{"id":19379,"date":"2017-12-13T17:37:36","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T22:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19379"},"modified":"2017-12-13T17:37:36","modified_gmt":"2017-12-13T22:37:36","slug":"politics-as-usual-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Fake News?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do facts matter? I mean that in all seriousness.
\nI\u2019ve said this before but it seems to me that objective truth is under siege these days. Misinformation, misleading statements and – at times – outright lies are proffered by the usual suspects \u2013 advertisers, political spin masters, corporate talking heads and the like \u2013 with reckless abandon and lightning speed. While disappointing, that isn\u2019t surprising or unusual. However, the sheer volume of lies and distortions of the truth are truly frightening.
\nAs is its reach.
\nThe advent of social media has magnified the speed with which \u201cinformation\u201d flies around the globe. And that increases its impact manifold. Folks are hit by waves and waves of this stuff in their daily \u2013 and targeted \u2013 news feeds.
\nA cacophony of biased noise that they are forced to try to make sense of.
\nWhich brings me to my concern about the ability of the general public to access objective truth on matters of public interest. Where do they get their information?
\nWell, they should be able to get facts about issues from the fourth estate; ostensibly apolitical organizations that provide either both sides of an issue or at least a fulsome analysis of one side.
\nThe news media is supposed to fill that role. I\u2019m not talking about the talk show hosts, or the shock jocks, whose sole job is to deliberately distort the truth for the purposes of generating interest and ratings. They share their opinions on issues, no matter how ill or uninformed they may be. And they do so as loudly as possible. Folks have no illusion that these talking heads are in any way unbiased.
\nI am talking about real journalists. They are supposed to present the news; information about issues of local, national or global importance in an unbiased or at least neutral manner. Or, at least as unbiased as possible because, let\u2019s face it, everyone has a bias and it\u2019s pretty difficult to be completely dispassionate as a consequence.
\nBut regardless, the mainstream media is charged with the responsibility of informing the public on things that matter. So, when they fail in that job it can have serious consequences, especially in an era where the guy at the top says all news that he doesn\u2019t like is \u201cfake news\u201d, you\u2019d better be sure your reporting is fair, and accurate.
\nRecently, CNN, an arguably well respected news organization, pushed a story, and pushed it hard, that was at best a distortion of facts. They reported about an email that supposedly proved that the Trumps had access to the hacked Clinton emails a day before everyone else had access to those emails. Turns out they were wrong. They had the dates wrong. The Trumps did get the email about the encryption key \u2013 but well after the emails were already public.
\nSo, after hours of pushing this exclusive story, they had to back down and admit that after checking their sources, they made a mistake. They retracted their story and apologized. Mitigates the damage somewhat, but none the less, the reputation of CNN has taken a hit. And justifiably so.
\nEvery media outlet in the world seems to be chasing the same story \u2013 finding evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians. Fair enough. If true, that would be a huge story. Everyone has visions of the Pulitzer Prize for a Watergate like story.
\nBut in the haste to chase the story, you can\u2019t overlook the facts. You have to do your job. You get a tip, and you check it, double check it, triple check it, source it and source it again, and then you run with it.
\nFacts matter. The truth matters.
\nWhen the supposed \u201cgood-guy\u201d is demonstrated to have pushed a false narrative, it loses all semblance of its hard won integrity. And that\u2019s never in the public\u2019s best interest.
\nThe responsible, ethical and appropriate response is to retract, correct and apologize. Anything less is to do a disservice to the very public and principles they supposedly serve.
\nCNN has done that. Now if only other purveyors of misinformation (Fox \u201cnews\u201d anyone?) would do the same.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas Do facts matter? I mean that in all seriousness. I\u2019ve said this before but it seems to me that objective truth is under siege these days. Misinformation, misleading statements and – at times – outright lies are proffered by the usual suspects \u2013 advertisers, political spin masters, corporate talking heads and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-52z","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 07:35:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}