Western media whines about fake news

[mr friendly guy]

Your argument here seems to be there is no difference between being conned and and being the con man yourself.

Er no its not. I pointed out mainstream media also has little accountability, at least comparable to fake news sites. You then bring up Obama and so I asked what the hell has got to do with it? Do you expect Obama to regulate media?

So the media wasn't subjected to a campaign of disinformation by the Bush administration then? So when journalists get bamboozled they are supposed to go to jail or what?

1. Is irrelevant, since examples have been already posted in this thread where the media made things up. It was the media distributing the disinformation in those cases.

2. I was thinking of ranging from public apology, demotion, to losing their jobs at the extreme end, or being sued for defamation like the rolling stone university rape case. But hey lets bring up the jail card.

Note that the punishment for making fake news while related to my argument, is not the main thrust of it. My position is that mainstream media are also deceptive and arguable worse than fake news sites and both have the same level of accountability. That is very little. I can only assume you bringing up "punishment" with all these awesome ideas of stoning to death, and going to jail is some type of red herring.

The problem you are complaining about, the invasion of Iraq, is political in nature and needs a political response. Hence Obama. Reputable media outlets will publish retractions for bullshit stories (which the New York Times did with their most damaging Yellowcake story). Fake news sites never even attempt to correct the record as they never even pretend to be responsible.

To be more specific, since this is a topic about fake news, I am complaining the false reporting on Iraq, rather than the actions of the Bush administration, because that's a separate topic. You're conflating the two.

So you upset no one went to jail for Iraq?

Not pleased about it, but again I was talking about media publishing fake stories about Iraq and not about the actions of Bush and co. Try not to conflate the two.

It sucks I know but you might as well bemoan the fact no one was held accountable for the Gulf of Tonkin Incident at this point. The political powers that be have decided zero accountability is better for the nation for whatever reason and getting a pound of flesh from the media will hardly change that.

Here is the thing. If the media managed convince 99% of the electorate that Bush was full of shit, I very doubt he would be able to muster the support for his military adventure. Once again, I am not blaming them for Bush, I am blaming WaPo for bullshit reporting. Since you know, this is a thread about fake news.

A source feeding you bullshit is not the same as making things up yourself. We could go over how anonymous national security sources should be considered suspect, but there is a difference there. Look I'm not claiming the way the media approaches stories, especially national security ones is great. Clearly it sucks.

I am sure that makes relatives to dead Iraqis feel so much better. At least mainstream media was just misled, and not because they made things up. Don't quit your day job to be a counsellor.

Again what accountability do you purpose? Jail for incorrect stories? What about opinions that proved to be a bad idea? Should everyone who voted for Bush and the Iraq war by proxy be stoned in the town square or what? My point on accountability is really quite narrow. It's simply that when you are a real news organization with an address and such if you publish purely made up nonsense you can get sued, be told to stop publishing by a court etc. Fake news is so amorphous even the limited recourse available to citizens really isn't there. That's not even getting into what I consider the bigger threat from it which is how it just reinforces toxic tribalism and decision making based solely on emotion for a huge portion of the electorate.

Then you agree that mainstream media should be sued. WaPo claimed RT made some of those fake news stories and hasn't really provided any proof other than "some organisation on the internet said so." Or maybe that's a case of them being misled, so its all ok, right?

[Flagg]

mr friendly guy, If I may make a point you didn't; Punishment for news outlets considered mainstream that consistently fail in their responsibility to provide accurate news is the same for any business that fails to deliver a product that is not defective: They make things right and/or pay the price. And sometimes the price is shutting down because their viewer/reader numbers tank and advertisers don't pay them as much (or just don't bother advertising on that channel or in that publication at all) and they go out of business.

[Simon_Jester]

One of the key issues here is that when a mainstream media outlet intentionally lies about a specific group, they can potentially get sued. They don't always, but they can.

So, for example, if the New York Times published an article claiming that Pence was secretly a serial killer, Pence would have grounds to sue.

This is exactly why mainstream media outlets tend to use words like "alleged," tend to solicit comments from spokespersons and defense lawyers when actual crimes are involved, and tend to do their homework before printing an elaborate 'exposé.'

But when you have an organization that routinely cycles through shell organizations, has little or no physical-world presence because it operates online, and makes no claim to be anything other than a fiction-producing clickbait company... There is even less recourse. It is damn hard for me to sue someone for libel for making up a story that gets half a million hits on Facebook. Even if they called me a serial killer. And they certainly have no incentive to print or even ask for my side of the story, because "you made that shit up" would detract from the narrative they're trying to sell.

Furthermore, rumors that spread through social media have more potential to cause harm, contrary to arguments by others that the greater credibility of mainstream media makes a false claim by mainstream journalists more of a problem.

See, a newspaper article on Page 6 tends to sputter out- it doesn't reliably reach the craziest parts of the population. It can, but it won't always. By contrast, due to the way social media works, false allegations online can wind up being piped directly towards unstable or delusional people. The people who are likely to act on the false beliefs created by those rumors. This is illustrated by the recent incident of some loony shooting up a random pizzeria in Washington D.C., because he thought he was 'investigating' a ring of child abusers. Claims of the ring's existence were a made-up campaign story aimed at the Clinton campaign.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/loc ... 3a8f2c802c

The odds are very good that if a newspaper had published a story alleging this, and it hadn't gone viral on Facebook, nothing would have happened. Because a guy from two states away would not have read the story, would not have decided to grab a machine gun and drive over to "check it out."

Furthermore, if a newspaper had published the story triggering this, they would be worrying about a lawsuit from the pizzeria that was targeted purely because they were included in the pile of random made-up nonsense someone threw together in hopes that they could toss it at Hillary Clinton and maybe it would stick.

As per our usual policies, text of the article I linked to is below.

A North Carolina man was arrested Sunday after he walked into a popular pizza restaurant in Northwest Washington carrying an assault rifle and fired one or more shots, D.C. police said. The man told police he had come to the restaurant to “self-investigate” a false election-related conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton that spread online during her presidential campaign.

The incident caused panic, with several businesses going into lockdown as police swarmed the neighborhood after receiving the call shortly before 3 p.m.

Police said 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch, of Salisbury, N.C., walked in the front door of Comet Ping Pong and pointed a firearm in the direction of a restaurant employee. The employee was able to flee and notify police. Police said Welch proceeded to discharge the rifle inside the restaurant; they think that all other occupants had fled when Welch began shooting.

Welch has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. Police said there were no reported injuries.

Interim D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said police arrived on the scene minutes after the first call, set up a perimeter and safely arrested Welch about 45 minutes after he entered the restaurant.

A D.C. police report made public Monday says Welch had been armed with an AR-15 assault-style rifle. The report also says police seized a Colt .38 caliber handgun and a shotgun. One of those weapons was found inside the restaurant; the other in the suspect’s car. Police did not specify the locations.

The police report also describes Welch’s arrest. Police said he surrendered shortly after officers surrounded the pizza shop and emerged with his hands raised above his head.

The report says in addition to the weapons, police seized a folding knife, a T-shirt, a hooded sweatshirt and denim blue jeans.

Vivek Jain, of Potomac, Md., was eating lunch inside Banana Leaf, a nearby Indian restaurant, when Comet patrons came rushing inside. He said Banana Leaf was locked down for about 90 minutes.

“A bunch of people ran in from Comet and said a man walked in with a gun,” Jain said.

About 45 minutes later, he said, he saw a man walking backward out into the street with his hands in the air.

“He laid down on Connecticut Avenue and he was immediately picked up by the police and taken away,” he said.

The popular family restaurant, near Connecticut and Nebraska avenues NW in the Chevy Chase neighborhood, was swept up in the onslaught of fake news and conspiracy theories that were prevalent during the presidential campaign. The restaurant, its owner, staff and nearby businesses have been attacked on social media and received death threats.

Although police initially said it did not appear the incident was related to the threats, businesses and residents immediately surmised it might be connected to “pizzagate.”

James Alefantis, the owner of Comet Ping Pong, said in a statement: “What happened today demonstrates that promoting false and reckless conspiracy theories comes with consequences. I hope that those involved in fanning these flames will take a moment to contemplate what happened here today, and stop promoting these falsehoods right away.”

The restaurant’s owner and employees were threatened on social media in the days before the election after fake news stories circulated claiming that then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief were running a child sex ring from the restaurant’s backrooms. Even Michael Flynn, a retired general whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to advise him on national security, shared stories about another anti-Clinton conspiracy theory involving pedophilia. None of them were true. But the fake stories and threats persisted, some even aimed at children of Comet Ping Pong employees and patrons. The restaurant’s owner was forced to contact the FBI, local police, Facebook and other social-media platforms in an effort to remove the articles.

Last month, citing its policy against posting the personal information of others, Reddit banned the “pizzagate” topic.

But it didn’t stop the harassment, and nearby businesses have received threats as well, according to police. On Sunday, Washington Post reporters involved in this article were the target of online threats shortly after it posted.

Matt Carr, the owner of the Little Red Fox market and coffee shop, said his business started getting threats last weekend. They got 30 to 40 calls before they stopped answering calls from blocked numbers, he said. “One person said he wanted to line us up in front of a firing squad,” said Carr, who spent more than an hour in lockdown with his employees Sunday.

The threats were all tied to the Comet Ping Pong accusations online, he said. “There’s some old painted-over symbol on the marquee that they claim is an international symbol of pedophilia and that there are underground tunnels. . . . There’s some video on YouTube that has almost 100,000 views and talks about me, the owner of the Little Red Fox, by name.

“This was our worst fear,” he said, “that someone would read all this and come to the block with a gun. And today it happened.”

Politics and Prose, the bookstore that has been a Washington institution and neighborhood fixture for more than 30 years, was in the middle of a book event when attendees and staff saw police converging on the block, said Bradley Graham, a store co-owner.

They, too, had received threats recently, Graham said, and were planning to meet with police Monday “because we had feared that what, up to now, had been simply despicable menacing verbal attacks online or on the phone might escalate.”

Graham said he was told that the gunman walked into the kitchen at Comet Ping Pong on Sunday, “presumably looking for the alleged tunnels” where children were hidden and tortured. Graham believes that account of the gunman’s actions came from an employee at the restaurant.

He said the businesses are hoping to get more police protection, “and we would also hope that law enforcement authorities will be prompted to take additional measures to shut down the sites where this hateful material is being spread, and also measures to try to trace the menacing phone calls.

“ . . . We’re all rather shaken,” he said.

“Political figures have the means to deal with conspiratorial allegations and threats, but your neighborhood mom and pop shop does not,” Carr said later in an email. “I make coffee and breakfast burritos for a living. This is out of our league.”

[snip a few paragraphs at end for being repetitive human-interest]

[K. A. Pital]

This has been posted by Raj on the previous page, was it not?

[Flagg]

Jesus fucking Salazar. That is bonkers. I thought we were done with the nonexistent "child sex ring" bullshit which caused so many destroyed lives (including people who are totally innocent that are still in prison despite "victims of satanic ritual abuse" refuting their testimony along with the kids who were victimized not by the accused they were forced to testify against, but because of asshole cops and prosecutors who wanted to make names for themselves no matter how many lives were destroyed) from the early '80s until the mid '90s.

I also see yet another heavily armed crazy white person not gunned down by police because they were given an opportunity to surrender instead of having SWAT go in and pre-cyborg Murphy from Robocop him.

[Flagg]

As a follow up, how was this chucklefuck not charged with terrorism? It was a politically motivated crime where he literally terrorized dozens of peo- oh, he's a white conservative. Now it makes sense.

[Flagg]

Simon, news outlets started to really change the language they used ("suspected", "alleged", and "convicted" as opposed to just saying someone is outright guilty) in describing suspected and even outright guilty convicted criminals to avoid lawsuits for slander and libel in the aftermath of the Atlanta Olympics bombing.

For all of those under the age of 25-30, both several national news organizations and the Justice Department were successfully sued because they started accusing the hero security guard named Richard Jewels who spotted a suspicious duffel bag or backpack left on an empty bench with no apparent owner in sight (and immediately called it in and began clearing the area, saving dozens of lives, right before the bomb inside the pack exploded) with building and putting the bomb there himself in order to seek fame and hero status.

They had people on TV just making up psych profiles of the man using everything from living with his mother (guard work pays shit, plus he was taking care of her IIRC) to his being overweight against him. And Janet Reno, the Attorney General at the time, wasn't doing him any good having bought that line of bullshit herself and they even ransacked searched his home, which was covered live on national TV, based on speculation. They ruined the poor man's life.

Then the ATFE, the only law enforcement agency investigating the case who were working with actual evidence as opposed to conjecture and "speech/body language frauds experts" conclusively linked the explosive device to Christian Extremist Terrorist Eric Rudolph who bombed everything from abortion clinics (leaving other bombs hidden on the site set to explode when first responders were there to kill them, too) to gay bars.

Jewels died a few years ago with a lot of money made from suing some national news networks and the DoJ, but a very broken man. And there are still people who think he did it simply because they heard and saw all of the months of headlines and conjecture, but not the day or 2 of small articles clearing him and implicating Eric Rudolph.

[Joun_Lord]

As a follow up, how was this chucklefuck not charged with terrorism? It was a politically motivated crime where he literally terrorized dozens of peo- oh, he's a white conservative. Now it makes sense.

Was his aim actually to cause terror or was it just a side effect of his stupid shit? Any crime causes terror, someone mugging someone can cause terror. And just because something was politically motivated doesn't mean it was terror either. Though its connected to politics, "pizza-gate"s allegedly being created to fuck around with Hillary, this attack might not have even been politically motivated. According to the dumbfuck himself it was about doing "some good" and he isn't political.

Trying to label anything bad as terrorism diminishes the horror of actual terrorism (which I'm not accusing you of doing). Terrorism is some gut punch thing because of how terrible it is, how horrifying, how it does terrify people. The aim of terrorism is more then just hurting people physically but mentally as well, to leave the survivors and everyone else terrified, that is part of the goal. For incredibly stupid shit like this fucking moron firing off a round from his penis compensator for the children terror was not his goal. Its not terrorism. Don't mean they shouldn't smack him in the dick with the book for the terror he caused though.

A bit of interesting shit from the article I linked. Something relevant to this thread straight from the idiots mouth......

He said he did not like the term fake news, believing it was meant to diminish stories outside the mainstream media, which he does not completely trust.

Thats in my opinion the problem with fake news, not so much a problem with it itself but how terrible the reputation of main stream news is. How untrustworthy it is. How people trying to find alternatives because they can't trust the regular news get sucked into incredibly biased "alternative" news or outright false news. Maybe if the media wasn't making shit up or distorting the truth idiots like the pizza guy wouldn't be looking at made up bullshit.

[Flagg]

As a follow up, how was this chucklefuck not charged with terrorism? It was a politically motivated crime where he literally terrorized dozens of peo- oh, he's a white conservative. Now it makes sense.

Was his aim actually to cause terror or was it just a side effect of his stupid shit? Any crime causes terror, someone mugging someone can cause terror. And just because something was politically motivated doesn't mean it was terror either. Though its connected to politics, "pizza-gate"s allegedly being created to fuck around with Hillary, this attack might not have even been politically motivated. According to the dumbfuck himself it was about doing "some good" and he isn't political.

Trying to label anything bad as terrorism diminishes the horror of actual terrorism (which I'm not accusing you of doing). Terrorism is some gut punch thing because of how terrible it is, how horrifying, how it does terrify people. The aim of terrorism is more then just hurting people physically but mentally as well, to leave the survivors and everyone else terrified, that is part of the goal. For incredibly stupid shit like this fucking moron firing off a round from his penis compensator for the children terror was not his goal. Its not terrorism. Don't mean they shouldn't smack him in the dick with the book for the terror he caused though.

A bit of interesting shit from the article I linked. Something relevant to this thread straight from the idiots mouth......

He said he did not like the term fake news, believing it was meant to diminish stories outside the mainstream media, which he does not completely trust.

Thats in my opinion the problem with fake news, not so much a problem with it itself but how terrible the reputation of main stream news is. How untrustworthy it is. How people trying to find alternatives because they can't trust the regular news get sucked into incredibly biased "alternative" news or outright false news. Maybe if the media wasn't making shit up or distorting the truth idiots like the pizza guy wouldn't be looking at made up bullshit.

Yeah, thinking about it more I have to agree that it wasn't an act of terrorism. It was an act of total lunacy.

People like this used to be taken care of by the government so they couldn't do shit like this. They were kept in mental asylums until Ronnie Raygun closed them all (I know they were hellholes, but there is a middle ground between a hellish asylum and closing them all, dropping the former residents off at the nearest goddamned gun show).

And now the nutbags will have one of their own in the White House. So at least one in every branch of government and a whole cable "news" channel to be Mister "Grab them by the pussy's" team of Goebbles.

[TheFeniX]

People like this used to be taken care of by the government so they couldn't do shit like this. They were kept in mental asylums until Ronnie Raygun closed them all (I know they were hellholes, but there is a middle ground between a hellish asylum and closing them all, dropping the former residents off at the nearest goddamned gun show).

While I fully agree about the sad state of the U.S. mental health care system, I don't see how an improved system could have identified someone like Welch before he took an "assault-rifle" (which is untrue and journalists/bloggers really need to get their shit together here) based on bad information and a mistrust of mainstream media. Sounds much more a case of conspiracy bullshit with a mix of hero complex. He gave up once his own "investigation" showed he was a moron.

Guy probably thought he was going to break the whole thing wide open and be lauded as a hero. Being gullible and stupid isn't mental illness.

[Joun_Lord]

Yeah, thinking about it more I have to agree that it wasn't an act of terrorism. It was an act of total lunacy.

People like this used to be taken care of by the government so they couldn't do shit like this. They were kept in mental asylums until Ronnie Raygun closed them all (I know they were hellholes, but there is a middle ground between a hellish asylum and closing them all, dropping the former residents off at the nearest goddamned gun show).

And now the nutbags will have one of their own in the White House. So at least one in every branch of government and a whole cable "news" channel to be Mister "Grab them by the pussy's" team of Goebbles.

It was indeed an act of lunacy though I stress the act part. Until this moron decided to go try to save some probably imaginary children he was a crazy moron but one I don't think was worthy of being locked up in prison or a loony bin. Having the "big bad gubmint" take care of people deemed crazy without anything overt seems really something that can be abused easily. Especially true when politics get involved.

This stupid fucker until he did his stupid shit might have been crazy but might not have been. Because he believed in some online conspiracy? So do quite a few other people, whole groups of people believe the moon landings were fake, Obama is a secret Kenyan reptillian, Bush did 9/11, that JFK, MLK, and RFK were all assassinated by the FBI or the CIA or both, and the Earth is flat by scientists want us to believe its round because........uhh science bad. Have to lock up half the country probably for believing conspiracies. Because he believed that "lame stream media" was a phony, a great big phony? Like only around 30% of Americans trust the media.

How about because he said stupid shit we disagree with? We've long had problems of people being different, thinking different things being persecuted. Look at the problems of the non-religious in the past and even today where they are barely trusted. Look at how gay people were locked up for supposed mental illness, how people still consider gaymosexuality and being transgender a sign of nuttiness because some dudes want to slap chop off their nuts. Stupid ass female diseases like hysteria and the vapors.

Some people want to consider all religious people as mentally ill, some people want to consider only people who don't believe in their personal brand of sky pixie as crazy. Some might consider voting for Donald Trump as a sign of mental illness.....or racism. Others might consider voting for Hillary Clinton a sign of mental illness (and probably "reverse racism"). I think its pretty nutty to vote for 3rd party when the choices are Jill Stein and Gary Johnson.

I don't trust the government, soon to be run by a possibly certifiably crazy like a moose guy, to decide who be crazy and who to lock up. Its not perfect but usually its best to lock up people only when they become a danger to themselves or others or when some actual white coat wearing head shrink says they are insane in the membrane.

[Flagg]

I'm not saying that because he's a conspiracy theorist nutjob he should be locked up by the government. I'm saying that because he's a paranoid nutjob he should have had to see a mental health professional and if they (and at least a psychiatrist or 2) believed his paranoid conspiracy batshitted-ness would lead to him playing Frank Castle they should have petitioned a judge that also specializes in issues of mental health for him to at least have a 72 hour evaluation at a very not hellish mental health facility and if long term residential institution is deemed necessary and a judge agrees he should be locked up and given intense therapy until a regular monthly review of the parties involved decide he is mentally fit for outpatient care.

For the record, between the ages of 11 and 13 I was put into an acute juvenile mental health center by my psychologist and mother due to deep depression and behaviors that manifested from it for 14 days twice, outpatient twice, and 6 months of residential treatment once. If I hadn't been I'd be dead or in prison. I know how the system works and feel that from my own experiences I'm more qualified than most non-mental health professionals on the subject and by no means do I support throwing your average moron with moronic beliefs into a mental health facility.

But the guy entered a pizzeria with a gun based on crazy shit he read on the internet. I kind of doubt there were no warning signs displayed for such extreme behavior in the crazyface's recent past that if we had even 1/100th of a functioning public mental health system could have been picked up on so at the very least his guns could have been confiscated and forbidden from buying new ones until deemed fit enough to get the ones taken out of his hands back.

[mr friendly guy]

mr friendly guy, If I may make a point you didn't; Punishment for news outlets considered mainstream that consistently fail in their responsibility to provide accurate news is the same for any business that fails to deliver a product that is not defective: They make things right and/or pay the price. And sometimes the price is shutting down because their viewer/reader numbers tank and advertisers don't pay them as much (or just don't bother advertising on that channel or in that publication at all) and they go out of business.

I will add the most obvious example I can think of a newspaper shutting down because of shitty practices was News of the World. And that was due to UK politicians putting pressure on Murdoch.

Now print media is losing readers, but I am not sure how much of that is because "people no longer trust them." Even if it was, the fact they have been going on for so long would suggest that this is at best a long process.

Worse case scenario, mainstream media could publish bullshit, and people won't have a clue they are being tricked.

[Joun_Lord]

I'm not saying that because he's a conspiracy theorist nutjob he should be locked up by the government. I'm saying that because he's a paranoid nutjob he should have had to see a mental health professional and if they (and at least a psychiatrist or 2) believed his paranoid conspiracy batshitted-ness would lead to him playing Frank Castle they should have petitioned a judge that also specializes in issues of mental health for him to at least have a 72 hour evaluation at a very not hellish mental health facility and if long term residential institution is deemed necessary and a judge agrees he should be locked up and given intense therapy until a regular monthly review of the parties involved decide he is mentally fit for outpatient care.

For the record, between the ages of 11 and 13 I was put into an acute juvenile mental health center by my psychologist and mother due to deep depression and behaviors that manifested from it for 14 days twice, outpatient twice, and 6 months of residential treatment once. If I hadn't been I'd be dead or in prison. I know how the system works and feel that from my own experiences I'm more qualified than most non-mental health professionals on the subject and by no means do I support throwing your average moron with moronic beliefs into a mental health facility.

But the guy entered a pizzeria with a gun based on crazy shit he read on the internet. I kind of doubt there were no warning signs displayed for such extreme behavior in the crazyface's recent past that if we had even 1/100th of a functioning public mental health system could have been picked up on so at the very least his guns could have been confiscated and forbidden from buying new ones until deemed fit enough to get the ones taken out of his hands back.

Being a conspiracy theorist or a paranoid type aren't thing that are automatically ground for needing to see a shrink. Plenty of people believe crazy ass shit far worse then sex dungeons under pizza parlors. The difference between all of them, every idiot suckered by "pizza-gate", birtherism, 9/11 trutherism, and waht ever other bullshit dredged from the bowels of the internet and the minds of madmen is actions. Pizza guy decided to act on his crazyiness just the same as some idiot who believed the Sandy Hook conspiracy acted on his by threatening people.

Until people act on shit they aren't going to be known to be a threat unless someone notices (more on that later) or are talking regularly to a mental health specialist. Considering both the costs of mental health help and the stigma I have no doubt far too few people are buying new houses for head docs. But even if pizza guy was talking to a shrink until he said something about threatening people, going out to save the children by shooting up a place (atleast he had the sense to shoot up instead of down considering he was looking for rape dungeons and not rape attics) there would have been no reason to lock his stupid ass up.

As someone who was also a patron of juvie loony bin I do understand some people need locked up, sometimes long term. I certainly needed it when it happened to me, I still got the chunks missing out of my wrists to prove it. But I also understand that not everyone needs to be there, not everyone was trying to chew through their wrists because they were so far fucking gone they practically turned into an animal, most people are going to find camaraderie with a bunch of nuts. Plenty of people have crazy beliefs, they aren't crazy though.

Pizza guy did enter the pizza shoppe because of crazy shit he read on the internet, he did so because he was fucknuts, the shit he read was just an excuse. If it was not that he might have tried some shit at Freedom Fries Tower, the White House, Sandy Hook elementary, or any other site related to another bit of stupid crazy people are sometimes drawn into.

There might have been warning signs but again without him seeing a psychologist nobody might have noticed them. His family might not have noticed especially if he was long term conspiracy shit. He could be like some people and not share. Even with a 101% working mental health system he might have slipped through the cracks by either not partaking in it or lying or not mentioning it because he didn't think wanting to go take a gun into a pizza shop to rescue some child sex slaves that the internet assures him are there was crazy. Also he is waiting on his Nigerian friend Mubutu to send him his share of Mubutu's inheritance any day now.....any day now.

Most people aren't going to be known to be actually crazy, not just believe crazy shit but actually factually shoot up a pizza parlor crazy, until they do crazy ass shit like for instance shoot up a pizza parlor. Most people aren't going to share their impending bought of stupidity either through inability or fear. Fear of being labeled crazy, fear of being locked up, fear of being stigmatized and ostracized, fear of having property taken. I think really it would help in this country if people with mental health problems weren't looked so down upon, either as weak or something to be fear or mocked.

[Flagg]

I'm not disputing anything you're saying. Pizza-Douche likely didn't go from stupid conspiracy nut on the internet to Punisher wannabe waving guns around to free children that don't exist without some kind of warning signs.

[mr friendly guy]

I just want to talk about a few good points SJ raised

1. Fake news can go viral on social media

So can mainstream news, and I think its an unfair comparison to compare spreading via social media with the initial viewing on a mainstream source in print. Because these days a lot of mainstream organisations also have websites republishing their stories. A person reading a newspaper, finding a story they want to post on social media might be too lazy to then find the equivalent article online, but if they saw it online in the first place, then its just a few clicks away.

I would argue initially mainstream news will reach more people than fake news sites, and I am not just talking about printed media in the hard copy. I am talking via their websites. As to which one goes viral after that would depend on how motivated the person who saw the original article in question is

2. rumors that spread through social media have more potential to cause harm

That is true, but as with the Iraq war example, or any example targeting say a company or country instead of an individual, there is possibility of more harm simply because more people are involved.

3. Mainstream sites can be sued.

That's true, but how often? IIRC a few years ago a court case pretty much allowed Fox news to say what it wants on first amendment grounds.

Going on, a website publishing fake news in Macedonia may be hard to reach compared to one in the US, but to sue someone in the US also requires money. Even Hulk Hogan who presumably made some decent money as an entertainer for WWF, later WWE had to have the backing of a billionaire to successfully sue Gawker.

I will give this one to the mainstream news, but I would argue its not that great a detriment unless you're really afraid of being sued or not a "risk taker" type. Or you actually have Clark Kent level of ethics. Or the ethics found in Fat Albert cartoons. *

* yeah in the Fat Albert cartoon one of the characters assumed a sports star was doing drugs. However Fat Albert made them investigate it properly and it turned out to be allergy pills. If only mainstream media actually did that. Investigate.

[Simon_Jester]

Was his aim actually to cause terror or was it just a side effect of his stupid shit? Any crime causes terror, someone mugging someone can cause terror. And just because something was politically motivated doesn't mean it was terror either. Though its connected to politics, "pizza-gate"s allegedly being created to fuck around with Hillary, this attack might not have even been politically motivated. According to the dumbfuck himself it was about doing "some good" and he isn't political.

He can say he's not political, but his decision to act on a story spread by political people for a political end makes him, in effect, a tool of a political movement. However, he is not a terrorist, any more than any other tool is.

That said, basically, there's a contradiction at work here.
1) The guy isn't a terrorist, in that there is no evidence he did this to scare anyone. He seems to have honestly thought he was breaking up a pedophile ring.
2) If he weren't a white guy acting on rumors cooked up by Republicans, it is very likely he would be labeled a terrorist. Does anyone think Donald Trump would hesitate to call a man a terrorist for showing up with a machine gun at one of his favorite restaurants to "investigate" rumors of child sex abuse?

He said he did not like the term fake news, believing it was meant to diminish stories outside the mainstream media, which he does not completely trust.

Thats in my opinion the problem with fake news, not so much a problem with it itself but how terrible the reputation of main stream news is. How untrustworthy it is. How people trying to find alternatives because they can't trust the regular news get sucked into incredibly biased "alternative" news or outright false news. Maybe if the media wasn't making shit up or distorting the truth idiots like the pizza guy wouldn't be looking at made up bullshit.

And here we go again. It's like... the blame HAS to be deflected onto the mainstream media, for some reason. It isn't enough to say "random libelous crap is bad," we have to say "if the newspapers didn't lie some of the time, there wouldn't be these online sources lying all of the time!"

I don't think it makes very much sense.

I just want to talk about a few good points SJ raised

1. Fake news can go viral on social media

So can mainstream news, and I think its an unfair comparison to compare spreading via social media with the initial viewing on a mainstream source in print. Because these days a lot of mainstream organisations also have websites republishing their stories. A person reading a newspaper, finding a story they want to post on social media might be too lazy to then find the equivalent article online, but if they saw it online in the first place, then its just a few clicks away.

I would argue initially mainstream news will reach more people than fake news sites, and I am not just talking about printed media in the hard copy. I am talking via their websites. As to which one goes viral after that would depend on how motivated the person who saw the original article in question is

The catch is that except via social media, specifically, the mainstream articles are unlikely to get specifically funneled towards lunatics. Lunatics generally aren't going to be more enthusiastic readers of the New York Times than regular people. But lunatics WILL subscribe to dodgy online 'news sources' and will form little blobs of lunacy on Facebook to share stories about the world from the lunatic point of view.

It's like the difference between pesticides that bio-accumulate and those that don't. Stuff like DDT, when you spray it around to kill bugs, can build up inside larger animals such as birds, where it becomes disproportionately toxic because it keeps accumulating. Toxins that don't accumulate are less of a problem by comparison.

Furthermore, the power of these things that go viral depends in large part on how extreme they are. Stuff like completely fabricated accusations of pedophilia tends to accumulate in ways that "Russia Today made up a story about Syria!" does not. That is WHY we have the concept of a libel lawsuit in the first place, because we recognize that certain types of slurs and attacks can cause irreversible damage to the people thus targeted.

If we don't start using that tool against Internet harassment somehow (and I'm not sure we can), then our society is going to suffer massive damage from random sleazeballs going around doing hatchet-jobs on the reputations of honest people. To some extent we already have.

2. rumors that spread through social media have more potential to cause harm

That is true, but as with the Iraq war example, or any example targeting say a company or country instead of an individual, there is possibility of more harm simply because more people are involved.

The potential exists- but in those cases, the media is rarely the instigating agent. At worst they are insufficiently critical about publishing information provided to them by someone else.

I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it is really foolish of us to singlemindedly fixate on lazy republication articles in the mainstream media when we have "reporters" for independent outlets who knowingly fabricate their articles entirely.

3. Mainstream sites can be sued.

That's true, but how often? IIRC a few years ago a court case pretty much allowed Fox news to say what it wants on first amendment grounds.

This is a fairly good generalized criticism.

The residual fear of lawsuits still seems to have some desirable effect (which is why mainstream journalists do not just straight-up fabricate accusations of pedophilia against people they don't like). But we're definitely trending towards "anyone can say anything they like," and the consequences are potentially dire.

However, it is the WORST and most dishonest people within our media ecosystem who are pulling us in this direction the fastest. Targeting the people in the middle of the pack for criticism is a mistake, because they're not the ones actively shifting the Overton window of "how horrible a falsehood is it acceptable to utter, and what will be the consequences for doing so?"

[Joun_Lord]

He can say he's not political, but his decision to act on a story spread by political people for a political end makes him, in effect, a tool of a political movement. However, he is not a terrorist, any more than any other tool is.

That said, basically, there's a contradiction at work here.
1) The guy isn't a terrorist, in that there is no evidence he did this to scare anyone. He seems to have honestly thought he was breaking up a pedophile ring.
2) If he weren't a white guy acting on rumors cooked up by Republicans, it is very likely he would be labeled a terrorist. Does anyone think Donald Trump would hesitate to call a man a terrorist for showing up with a machine gun at one of his favorite restaurants to "investigate" rumors of child sex abuse?

The fact that the story itself is the result of political shenanigans doesn't mean his actions are. I mean they probably are anyway, I believe this guy that he wasn't political about as much as I believe my cat won't bite the shit out of me when she rolls on her back wanting a belly rub. But my point is that someone can do something even linked to politics without a political motive.

And yes, if this guy was anything but white he'd probably be labeled as a terrorist by Trump and people like them. Because they are idiots who would label everyone they think is bad a terrorist and a Nazi and a Muslim if they could get away with it. Though I'm sure Dems would label everyone they think is a bad a racist and a Nazi. Ah its lovely how universal calling your opponent a Nazi is.

And here we go again. It's like... the blame HAS to be deflected onto the mainstream media, for some reason. It isn't enough to say "random libelous crap is bad," we have to say "if the newspapers didn't lie some of the time, there wouldn't be these online sources lying all of the time!"

I don't think it makes very much sense.

It makes perfect cents in that people wouldn't be turning to these lying online sources if newspapers (and tv news and more main stream online sources) didn't lie their asses off and distort the truth. It is their fault, they created this mess by lying and by creating such sensationalist headlines that people are turning to crap blogs and shit and actually believing them because their bullshit meters have been long since wiped out. The fake news business didn't just appear out of thin 1s and 0s and 2s, it is the result of the actions of the "lame stream media".

It isn't all their fault but they certainly have a big hand in creating this environment where bullshit news is so damn rampant.

[mr friendly guy]

You know, it occurs to me one could run a fake news site for the sole purpose of gathering stories from other fake news sites. That way I didn't really make up the fake news, I just quoted someone else. Ethically, just the same as mainstream media. Seriously, the allegations against RT running fake news sites consists of, random internet site says so. If people can't see that deliberately misinterpreting or taking claims from random sources at face value is at best very superficial compared to "making shit out of thin air," the only thing I can do is point out that mainstream news also makes shit out of thin air. Since I read a lot of articles on China, I have come across a few over the years. However I know its not just Chinese citizens that criticise mainstream media. Russia and Israel citizens are also noticeable, but since I don't know that much about them (although I suspect I know more than the average person), I can't really comment too much. However one has to wonder, unless China just happens to have erroneous news about it, and other countries are reported on the highest standards

1. I already posted the James Reynolds example from BBC where China is deliberately hiding the fact that there were protests in the UK when the Olympic torch was being carried.

Lie. Not misinterpretation of the fact. Lie. There is no way for him to know this short of mind reading powers, and the fact they did report shows he is wrong. Moreover as a reporter, (young reporter of the year no less), he should know it takes time, like more than half an hour to adjust a program that had already been planned to include the new footage.

2. Beijing deliberately shows an image of the sun on advertising screen because its so smoggy because of pollution that the sun doesn't shine through.

While I first saw this on the Daily Fail, the original source is TIME magazine. Unfortunately for them, it was a tourist advert. Yeah, parts of China are actually sunny especially when you go south, and amazing as it sounds, some people like sunny weather. I know right.

No a misinterpretation of the advert. Lie. You cannot interpret a tourist advert with a bright sun as "shining a light because its so smoggy the sun doesn't get through."

No doubt it was designed to feed into LOL China and going how oppressive the country is that they have to resort to televised version of the sun.

3. China is going to mandate people dancing in public squares dance to government approved dance routines.

I wish I was making this up. Apparently they have now gone into comic book villain of evil. Because regulating who can use public squares because "dancing grannies" actually cause a disturbance to other people is a bad thing.

Eventually western media caught on to this fact that is was never announced that way, but don't worry, here is how they spun it. PEOPLE POWER and DEMOCRACY. Yep, people protested made the government back down.

This might, and I stress might be a misinterpretation of a government statement, but you would have to have a really uncharitable mindset from the start and assume everything someone says is going to be bad.

4. China bans time travel shows.

This was actually posted on this board a few years ago, sourced from BBC. Too bad when I went to China in the same year they were actually screening wait for it... a time travel show. Anyone interested, its called Gong or Palace. This was months after China supposedly banned time travel shows.

Man China is such an oppressive place they banned my favourite show, Doctor Who. Well actually since Moffat turned it shit, its no longer my favourite, courtesy of BBC.

5. China is building enormous ghost cities purely to stimulate the economy, ie is rigging the numbers.

Here I thought the reason people build apartments is for other people to live in. Nope, apparently its done just so to boost GDP figures. Well its possible to do it in that manner, there is no way you can know that's in the government planner's head unless you have mind reading powers or they admit it.

This claim originated from Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan, but has been regurgitated by Western media enough times.

We know this claim is bullshit, because Ghost cities are slowly filling up.

This is no different from someone saying person x is a paedophile. I mean person x is a real person, paedophiles exist, so its plausible. I mean China is building lots of apartments, doing so does cause a rise in GDP, people do lie, so yeah its possible they did it just to raise GDP numbers.

Any investor being misled by this could certainly alter their pattern of investment, so it certainly can cause harm.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm going to be honest, I don't have the time or energy to go over all of this in detail, so I'll just make two points.

1) Negative claims that take serious and careful investigation to disprove are nowhere near the same category as completely fabricated claims that you just made up for giggles and that involve people committing obvious and rare crimes. For instance, the English-language echo chamber on "ghost cities" can only be debunked by digging through mountains of city population statistics, many of them in foreign languages. The level of investigative effort required is not unduly large, but it is definitely an obstacle. Nations throughout time and space have ALWAYS suffered from varying degrees of ignorance about what is really going on in countries on the other side of the world. Your decision to take this personally and treat it as some kind of special fault of Western mainstream media says more about you than it does about the mainstream media.

2) If you think echoing false opinions about a foreign country that everyone in the host country has heard and that can't be sorted out without figuring out how to get primary source material in a foreign country is anywhere near as bitterly, cruelly, intimately personal and vicious an attack as being accused of being a pedophile... you're a smarmy idiot.

[mr friendly guy]

Simon, you didn't go through my thing and at least you're honest about it. That's something I guess.

BTW - why do you think I take it personally? Unless you assume I take all bullshit claims personally? I choose to talk about China because its a subject I have knowledge on so I can say with confidence sources are bullshitting.

1. I am NOT talking about the claim of whether ghost cities are filling up, I am talking about the claim that China builds apartments not to get people to live in them, but purely to make GDP look good. That's something pulled out of thin air.

However you're right that it will take longer to prove whether its wrong, because even if officials deny they did it for that reason, one can always claim they lie. It will take time before these cities fill up to show such a claim is wrong, so we had to wait years before the evidence came in.

2. Sigh, I am comparing what constitutes "making things up," because frankly I am hearing a lot of erroneous claims explained away as less because its that people misinterpreted things, rather than just making it up out of thin air, which apparently according to you is somewhat better. I am pointing out those paedophile claims have the same number of steps as claims about Chinese ghost cities. Find two things which are true, link them together even though they have no evidence to link them together. In other words, they are just as made up as each other. Now if you're going to say, but that made up lie hurts more, fine. I will change it to, fake news accuse person x of being a tax evader, because its possible they could be a tax evader. It would not change my message one bit.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Bluntly, there is a huge difference between a media organization that is wrong, even consistently wrong, and a media organization that is lying.

If you are in denial about this, or are so busy bashing your favored Western media targets that you cannot even perceive that something is wrong when a totally fabricated story like "FBI agent investigating Clinton commits suicide under suspicious circumstances" gets half a million people believing it and telling their friends...

I have nothing further to say to you.

....

Aren't you really splitting hairs? At some point, the difference is nonexistent, especially if the said organisation is being willfully wrong. They don't have to be lying to be willfully wrong about shit because it stirs up shit that generates more news.

[Simon_Jester]

I really don't think I am.

There is a significant ethical difference between lazily repeating things you believe to be true, and explicitly writing fiction that you intend to pass off as truth to other people.