The lies that "reference media" tell about those deplorable rurals

[Estebonrober]

That's a fictional background story. Perfect to illustrate mechanisms... if you say that.

You are going to have to reword that for me. I’m not sure your statement here.

 

[Hrothbern]

You are going to have to reword that for me. I’m not sure your statement here.

ok
Short version
Make clear that you tell your readers that the stories you use to illustrate the mechanisms and Real Life effects are fictional. And you made those up to make it easier for the reader to understand some effects, to enable your readers to better identify with those personal situations.

Nothing imo as such wrong with that.
Much of the powerful literature was written for that purpose.
Such an article more a short story.
Just be clear.

 

[Truthy]

Have you even read a news piece in some "credible" media that you immediately recognized as implausible?

Every time I actually know a bit about a topic I can tell most media stories about it are crap

 

[Estebonrober]

ok
Short version
Make clear that you tell your readers that the stories you use to illustrate the mechanisms and Real Life effects are fictional. And you made those up to make it easier for the reader to understand some effects, to enable your readers to better identify with those personal situations.

Nothing imo as such wrong with that.
Much of the powerful literature was written for that purpose.
Such an article more a short story.
Just be clear.

Ok yea no these are real stories with real people and stuff. It’s actual journalism just told in a story like fashion. It’s like long form journalism. You should listen to it. It’s good. It’s interesting. You can listen while playing Civ.

 

[innonimatu]

Not how to see implausible news, but how well the population is able to distinguish opinions from facts.
Younger people are better in this than older people.
Whether this has to do with a better immunity developed by the younger generations or with the normal increase from ageing of cognitive decline, is another discussion.

I do think that people who are exposed for few years to these unreliable, often deceiving, "news" do develop a kind of immunity to it. It is interesting that on every case when restrictive regimes, where censorship happened, were overthrown, people were initially bewildered and easily led by news, got very excited politically, but in a few years all that subsided. I notice that in my own country's history, back in the 70s.

But this immunity is also in part cynicism regarding politics in general, and participation in decision-making. And that is not a good thing.

 

[metalhead]

Have you even read a news piece in some "credible" media that you immediately recognized as implausible?

 

[Bamspeedy]

I’m replying to this for a couple reasons. First my general point is just because a news source was incorrect or one of its reporters lied in particular news story does not mean it should be disregarded completely. Unless you are a serial abuser like say Fox News.

Second the reason I linked the story was because it has a similar thread digging into prejudices of small town America. It is very well done and worth a listen. Sure it’s anecdotal, but it shows how national politics can just wreck real small towns over stupid crap.

Oh, I don't want to dismiss NPR completely, just pointing out they refused to correct an error. When the subject is segregation in schools and one of the main schools that is the focus of your report did not vote to segregate like you said it did, I think that's a pretty big error. But NPR is a better news source than many.

The anecdotal stories are interesting, but annoying when people use those few examples to generalize about millions of other people. But I guess without it, some viewpoints never get told, so there is some benefit to it. I've listened to many 'This american life' episodes, and will probably listen to more now that the NFL season is coming to a close.

Sure, Fox is not one of the better news sources, but I would put it above a few others (RT, PressTV, etc).

Let's not kid ourselves, the author of the OP is using this latest case to encourage us to dismiss 'western media' in favor of his 'alternative media' (random sources, just whatever disputes the 'western narrative'). But this is a poor example, as his real issue is most often western governments feeding 'lies' to the media, not journalists just making stuff up.
One of his favorite journalists finds a can of beans from Denmark in the middle east and uses it to imply ISIS is operated by 'Western governments'. Maybe he's reporting the truth in that he did find the beans, but 'connecting the dots' about that one fact is a bit of a stretch to say the least.

snip

And note the date, perhaps at that point in time the FBI did not have the evidence that they do now.

 

[metalhead]

And note the date, perhaps at that point in time the FBI did not have the evidence that they do now.

Christopher Steele had already given them some of the evidence. Other foreign intelligence agencies had given them evidence. More importantly, Trump himself gave the evidence to the American people when he asked Russia to hack Hillary's email server.

The investigation had been ongoing for months. Donald Trump had easily verifiable ties to Russia going back to the 1980s, just based off of information that was readily available in the public domain. The headline was comically wrong and the story so obviously meant to be false and exculpatory.