Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Eye of the beholder...............


With fake new lurking everywhere, these have been some trying times for journalists who actually care about having a reputation for objectivity - "Just the facts, maam."

Academia, fortunately, has rushed in to help sort it all out.  Messing around in the Intertunnel can end you up in some strange places.  For instance, this paper "Social Media And Fake News In The 2016 Election."

To save you from having to read the whole paper, here is their conclusion:

In summary, our data suggest that social media were not the most important source of election news, and even the most widely circulated fake news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans. 

I stopped paying attention when the authors reported that their sources for determining fake news were Snopes, PolitiFact, and BuzzFeed.  Really?

If you Google "is Snopes.com biased?" you will be led here.  What a hoot.  You can look up the others your ownself.

My suggestion is that you talk with and listen  - talk and listen, not argue - to many different people with different perspectives and persuasions.  Its okay to watch both CNN and Fox News, just don't believe either one of them without doing your own thinking.   This suggestion applies to both news purveyors and news consumers.   Just saying.

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