(May 19, 2017 at 5:20 am)Marsellus Wallace Wrote: what about fake actual news ?
That reminds me of something... back 2 years ago, when we had a presidential election, my government mismanaged (intentionally, some would say) the organisation of elections in diaspora, causing a lot of people to cram to few centers (mainly in Europe) making long queues, standing there for hours, while others did not manage to vote at all - the reason being, historically the diaspora never voted for them. The news agencies supporting the government (the ruling party) sent some agents to a remote place in France where there was no one waiting and said at television (I'll use my own wording), "All the fuss about people cramming in huge queues and not being able to vote is a lie. Look, see the evidence for yourselves!"
So I had friends posting on facebook huge lengths of queues in cities such as Paris, while certain media agencies said "There is no such thing. It's all a lie, fabricated."
But the problem here is that the state institution that oversees the news agencies (e.g., making sure they don't lie) is subordinate to the parliament, and that means, of course, to the ruling party. So one thing that our government could do to prevent such problems (which it doesn't wanna do, of course, since they would loose a good part of their electorate) would be to weaken their grip on that institution. I don't know how other countries secure the independence of the media.
Until then, I am very disbelieving to whatever the news agencies supporting the ruling party may say, as politics is concerned. To me they sound like any corrupt politician telling his own fairytale version of reality. My distrust in them is so high that I'm not even interested what they are saying. And as long as they don't come with good evidence to prove their claims, I don't care -- and besides, I don't even have the means to fact check most of them. So instead I read the news from the news agencies who do not ass kiss the politicians of the ruling party. As for those people who subscribe to the news agencies backing the ruling party, there is nothing I can do - they simply live in a different reality.
