Fake news, real violence: 'Pizzagate' and the consequences of an Internet echo chamber

http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/05/media/fake-news-real-violence-pizzagate/index.html

Millions of people have read about a crazy conspiracy theory called "Pizzagate." An untold number of them actually believe it. One person apparently took matters into his own hands and showed up with guns to the pizza place that the conspiracy theorists say is at the center of the web.

Why Snapchat And Apple Don’t Have A Fake News Problem

https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/snapchat-fake-news?utm_term=.br4leM891#.fukDOzaKJ

IN MACEDONIA'S FAKE NEWS HUB, TEEN SHOWS AP HOW IT'S DONE

http://www.apnewsarchive.com/2016/A-Macedonian-teenager-at-the-heart-of-his-town-s-burgeoning-fake-news-industry-has-shown-The-Associated-Press-how-it-s-done-opening-a-window-into-a-phenomenon-that-has-everyone-from-Was/id-12fc49ad3b694f35b5c4a08513ec8d33

As President Barack Obama, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, journalists and academics argue over the impact of social media-driven propaganda on the latest American election, this sleepy former manufacturing town overlooking the Vardar River in central Macedonia has found itself increasingly drawn into the debate.

BuzzFeed News identified Veles as a hub of the fake news industry seeding sensationalized or falsified information across Facebook. A reporter from Britain's Channel 4 News chased the industry's adolescent kingpins across town, cornering one 16-year-old fake news baron who said he had no plans to stop — even though he acknowledged it was wrong.

But there were no such qualms from the teenager who spoke to The Associated Press at Veles' Gemdidzii Sports Hall.

Retreating from a spirited indoor soccer game into an empty office, he walked an AP journalist through the ins-and-outs of his fake news operation on condition that neither he nor his stable of bogus news sites would be identified, because otherwise that would hurt his business.

He showed the AP how he ripped much of his material off The Political Insider, a right-wing news site that produces a steady drumbeat of pro-Donald Trump pieces. He then flipped over to Google Analytics, an audience tracking tool, to show that he'd managed to gather more than 685,000 page views a week.

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Must Defend the Truth

Friday night, the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg went on his vast social network to convince an expanding chorus of critics — including the departing president of the United States — that he honest-to-goodness wants to combat the “fake news” that is running wild across his site and others, and turning our politics into a paranoiac fantasy come to life.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/business/media/zuckerberg-and-facebook-must-defend-the-truth.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Fact check: This is not really a post-fact election

Here in WaPo

So voters want more fact-checking. But is it making any difference? Do people change their minds when faced with a fact check that surprises them, or do they internalize only fact checks that suit their own biases? Our understanding of basic psychology suggests that fact checks are often read with a partisan eye.

Often, but not always. A new working paper by Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College and Jason Reifler of Exeter University, who have studied fact-checking extensively, indicates that readers can learn from fact checks. Nyhan and ­Reifler conducted a survey of a representative panel of 1,000 Americans to gauge their general knowledge, party preferences and attitudes toward fact-checking. They then took participants who accepted a follow-up invitation to be studied further and split them into two groups. One half received nine fact checks; the other half was the control group and received placebo content in the form of PR releases. Lo and behold, participants in the “treatment” group scored far better when asked factual questions related to the content they read than those in the control group.

The erosion of truth: Trump’s surrogates are Fox-ifying mainstream television news

One peculiar consequence of the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump is that the mainstream television media has been invaded by marauding truth-free barbarians who have compromised its integrity.In normal times, mainstream television media outlets pursue excellence by seeking to adhere to well-established journalistic standards, such as the code of ethics promulgated by the Society of Professional Journalists.


A central tenet of journalistic standards is that reporting must strive to be accurate and truthful. And presenting the truth is crucial not only to the integrity of news journalism but also to the proper functioning of our entire democratic society itself.

http://www.salon.com/2016/09/11/the-erosion-of-truth-trumps-surrogates-are-fox-ifying-mainstream-television-news/

http://www.salon.com/2016/09/11/the-erosion-of-truth-trumps-surrogates-are-fox-ifying-mainstream-television-news/

R.I.P. Political Journalism (1440-2016)

The unrelentingly hostile coverage of Hillary Clinton has dealt a potentially fatal blow to the corporate media's credibility. Antagonism toward Clinton has been noted by numerous media insiders. In 2014, NBC's Chuck Todd said, "I don’t think the country has Clinton fatigue. I think the media has Clinton fatigue. You can sort of feel it." Bloomberg's Mark Halperin recently conceded that "there's a deep well of anti-Clinton sentiment in the press." Those observations have been confirmed by studies from Harvard and the Washington Post — and with a few notable exceptions, corporate media coverage is getting steadily worse as Election Day approaches.

http://shareblue.com/r-i-p-political-journalism/#.V9XBi2vcEaE.twitter

Interesting series of tweets and graphs showing the negative coverage of both candidates