News"?
Blocking news or opinions of any sort is called Censorship. Going
down that road is the start of something called, "Dictatorship"!
Of course the old line corporate media knows beyond doubt that they
only report "Real News". But before we fall into the pit of name
calling, let's assume that most news is biased. What I write is most
assuredly biased in support of whatever silly thoughts I'm
entertaining at the moment. The question is not one of how to
"protect" the American People from "fake news", rather, it is how to
teach the American People to search out the source of the news, and
determine what the writer is attempting to say.
If the Media had not spent so many years confusing Americans, and had
put their efforts in teaching us how to think, there would be no
discussion about "Protecting" us. Would the Media censor the sort of
news that flashes across our TV's, radios, and internet about the end
of every year?
"A sleigh pulled by 8 flying Reindeer and carrying a fat little Elf in
a red suit with a sack full of goodies has been spotted leaving the
vicinity of the North Pole".
And what about, "President Elect Donald Trump wants what is best for
working class Americans".
Rather than censoring such reports, we simply learn to run down the
source and then determine what we want to do with the information.
The one report is based upon a poem, T'was the Night Before
Christmas". the other report was based on Bullshit.
Notice how I subtly biased the Trump report?
I guess that for me, this article is nothing new. The Establishment
has been jerking us around since the American Oligarchy was
established back in the 1700's. But if we Americans accept open
censorship such as is being proposed, then we are not much different
than a flock of sheep.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/21/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Parry writes: "The New York Times wants a system of censorship for the
> Internet to block what it calls 'fake news,' but the Times ignores its own
> record of publishing 'fake news.'"
>
> Should Facebook censor fake news? (photo: Czarek Sokolowski/AP)
>
>
> NYT Advocates Internet Censorship
> By Robert Parry, Consortium News
> 21 November 16
>
> The New York Times wants a system of censorship for the Internet to block
> what it calls "fake news," but the Times ignores its own record of
> publishing "fake news," reports Robert Parry.
>
> In its lead editorial on Sunday, The New York Times decried what it deemed
> "The Digital Virus Called Fake News" and called for Internet censorship to
> counter this alleged problem, taking particular aim at Facebook founder
> Mark
> Zuckerberg for letting "liars and con artists hijack his platform."
> As this mainstream campaign against "fake news" quickly has gained momentum
> in the past week, two false items get cited repeatedly, a claim that Pope
> Francis endorsed Donald Trump and an assertion that Trump was prevailing in
> the popular vote over Hillary Clinton. I could add another election-related
> falsehood, a hoax spread by Trump supporters that liberal documentarian
> Michael Moore was endorsing Trump when he actually was backing Clinton.
> But I also know that Clinton supporters were privately pushing some
> salacious and unsubstantiated charges about Trump's sex life, and Clinton
> personally charged that Trump was under the control of Russian President
> Vladimir Putin although there was no evidence presented to support that
> McCarthyistic accusation.
> The simple reality is that lots of dubious accusations get flung around
> during the heat of a campaign - nothing new there - and it is always a
> challenge for professional journalists to swat them down the best we can.
> What's different now is that the Times envisions some structure (or
> algorithm) for eliminating what it calls "fake news."
> But, with a stunning lack of self-awareness, the Times fails to acknowledge
> the many times that it has published "fake news," such as reporting in 2002
> that Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes meant that it was reconstituting its
> nuclear weapons program; its bogus analysis tracing the firing location of
> a
> Syrian sarin-laden rocket in 2013 back to a Syrian military base that
> turned
> out to be four times outside the rocket's range; or its publication of
> photos supposedly showing Russian soldiers inside Russia and then inside
> Ukraine in 2014 when it turned out that the "inside-Russia" photo was also
> taken inside Ukraine, destroying the premise of the story.
> These are just three examples among many of the Times publishing "fake
> news"
> - and all three appeared on Page One before being grudgingly or partially
> retracted, usually far inside the newspaper under opaque headlines so most
> readers wouldn't notice. Much of the Times' "fake news" continued to
> reverberate in support of U.S. government propaganda even after the partial
> retractions.
> Who Is the Judge?
> So, should Zuckerberg prevent Facebook users from circulating New York
> Times
> stories? Obviously, the Times would not favor that solution to the problem
> of "fake news." Instead, the Times expects to be one of the arbiters
> deciding which Internet outlets get banned and which ones get gold seals of
> approval.
> The Times lead editorial, following a front-page article on the same topic
> on Friday, leaves little doubt what the newspaper would like to see. It
> wants major Internet platforms and search engines, such as Facebook and
> Google, to close off access to sites accused of disseminating "fake news."
> The editorial said, "a big part of the responsibility for this scourge
> rests
> with internet companies like Facebook and Google, which have made it
> possible for fake news to be shared nearly instantly with millions of users
> and have been slow to block it from their sites. .
> "Facebook says it is working on weeding out such fabrications. It said last
> Monday that it would no longer place Facebook-powered ads on fake news
> websites, a move that could cost Facebook and those fake news sites a
> lucrative source of revenue. Earlier on the same day, Google said it would
> stop letting those sites use its ad placement network. These steps would
> help, but Facebook, in particular, owes its users, and democracy itself,
> far
> more.
> "Facebook has demonstrated that it can effectively block content like
> click-bait articles and spam from its platform by tweaking its algorithms,
> which determine what links, photos and ads users see in their news feeds. .
> Facebook managers are constantly changing and refining the algorithms,
> which
> means the system is malleable and subject to human judgment."
> The Times editorial continued: "This summer, Facebook decided to show more
> posts from friends and family members in users' news feeds and reduce
> stories from news organizations, because that's what it said users wanted.
> If it can do that, surely its programmers can train the software to spot
> bogus stories and outwit the people producing this garbage. .
> "Mr. Zuckerberg himself has spoken at length about how social media can
> help
> improve society. . None of that will happen if he continues to let liars
> and
> con artists hijack his platform."
> Gray Areas
> But the problem is that while some falsehoods may be obvious and clear-cut,
> much information exists in a gray area in which two or more sides may
> disagree on what the facts are. And the U.S. government doesn't always tell
> the truth although you would be hard-pressed to find recent examples of the
> Times recognizing that reality. Especially over the past several decades,
> the Times has usually embraced the Official Version of a disputed event and
> has deemed serious skepticism out of bounds.
> That was the way the Times treated denials from the Iraqi government and
> some outside experts who disputed the "aluminum tube" story in 2002 - and
> how the Times has brushed off disagreements regarding the U.S. government's
> portrayal of events in Syria, Ukraine and Russia. Increasingly, the Times
> has come across as a propaganda conduit for Official Washington rather than
> a professional journalistic entity.
> But the Times and other mainstream news outlets - along with some favored
> Internet sites - now sit on a Google-financed entity called the First Draft
> Coalition, which presents itself as a kind of Ministry of Truth that will
> decide which stories are true and which are "fake."
> If the Times' editorial recommendations are followed, the disfavored
> stories
> and the sites publishing them would no longer be accessible through popular
> search engines and platforms, essentially blocking the public's access to
> them. [See Consortiumnews.com's "What to Do About 'Fake News.'"]
> The Times asserts that such censorship would be good for democracy - and it
> surely is true that hoaxes and baseless conspiracy theories are no help to
> democracy - but regulation of information in the manner that the Times
> suggests has more than a whiff of Orwellian totalitarianism to it.
> And the proposal is especially troubling coming from the Times, with its
> checkered recent record of disseminating dangerous disinformation.
>
> ________________________________________
> Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
> for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
> book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book
> (from
> Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
>
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> Should Facebook censor fake news? (photo: Czarek Sokolowski/AP)
> https://consortiumnews.com/2016/11/20/nyt-advocates-internet-censorship/http
> s://consortiumnews.com/2016/11/20/nyt-advocates-internet-censorship/
> NYT Advocates Internet Censorship
> By Robert Parry, Consortium News
> 21 November 16
> The New York Times wants a system of censorship for the Internet to block
> what it calls "fake news," but the Times ignores its own record of
> publishing "fake news," reports Robert Parry.
> n its lead editorial on Sunday, The New York Times decried what it deemed
> "The Digital Virus Called Fake News" and called for Internet censorship to
> counter this alleged problem, taking particular aim at Facebook founder
> Mark
> Zuckerberg for letting "liars and con artists hijack his platform."
> As this mainstream campaign against "fake news" quickly has gained momentum
> in the past week, two false items get cited repeatedly, a claim that Pope
> Francis endorsed Donald Trump and an assertion that Trump was prevailing in
> the popular vote over Hillary Clinton. I could add another election-related
> falsehood, a hoax spread by Trump supporters that liberal documentarian
> Michael Moore was endorsing Trump when he actually was backing Clinton.
> But I also know that Clinton supporters were privately pushing some
> salacious and unsubstantiated charges about Trump's sex life, and Clinton
> personally charged that Trump was under the control of Russian President
> Vladimir Putin although there was no evidence presented to support that
> McCarthyistic accusation.
> The simple reality is that lots of dubious accusations get flung around
> during the heat of a campaign - nothing new there - and it is always a
> challenge for professional journalists to swat them down the best we can.
> What's different now is that the Times envisions some structure (or
> algorithm) for eliminating what it calls "fake news."
> But, with a stunning lack of self-awareness, the Times fails to acknowledge
> the many times that it has published "fake news," such as reporting in 2002
> that Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes meant that it was reconstituting its
> nuclear weapons program; its bogus analysis tracing the firing location of
> a
> Syrian sarin-laden rocket in 2013 back to a Syrian military base that
> turned
> out to be four times outside the rocket's range; or its publication of
> photos supposedly showing Russian soldiers inside Russia and then inside
> Ukraine in 2014 when it turned out that the "inside-Russia" photo was also
> taken inside Ukraine, destroying the premise of the story.
> These are just three examples among many of the Times publishing "fake
> news"
> - and all three appeared on Page One before being grudgingly or partially
> retracted, usually far inside the newspaper under opaque headlines so most
> readers wouldn't notice. Much of the Times' "fake news" continued to
> reverberate in support of U.S. government propaganda even after the partial
> retractions.
> Who Is the Judge?
> So, should Zuckerberg prevent Facebook users from circulating New York
> Times
> stories? Obviously, the Times would not favor that solution to the problem
> of "fake news." Instead, the Times expects to be one of the arbiters
> deciding which Internet outlets get banned and which ones get gold seals of
> approval.
> The Times lead editorial, following a front-page article on the same topic
> on Friday, leaves little doubt what the newspaper would like to see. It
> wants major Internet platforms and search engines, such as Facebook and
> Google, to close off access to sites accused of disseminating "fake news."
> The editorial said, "a big part of the responsibility for this scourge
> rests
> with internet companies like Facebook and Google, which have made it
> possible for fake news to be shared nearly instantly with millions of users
> and have been slow to block it from their sites. .
> "Facebook says it is working on weeding out such fabrications. It said last
> Monday that it would no longer place Facebook-powered ads on fake news
> websites, a move that could cost Facebook and those fake news sites a
> lucrative source of revenue. Earlier on the same day, Google said it would
> stop letting those sites use its ad placement network. These steps would
> help, but Facebook, in particular, owes its users, and democracy itself,
> far
> more.
> "Facebook has demonstrated that it can effectively block content like
> click-bait articles and spam from its platform by tweaking its algorithms,
> which determine what links, photos and ads users see in their news feeds. .
> Facebook managers are constantly changing and refining the algorithms,
> which
> means the system is malleable and subject to human judgment."
> The Times editorial continued: "This summer, Facebook decided to show more
> posts from friends and family members in users' news feeds and reduce
> stories from news organizations, because that's what it said users wanted.
> If it can do that, surely its programmers can train the software to spot
> bogus stories and outwit the people producing this garbage. .
> "Mr. Zuckerberg himself has spoken at length about how social media can
> help
> improve society. . None of that will happen if he continues to let liars
> and
> con artists hijack his platform."
> Gray Areas
> But the problem is that while some falsehoods may be obvious and clear-cut,
> much information exists in a gray area in which two or more sides may
> disagree on what the facts are. And the U.S. government doesn't always tell
> the truth although you would be hard-pressed to find recent examples of the
> Times recognizing that reality. Especially over the past several decades,
> the Times has usually embraced the Official Version of a disputed event and
> has deemed serious skepticism out of bounds.
> That was the way the Times treated denials from the Iraqi government and
> some outside experts who disputed the "aluminum tube" story in 2002 - and
> how the Times has brushed off disagreements regarding the U.S. government's
> portrayal of events in Syria, Ukraine and Russia. Increasingly, the Times
> has come across as a propaganda conduit for Official Washington rather than
> a professional journalistic entity.
> But the Times and other mainstream news outlets - along with some favored
> Internet sites - now sit on a Google-financed entity called the First Draft
> Coalition, which presents itself as a kind of Ministry of Truth that will
> decide which stories are true and which are "fake."
> If the Times' editorial recommendations are followed, the disfavored
> stories
> and the sites publishing them would no longer be accessible through popular
> search engines and platforms, essentially blocking the public's access to
> them. [See Consortiumnews.com's "What to Do About 'Fake News.'"]
> The Times asserts that such censorship would be good for democracy - and it
> surely is true that hoaxes and baseless conspiracy theories are no help to
> democracy - but regulation of information in the manner that the Times
> suggests has more than a whiff of Orwellian totalitarianism to it.
> And the proposal is especially troubling coming from the Times, with its
> checkered recent record of disseminating dangerous disinformation.
>
> Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
> for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
> book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book
> (from
> Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
>
>
>
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