Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

> His company sells persuasion tools to manufacturers of consumer (and industrial) goods and services producers.

I think the whole "Fake News" is the start of a new thing. What has happened is that traditional media failed to manufacture consent like it was supposed to. It surely wasn't for the lack of trying. They were passing debate questions to their favorite candidate, claiming reading leaked document is only legal for the media and so on. So they really tried, failed, and everyone noticed.

That in effect, created a vacuum in that market. That is the market of "pay us a lots of money and we'll persuade millions of people to accept whatever ideology, products, ideas you want". It is good for selling trinkets, but also good for electing officials and so on.

Notice how quickly (and smartly) both Google and Facebook jumped in:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/technology/google-faceboo...

Now it has to be wrapped officially in "We are saving those poor uneducated slobs from being told lizard people run the government" and so on, but I think the message has to be read between the lines.

Meh. I think you fail to account for the conversational drift in the meaning of fake news. The quick response was to the pile of pure click bait websites pushing stories like pizza-gate, claims that Clinton was having interns murdered, and so on. After the election, I was writing to electors in the state I grew up in, and found they were actually re-sharing these kinds of stories on their Facebook pages. As a protective measure, the Breitbarts of the world responded by calling everything else fake news, and diluting the meaning of the term.

Apparently they successfully persuaded a Chomsky fan that the term was meaningless?

>They were passing debate questions to their favorite candidate

Sort of. Rather, Donna Brazile, a high-ranking Democrat at the time, was also working as a CNN analyst. She got access to general debate topics and sent them to Clinton's camp.

CNN fired her almost immediately upon learning this, and said:

>"CNN never gave Brazile access to any questions, prep material, attendee list, background information or meetings in advance of a town hall or debate." [0]

Brazile doubled down, criticized CNN, and said her only regret was getting caught. [0]

>“My conscience — as an activist, a strategist — is very clear [...] if I had to do it all over again, I would know a hell of a lot more about cybersecurity.”

CNN is not at fault here. Brazile violated her contract and general ethical standards to support her party. I'm no fan of CNN, but they did not leak questions intentionally.

Sure, CNN could be lying and Brazile could be agreeing to take the fall. But considering they both shittalked each other in the media after she was fired, and CNN's immediate condemnation of her and her actions, then that's a pretty hefty conspiracy theory claim. To me, this just seems like the Democratic leadership wasn't afraid to play a little dirty - all of their own doing.

>claiming reading leaked document is only legal for the media

Who did this? Every major media source, including the left-leaning ones, openly discussed and sometimes provided links to the Wikileaks archives.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/07/do...

>Who did this?

The claim that "reading leaked document[s] is only legal for the media" isn't what was actually said, but this clip is probably what parent is referring to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DcATG9Qy_A

Well, that's pretty bad.

A charitable interpretation would be that the scriptwriter, or Cuomo, genuinely believed this to be true and so were ignorantly trying to give helpful advice to the audience. Maybe not, though.

Regardless, both of the grandparent post's criticisms (and I'd really only merit this one criticism as particularly valid) apply to CNN, which has consistently proved itself to be one of the worst mainstream outlets of the decade. So I wouldn't take that as a huge indictment of the media in general. He'll have to provide more examples than that.

You may be dismayed that many the new voters in the new few elections do not share your high level of faith in the mainstream media: a Data & Society report posted last week finds that American teenagers have low levels of trust in the media:

https://datasociety.net/blog/2017/03/01/navigating-the-news/

I'm not dismayed by it.

I need more upvotes for this.

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