regimes are vastly larger and more powerful than most realize.
NY Times: Other than the facts were all wrong, the primary source has been arrested for creating a hoax, and we didn’t bother to verify much, it’s a great story
A 12-part NY Times story from 2018 was based almost entirely on a hoax. In other words, it is the very definition of fake news.
Is there an adult at the Wall Street Journal? Runs bizarre opinion column saying Dr. Jill Biden is a fake doctor
Wall Street Journals runs an utterly bizarre opinion column by some low life who asserts that Dr. Jill Biden should be permitted to use her Doctor title (she has an earned doctorate) because she is not a medical doctor. The author even goes so far as to suggest she is a “fake doctor”. That this column even ran reveals the rot that now inhabits the WSJ’s editorial board – and that news is far bigger news than this idiotic opinion column.
Journalism negativity: “First shipments of coronavirus vaccine will fall short”
The media manages to take an overall great news story and turn it into a negative . Why is so much journalism just pure doom and gloom? I have no idea.
Journalism: “Obituary of Kansas COVID Victim Who Died in Isolation Blasts Anti-Maskers”
90% of those in Kanas are wearing face masks according to COVIDcast at CMU. Reporter Lydia Smith of perennial fake news site Newsweek, was incapable of doing this simple fact check, and instead, sources the entire story to a social media post on Facebook.