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Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Snopes says fake news isn't the problem — the media is

The day after the election, news began swirling around social media that New York Timescolumnist David Brooks had called for President-elect Donald Trump’s assassination. Snopes managing editor Brooke Binkowski had a feeling it was fake. Because, come on now, would a prominent columnist for a reputable news outlet really make that kind of comment?

Snopes has made its business out of correcting the misunderstood satire, malicious falsehoods, and poorly informed gossip that echoes across the internet — and that business is booming. Traffic jumped 85 percent over the past year to 13.6 million unique visitors in October, according to comScore. The site supports itself through advertising, and in the last three years it has made enough money to quadruple the size of its staff.

Sure enough, a bit of Snopes reporting revealed that Brooks had written a column saying Trump would likely resign or be impeached within a year. A news item published on The Rightists claimed Brooks had then said in an interview for KYRQ Radio New York that Trump should be killed. Snopes found The Rightists doesn’t even pretend to traffic in truth. In the site’s “about” section, it describes itself this way: “This is HYBRID site of news and satire. part [sic] of our stories already happens, part, not yet. NOT all of our stories are true!” What’s more, the story’s facts didn’t add up. For example, the site claimed Brooks had made the comments on a radio station — KYRQ — that didn’t exist.

Verdict: FALSE.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

CNN,MSNBC,ARE FAKE NEWS.

Anonymous said...

snopes is also fake. they've been caught "fixing" news for those who pay enough.

Anonymous said...

Funny There publisber was KNOWN for publishing FAKE QUOTES.

Anonymous said...

The legitimacy of fake news sites has never become clearer in the aftermath of Trumps election to POTUS. B. Husain Obama, on a world stage in Germany, denounced fake news sites as a detriment to voters and free elections. In other words, he is saying that the MSM, with all of their left-winged propoganda, is real news. He is pushing so hard on this, Facebook and Twitter are marching lock-step with him and the MSM deionizing sites like breitbart and SBY NEWS. In his final 60 days in office (I love hearing that) I think he will make it his biggest agenda item, since "fake" news sites, that give a fair a balanced picture of news, is the Achilles heel to the MSM propaganda machine. WE THE PEOPLE must stop this new push to suppress free speech, or the next election might go the way CNN, NY Times and the Washington Post wanted to go this time. Facebook and Twitter are already working on algorithms to spot "fake" news, and it's liberal programmers who will be setting those parameters. How convenient ...and scary.