This story about Time Cook's comments on Fake News is being widely reported. Any comments?

2020? (And NOT his vision!)

Fake news is not a new phenomenon. During WWI the British embarked on a massive fake news project to glorify the war and make it look like something other than what it was - an incredible blood bath. They did so because, if the reality was known, no one would enlist. I recall reading that the Nazi propaganda machine was modeled on the British fake news initiative in WWI.

Having said that, I believe the fake news of today is worse because the internet has made it much easier to accomplish and therefore people like Trump can aim it at very specific segments of society. And, this audience likely only consumes fake news . Does anyone think that the largest part of Trump's base reads The New York Times, The Manchester Chronicle, The Washington Post, et cetera?

Unfortunately, fake news sites are also read by people who should know better….like Trump. It appears that his following of Breitbart got a very dangerous person into the White House as his chief advisor.

The general response to Kellyanne Conway's lie about a "Bowling Green Massacre" underscores the danger of fake news. According to MarketWatch, 51% of Trump voters agree that the Bowling Green massacre shows why the U.S. needs his travel ban.

Recent comments from the White House trumpeters (a.k.a. staff) is beginning to sound like the early days of the Nazi regime in Germany. As to the alleged voting fraud It sounds as if the Voldemort White House credo is an historic quote...

A little late.

It's never late so long as Trump keeps spewing it.

This morning, when asked a question that referenced Flynn's departure, Trump once again made the media the scapegoat. According to Trump, Flynn is not gone because he broke the law in speaking to the Russians and then lied about it to the Vice President.

Trump said Flynn is gone because he was badly treated by the fake media. As long as Trump keeps regurgitating this kind of nonsense, he needs to be called out. It's not enough that he keeps making a laughing stock of himself in front of the world.

I think dboh was referring to Germany in 1933 or thereabouts.

I think you're giving Trump both more and less credit than he deserves.

When Hitler said that, he was being insightful and shrewd, and he maaay even have stuck a toe across the line into "wise" territory.

He understood that he was lying, he understood the nature of his lies, and he lied with 20-20 foresight of the implications and potential (read desired) consequences of his lying.

I don't think Trump is the possessor of any of Hitler's attributes.

Nor, on the other hand, do I think he lies with malevolent intent as did Hitler.

I don't think he even knows that he's lying.

He's proved with 100% reliability that he's incapable of accepting the fact that he's ever lost or been wrong by invariably twisting reality to make himself a winner or, as the case may be, right (even if only in his own mind), and I think that's precisely at the root of his voter fraud allegations: if there's an appearance that he lost it's because something insidious has made it appear that way.

And I don't think he's capable of foreseeing any consequences of his imaginary truths beyond the immediacy of their clearing up the mystery of why he appears to have lost or been wrong in the first place (although it's clear that people around him do see potential benefits in them and are exploiting them to their own advantage, which makes it feel more like the final years of Reagan's presidency than like Nazi Germany).

I think that what we have here is a classic case of a defendant who's incapable of understanding the nature of the charges against him.

America has sent an insane man to the White House and is about to find out the hard way!

Reference my post immediately preceding this one.

Actually, I was talking about the talking about fake news. It's too late to talk about it now; why wasn't Cook talking about it when when fake news was starting to take over? This is worse than the trifids.

Here are the thoughts of a reporter on the diminishing trust in mainstream media.

Neil MzcDonald's observations are not new. Nearly three years ago I was privileged to be present at Texas Christian University's Bob Scheiffer School of Communications annual "state of the profession" colloquium chaired by the aforesaid Bob Schieffer (the highly respected Dean of CBS News reporters) and a panel consisting of a who's who in reporting around the world. Note those were actual on the scene reporters not news readers or talking heads who never get out of the studio. There were several major surprises at that colloquium:

• The unanimous opinion of the panel that even the largest news organizations were not doing an adequate job of fact checking stories.
• Very few news organizations were or could exercise even cursory editorial oversight
• Rising costs and falling revenues were resulting in the use of unverified and questionable sources
• A majority of "news" was coming from unpaid bloggers many of which have little legitimacy
• Bob Scheiffer's assertion, "Washington is broken and I don't know if it can be fixed" followed by the announcement of his retirement from CBS News

The situation has not improved since then.

Well that one is so common... well, "common" implies that it happens a lot, not constantly, so that's the wrong word. Anyway, the phenomena has a name, "propaganda". There's absolutely nothing new about that, it's been happening since we've had any form of governance in the world. It happens whether or not a country is at war, but war (declared or otherwise) certainly intensifies it. So I don't know if it's fair to compare lying about something specific to lying about pretty much everything. At least propaganda has a specific goal.

(and in a lot of cases, propoganda is believed by a majority of the target demographic at the time, Trump does not seem to be enjoying this)

Trump is pretty much 100% successful in having his propaganda believed by the target audience, because his target audience is not the majority of Americans. His target continues to be his base - the rabid and defiantly ignorant followers who show up at his rallies to bow down and kiss his feet.

I’m afraid propaganda and fake news occur so much more frequently than you suggest that it is in fact virtually constant. It has particularly been on the increase with the advent of the internet and its global reach and perceived reliability, and the various (but generally deleterious) effects of this on the classic media. The ‘requirement’ of war you mention is easily met, both in the real sense (there are plenty of wars going on across the world) as figuratively (e.g., war on drugs, ‘terrorism’ etc.), and in the minds of many people (e.g., increasingly polar politics).

As to the specificity of the propaganda you perceive, I think that is also questionable. Yes, the blatant lies still feature prominently, but another, perhaps even more important goal is to confuse the adversary (often the general public) sufficiently so it won’t or can’t believe anything anymore and loses track of the reliably factual forest for the fake news trees in their underbrush of lies. Controlling the media helps a lot, but even sophisticated audiences can be fooled often and long enough for the perpetrator to achieve certain goals by delaying unified and consistent responses.

There is actually quite a bit of attention devoted to documenting and debunking fake news, but you have to dig for it (e.g., StopFake, focused on Ukraine, but offering more general information as well) and EU vs Disinformation, to name just a couple. There are also efforts to rate web sites for bias (Media bias/fact check) or reliability/veracity, as exemplified by browser extensions like Fake News Monitor (Chrome). Even so, all these sources require an attentive and critical user, probably putting it beyond general usage. To achieve that, education is needed.

The cynicism engendered by hypocritical politicians who rail against their opponents while perpetrating the same offenses blamed on these same opponents can only increase when such methods are shown to be successful. Talking about war, anyone? That doesn’t seem to sound so bad any longer to many who haven’t actually experienced a real one, and, worse, even to many of those who have.

Unfortunately, the average US citizen has never been much interested in the rest of the world, unless something was going on that directly (and negatively) affected him/her, and then only to the extent of making that negative stop, often regardless of the method used. The latter has perhaps a lot to do with the fact that the US has not been subjected to a devastating war on its own soil, in which most major population centers (including the associated population), transportation and industry infrastructure were destroyed. The civil war only scratched that surface, but had it even been really all-encompassing, its deterring effects on the population would still have dissipated generations ago. Look at Europe to see this form of societal amnesia in action, where EEC/EU efforts to join together to stop a new conflagration threaten to derail within 3 generations (say, 25 yrs) after the last, amidst rhetoric that more than just marginally resembles the aggressively manipulative garbage leading to WW2. Talking about throwing out the baby with the bathwater…

Fake news and propaganda arguably featured prominently in a number of recent events, from the Dutch vote to reject an EU association treaty with Ukraine to the Brexit vote (both NON-binding referenda!) and the election of Trump. That isn’t to say that there aren’t any underlying grievances that needed to be addressed, but it turns out that many of those grievances had little if anything to do with the actual issues put to the electorate. It’s the result of what I’ve called the ‘FU’ Society for years. And I have to confess that I don’t see things improving anytime soon. Contrary to what many seem to think, things can always get worse. A lot worse. Should that happen and people experience a real McConflagration, we have precious few generations to try and fix things before the pressure to regress becomes irresistible, again.

This past Sunday evening Scott Pelley did a 60 Minutes report on "Fake News" which underlined the importance of getting the truth out. Essentially the conclusion was that, as long as it's prepared in a 'newsy' fashion, people will believe anything. Pelley provided some sample headlines, one of which was 'Colonospcopy reveals Trump has brain cancer' and I thought: "How could anyone, who knows what a colonoscopy is, believe something as impossible as that?" Then I thought again: "Maybe it is possible. After all, we have to assume that Trump's brain is in his head, and since his head is …."

Hahahaha