If you believe all negative news about Trump is "fake..."

Politics and Social Issues
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… show me how it’s being done.

Since there seems to be a suprising amount of support for Trump here, and distrust for the mainstream media, maybe someone can help me understand this. (I have asked about this in a number of forums in the past 2 years but never gotten a satisfactory answer.)

First: I’m well aware that there are sloppy, unethical and stupid journalists. As in any field, there are people who should not be there. I am also aware that media bias exists (and has always existed), and that certain individual media outlets that have pretty obvious agendas.

What I don’t understand is the idea that “the mainstream media” is in the business of creating “fake news.” And by “fake,” I don’t mean biased, or spun, but fabricated, false narratives.

If this is happening, then how is it happening, logistically?

For the sake of argument, I will accept it as a “given” that the Washington Post, the New York Times, MSN, CNN, etc. etc. etc. are all lying about Trump.

I’m simply asking how these elaborate, detailed narratives are being created.

When I say I have never gotten a satisfactory answer, it’s been because people have provided examples of errors or bias (which isn’t “fake,”) or said, “MSN (or whichever) makes up something and they all go along like sheep.”

I’ve already provided the “given” that they are lying. I want to know HOW:

✓ Tens of thousands of journalists, at thousands of competing outlets worldwide;

✓ the AP wire;

✓ present and past WH staff;

✓ elected officials across the nation;

✓ the FBI and our justice system;

✓ Pew, Barna and Gallup;

✓ old friends, business partners and employees of Donald Trump;

✓ dozens of random women;

✓ world leaders (including our allies);

✓ citizens in other developed nations;

✓ and the majority of economists, historians, political scientists, scientists of all stripes, physicians, patient advocacy groups, urban planners, climatologists, environmentalists, military strategy experts, educators, etc etc etc…

… are collaborating in a massive stage show to destroy and discredit this President.

How are different journalists inventing these stories simultaneously and updating them dozens of times each day?

Are they interviewing sources that don’t exist? Fabricating transcripts? Falsifying video, audio, court documents on everything?

How is it that no one has veered from the script?

And who is WRITING the script? Because somebody has to be “in charge” of all this.

Show me how this Rube Goldberg machine works.

Take the question OUT of the realm of ideology or even Trump. Articulate this conspiracy, which makes the JFK Assassination look like a game of Candyland.

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Who would you think the Washington Post, the New York Times, MSN, CNN would support?

Trump or bernie as the two candidates???

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Player; There is one post in this thread. I know we go off on tangents regularly, but, try to stay on topic, for, I don’t know, the first page of the thread.

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Who would you think the Washington Post, the New York Times, MSN, CNN would support?

Trump or bernie as the two candidates???


 

??? You must be responding to a different topic.

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Take it easy on Player. He typed two(ish) lines of text, which is almost double his usual output. We can’t expect quality and quantity to both increase at the same time.

The point of this thread is why I consider Trump supporters to be simply another flavour of conspiracy theorist or religious person- they have no evidence, just a feeling that they ‘know’ everything confirming what they already believe is true.

It is interesting to hear what they think, but don’t expect to feel satisfied by any of the responses. If they had good reasons to believe, those reasons would have been long been plastered all over Fox and other right-wing “media” outlets. I fully expect deflection and a whole lot of ‘what-about-isms’ to be posted, but zero evidence (other than the idea that their lack of evidence is somehow evidence.)

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0

The point of this thread is why I consider Trump supporters to be simply another flavour of conspiracy theorist or religious person
 

Exactly. To further explain:

If an idea is simply ludicrous, it should be evident regardless of your political ideology.

For example: It’s impossible to overstate how much I detest Donald Trump. I’ve found him disgusting since the 1980s, and I fear he’s damaging the US beyond repair.

Suppose I logged online and saw this news trending:

Researchers conclude Trump responsible for JFK assassination, Jack the Ripper killings, Pompeii

(Wash. DC) — A panel of esteemed researchers from around the world have released a study showing conclusive proof that President Donald Trump has been personally responsible for every bad thing that’s ever happened.

“We have DNA, fingerprints and video proving that President Donald Trump caused the 1929 stock market crash that led to the Great Depression, and that he invented the Black Plague virus that wiped out half of Europe in the Middle Ages,” said Scientist Dr. Joe Schmo. “And it turns out that in the 1st Century, he was known as Judas Iscariot.”


Now as evil as I think Trump is, I would still recognize that this premise is simply impossible.

It seems to me thar any Trump supporter with an IQ over 93 and the common sense of a tangerine could do the same about the idea that all media sources are lying and somehow in a conspiracy to destroy him.

 

 

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"It seems to me that any Trump supporter with an IQ over 93 and the common sense of a tangerine could do the same about the idea that all media sources are lying and somehow in a conspiracy to destroy him."
I'm sure both of them do.
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I’m sure both of them do.
You just made me snort...!

But seriously, I know there are intelligent Trump supporters out there, who have been swept away by emotion and just haven’t thought this through… I hope, anyway

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Yes, there are lots of intelligent Trump supporters out there. But that’s merely another similarity they have with conspiracy theorists and religious people.

Many conspiracy theorists and religious people are much more intelligent than I am, but they have this giant hole in the area of their thinking that detects personal bias. Since it’s a human trait (I have it, but luckily my bias is correct), I don’t always blame the person, but after a while is does wear on me and I can get more emotionally invested in the discussion that I want or should.

My group of friends is almost exclusively smart, hard-working, funny, honest, friendly people. They are also all religious and prone to believing right-wing conspiracies (nothing too hardcore, just things like: capitalists are all wonderful people who the left are trying to destroy, or Trudeau [I’m Canadian] only lies and his opponents only tell the truth.) As much as I like having challenging conversations and learning things, I hate political or religious topics with them because I’m vastly outnumbered, and thus it’s too easy for all of them to basically ignore anything I say and just back each other up with more and more bad arguments.

This place is my refuge of sanity, because, although there are the obligatory trolls and fringe dwellers, there are also rational, thoughtful people who give me the dose of hope I need to not despair too much.

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So, if the underlying question is, are people that dumb? I think the answer is yes. But if you go around saying that, you’re not going to get very far in a conversation. I try to engage a PhD every now and then just to keep a check on myself. I was listening to a philosopher talk about moral realism recently and he used the word “habituated”. It’s not just an alternative for calling people dumb.

We wouldn’t call someone who grew up on a plantation in New Orleans 200 years ago “dumb” for not knowing the latest philosophy and science on human intelligence and inheritance. They wouldn’t know about genetics at all because no one did. They would be habituated to thinking the condition of slavery was natural. If they tried to work against that reality, the system would crush them. Unless they got off that plantation and went to the best schooling available at the time, they wouldn’t have much incentive to question it.

Many people today find themselves torn between their habituated culture and the world of information and ideas outside of it. This is not a left or right problem. Look to bees, GMOs and vaccines for the same phenomenon. Many of them deal with it by positing a system that they can’t access and can’t control and finding people who agree with them about that. They take comfort there rather than attempt to understand the real world.

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"So, if the underlying question is, are people that dumb? I think the answer is yes."
Who's habituated, who's dumb, and how can you tell the difference?

I give most people a free pass until I show them how they are wrong. Then if they keep being wrong on purpose, I label them ‘willfully ignorant’ (the ultimate insult in my opinion). Otherwise I see how and why they think the way they do and judge them based on that.

On topics of morality where there’s a legitimate spectrum of beliefs, I don’t come down as hard, but when it comes to facts and/or logic, I have little patience.

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That can be a challenge, but you can’t get inside someone’s head, so I’ve become less interested in people’s motives lately. They might not even know them. There’s a TED talk about the reaction you described, if we disagree with someone our first reaction is to assume they are misinformed. That can be true, but once you are past that point, it gets a lot more difficult. The TED talk didn’t give an answer if I remember right.

The other problem is, how do you educate 60 million people when there are powerful people trying to prevent you from doing that? I’m getting off topic and above my pay grade, but we have to live with people who don’t think like us until we figure that out. There’s a lot we can get done despite disagreement and I think if we focus on that stuff, we’ll figure out the rest.

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My interest is very much with the motives behind beliefs. The reason someone believes something different than me is fascinating. It never ceases to amaze me how two people can have exactly the same factual information and come to literally opposite conclusions.

Most people don’t have a clue why they believe something and don’t seem to care. That’s probably why telling them how and why they’re wrong falls on deaf ears.

You’re right that educating millions on how to think is ultimately the issue, but the sheer volume of ignorance has a momentum that makes changing course veeeery slow. And those interested in keeping the ignorant ignorant have the advantage of all that ignorance to work with. Trump is a god-send to them. It’s creepy seeing Trump accidentally do everything the ignorance-pushers want him to do and all his followers taking it in without question.

Getting back on topic, maybe I’m completely wrong about Trump and some Trump followers come and show me why I should believe the negative reporting on Trump is fake.

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[So, if the underlying question is, are people that dumb? I think the answer is yes. But if you go around saying that, you’re not going to get very far in a conversation...

We wouldn’t call someone who grew up on a plantation in New Orleans 200 years ago “dumb” for not knowing the latest philosophy and science on human intelligence and inheritance.]


And maybe I’m just not posing my question correctly. Because to me, this seems to be more of a question about logic, and less about politics.

My question is about logistics. Only logistics. I don’t ask anyone to prove to me that the media is “liberal” or that any particular report is wrong. I’m asking HOW such a giant conspiracy could operate … because thousands of writers can’t spontaneously invent all these events, scandals and claims that magically fit together. Not even with high-speed Internet. To be “fake news,” someone would have to be writing and directing it all.

Going beyond logic: I realize most people don’t understand how newsrooms work, or what journalists are like.

In general, journalists are competitive and backbiting. They herd like cats. They want to scoop other reporters and get their bylines on exclusive stories.

If a competitor (or even a colleague) runs something false, they want to get credit for exposing it.

And they really, really hate it when an editor or publisher demands a certain angle. I remember years ago watching a colleage and editor literally come close to blows over a change that was made to a bylined article to please an advertiser.

So … yes, there is SOME corporate influence, and yes, publishers have agendas. But the idea that the corporate overlords just tell the writers what to say, or that all the journalists are collaborating on some giant work of fiction, is just ridiculous.

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Many conspiracy theorists and religious people are much more intelligent than I am, but they have this giant hole in the area of their thinking that detects personal bias.
Actually, if you look into Qanon (Pizzagate, etc), it has LOT in common with the Satanic Panic of the 1980s & 1990s. The lines of thought are very similar, and the same players, mainly Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians, are central to both conspiracies.
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"Qanon (Pizzagate, etc), it has LOT in common with the Satanic Panic of the 1980s & 1990s."
That's why what someone believes is less important than why they believe it. Pizzagate, Mormonism, sasquatch, ghosts, flat-earth, healing crystals, and all the other examples of irrational ideas have nothing in common other than the mental errors that lead to them.

Understanding the root of the problem is the only way to solve it.

If someone comes on here to point out their justification for dismissing all negative news about Trump, we are likely to see the same mistakes made by believers in all the examples I listed above. If, however, they show that there are excellent reasons for dismissing the reports, I’ll be truly amazed and embarrassed and grateful.

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I understand the actual question Tee. It’s either rhetorical to someone like me, or something you’ll never get a straight answer to from someone who believes the conspiracy. I’ve walked people all the way through how to determine what’s true and had agreement on the complete scientific method, then tried to apply it to whatever they were trying to sell me, and it’s like a switch flips, they go back to believing for no reason. They say things like “too many questions”, or bring up some other conspiracy that turned out to be true, thus proving all conspiracies are true. It’s just a cascade of logic fallacies.

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“To be “fake news,” someone would have to be writing and directing it all.”

i haved claimed previously that the output of this writer is the spreading of superficial analysis of the real world. This is an example.

Its a conversation to distract from serious critical analysis of how our news is reported and why news is presented essentially the same on all corporate media stations.

 

It is fake news because its not genuine, objective or honest when half truths are presented or outright false claims are pushed forward (see claim about trump being a russian agent).

All the criticism of trump from the likes of cnn, msnbc, etc is from the right not left in the economic and foriegn policy space. Examples (something that you guys never provide) are the reporting on the attempted coup in Venezuela, the pull out of troops in syria, the cease of war “games” off the n korean coast, the reporting of the US economy as a recovering and healthy one while silent on the unprecedented rate of deregulation of the economy and the environmental distruction underway etc. Look at NYT healine on recent shootings when it claimed Trump wants to bring people together. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Any slight difference these corporate giants might have with Fox news on trump will all be forgiven when we have trump vs bernie. Thats my point.

 

And if you think that it takes a conspiracy to presest news with a certain agenda with the jounos taking instructions from thier masters you obviously have no idea or appreciation of the propaganda model in operation.

 

Here is an excellent 3 minute clip of andrew marr from the bbc and chomsky when marr proclaims he is never censored and is free to write what he wants.

 

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Wow, Player can use paragraphs and links.

This is Chomsky at his worst. He’s saying that the propaganda machine doesn’t just censor, it gets the majority of people to believe all the lies. He’s confusing propaganda with culture. What he’s saying could only be maintained if the majority of people believed it. It’s what I was saying about slavery in the South 200 years ago. We have competing ideas about economics and politics now. How do you think Ocasio-Cortez got elected?

As for examples, they are given frequently, simply naming some headlines didn’t add anything to this conversation.

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It takes a sane person about three or four tweets to see that Trump is morally bankrupt, a moron, and utterly unsuited to lead anything involving humans, or any other living thing for that matter.

If you don’t like the news reporting how horrible Trump is, maybe get mad at the bozo providing all the fodder for the stories.