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Mar 27, 2017
Israel's Fake News
According to a report in Haaretz, one of the leaks from one of the investigations into Netanyahu's affairs (investigation #2000, fyi) is about how as part of the deal being arranged, allegedly, between Netanyahu and Noni Moses, head of Yediot Acharonot, Yediot would write negative articles about Naftali Bennet, head of Habayit Hayehudi and a politician seen by many as a potential rival to Netanyahu's position of leadership.
This would have been Israel's version of what has become known in the USA as #FakeNews. A politician telling newspapers to do hit jobs on rival politicians and then the public just reads it as regular news and editorials not knowing that the slant was dictated by political rivals.
On the one hand, thankfully it didn't end up happening. On the other hand, how do we know that most of what we read in the newspapers and other news media is already not fake news?
This would have been Israel's version of what has become known in the USA as #FakeNews. A politician telling newspapers to do hit jobs on rival politicians and then the public just reads it as regular news and editorials not knowing that the slant was dictated by political rivals.
On the one hand, thankfully it didn't end up happening. On the other hand, how do we know that most of what we read in the newspapers and other news media is already not fake news?
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Also, there used to be a time -- at least in the U.S. -- when newspapers distinguished clearly between news articles (which tried to give the news objectively) and opinion pieces (clearly marked as opinions). Those times are long gone (led by the New York Times), and "news articles" can now be strongly biased.
ReplyDeleteIs this true in Israel also?
Actually, that is not what is known in the U.S. as "fake news." The term "fake news" is for the type of articles invented out of whole cloth and published on websites that are not in fact news organizations at all, but exist entirely either to draw revenue though advertisements based on clicks, or to disparage a particular person/party.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news
Yehoshua, fake news also includes slanted / biased reporting in regular news articles. The Israeli mass media has been guilty of this for decades, highlighting one side, sometimes ignoring the other.
DeleteYes, that's the definition the Dan Rathers of the world would have you use.
DeleteExpanding "fake news" to include any coverage one does not like renders the term meaningless (which is actually the point of those who use it in that way).
Deleteit isnt news I dont like. I dont care if they talk badly about Bennet - I didnt vote for him, though I like certain things about him. I would call it fake news because it is a targeted article specifically to report something a specific way against somebody regardless of the reality. meaning, Yediot wouldnt have written whatever articles were under discussion without netanyahu having demanded it.
ReplyDeleteYour statement is self-contradictory. "Regardless of the reality" means that the article does not accord with the reality. That has nothing to do with whether "Yediot wouldnt have written whatever articles were under discussion without netanyahu having demanded it." So, if you mean to say that the events described in the article did not occur, then it is fake news. If you mean that they were lead to publish factually true information due to some outside reason, it is not fake news, though it may be lacking in journalistic integrity.
ReplyDeleteYehoshua, indeed fake news also includes the NYT which we all know has partial reporting and has had to backtrack many times when the partial news is blatant. Ynet and Yisrael HaYom also publish fake news. Journalism today is definitely not at the same standard as it used to be.
ReplyDeleteBiased or slanted coverage is a problem, but it is a different problem. There is no need to conflate different issues by labeling them with the same term.
Delete