[Air-L] breaking news and fake news - the wash post's russian power grid hackers story

Jonathan Marshall Jonathan.Marshall at uts.edu.au
Sun Jan 1 15:26:46 PST 2017


>I'm sure many of you saw the Washington Post's story on Friday that Russian
>hackers had penetrated the US power grid through a utility in Vermont and
>also the unraveling of that story over the following half day.

I don't know. Not that I particularly want to defend the Washington post, but there is surely a difference between fake news and a mistake.

Mistaken/inaccurate news is bound to happen. People always will leap to conclusions, group loyalties and filters will be reinforced, and publications will seek eyeballs and repetition; that is how they make money. That is normal practice in the info society.  The article was corrected, but the point is still pretty similar, computers were likely to have been hacked, and this could be a problem.

Fake news is news which once falsified is never corrected, but is regurgitated over and over again - because it is not about 'accuracy' but about strategy.

jon

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