Politics

Comment gagnent les fake news

Mar 8, 2017 Aleksander Dardeli

WASHINGTON, DC – En réponse à la vague des fausses nouvelles (fake news) qui ont inondé la récente campagne présidentielle aux États-Unis, beaucoup d'attention a été consacrée à ceux qui produisent ou propagent ces histoires. L'hypothèse est que, si les médias ne communiquaient qu’à propos de « faits (établis) », les lecteurs et téléspectateurs seraient en mesure de tirer systématiquement la bonne conclusion d'une histoire donnée.

Pourtant, cette approche ne traite que la moitié de l'équation. C’est vrai, nous avons besoin que les médias d’actualité fournissent des informations fiables; mais il est également nécessaire que les destinataires soient des consommateurs avertis.

Depuis des dizaines d’années, le gouvernement américain a soutenu des programmes visant à favoriser l'indépendance des médias dans des pays autoritaires, pauvres ou dysfonctionnels. Or, ces programmes supposent implicitement que les États-Unis soient eux-mêmes à l'abri des problèmes que les citoyens d'autres pays rencontrent lorsqu'ils créent ou consomment de l'information. Aux États-Unis, nous supposons également que les médias américains, financés par la publicité, continueront de prospérer; que le journalisme indépendant est la norme; et que la plupart des gens sont capables de penser de manière critique et de faire des jugements pertinents sur l'information qu'ils reçoivent.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 31 Comments on this article

Allan Bleiken May 3, 2017

WHAT IS FAKE NEWS?
Unfortunately, fake news is all too often in the eye of the beholder. As the owner of a research company, I have found it takes a massive amount of personal determination to publish information which is honest, balanced, and unbiased.

For the main stream media to accuse others of fake news is like the kettle calling the pot black. Far too many colipumnists and opinion writers in the main stream media present highly unbalanced and misleading information as credible information and disguise it as news. It grieves me to point out that many of the world's problems today can be attributed to the main stream media.

Today, 80% of the US media is owned and controlled by five American corporations. Their first obligation is profit, and if truth gets in the way of profit, too bad, so sad.

If the main stream media did it's job properly the world would be in a better place. As history has unfortunately shown, many military conflicts in the past can be attributed to media agitation.

A good medicine for any individual or organization is to look in the mirror before criticizing others.
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jan olaf sipkes May 3, 2017

Just taking a rapid poll : how many od U believe Irex is a real non- profit organization ?
Another arm of USA's good intended idea of promoting Democracy ? All the way in corrupt Ukraine ?
15.000 Ukrainians taught to read the press ?
How musch more urgent needs could be attended "at home, in the USA" getting "more bang for the buck" ?
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Joel Dubow May 3, 2017

I agree with the author's words. Yet I suspect his agenda. For the past twenty years many serious people have criticized and documented the bias and snide sarcasem of the news media. Over ninety percent of the reporters in the news media self-identify as liberal. Examples abound of news distortion, suppression and reflexive defense of questionable behavior by politically correct leaders. The media has also echoed, amplified and defended often half-truth policy cover stories issued issued by liberal politicians.
This was true during the 2016 US Presidential election.

Once Hillary lost the hue and cry went up about "Fake News". Yet the news identified as fake is almost always attributed to the politically incorrect. The solution seems to be "lets kill the messinger".

Thus the credibiity of the "Fake News" crusaders is suspect. Until people like the author address real critical thinking and quality in journalism the Fake News Crusade will look more and more like an attempt to set up an Orwellian Ministry of Truth.
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j. von Hettlingen Mar 12, 2017

Aleksander Dardeli urges people to cultivate "critical-thinking skills" as the best weapon to fight fake news. He believes "philanthropists can also create or support grassroots organizations that work with citizens to strengthen their ability to consume information critically." It takes both "time and practice" to acquire "critical-thinking skills." Education is key to a country's bright future, and governments need to make the "modest investment" and "make teaching these skills a standard practice in school curricula" - to discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda.
The author explains how IREX, his global nonprofit organization has trained "fiften thousand Ukrainians" to resist brainwashing and "neutralize the detrimental effects of Kremlin-funded propaganda." The project was "carried out by IREX mobilized librarians" who taught "concrete skills in avoiding emotional manipulation, verifying sources and credentials, detecting paid content and hate speech, and debunking fake videos and photos." The efforts reaped rewards: "participants improved their ability to distinguish trustworthy news from false news by 24%. Better yet, they then trained hundreds more people to detect disinformation, thus multiplying the initiative’s overall impact."
The author says, "some of the models that have been used abroad may work in the US, too." Since the November election, there is a sense of urgency to take on fake news, because media platforms had been used to undermine the political process in America. They had been accused of failing to stem the flow of fallacies and falsehoods on their networks. Conspiracy theories and misinformation had been cleverly packaged by media outlets with questionable editorial ethics, with clueless voters being unable to make any distinctions between fact and fiction. As a result they made their decisions based on emotions and "personal beliefs."
Many voters were gullible enough to believe a website called the Denver Guardian, which peddled stories about Clinton murdering people and enslaving children. Have they had some critical-thinking skills, they would have doubted the story. Just because it hadn't been widely reported doesn't mean it was true. The problem is that "only 32% of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in traditional media outlets," which inhabit an almost completely separate world from the news consumed by rightwing voters. They were attracted to a cluster of pro-Trump sites founded by teenagers in Macedonia, who were motivated only by the advertising dollars they could generate, if enough people clicked on their links.
The author points out the challenge most analysts and experts face - they fail to convince millions of Americans, who "were turned off by the pundits’ incessant chatter. To these voters, the pundits were simply information peddlers with no attachments to the issues that matter. Men and women talking in front of TV cameras are too far removed from the factories, offices, bars, churches, schools, and hospitals where viewers form the relationships that determine how they process information."
Indeed, Trump seemed love rallies and understand "the importance of human connection in shaping people’s interpretation and response to the information they receive," despite the "so-called digital revolution." He knew how to forge "relationships" and win supporters' trust, and that information "consumed reflects economic and political opportunities, personal incentives, and institutional or cultural norms" of his voters. These people only "select sources – whether credible or not – that are critical of globalization and current fiscal and economic policies."
It's an irony that America, for decades, "has supported programs to foster independent media in authoritarian, resource-deprived, or dysfunctional countries. But these programs tacitly assume that the US itself is immune to the problems people in other countries encounter when they create or consume information." Yet some critics gloat, saying chickens have come home to roost.
The author's advice is that a large supply of "sound information is not sufficient to make good choices..... Information is much like the food we eat: we need to understand its ingredients, and where and how it is produced, and the effects of overconsumption....Accurate information and critical-thinking skills are indispensable to democracy. We cannot take them for granted, even in America. That is how fake news wins."
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kiers sohn Mar 12, 2017

"skills in avoiding emotional manipulation, verifying sources and credentials, detecting paid content and hate speech, and debunking fake videos and photos"....LOL! YOU BECOME USELESS TO CAPITALISM! Every tv commercial, every movie, every BS sales pitch uses these vices.
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Jose araujo Mar 9, 2017

I guess we will still have a problem if the "fake" news fighters only fight for one side. I bet that in the Ukrain example, the 15.ooo fake russian news fighters ended up promoting the views of the Ukrainian regime... We are only human afterall.
- Jose araujo Mar 10, 2017
  
  Forgive me if I'm being too skeptical, but I don't believe in fairytales either. I don’t believe in regimes that hire and trains people to speak the truth…
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- Oleksandr Aleksandrovych Mar 9, 2017
  
  Please do not confuse presentation of different opinions about an established verifyable fact with invention of "facts". "A little Russian-speaking boy crucified by Ukrainian junta" has never been proven as a fact nor is it "an alternative point of view". It is simply a deliberate concocted lie. This is the kind of "facts" that 15000 Ukrainians have been trained to unmask, not promoting the views of the Ukrainian regime.
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Petey Bee Mar 9, 2017

Fake news (off-brand outlets, similar to "fake gucci bag") wins when the real news embraces the scandal and tabloid format and destroys its own brand image.
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Michael Parsons Mar 9, 2017

Surely repudiation of the long-standig 'moral highground' of the Establishment, the Bush-Clinton oligarchy, is a sign of the achievement of a new wave of indepenant thinking, not the opposite? This article is simply the gasp nof disbelief that their diktat no longer holds sway.And if it were the result of 'Russian intervention' -which it surely isn't - then we would have much to thank them for.
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Mitchell Rossman Mar 8, 2017

Excuse me, but the teaching of critical thinking in high school is banned by law in many states in the US, namely the South and the Plain States. Something about kids not obeying their mamas.
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Oleksandr Aleksandrovych Mar 8, 2017

The author is quite right about the importance of educating critically thinking public. In the long term, this is a very sound policy. However, in the short term, Russian propaganda will destroy our societies sooner than we educate new smart thinkers. Hence, the only way to protect us in the short term is simply to ban and kick out all Russian tv and other media from our cables and internet (as best as we could), and without any remorse. These people are the enemy; this has nothing to do with the freedom of speech. Watch Yuri Bezmenov.
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Michael Public Mar 8, 2017

Pleasantly surprised by the thoughtful piece on this subject. So you want to fix the trust in the press? I think the damage is permanent in the same way very few divorcees take their ex back. To fix the trust deficit the trustability of these major press organizations needs to be built into their economic structure. Financing by government, advertising or owners all leads to major mission creep. For comparison imagine police we remunerated solely based on the advertising they sold: crime would run rampant while every police van would be covered in adverts. The press need to be financed in a way that assures strong independence. Although it is a pipe dream type solution I would propose they convert to NPOs and they automatically get (say) 1% of all tax collected. There would need to be checks and balances as to how they are selected and run but this would ensure that at their core design they are not subject to reward systems that distort their behavior, which is exactly what brought us to this point.
- Steve Hurst Mar 8, 2017
  
  Micheal
  
  Celebrity gossip tabloid type outlets and Jerry Springer are not consumed by people bothered about facts and they sell well
  
  "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people" Karl Marx except the particular religion is now Television which is morphing into intraweb Social Media, and it is Social Media which is the conduit for most Fake News. As for the Police it is likely that everybody will become the Police and be asked to report 'unusual activity', such a reporting request was recently made in the UK. Enjoy
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Steve Hurst Mar 8, 2017

Arh yes the mendacious metropolitan metrosexual media is at fault not stupid people with cognitive bias issues and a belief in conspiracy theories. Tell me why is it only people in remote rural locations that are abducted by aliens and subjected to probes onboard UFOs, never any central locations. Are aliens capable of flying across the galaxy only interested in certain specimens or having their civilization saved by American teenagers. Heavens preserve us
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Paul Griesbach Mar 8, 2017

We have more choice of potato chips than politics, institutionalized opposition more than representation. As a super cheap, quick fix, what about a tax paid for cable TV channel for each party, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, Progressives, Populists, what have you, to officially spout their particular spiel. (Would anyone even be interested to watch?)
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Comment gagnent les fake news

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