Media lies and distortions

amother

Wheat

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 2:33 pm

In the past few weeks, I have begun to realize that the media is lying about anything related to Trump. They are messing with people, distorting reality and spinning the truth to promote their hateful agenda against Trump. The story of a man who's sick mother died because she was banned from getting on a plane, just takes the cake. It turned out to be a lie, the mother died a week before the ban but the media failed to do their job and investigate it properly before they ran with the story. This seems to be happening way to often and it is getting to the point where I question and doubt everything the media writes about. I feel like I am being gaslighted by the media and that is not a good feeling.

Anyone else struggling with this and how do deal with your emotions when you hear stories like these which later turn out to be false? How do you figure out what is or isn't true? And considering this story, was Trump wrong when he said that we can't really vet people properly?

http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.769036

Maya

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 2:49 pm

I use non partisan fact checking websites for most news items.

There is so much fake news everywhere that we should not rely on only one, or even two, articles about a story.

For example, I kept on seeing from my conservative friends memes and "news articles" about the Quebec shooter being a Muslim, and about how the horrible terrible liberals don't want anyone to know so the media is keeping quiet about it. And I actually wondered about that for a minute. But in reality though, the shooter was a white supremacist Trump supporter.

Politifact is where I check almost everything.

amother

Wheat

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 3:38 pm

Maya wrote:

Thank you. How do you know that Politifact is neutral and have only real, authentic news (I am not interested in either a liberal or conservative viewpoint/commentary, only the truth as it happened)? How do you know for sure that they are not distorting their facts and claiming that they verified it and that it doesn't fit neither a liberal nor a conservative agenda? How do they verify it to ensure that it is the truth?

amother

Wheat

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 3:42 pm

amother wrote:

Be mindful about generalizing. there is no one entity called 'the media'. Its lazy and dangerous.

You mean like the media generalized the executive order that Trump signed and said that he banned all Muslims when that was yet another lie as well?

The definition of media (according to dictionary.com) is-- the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, that reach or influence people widely. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/media

How would you call it without generalizing it?

Maya

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 3:47 pm

amother wrote:

They are not a news outlet, they are a fact checking site. Despite what some want to believe, facts are facts and they can't be changed. They bring sources for all of their claims.

http://www.politifact.com/global-news/

SixOfWands

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 4:01 pm

amother wrote:

You mean like the media generalized the executive order that Trump signed and said that he banned Muslims when that was yet another lie as well?

The definition of media (according to dictionary.com) is-- usually used with a plural verb) the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, that reach or influence people widely. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/media

How would you call it without generalizing it?

Trump tweeted, "If the ban were announced with a one week notice, the "bad" would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad "dudes" out there!"

https://twitter.com/realDonald.....66051

"Everybody is arguing whether or not it is a BAN. Call it what you want, it is about keeping bad people (with bad intentions) out of country!"

So I'm not sure what the problem is with calling the action precisely what the President called it.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/.....-out/

(All posted by Trump from an unsecured Android device, from what I've read.)

I didn't really see any mainstream media call it a "Muslim ban" in any case, but I wasn't looking for it. It was called a "travel ban" or a "ban from certain Muslim countries." And it was. Is.

In any case, while there are clear slants, most of the mainstream media does a good job at keeping us informed. Yes, mistakes are made, particularly when witnesses lie or when news develops quickly. But that doesn't make the reporting of this information "fake news." It simply reflects the fact that with the advent of the internet, the news cycle is fast, and reporting must be done immediately.

Just in the past few days, Fox News tweeted that the suspect in the attack at the Quebec mosque was "of Moroccan origin." That's just plain wrong. The perpetrator was a white Canadian racist. Fox didn't immediately retract, but I assume they eventually did. Or it just kind of got buried under more accurate information.

Does that mean that Fox News is a "false news site" that should be shunned? Well, I might like that, but its just not the case. They have a slant, but they don't (usually) make it up. Any more than CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, or any other mainstream source "makes it up."

But its good to fact check, especially if you get your news from a less mainstream source. And its good to reach multiple sources.

amother

Wheat

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 4:15 pm

SixOfWands wrote:

Yes, it was called a "Muslim Ban". We even had protests around the country because of this "Muslim ban". And it was called a "Muslim ban" by several media outlets as well.

http://www.rollingstone.com/po.....63615

http://www.aljazeera.com/indep......html

http://www.independent.co.uk/n......html

http://www.slate.com/articles/......html

I actually believed it was a "Muslim ban" until I read the Executive Order myself and realized that it was not a Muslim Ban. And now I am confused about whether or not the executive order is constitutional because I have been hearing conflicting feedback about that as well.
So how do you believe anything when multiple sources state the same thing and they all turn out to be a lie when you go to the original source to verify it?

SixOfWands

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 4:23 pm

amother wrote:

Yes, it was called a "Muslim Ban". We even had protests around the country because of this "Muslim ban". And it was called a "Muslim ban" by several media outlets as well.

http://www.rollingstone.com/po.....63615

http://www.aljazeera.com/indep......html

http://www.independent.co.uk/n......html

http://www.slate.com/articles/......html

I actually believed it was a "Muslim ban" until I read the Executive Order myself and realized that it was not a Muslim Ban. And now I am confused about whether or not the executive order is constitutional become I have been hearing conflicting feedback about that as well.
So how do you believe anything when multiple sources state the same thing and they all turn out to be a lie when you go to the original source to verify it?

WADR, I referred to mainstream media sources.

Rolling Stone is wonderful for music news, but its not a mainstream media source. If you're getting your news there, I suggest that you go elsewhere.

Nor is Al Jazeera a mainstream source.

Slate is running a Trump Apocalypse Watch, and has stated (IIRC) that it will not "normalize" Trump or his behavior, taking it out of the mainstream media. In any case, you cited an opinion piece, explaining why the action really is a "Muslim ban," whatever its called.

And the Independent article clarifies immediately.

You'll have to try harder.

SixOfWands

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 4:33 pm

Laiya wrote:

It's not just about checking facts.

The bias is more subtle. It's about WHAT gets coverage. It's about adjectives used in headlines and articles. It's about whose point of view the article focuses on. It's opinion disguised as "news".

It's about careful choice of words, like a current cnn headline that reads: On Gorsuch, it's evangelicas vs atheists. Iow, you'd only like him if you're a religious fanatic.

Well, there's also a slant to what you said. The article you cite is about evangelical support for Gorsuch, and about how evangelicals and anti-evangelicals (for lack of a better term) view the Supreme Court as a battleground. The article starts "Several days before President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, he predicted that "evangelicals, Christians will love my pick."" It goes on to state, "If conservative Christians praised the judge, particularly for his opinions on two religious freedom cases, atheists just as quickly condemned him. Both non-believers and evangelicals view the Supreme Court as essential to their political future, and the early clash between two of the country's largest religious groups forebodes a fierce battle over Gorsuch's Senate confirmation." You can't really do an article on this issue without mentioning that, well, that the issue exists.

Other CNN articles refer to his education, his time on the bench, his mother, and even his love for fly fishing.

amother

Wheat

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 4:45 pm

SixOfWands wrote:

Okay, here are some other sites that call it a "Muslim Ban" (I am just listing a few sites, if you go on google news you can find many more articles that call it a "Muslim ban" as well. While some may say that the ban excludes certain countries or that "republicans insist that its not a "Muslim ban", they still call it a "Muslim Ban" so how do you recognize that its a mainstream media source? And can you explain what you mean with what you said about Slate?

http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....57956

https://www.washingtonpost.com.....a0d81

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/w.....33360

Fox

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 4:54 pm

SixOfWands wrote:

It simply reflects the fact that with the advent of the internet, the news cycle is fast, and reporting must be done immediately.

Just in the past few days, Fox News tweeted that the suspect in the attack at the Quebec mosque was "of Moroccan origin." That's just plain wrong. The perpetrator was a white Canadian racist. Fox didn't immediately retract, but I assume they eventually did. Or it just kind of got buried under more accurate information.

Does that mean that Fox News is a "false news site" that should be shunned? Well, I might like that, but its just not the case. They have a slant, but they don't (usually) make it up. Any more than CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, or any other mainstream source "makes it up."

But its good to fact check, especially if you get your news from a less mainstream source. And its good to reach multiple sources.

Many of you may be surprised to find me pretty much in agreement with SixOfWands on what happens.

The 24/7 news cycle is an absolute disaster to good reporting, accuracy, and reasonable analysis. In fact, a very persuasive argument can be made that very little true reporting goes on anymore -- it's more like the battle of the press releases.

The Quebec mosque shooter was an excellent example: it was true that the police initially identified a suspect as being "of Moroccan origin," and virtually everyone reported that. Of course, within hours, the police determined that he was a witness, not a suspect. Oops, our bad! With varying degrees of alacrity. Unfortunately, the truth -- that the police weren't sure during the first few hours who was involved or how many suspects they were seeking -- was much less exciting and Tweetable.

In terms of bias, it's not that bias is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be a good thing for a media outlet to say, "Look, here are our values, and we cover stories that pertain to these values and analyze things in terms of these values." The problem is when a media outlet pretends -- to itself and/or to its audience -- to be objective.

Fortunately, cases like "A Rape on Campus," the Rolling Stone's fabricated piece of investigative journalism, are rare. Most journalists and outlets have enough integrity not to make up something out of whole cloth.

However, a good rule of thumb is to be sure to read something every day from one or more sources that are likely to make you mad.

SixOfWands

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 4:55 pm

amother wrote:

The first paragraph of the Daily News article makes clear what the order said: "President Trump’s most recent executive order effectively bans citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for at least 90 days — but some Muslim countries were spared from the order's blacklist, even though they have deep-seated ties to terrorism."

The Washington Post article states that Republicans say it isn't a ban. I don't know how you spin that as saying that there is one!

In any case, as noted above, Trump called it a "ban." You want to condemn someone for using the term, start with him.

The Mirror argues that Trump's verbiage is misleading, referring to the specifics of the ban and of Trump's comments, including a 2015 call for, "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."

You need to read past the headlines. That's the way it works. Headlines are short and pithy to draw you in. They are corrected in the article. That's the way it works. Always has. Always will.

SixOfWands

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 5:01 pm

Fox wrote:

With the decline of print media, and the increase in people getting news from Twitter, or from blogs, we're seeing the death of real investigative journalism.

Its a tremendous loss to our society. IMNSHO. No one is digging into the real stories.

(Did the police ever actually name the Moroccan as a suspect? It was out there, I know, but I didn't know it was sourced from the police. I originally saw it in a French-Canadian newspaper, but I'm not sufficiently fluent in French to understand it.)

amother

Wheat

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 5:04 pm

SixOfWands wrote:

Did you read the Washington Post article beyond the title? Because they say that Republicans insist its not a "Muslim ban" but that it really is a "Muslim ban". And I am not talking about a ban, I am talking about a "Muslim ban" so I dont know why you keep referring back to the word "ban" itself instead of the term "Muslim ban". And as I said, they may have stated that it left out other countries but it was still considered to be a "Muslim ban" anyway. That is what people were protesting this past saturday, the "Muslim ban", not the "ban". Do you even understand the difference between the two?

Laiya

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 5:08 pm

I don't want to start sounding like a Scott Adams groupie. He's a comic strip writer and calls himself a student of persuasion. He has not stated whether he supports Trump politically.

Adams gets his ideas from behavior psychologist Robert Cialdini who, incidentally, was hired by the Obama campaign to help with Obama's PR efforts back when he was running for president.

This is what he posted yesterday:

wrote:

I made the mistake of turning on CNN yesterday and saw all the hypnotized pundits trying to work the secret persuasion word “chaos” into every comment about President Trump. That’s your tell that none of the pundits are offering independent opinions. They are part of the hive mind led by some uncredited persuader on their side. Someone told them to say “chaos” a lot, and so they do. This might signal the return of Godzilla [Cialdini]. Reminds me of “dark,” their hive-mind word for the summer of 2016.

Out of curiosity, I googled "Trump and chaos". The entire first page of google results, from various different msm sources, has similar headlines about how Trump is "chaotic", "unleashing global chaos", etc.

It's a bit creepy tbh.

Today, Adams writes,

wrote:

Every time you hear the word “chaos” on CNN this weekend, take a swig of alcohol. You’ll be drunk in ten minutes.

As you know by now, the word chaos is engineered persuasion from someone on the left. (Godzilla?) All of the pundits, celebrities, and TV hosts that dislike Trump are using it as often as possible. It’s starting to become hilarious because word-thinking is all they have left.

Is it time to turn “chaos” into a drinking game? Take a shot every time you hear someone say “chaos” on CNN this Friday night.

Laiya

Wed, Feb 01 2017, 5:24 pm

SixOfWands wrote:

There are many things to say about Gorsuch. What I'd think is the most relevant, personally, is that he's a constitutionalist and admirer of Scalia, whose seat he's meant to fill in.

That he served as law clerk/protoge for the court's most moderate judge, Kennedy, is also probably relevant.

Readers might find it interesting that Gorsuch unanimously passed the Senate for his Circuit Court nomination, including receiving votes in favor from Chuck Schumer, Kerry, Biden, Obama and Hillary. Etc.