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Media Bias [Merged]

I am on a couple of political pages on FB......run into so many people who will not read certain publications or web site's 'cause they are perceived to be right wing.........it does not seem to matter that the information might be correct......



Love your post ;)



Cheers
Larry
 
interesting study that looked at the amount of fake news shared on facebook during the 2016 campaign.

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586

A lot to digest but to sum up:

Not as much fake news shared as one would think.

Fake news shared mostly by older people and by ultra right wing conservatives.

 
Saw the same thing on CBC.

Their take... People who called themselves liberals shared no fake stories, New York research finds. People over 65 and ultra conservatives shared about seven times more fake information.

Now I'm not a rocket scientist... but 7x0 = 0 in my math.


The real takeaway point is that much of the phenomena in the over 65 age group can be accounted for by poor digital literacy.
 
ModlrMike said:
Saw the same thing on CBC.

Their take... People who called themselves liberals shared no fake stories, New York research finds. People over 65 and ultra conservatives shared about seven times more fake information.

Now I'm not a rocket scientist... but 7x0 = 0 in my math.


The real takeaway point is that much of the phenomena in the over 65 age group can be accounted for by poor digital literacy.

that was something mentioned in the study.  Older people also tend to be conservative but that they may be more prone to sharing fake news than others.

My overall take is that fake news isn't shared as much as we may think.

Edit to add to what ModlrMike stated:  From the study link above:  http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586

Within this cohort, lower levels of digital literacy could be compounded by the tendency to use social endorsements as credibility cues (19). If true, this would imply a growing impact as more Americans from older age groups join online social communities. A second possibility, drawn from cognitive and social psychology, suggests a general effect of aging on memory. Under this account, memory deteriorates with age in a way that particularly undermines resistance to “illusions of truth” and other effects related to belief persistence and the availability heuristic, especially in relation to source cues (20–22). The severity of these effects would theoretically increase with the complexity of the information environment and the prevalence of misinformation.

Disclosure:  I saw the headline and only read the first two lines of the CBC article and then looked for the source.  The link provided is the source doc, so from there form whatever opinion you want on the study but it looks like a decent body of work on the subject.
 
How it was conducted: A survey of 3,500 people was conducted by pollster YouGov from April to November 2016, including a sample of 1,300 respondents who shared access to their Facebook time lines.

Partisan split: Education, income, and gender had no bearing on an individual’s tendency to share fake stories. However, there was a significant partisan difference: 18% of Republicans shared fake news links, versus fewer than 4% of Democrats. However, the researchers suggested this could be because most fake news during the campaign tended to be pro-Trump or anti-Clinton rather than because conservatives have any greater underlying tendency to share fake news.

https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/612741/whos-sharing-fake-news-on-facebook-older-republicans/

Then again:

Junk news on social media is shared predominantly by the right wing

Analyzing the dynamics of online political news sharing shows that there’s an ideological pattern to who’s spreading the bad stuff.

The study: Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute monitored 13,500 politically active US Twitter users and 48,000 public Facebook pages for the three months ahead of the recent State of the Union address. They then studied how political news that was extremist, sensationalist, conspiratorial, fake, or otherwise characteristic of “junk” got shared.

The results: On Twitter, a core of Trump supporters shared “the widest range of known junk news sources” and circulated “more junk news than all the other groups put together.” On Facebook, extreme hard-right pages (not Republican pages) achieved a similar feat.

Why it matters: Fake news remains a huge headache for social networks and political leaders. A better understanding of how it’s shared could help clean it up.

https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/610194/junk-news-on-social-media-is-shared-predominantly-by-the-right-wing/
 
For the Cdn viewers of CNN:

https://www.kusi.com/cnn-requests-kusi-for-local-view-on-the-border-declines-our-reporter-after-finding-out-wall-works/

CNN requests KUSI (SAN DIEGO) for local view on the border, declines our reporter after finding out wall works - 10 Jan 19    (Videos at Link)

SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – Thursday morning, CNN called the KUSI Newsroom asking if one of our reporters could give them a local view of the debate surrounding the border wall and government shutdown. KUSI offered our own Dan Plante, who has reported dozens of times on the border, including one story from 2016 that was retweeted by former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, and posted on DrudgeReport.com. The Border Fence Tour is below.

We believe CNN declined a report from KUSI because we informed them that most Border Patrol Agents we have spoken to told us the barrier does in fact work. We have continuously been told by Border Patrol Agents that the barrier along the Southern border helps prevent illegal entries, drugs, and weapons from entering the United States, and the numbers prove it.

@KUSINews
· Jan 10, 2019
Thursday morning, @CNN called the KUSI Newsroom asking if a reporter could give them a local view of the debate surrounding the border wall and government shutdown. After we informed them about our past reports, they declined to hear from us.


CNN PR replied to our tweet with the following statement, “We called several local stations to book someone for a show. We didn’t end up booking any of them. That happens many times every single day. We did, however, book a reporter from KUSI for a story on immigration and the border wall in November. This is a non story.
 
Really? A wall stops "weapons" from entering the US. The US is worried about weapons entering it's territory when any idiot can already acquire an arsenal inside the US.

Is the worry purely from a commercial point of view then: they don't want anyone competing with the likes of Smith & Wesson, Colt, Remington and the likes?
 
The wall would actually likely save alot of Mexican lives in so far as the number of guns flowing into Mexico from the US.

Both from illegal sources and the government (ATF).
 
SeaKingTacco said:
Journeyman,

The reaction in the comments section that you highlighted is exactly the problem with this "bright" idea.

For the full on loonies, this destroys whatever credibility the Canadian media once had. Welcome the full blown, post fact Trumpites to Canada.

Even for more reasoned and thoughtful folks, it has now got to plant at least a seed of doubt in peoples minds that any news coverage the Liberals get from here on out is tainted. Even I wonder how the Conservatives can possibly get a fair shake, now. Even sub-conciously, if you are a reporter or editor in Canada and the difference between having a job or not having one is this program, how hard are you going to try to dig up dirt on the Liberals?

This is precisely why governments should have nothing...NOTHING...to do with media, beyond holding press conferences amd giving interviews. Ever.

Late to the party.... been staying away intentionally.

Just a quick point.  The funding will taint the institutions as you suggest.  "People" will be less likely to believe what they read. 

But

At the same time I believe that a large number of reporters, being aware of this perception, will now go out of their way to demonstrate that they are NOT government stooges and will incline towards a less friendly take on all things governmental.

So, how does this play out?

An increase in negative news stories but nobody believes them?  Or nobody reads them?
 
Chris Pook said:
So, how does this play out?
An increase in negative news stories but nobody believes them?  Or nobody reads them?

I think we went very quickly to
Journeyman said:
... any public outcry would soon fade to typical Canadian disinterest.

While I haven't looked into it, I haven't heard of anyone's news-gathering styles changing.  I suspect that the same people who previously read widely and judged cautiously are still the same percentage as those who get news in 10-second sound bites, whether from CBC or Fox News, or those whose understanding of issues remains headline deep from whatever source reinforces their confirmation bias.

What may be an issue though, not directly related to media bias, is that the latter group is either growing or simply becoming increasingly strident in voicing their biased, ill-informed views.  Perhaps the movie Idiocracy is more of a prophetic documentary than a comedy.  "Sad"
 
Latest on the #NotYetBoughtMedia from The Canadian Press ...
The Trudeau government is due to deliver an update to its plan to support journalism in next week’s budget but Ottawa’s recent silence on the file has stoked concerns in the media industry that a lifeline is taking too long to arrive.

Last fall, the federal Liberals announced new tax credits and incentives, worth $595 million over the next five years, to support the struggling news industry.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau argued at the time that strong journalism was essential for a healthy democracy and said more details would be in the federal budget.

But while the industry applauded the plan, the strategy was immediately met with criticism when it was sketched out in November’s fall economic statement.

Conservatives accused the government of trying to buy journalists ahead of the October election, with one MP suggesting the package could be a slush fund to pay for a “gigantic propaganda machine” for the Liberals. Some journalists have warned the aid package could erode the independence and credibility of the press.

The stated aim is for the program to be funded by the government but have no place for politicians to decide what constitutes a media outlet or who would be eligible. Ottawa hopes this approach will avoid the appearance of conflict between a free press and government influence.

Moving forward with the plan, however, promises to be politically delicate with only seven months to go before the election.

In November, Ottawa said it would create an independent panel of experts from the journalism community to seek advice on the measures and, in particular, define which outlets will be eligible for a refundable tax credit on labour costs.

But the government has yet to set up the panel. Industry representatives say there were some good meetings with federal officials after the announcement before the interactions abruptly stopped.

John Hinds, the CEO of News Media Canada, said the “clock is ticking.”

“We’ve found that there hasn’t been a lot of back and forth … That’s a bit anxiety-producing for everybody,” Hinds, whose association represents over 800 news publications, said Friday in an interview. “We’re well into the business planning for the year and without certainty it doesn’t help … A lot of publications, whether they’re large or small, are pretty precarious right now.”

The scope and criteria for a tax credit on labour costs need to be defined quickly to allow outlets to make business decisions, he said. The tax credit, which Hinds hopes will cover 30 to 35 per cent of newsroom staffing costs, will be retroactive to Jan. 1.

The package also includes a temporary, non-refundable tax credit for subscribers to digital news sites and a model to allow non-profit media organizations to apply for charitable status, enabling them to seek donations for which they could issue tax receipts.

Edward Greenspon, a former journalist who is now president of the Public Policy Forum think-tank, said he will be interested to see if the government is only pushing ahead with some parts of its package, or if it’s decided the pre-election period isn’t the best time for it.

The Public Policy Forum has published a major report with recommendations on how the government can take on the complex challenge of helping the news industry without interfering with journalism.

Greenspon said with so little activity in recent weeks there’s a sense the process is behind schedule ...
A bit more @ link
 
Some details on the #NotYetBoughtMedia plan by Canadian media critic Jesse Brown (disclosure:  I listen to Canadaland & donate to his podcast via Patreon).

Twitter thread starts here - screen captures attached.
 

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Of all the Liberal ideas since 2015, this is by orders of magnitude, the worst.

Once a media organization takes the money, it can (rightly or wrongly) be accused of being the Government's pocket. Nobody will trust anything anymore. Which, cynically (and given recent events), might be the point. 

This is a mess. No serious media organization should take the money.
 
SeaKingTacco said:
Of all the Liberal ideas since 2015, this is by orders of magnitude, the worst.

Once a media organization takes the money, it can (rightly or wrongly) be accused of being the Government's pocket. Nobody will trust anything anymore. Which, cynically (and given recent events), might be the point. 

This is a mess. No serious media organization should take the money.
Ahh, but, they will.

 
Turns out there's an app for all of this:
Introducing Pandr: The app that matches corrupt politicians with woke journalists 
https://theswift.net/culture/introducing-pandr-the-app-that-matches-corrupt-politicians-with-woke-journalists/
 
SeaKingTacco said:
Nobody will trust anything anymore.
With everything else going on out there, mission accomplished ...
 

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5.5 million Sole sourced contract to Post Media for communications research:
https://twitter.com/mindingottawa/status/1138059775369986049?s=19

 
It doesn't matter who the leader opposite the LPC is.  The media will find a way to demonize him/her.

 
Ah, yes - the monolithic leftist Canadian Media. All those Scheer endorsements must have been some sort of fiendish Commie reverse psychology, eh?
 
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