A bit bored, are we, Nate? Not a football fan?
The Left’s fury over the fact that their certifiably awful candidate somehow managed to lose to even more certifiably awful Donald Trump is unabated. Indeed, it seems to be getting worse, as Democrats, progressives and social justice warriors continue to reveal themselves as poor losers and lousy citizens—but spectacular hypocrites—by both trying to undo the election and attempting to undermine the legitimacy of the President Elect before he even moves in to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. At the same time, the Democratic Party is teaching our children, if they read Politico, that denying accountability and blaming others for your own botches is acceptable adult behavior. It wasn’t their fault that they managed to blow an election against an adversary they publicly wished for. It was the Russians! The FBI! The Electoral College! The news media! The voters hate women–even women hate women!
It was Hillary Clinton, of course, but never mind. Yesterday’s headline in The Washington Examiner and a few other news sources are sure to give the Democrats solace: Nate Silver (the acclaimed statistics guru who nonetheless joined other poll-readers to pronounce Hillary an odds on favorite to win on November 12 but with a bit less certainly than the rest, so he remains a genius by being less wrong), it said, had pronounced that “Clinton ‘almost certainly’ would be president if not for Comey.”
This is fake news. Why? I could go into detail about why it’s an irresponsible opinion and based on logical fallacies as well as confirmation bias, which Nate is supposed to understand, but that wouldn’t make the story fake news. It is fake news because Silver never said what the headline claims.
Silver, who actual writes up positions he believes are accurate on his blog, apparently was bored on Sunday so he began musing in a series of tweets.
“Comey had a large, measurable impact on the race. Harder to say with Russia/Wikileaks because it was drip-drip-drip,” he said in the first. This became, in the Examiner story, “Comey had a large, measurable impact on the race,” leaving out the second part of the tweet, the part that meant “I think, but it’s impossible to be sure because other things were happening too.”
I have to say, Nate is really sloppy here. One way Comey had a larger impact than he should have was because of the way the Clinton campaign reacted to his first letter, which he was ethically obligated to write. They sicced other lawyers on him (lawyers who were looking for jobs in the upcoming Clinton Administration); they even accused him of breaking the law, which was ridiculous. They made themselves, that is, Hillary, look guilty by attacking the same guy they had called a great American just a couple of months earlier for not recommending that the candidate be indicted.
If Comey’s first letter about the Weiner e-mails had a “measurable impact,” it’s because Bill Clinton seeming to try to influence the investigation by meeting with Loretta Lynch had a “measurable impact,” because that’s what forced Comey to go into detail when he announced the decision not to indict. That announcement had a a “measurable impact,” because the details prompted Congressional Republicans to call on him to testify, whereupon he made the promise to alert them if there were “new developments.” But the real “measurable impact” sprung from the fact that Clinton endangered U.S. security to advance her own agenda, and when she was found out, lied about it, vocally, for more than a year. Clinton has yet to acknowledge that.
In his next tweet, Nate revealed that the impact wasn’t all that “measurable” after all:
There’s more evidence, too: Late-deciding voters broke strongly against Clinton in swing states, enough to cost her MI/WI/PA. pic.twitter.com/8r801ahDQO
Now he’s not just talking about changes after the Comey letters, except in the sense of post hoc ergo propter hoc (“after this, and thus because of it”), a classic logical fallacy. He’s talking about what happened on November 12, which was after a lot of things: the revelation that journalists were colluding with the Democrats, the fact that the DNC chair used her position to help Clinton cheat during a debate, the fact that the reaction of the DNC chair, Donna Brazile was, in essence, “I’m not sorry, and I would do it again,” more revelations about Clinton Foundation influence peddling, and the Comey letters, as well as the Clinton campaign’s disgusting attack on Comey for doing his job. These factors, as well as others, like Clinton calling half the country “deplorables,” all came before those undecideds flipped to Trump. How can Silver credibly say Comey was the reason? He can’t.
Furthermore, the fact that late deciding voters went for Trump was to be expected, and can’t be attributed just to Comey, the Russians, Wikileaks or any of the factors that popped up in the last two weeks, after Trump’s “pussy” talk with Billy Bush had everyone predicting a Clinton landslide. Any voter paying attention already knew that Trump was unfit to be President, and either didn’t care, deciding that they wanted to make a statement of protest–the statement being, “ARRGHHH!”—against the “elites” or Obama or Obamacare or Stonehenge or something, or believing that an ignorant, narcissist bully was just what the country needed, or they did care and had decided to vote for Hillary, lies and all.
How could anyone be undecided that late? If someone was genuinely undecided, it had to be because they hadn’t yet concluded and were incapable of concluding that it would be insane to vote for Trump. I had been reading experts for weeks saying that undecided voters were likely to split for Trump. “More evidence” of what? That undecided voters went for Trump after Comey’s letters…and also after the Cubs won the World Series? Nate’s smarter than that.
Nate may have also been pondering the flaws in his reasoning—remember that Twitter chains tend to be stream of consciousness, and not thought out like, say, a blog post—because his final tweet was this:
“I’ll put it like this: Clinton would almost certainly be President-elect if the election had been held on Oct. 27.”
Well that’s a safe assumption, and not news at all. After muddling around in a couple of tweets, all Silver was willing to say with confidence—this is his last tweet on the topic, remember; the conclusion— is that what happened in the last two weeks, combined with other factors already in play, resulted in a Trump victory.
Big deal.
What Silver didn’t say, never said, and cannot he interpreted as saying, was that “Clinton ‘almost certainly’ would be president if not for Comey.”
Now watch this story be quoted incessantly by Democrats saying, “See? See?”
Fake news.
Ethics Alarms 
As a baseball fan, I placed my metric faith in the hands of Silver and several others since the bases for sabermetrics is an objective analysis of baseball. Silver’s 538 still dabbles into that. But this?
Here it is, in a nutshell, the same as all the data purifiers who saw ‘glitches’ in the voting patterns: You got it wrong! Got that? Understand that? Your proprietary programs failed. To be perfectly blunt, Nate – you got bitch slapped.
Time to give the data geeks a fishing license since that is the route they are following.
Any time a predictive formula fails, it doesn’t mean the method is wrong or the value of the method, all it means is the particular formula isn’t including enough factors to predict accurately. Nothing wrong with what the data geeks are doing– they just now have to reevaluate the formula for completeness and reevaluate any coefficients they use to weight particular components of the formula.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/46703
So Colbert actively made tailored episodes at the request of Hillary’s people.
And now we have McCain and his buddies claiming that WikiLeaks and Putin won the election for Trump by releasing damaging info about Hillary (unfortunately true!) and secretly burned down the Reichstag so the Trump the white supremacist could start putting progressives in concentration camps he plans to build. What a diabolical plot!!!
John’s only human: he was waiting for a chance to get back at Trump for his disgusting prisoner of war smear. Politics ain’t beanbag. I bet Trump gets that message.
Oh Jack, could we have an instance of the Sicilian Ethic Rationalization operating here? Although I consider McCain a hero for what he went though in the Hanoi Hilton as he refused a chance to get out, this is just what I’d expect from him.
No question: It’s payback.
Could he not be legitimately concerned by the fact that our election was influenced by a foreign power, for the purpose of convincing Americans to elect a tool of that foreign power who is now appointing other tools of that foreign power to high-level positions in his cabinet?
Even if that is not McCain’s motivation, why is it not yours?
And now we have McCain and his buddies claiming that WikiLeaks and Putin won the election for Trump by releasing damaging info about Hillary
I’m confused. When did McCain get put in charge of the CIA?
Progressive Magical Thinking
Take a moment to follow the link above, read the brief “definition” provided; then watch the video.
I chose to start this comment this way for a very specific reason; this is no longer a joke!! The definition and the commercial are showing us a real character flaw that are entrenched in our modern society. This is how a vast segment of our society functions in this modern world of instant gratification. Our politicians and the media are banking on these character flaws to assist them in “elevating” their chosen ideological views.
The uptick of all the false news is a direct reaction to the fact that readers/listeners have been dumbed down to such an extent that they simply cannot derive what is false, and in many cases they really just don’t give a damn if it’s false as long as it demeans the ideological views of those they oppose. The character flaws that cause this behavior are rationalized away as being “necessary” because those that they oppose are evil and they truly believe that the ends justifies the means.
The dumbing down of America, the unashamed rationalizing of unethical behaviors and the open encouragement of society to stoop to morally bankrupt behaviors is, and has been, dominating our society and, as a result, society is rapidly declining into chaos that is puppeteer by the media and politicians.
Be aware; here’s how it works.
Say or print something to smear those who are ideologically different than you, it doesn’t matter how outrageous it is, truth be damned, and use the 1st Amendment to justifying your “right” to say or write it. Let it fester in society (that’s being fed by instant gratification) where ignorant people will carry the false news across the internet (hopefully it will go viral). If by chance you need to retract your statement, that’s ok, the damage has been done, your message is out there, your message will spread, the ignorant masses will eat it up, the text video or audio will still exist so the retraction is completely irrelevant. Progressive Magical Thinking will hopefully extend the message and it will turn into a usable meme.
Although the definition I provided above about Progressive Magical Thinking is very partisan oriented, primarily because I’ve seen this as a dominating factor of the political left, it is no longer limited to the political left. Trump has recognized the effectiveness of this tactic and is using it to new levels.
It doesn’t matter which side of the political divide you reside, you ARE being manipulated by both sides. If you are not consciously aware of these efforts, you will unknowingly submit to the dark side of non-partisan complete moral bankruptcy.
Typo…
The definition and the commercial are showing us a real character flaw that is entrenched in our modern society.
I’d be comfortable assuming that if Hillary won and conservatives claimed Russia affected the outcome, they’d all be called conspiracy theorist nut jobs.
Jack,
I’ve got to push back on this; and, you’re making it worse, judging by the comments here.
Your headline is itself misleading: your headline says, if I read it literally, that Nate Silver said something false. Rick M. rises to the bait, and says “yeah yeah.”
Of course, that is NOT what happened. Reading further in your column, you point out it was not Nate Silver who said something wrong, it was the Washington Examiner who said it.
To use your own words at the end of the column:
“What Silver didn’t say, never said, and cannot he interpreted as saying, was that “Clinton ‘almost certainly’ would be president if not for Comey.”
In other words, your punchline directly contradicts your headline. And this is in a post on “fake news.”
Don’t you share some of the blame for putting out a misleading headline, just as the Examiner put out a misleading quote?
But the broader problem is this: in this and other posts, you are conflating real news organizations’ mistakes and biases with some serious crap out there.
I insist there is a huge difference between Stephanie Ruhle making a mistake and a bunch of amoral teenagers in Macedonia trolling Trump supporters on Google ad pages.
What are those differences?
1. Admission. Stephanie Ruhle immediately (20-30 minutes as I recall) self-corrected, most abjectly, on-air. I have yet to see the Macedonians issue a correction for Pizza-gate.
2. Politics. The Macedonians et al may be amoral, but they’re not stupid. They tried trolling the left with fake news and found it didn’t take; there’s a reason they go for the right-wing paranoia stuff – because it sells! It sells to people who are bitter, less educated, and inclined to conspiracy theories. And that is not, repeat NOT, even spread across the political divide.
3. Institutions. I’m sorry, but Nate Silver, Bloomberg and CNN employ people who are trained in areas like statistics and journalism; the real purveyors of what ought to be proprietarily-called “fake news” are disaffected, money-grubbing teens who don’t give a damn about the havoc the wreak.
Whether you mean to or not, you are giving aid and comfort to the real fake-news progenitors by insisting on a single continuum between mainstream media and these bottom-feeders.
There’s plenty of room to call out bias, journalistic mistakes, and confirmation biases in the MSM – you do a good job of it, as you should. But when you conflate those (legitimate and valuable) critiques with cyber-trash by using the same term to refer to them each, you are causing the cyber-punk sympathizers to think it’s all the same. And it’s not.
“They tried trolling the left with fake news and found it didn’t take”
Given that the mainstream media has near monopoly on duping the Left en masse, it is hard to get a word in edgewise.
They even have seemingly erudite people, like you, spinning for them.
“Don’t you share some of the blame for putting out a misleading headline, just as the Examiner put out a misleading quote?”
Jack should have put quotes around the repeated headline. Yes.
However, your consistency on headline analsysis leaves much to be desired. In one instance you argue for more lax standards to get a left winger off the hook. In this instance you argue for more stringent standards when a left winger’s reputation is on the line.
Phenomenal.
Quote from the article:
“Most of the posts on these sites are aggregated, or completely plagiarized, from fringe and right-wing sites in the US. The Macedonians see a story elsewhere, write a sensationalized headline, and quickly post it to their site. Then they share it on Facebook to try and generate traffic. The more people who click through from Facebook, the more money they earn from ads on their website.
“Earlier in the year, s
ome in Veles experimented with left-leaning or pro–Bernie Sanders content, but nothing performed as well on Facebook as Trump content.
“People in America prefer to read news about Trump,” said a Macedonian 16-year-old who operates BVANews.com.
BuzzFeed News’ research also found that the most successful stories from these sites were nearly all false or misleading.
“For example, the most successful post BuzzFeed News found from a Macedonian site is based on a story from a fake news website. The headline on the story from ConservativeState.com was “Hillary Clinton In 2013: ‘I Would Like To See People Like Donald Trump Run For Office; They’re Honest And Can’t Be Bought.’” The post is a week old and has racked up an astounding 480,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. (To put that into perspective, the New York Times’ exclusive story that revealed Donald Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns generated a little more than 175,000 Facebook interactions in a month.)
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo
And presuming you’ll want to jump on Buzzfeed, here’s similar reporting from NBC.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fake-news-how-partying-macedonian-teen-earns-thousands-publishing-lies-n692451
If you’ll want to jump on NBC too, I ask you – whose reporting do you trust on this subject?
So what? I share stupid stories with people whom I am confident know they are stupid. Why in the world would you assume that an unsourced story influenced more voters than a New York Times story, based on Facebook shares? That’s crazy. Are you ON Facebook? Anyone who uses it knows its full of crap. Sadly, most people DON’T know the Times is full of crap…
charlesgreen, you give aid and comfort to the originators of “fake news” when you differentiate them from the cyber-trash.
The MSM brought this upon themselves after decades of story suppression, slanted news, and outright fabricated BS. When I was a teen, I noticed that CBS, NBC and so on (no cable news yet) slanted their coverage, always praising the Soviet Union and running America down. They have continued to do so ever since, making themselves the fake news.
With the Internet and Social Media, they are having trouble controlling the agenda, and they don’t like it. Now they have been caught out shilling for Hillary so blatantly that they need to shut down any competition, by force if necessary. Let them stew in it!
Get the hell away from my First Amendment, MSM! We (Americans) are tired of being told we are “bigoted, racist, whatever-phobic” because of our color, our religion, our nationality, our politics, etc. This whole topic is a naked attempt to silence dissenting views and prop up the failing traditional media. American are (for now) awakened, and are not having any of it!
Bingo.
I rest my case.
If you are so far out of touch with reality that you believe the MSM and the Macedonian teenagers are indistinguishable, then you are truly part of the problem.
Jack, take note who’s reading your blog; and who you’re encouraging by giving tacit support to the conflation theory.
Charles, the flaw in your analysis your assumption that Facebook shares are the measure of electoral impact, or of who sees stories among actual voters, or that clicks equal influence. They don’t.
“the flaw in your analysis your assumption that Facebook shares are the measure of electoral impact, or of who sees stories among actual voters, or that clicks equal influence. They don’t.”
I don’t know that they don’t, and you don’t know that they don’t. You’re right, though, there was an implicit link, as far as the election.
However, this is not just relevant to election politics; this is an issue about the press, journalism, and the truth – it’s much more broadly societally relevant than just elections (not that there’s anything wrong with that…)
Whoa, Charles!
1. Your headline is itself misleading: your headline says, if I read it literally, that Nate Silver said something false. Rick M. rises to the bait, and says “yeah yeah.”
I’m not responsible for readers who misread. The headline wasd 100% correct. What was the fake news? The fake NEWS was that Nate Silver Says Clinton “Almost Certainly” Would Be President If Not For Comey. He didn’t say it. I don’t need quotes, because I wasn’t saying that it was a fake headline. If a statement follows the words “This is fake news,” it not only doesn’t need quotes, it shouldn’t have quotes. Here’s news that is fake: the news is that Nate Silver said this, and he didn’t.
2. Of course, that is NOT what happened. Reading further in your column, you point out it was not Nate Silver who said something wrong, it was the Washington Examiner who said it.
No, I explained very clearly what the headline stated clearly. I said it was FAKE News that Nate said that, and that’s what the headline stated too.
3. To use your own words at the end of the column:
“What Silver didn’t say, never said, and cannot he interpreted as saying, was that “Clinton ‘almost certainly’ would be president if not for Comey.”
In other words, your punchline directly contradicts your headline. And this is in a post on “fake news.”
Now I have to push back, because this is blatant gotcha, and it stinks. If I write, “News: Nate Silver says Trump is a sea slug”, I don’t have to use quotes, because it’s news. I wrote: This News is fake: Nate Silver said X. That is clear as a bell, unless you are looking to misunderstand. If the headline said, “This STATEMENT/ASSERTION/HEADLINE is false, then I would need quotes. But I was talking afount the NEWS, aka, an event or occurrence worthy of note. The event: Nate Silver Said…
And I said it was a false event. The headline and the quote about it were also false, but the issue is the news.
Don’t you share some of the blame for putting out a misleading headline, just as the Examiner put out a misleading quote?
I don’t, because I didn’t, and the criticism is not only unfair, but wrong on the facts.
Meanwhile…
1. Admission. Stephanie Ruhle immediately (20-30 minutes as I recall) self-corrected, most abjectly, on-air. I have yet to see the Macedonians issue a correction for Pizza-gate.
The news is fake when it is publicized. Apologies, retractions, etc, don’t make it less false. Moreover, as I stated, fake news from established media figures is WORSE than Macedonian Fake news site junk, because it is more credible.
2. Politics. The Macedonians et al may be amoral, but they’re not stupid. They tried trolling the left with fake news and found it didn’t take; there’s a reason they go for the right-wing paranoia stuff – because it sells! It sells to people who are bitter, less educated, and inclined to conspiracy theories. And that is not, repeat NOT, even spread across the political divide.
Right. Conservatives are stupid. Funny how so many of my liberal friends post memes that are so moronic they make my hair grow. This is pure bias, Charles, and I’m surprised at you.
3. Institutions. I’m sorry, but Nate Silver, Bloomberg and CNN employ people who are trained in areas like statistics and journalism; the real purveyors of what ought to be proprietarily-called “fake news” are disaffected, money-grubbing teens who don’t give a damn about the havoc the wreak.
Again: the fake news from institutions and well-known figures are far more damaging, and equally irresponsible.
“I’m not responsible for readers who misread.”
That would then include not only me, but Rick M and Texaagg, based on their comments critical of Silver, who they both apparently thought you were criticizing.
Ok, I can buy that, but I’m not sure the ambiguity was worth the point you’re making.
All confirmation bias. I warn against it constantly. That’s all I can do. The headline was the most accurate way to describe the issue. And it wasn’t ambiguous at all.
Don’t you find it curious that Texagg, Rick and I all shared the same confirmation bias? How often does THAT happen? 🙂
“Confirmation bias makes strange bedfellows.”
Will Rogers.
(Fake quote.)
Except that we didn’t.
Speaking of “confirmation bias”…
Isn’t my comment above full of “confirmation bias” too. 😉
I’ve really got to hand it to charlesgreen, is getting better at twisting and misrepresentating, he actually had me going there for a minute, then all of a sudden I said out loud “WHAT…..”! Better luck next time Charles. 😉
Oops…
that’s “misrepresenting” not “misrepresentating”
Don’t rope me in in some weak argumentum ad populum.
I said no such thing.
“Jack should have put quotes around the repeated headline. Yes.”
He’s wrong. Then I would have been saying that the QUOTE was “false news.” A quote is only false news if the quote didn’t occur. But the quote did occur: The Examiner said exactly that. My post was about the TRUE news that the Examiner had publicized false news, and had said exactly what I said they said, about a quote Nate Silver didn’t make.
If you are quoting someone, don’t you use quotes?
I wasn’t quoting some one. I was citing the false fact that the quote asserted, because that was the false news, not the quote itself.
Admittedly, this is pure White Knight, but he was right, too.
Alice was walking beside the White Knight in Looking Glass Land.
‘You are sad.’ the Knight said in an anxious tone: ‘let me sing you a song to comfort you.’
‘Is it very long?’ Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
‘It’s long.’ said the Knight, ‘but it’s very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it –
either it brings tears to their eyes, or else -‘
‘Or else what?’ said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
‘Or else it doesn’t, you know. The name of the song is called ‘Haddocks’ Eyes.”
‘Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?’ Alice said, trying to feel interested.
‘No, you don’t understand,’ the Knight said, looking a little vexed. ‘That’s what the name
is called. The name really is ‘The Aged, Aged Man.”
‘Then I ought to have said ‘That’s what the song is called’?’ Alice corrected herself.
‘No you oughtn’t: that’s another thing. The song is called ‘Ways and Means’ but that’s only
what it’s called, you know!’
‘Well, what is the song then?’ said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
‘I was coming to that,’ the Knight said. ‘The song really is ‘A-sitting On a Gate’: and the
tune’s my own invention.’
So saying, he stopped his horse and let the reins fall on its neck: then slowly beating time
with one hand, and with a faint smile lighting up his gentle, foolish face, he began…
Jack, I think the confusion is coming from two possible interpretations of the headline: in the one you intended, the fake news *is* that Nate Silver said Clinton would have won if not for Comey. In the one that many of us inferred, the headline was saying that Nate Silver was the distributor of the fake news, and that the fake news was “Clinton would have won if not for Comey.”
This is what I thought the headline was saying. In fact, it took quite a while for me to realize what you actually meant, and how the headline is technically accurate.
I can think of numerous ways to improve the headline:
“Fake News” of the Day from The Washington Examiner: Nate Silver Says Clinton “Almost Certainly” Would Be President If Not For Comey
The Washington Examiner Tries Its Hand at Fake News: Claims Nate Silver Says Clinton “Almost Certainly” Would be President if Not for Comey”
No, Washington Examiner, Nate Silver Didn’t Say Hillary would “Almost Certainly” Would be President if Not for Comey, and Stop Trying to Peddle Fake News
There are more possible permutations of this. But it appears many of your readers, on both the left and right, inferred something you did not intend from the headline, and when so many people from so many parts of the spectrum take away the same inaccurate meaning, that’s a problem with the headline, not with them.
Fine. Enjoy your trolling. It was accurate, and also the misunderstanding is irrelevant to the post. The point is that while it may have been ambiguous, it was not in any way false.
Who on the right was confused?
Trying to help you avoid confusion among your readers is “trolling?” I was offering genuine suggestions. I didn’t say the headline was inaccurate, I said it was unintentionally misleading, as shown by those who initially thought the headline meant something else and that you were accusing Nate Silver of peddling fake news.
I love this blog. It challenges my ideals more than any other, and I feel I learn a lot here. But if you really feel my comments–which I put effort and thought into–amount to nothing more than trolling, you don’t have to let me comment here.
Jack, for what it’s worth, I thought Chris phrased his thoughts respectfully and clearly, and in a most untroll-like fashion.
Chris is always un-troll like, except when it feels like he’s making extreme or tortured arguments just to argue. Claiming Donald Trump is a secret Russian agent is in that category. It’s a compliment. It means, “I know you aren’t stupid, and I don’t think you’re crazy, so the alternative is…”
A highly summarized comment that doesn’t mean what you think it does.
I understood fully what Jack was getting at. But as you raised the issue I am able to recognize where less discerning minds or more bias-addled minds may not be able to see what Jack meant. In which case, quotation marks would have been helpful, though not necessary.
Again. Don’t use a hasty generalization to assume you can falsely attribute support for one of your claims.
Funny how the Left always goes for the totalitarian answers to their problems…
Not funny. Very scary.
And if the MSM didn’t dredge up a 10 year clip of Donald Trump saying something akin to what Bill Clinton has probably said or done many times, Trump may have won in a landslide And if that one person didn’t take a video of Hillary being thrown into the Scooby Van like a side of beef, Hillary may have won in a landslide. The list goes on and on.
If my grandmother had wheels, she’s be a streetcar, as the old saying goes.
I know right. “If the public hadn’t found out just how awful Clinton was, she’d have won in a landslide.”
Left wing take away?
“We can’t let people find out how horrible our candidates are.”
I know…this is what makes Democrats screaming about this as damning as it is hilarious.
Current post election analysis from the Left:
Leading pundits believe that the locusts may have been the most important factor in the Democratic party’s poor performance.
In case anyone cares, the fake news headline is still up all over the place, days later. Mediaite, among others. So I ask, how is this not fake news, as much so as pure, intentional, made up Macedonian hoaxes? How is it not worse? It’s not true, people are reading it and repeating it. What’s the difference, except that stuff from the news media is supposed to be honest and trustworthy?
“To combat fake news, Facebook has teamed up with a shortlist of media organizations, including Snopes and ABC News, that are part of an international fact-checking network led by Poynter, a nonprofit school for journalism in St. Petersburg, Florida.”
“Starting as a test with a small percentage of its users in the US, Facebook will make it easier to report news stories that are fake or misleading.”
Snopes and ABC leading an effort to weed out fake and “misleading” news. I wonder how much of its own content Snopes will have to flag.
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-will-fact-check-label-fake-news-in-news-feed-2016-12