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

יוחנן ועקנין yohanan.ouaknine at ois.co.il
Sat Jan 7 01:28:56 PST 2017


Hello All !
Following this very interesting discussion, I would like to ask if "fake
titles" or "fake headlines" is a part of the fake news issue.
Biased news headlines is not a new issue (http://umich.edu/~newsbias/he
adlines.html) as many people don't bother reading the whole article, and
also because the writer of the article is not always responsible of the
headlines!

*Regards, *
*Yohanan Ouaknine *
*PhD candidate *
*Bar Ilan university, Israel*

On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 10:53 PM, kalev leetaru <kalev.leetaru5 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Robert, that's actually one of the fascinating aspects of all of this - how
> you define "fake news". If you dive back into the history of propaganda
> theory, you'll find some fantastic work on why defining "fake news" is so
> hard - the same set of facts can be used by well-meaning and earnest
> reporters to support wildly different conclusions. Paul Linebarger's
> classic "Psychological Warfare" offers a fantastic primer on this.
>
> If we define "fake news" as solely that news which the person writing it
> knew at the time to be solely and entirely false without any basis in fact
> and start looking at the legal definitions of things like "libel" then
> that's one avenue of approach. But, the discussion that's happening in
> journalism circles right now is really centering on a much broader
> definition of false and misleading news.
>
> Even on this very mailing list people have mentioned the alt-left and
> alt-right as "fake news". Some of that certainly falls into the category of
> outright libel, where the person writing it has posted elsewhere that they
> do solemnly swear that they know what they are writing to be exclusively
> false and devoid of any fact and recognize it to be libel. Yet, much of the
> alt-left and alt-right reporting that is being labeled as "fake news" is
> simply a highly partisan or skewed interpretation of a common set of facts,
> where if you talk with the reporters (and I've talked with several) they
> firmly stand behind what they've written and believe it to be solid
> journalism based on objective empirical fact.
>
> The difference is that when you turn to the Post/NYTimes/etc's journalism,
> there is an expectation of rigorous fact checking and a placement of
> "getting the story right" above "getting the scoop" and being the first to
> print. We all know that isn't always the case and that journalists take
> short cuts and papers make mistakes. But, the focus here is that we need to
> have more transparency on how the media functions.
>
> When papers like the Post and Times no longer treat their online stories as
> "print" and instead treat them as living documents to be edited over time
> and constantly rewritten, that raises all sorts of questions of how we
> trust and understand the information we consume, especially given studies
> on online sharing that show how much of what we share is shared based
> purely on the headline and lede, rather than a full careful reading of the
> entire article.
>
> Setting aside conspiracy theories, the bottom line is that we need much
> greater transparency in the journalism world - we can't just say "trust the
> Post" or any other outlet - we have to start thinking critically about how
> the things we take for granted like the inverted pyramid actually serve to
> enable and power false and misleading news (
> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/10/the-
> inverted-pyramid-and-how-fake-news-weaponized-modern-
> journalistic-practice/
> ).
>
> Kalev
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 3:29 PM, Robert Tynes <nativebuddha at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Kalev,
> >
> > Your points about the process of news making are worth considering. But
> > conflating  what the Post did with a discussion of fake news is a bit
> > off-base. The major difference is, despite conspiracy theories about
> major
> > papers such as the Post, Post reporters do seek out the most empirically
> > evident story possible. They do look for facts.
> >
> > Fake news, on the other hand, seeks to deceive, and to persuade its
> > audience towards more extreme ideological points of view.
> >
> > And motives matter.
> >
> >
> > -Robert
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > > On Jan 1, 2017, at 2:48 PM, kalev leetaru <kalev.leetaru5 at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > 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.
> > >
> > > What is so fascinating about this case from a "fake news" perspective
> is
> > > that it brings into sharp relief once again A) how the mainstream media
> > > forms a trust echochamber in which once one outlet runs a story,
> everyone
> > > follows without performing their own fact checking, B) the absolute
> trust
> > > frequently placed in government sources as "truth", C) the lack of fact
> > > checking even at tier one outlets like the Post and the lack of
> > > transparency in those processes (while answering other questions, the
> > Post
> > > declined for a second time to comment in any way on how it fact checks
> > > articles and the level of rigor it requires prior to publication), D)
> how
> > > once an article is published, even if it is retracted or substantively
> > > changed, how that is often not clearly communicated to readers.
> > >
> > > I thought many of you would find of interest in particular the
> chronology
> > > of edits to the Post page courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback
> > > Machine and how it was almost a full day after the article had been
> > > rewritten that the Post finally appended an editors note acknowledging
> > the
> > > wholesale changes - again points both to how newspapers now constantly
> > > rewrite their online articles over the course of a day or more and the
> > > immense power of the Archive in allowing us to trace those edits over
> > time.
> > >
> > > To me, perhaps the most interesting piece here from a "fake news"
> > > perspective is how often "breaking news" becomes "fake news" as major
> > > details change once more facts become available. Given that in this
> case
> > > the Post was constantly rewriting the article over more than 12 hours
> > after
> > > publication, it also raises the question of how we leverage all of
> these
> > > initiatives that look at news rewriting to help flag when articles are
> > > retracted or heavily edited and communicate that back to the general
> > public
> > > - the tools are all there, but in terms of helping getting that back to
> > the
> > > public.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/01/fake-
> > news-and-how-the-washington-post-rewrote-its-story-on-
> > russian-hacking-of-the-power-grid/
> > >
> > >
> > > Kalev
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> > > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> > > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/
> > listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> > >
> > > Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> > > http://www.aoir.org/
> >
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/
> listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/

-- 
Yohanan Ouaknine 

<http://www.twitter.com/yohananouaknine>   
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/yohananouaknine>  

 

This e-mail is for the sole use of the intended recipient and contains 
information that may be privileged and/or confidential. If you are not an 
intended recipient, please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete 
this e-mail and any attachments.

 

*P* *Think of the environmental impact before printing this page *



More information about the Air-L mailing list