
Fact-Checking Won’t Save Us from Fake News - DiabloD3
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fact-checking-wont-save-us-from-fake-news/
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tnones
Despite their protestations, I get the feeling that journalists are some of
the most prolific consumers of social media, using it more and more as a
source for their scoops and discussion topics. If so, it seems pretty
disingenuous for them to blame the readership for what they click on, when
they themselves seem unable to turn away and go find some real material.

The griping about the overuse of "fake news" displays a lack of self-awareness
too. It isn't just Alex Jones adherents who call the New York Times,
Washington Post and BBC fake news. All these major outlets have been caught
with their pants down posting untruths, often with an obvious political agenda
masked with under the thinnest veneer of objectivity. Corrections and
retractions are lost in the maelstrom of the attention economy, and opinion
pieces compete on equal footing with 'real' reporting, as the front page is no
longer the main source of traffic. The response to the obvious and baited ire
from the readership is to double down, censor any comments that contradict the
story as being uncivil and harassing, and get ever more offended the plebs
aren't eating up what you're serving, seeking out alternate sources in their
'ignorance'.

Respect and credibility are earned, not given. If contemporary journalists
want to raise the bar and bring their audience back to them, the solution
isn't a war on information, it's a war on their own delusions of grandeur and
their inability to step aside to let real domain experts speak. Those who are
in it for the job rather than the agenda and attention left the scene long
ago, and Gell Mann amnesia remains as true as ever.

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gravypod
I'm on a very wide screen monitor so I don't know how much of an issue this is
for other people but there is so much wasted space on this website. I'd say
the text makes up for less then 1/3 of the entire page.

254 vertical pixels are taken up just by the title + author + date + social
media. I really wish there was a news site that would give unbiased facts in a
clean and unbloated fasion.

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ry4n413
please stop opening the wounds

