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What do you mean by fake news?

It seems to have started out as actual made up news by organisations/people/websites pretending to be news organisations, but actually just making things up - eg. The pope endorsing Trump story and I'm sure loads more on both sides.

Then some professor published his list of fake news sites, and included a bunch of conservative media sites as well as satire as well as obvious fake news, there's probably some liberal legitimate media sites there too.

Then after Trump won conservatives started saying every liberal media site had been peddling fake news when they reported polls etc had him way down and Hillary was winning.

I've probably missed a load more things but my point is, I have no idea what fake news is at this point - but I do know that at least some of it isn't a result of a lack of time by legitimate journalists, some of it is just people making stuff up.

Fake news should only really refer to the type of news that was generated from the kids in Eastern Europe i.e. completely made up with zero truth behind it.

Unfortunately fake news has come to mean "news that I disagree with".

Like today when Trump tweeted that the BuzzFeed story was fake news even though there was nothing fake about it. Just that the claims were as yet unverified.

There's plenty of fake news on both sides. It's amazing to me that people can be so far up their ass to no not notice that.

> Coler's company, Disinfomedia, owns many faux news sites — he won't say how many. But he says his is one of the biggest fake-news businesses out there, which makes him a sort of godfather of the industry.

> Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503...

>> Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.

If you see this and your bias alarm isn't going crazy, then it needs some heavy readjustment.

Personally, I'd argue the following to be "fake news"

* Completely made-up

* Kernel of truth with context completely removed (see far-Right, far-Left, and sensationalist papers)

That leaves quite a bit of partisan news in the gray-but-OK zone, including several partisan sites that seem to solely exist to signal boost the most embarrassing and negative news of their opponents.

Perhaps the most clever thing, that you note, is the far-fringe groups are now calling the center Mainstream Media "fake news" as well. Which is the height of clever co-opting to me.

EDIT: formatting

> Conduct real journalism with well-paid staff that have the time to do their job

I can guarantee you that every single editor in the country would like to have well-paid staff who have the time to do their job well.

And if you can come up with a business model to make it happen, well then I am willing to dub you the savior of the news industry.

But absent any suggestions about how news organizations can actually accomplish this, your comment is basically just kicking them while they're down.

Hilariously enough one company has a business model that is working: BuzzFeed.

They have been using the money raised from their clickbait business to operate BuzzFeed News. Which actually is a very distinct unit containing highly respected, award winning journalists who work on old school, long form journalism.

Example: https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrishamby/super-court

and in exchange they have turned their name to trash. I know they do are doing some quality work and I still feel a bit dirty clicking on an article from buzzfeed.

I don't mind kicking them when they're down, news org editors are some of the most vile scum of the earth. They have no shame about peddling garbage.

Unless they make a sincere effort to restore trust by reporting the news instead of trying to shape society by controlling the narrative then I will happily dig their grave. At this point there is no news org I rank higher than Reddit comments -- it's all a stream of piss coming from partisan hacks.

As for business model suggestions, my only suggestion is cut the crap. They can either subject themselves to the indignity of peddling garbage to make money thereby destroying their credibility or they can procure a staff of well-read and well-written folks that have a history of neutrality.

Partnering with FB is a one-way trip to the former while the latter is a logical impossibility, news orgs inevitably stoop to partisan nonsense. Either report the news and don't get scared about alienating your ad sponsors/viewers or you peddle garbage to make money.

I have a difficult time envisioning what sort of journalism you expect. Is investigative reporting okay? Are opinion pieces off limits? Are government sources acceptable, or should they be excluded? What about business owners speaking on matters about which they're likely to have conflicts of interest?

Don't bother. It's pure confirmation bias.

People like this are just looking for an excuse to ignore all of the mainstream media so that they can plot their own path. Nothing respected organisations can do would change their mind. Unfortunately this path is how we ended up with PizzaGate.

I used to be a news editor. I guess I should consider myself vile scum as well?

The major difficulty traditional local newspapers have faced over the past two decades is this downward cycle:

10 Revenue declines.

20 Cost reductions are needed. First, you trim operational expenses, but eventually, you need to reduce head count.

30 With fewer reporters and editors available, you either overwork the remaining staff, leading to burnout, increased turnaround, and a reduction in quality, or you reduce coverage.

40 Either way, subscribers notice an inferior product. They're getting less than what they used to get, either in terms of quality or breadth of coverage (and likely both).

50 Subscribers cancel their subscription.

60 GOTO 10

So now we arrive at a catch 22. The product is not going to improve in quality unless a lot of people are willing to pay for it, and a lot of people (such as yourself) aren't going to be willing to pay for it unless the quality markedly improves.

I wonder if it might be possible for newspapers to get around this problem by doing a Kickstarter-like conditional pledging campaign. Basically, you have people commit to buying a subscription, but only if a high enough threshold of other people also commit. Then it becomes a win-win. If the campaign reaches its threshold, then everyone involved can feel pretty confident that it generates enough revenue to bump up the quality (assuming the newspaper is actually committed to doing that). And if it fails to reach the threshold, then you're not out any money for an inferior product.

> The major difficulty traditional local newspapers have faced over the past two decades is this downward cycle

IIRC, It's more like 4-5 decades, and while the cycle is approximately correct for the positive feedback loop now running, it didn't, as I recall, actually start with declining revenues, it started with a wave of newspaper mergers (and acquisition of newspapers by non-newspaper firms) and attempts to increase profits after those mergers by reducing costs, which got you to the step you label "20", and the cycle took off from there.

> Frankly I'm quite happy about "fake news" proliferating, it makes obvious how hopeless and useless news orgs are.

It feels incredibly reductive to group "news orgs" together like this. It's not as if they are all on the same level. Yet, all suffer from the erosion of trust in news media, no matter how good their work might be. Any if they all dies, what replaces them exactly? I'm yet to see anything close to a compelling model (especially from Silicon Valley).

> 1) it wouldn't fix that nobody trusts Facebook

If only that were true. So many people do trust Facebook, and absolutely believe everything they read on it, including blatantly false "news."

It still doesn't change the fact that news orgs universally lack the time to conduct real journalism

It doesn't change it because it's not a fact, let alone a universal one

fake news is a direct result of reducing the time that journalists have to vet and verify content.

No it isn't. "Fake news" is not a synonym for "shoddy journalism" - it's not journalism at all but a deliberate attempt to mislead.

It doesn't have to be deliberate but it can be completely unintentional. Let's take a look at the latest rumor mongering about Trump -- many news orgs have happily reported that intelligence agencies have evidence of Watergate-level wrongdoing and they've thrown in sexual deviancy for good measure, but all of it is unsubstantiated.

I'd expect reputable news orgs to not touch the issue until we see public statements by public officials but they're talking it up like no tomorrow. This is fake news and it qualifies just as well as shoddy journalism.

It doesn't have to be deliberate but it can be completely unintentional.

That's not what 'fake news' means.

many news orgs have happily reported that intelligence agencies have evidence of Watergate-level wrongdoing and they've thrown in sexual deviancy for good measure

No reputable news organization has reported that. I understand how you can be unhappy with the state of journalism but your arguments are not helped in any way by you inventing 'facts', redefining terms or completely misrepresenting reporting.

Actually, lots of people trust what they read on Facebook. They shouldn't, but they do.

> Fox News' "Fair and Balanced" slogan needs to taken as religious dogma...

I think I agree with most of what you're trying to get across in your post here, but the reference to Fox News is throwing me off. Followed to the letter, being 'fair and balanced' is certainly something that should be aspired to, but Fox's use of it as a slogan has always been a complete joke. Fox's interpretation of 'fair and balanced' is hardly any better than than the 'fake news' alternative.

upvoted your comment, but obviate does not mean "to make obvious."