An echo chamber full of fake news? Blame Google and Facebook, says Murdoch chief Former Times editor and News International chief executive Robert Thomson has launched a precision attack on the "duopoly" of Google and Facebook. As debate rages around what role "fake news" played in electing Donald Trump, Thomson points out that whether news is "real" or "fake", Google and Facebook don't care. Either way, …
Was either Assad or the Russians, as nobody else had the technical ability to do it.
While I'm inclined to agree with you, it's really impossible to be sure: there are so many different groups in Syria now with so many different weapons.
But there is little upside for either the Syrians or the Russians doing it because it is likely to draw the US into the conflict in a more active role. Last week on serious German media there were reports that reason Obama decided against intervention was that the spies decided that the gassing of 1500 was actually carried out by Al Nusra with support from Turkish secret service (Turkey has a long-standing dislike for the Assad led government). There are also groups who would love to topple Assad and install some kind of more religious government and get on with the real business: war with Israel. This is why I think that, at the end of the day, some kind of deal will be done by the US and the Russians to keep Assad in power.
You neglected to mention Murdoch's self interest in this as he has invested heavily in an online advertising competitor "AppNexus".
Hardly independent journalism when you are financially invested in seeing the dominant companies' market shares reduced... sort of the opposite of his approach to Sky TV, Broadband & the printed press - funny that... :P
Blame must be shared with the browser writers that sold out to the google search home page, and all the silly webmasters enslaved to google analytics (and thus giving away all their visitors information to google) - along with google tag manage, google fonts etc etc.
Oh and all the facebook/google etc "like this page" icons that are served from the data slurpers servers instead of locally.
No, the REAL real blame must go to the users who insist the webmasters link up with Google and Facebook and the like because that's what they use, that's what EVERYONE uses, and they could care less about the rest.
IOW, it's herd mentality, and it's as prevalent in the human race as it is on other animals, much as many of us would deny it personally. That's why peer pressure is so powerful. That's why network effects work, and so on. We're social creatures; we wanna belong. We don't even think about it most of the time; it's that much of an instinct.
It's good to have an enlightened opinion of such a specialist about fake news.
Just an example: Damned lies, News Corp and Manus Island refugees
So FB and Chocolate Factory are purveyors of fake news (whatever that is) but media isn't. I can remember many a supposed story in the media that was either faked (exploding cars on one show). Also, ask Dan Rather about "Fake but accurate" comments about Dubya's military service record. If you want me to believe you start be giving the facts first and check your sources. There have been Pulitzer Prizes given to fableists of the Washington Post and NYT (Jayson Blair comes to mind).
The media may get it wrong at times, but it is self correcting. Dan Rather's story was quickly found to be false and he and CBS owned up to it and suffered the consequences. You shouldn't refuse to watch CBS forevermore just because they've been wrong. There is no news outlet that's never wrong, but the more extremist their viewpoints the more fake news they carry, the greater the chance they KNOW the news they are carrying is fake, and the less likely they will be to admit that, let alone apologize for it.
Where is the similar mechanism for the sites like 'Sputnik News' that popped up out of nowhere during the election campaign with knowingly false stories about Hillary being so ill she would be dead before she could be sworn in (guess that time in the woods was a miracle cure!) or whatever? There is none, because Facebook doesn't publish the stories directly, they rely on their users to share them around - and share they did, so long as they were slanted in the same direction as the sharer's political views. Similar for Google, the more links to a site and clicks in google searches, the higher ranked those sites become so they are seen by more people when using Google.
There's no self correction mechanism in Facebook/Google, because even if you see someone you know sharing a story that's false, it is very hard to get them to believe you. Even if you do, by that time others who saw it on their page shared to their friends, so it spreads like the cancer Hillary was supposed to have had.
That's the difference with being a one to many broadcaster like CBS - they can make a retraction that will reach as wide of an audience as the original false information. In a many to many situation like Facebook, fake news spreads far far far faster and wider than retractions / corrections ever will. People are way more likely to share "wow this is big news and gives a great reason everyone should do like me and vote for X!" than "oh that news everyone has been sharing including me is fake, I should make sure everyone knows that, even though it may cause some to change their votes back to the other candidate".
I don't know about American TV, but all UK broadcasters are licensed by the government Ofcom?), and can theoretically get into serious trouble if their "news" programmes don't meet certain standards.
How on earth RT is allowed on the air I'll never know...
I wish it worked better though. The BBC were very keen to run articles about the MMR jab and gave a lot of unjustified air time to those ill-informed types who were making a lot of noise about the supposed dangers. They never got held to account properly for that, yet the result of their coverage was a lot of parents choosing to not have their kids immunised.
"On the subject of monopolistic practices Murdoch isn't exactly pure as the driven snow himself"
Oh come now. He had his kids baptised in the River Jordan with everyone in attendance (including Anthony Blair MP) dressed all in white raiment. Murdoch is as pure as the best driven snow that money can buy,
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