NewsTrust - Fake News - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

How to peek through Dan Schultz’s Truth Goggles, the B.S. detection software

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Andrew Phelps - May. 20 (Opinion) - Last November I wrote about Dan Schultz and his Truth Goggles, a piece of software he’s developing in partnership with PolitiFact that highlights suspicious claims in news articles. It’s as simple as spellcheck. Now, as Schultz finalizes his graduate thesis at the MIT Media Lab, he’s conducting a user study to understand how people (anonymously) respond to a prototype of the tool. It’s our first look at the software in action, and he wants you to give it a try.

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Rick Santorum's Dystopia of the Year 2014

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Paleofuture - By Matt Novak - Mar. 25 (Opinion) - According to Rick Santorum, if Obama is re-elected Americans will be forced to fill up their heads with gasoline Probably inspired by Hunger Games mania, Rick Santorum recently released the most dystopian campaign video we've seen in quite a while. Called "Obamaville," the video depicts the bleak world of 2014: President Obama has been re-elected, the playgrounds sit empty, freedom of religion is under attack, and apparently we're all cyborgs powered by putting gasoliine directly into our heads. THANKS A LOT OBAMA! As a fan of apocalyptic fiction, I watched closely and noticed a few interesting images that the campaign chose to include in the video. Some of the weirder images are below. If you notice the same timecode for some images it's because these images were only up for 2 or 3 frames, and trust me, that's where the gold is!

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Mike Daisey: Reports of my Death have been Greatly Exaggerated

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

mikedaisey.blogspot.com - By Mike Daisey - Mar. 20 (Opinion) - In the last forty-eight hours I have been equated with Stephen Glass, James Frey, and Greg Mortenson. Given the tenor of the condemnation, you would think I had concocted an elaborate, fanciful universe filled with furnaces in which babies are burned to make iPhone components, or that I never went to China, never stood outside the gates of Foxconn, never pretended to be a businessman to get inside of factories, never spoke to any workers. Especially galling is how many are gleefully eager to dance on my grave expressly so they can return to ignoring everything about the circumstances under which their devices are made. Given the tone, you would think I had fabulated an elaborate hoax, filled with astonishing horrors that no one had ever seen before. Except that we all know that isn’t true.

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Retraction

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

This American Life - By Ira Glass - Mar. 18 (Opinion) - Regrettably, we have discovered that one of our most popular episodes was partially fabricated. This week, we devote the entire hour to detailing the errors in "Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory," Mike Daisey’s story about visiting Foxconn, an Apple supplier factory in China.

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"MyFacts"

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Doonesbury - By Gary Trudeau - Feb. 12 (Cartoon) - This week, the Doonesbury comic strip takes on "MyFacts", a fictional online service that packages "faux facts" to support anyone's ideology, from creationism to 9/11 conspiracy theories.

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Fact-checking in the Echo Chamber Nation

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Dec. 23 (Opinion) - At a Republican campaign rally a few years ago, I asked one of the attendees how he got his news. "I listen to Rush and read NewsMax," he said. "And to make sure I'm getting a balanced view, I watch Fox." My liberal friends get their information from distinctly different sources — Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Rachel Maddow. To make sure they get a balanced view, they click Facebook links — from their liberal friends. This is life in our echo chamber nation. We protect ourselves from opinions we don't like and seek reinforcement from like-minded allies. The paradox ...

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When candidates lie, what's a political reporter to do?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Dan Froomkin - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - How journalists respond to intentional deception will be a defining feature of 2012 political coverage. Will they allow themselves to become accessories to deceptive politicians? Or will they aggressively and repeatedly expose misinformation and the people who traffic in it?

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Why Do They Do It?

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Sep. 16 (Opinion) - Why do politicians persist in peddling exaggerations, twisted facts and outright falsehoods? Here's a theory from a veteran political reporter. Jon Keller of WBZ in Boston offered up his explanation in his "Keller @ Large" commentary for Sept. 15. It was prompted by our coverage of the recent Republican presidential candidates' debate and our criticism of President Obama's jobs speech. We were flattered by the nice mention, of course. But what really caught our attention was Keller's conclusion: Jon Keller, Sept. 15: The president and all his allies and enemies have one thing in common — they frequently cite and repeat falsehoods that reflect, at best, sloppiness and carelessness, and, at worst, outright dishonesty. Why do they think they can get away with this reprehensible behavior? Because we do it all the time ourselves. We repeat gossip and rumor, forward garbage e-mails, and convince ourselves that falsehoods which fit our world view are actually the truth. So I’m wondering – why would we expect the people who represent us to not reflect us in this way as well? We see evidence of that every day at FactCheck.org. Readers forward to us an endless stream of chain emails they have received containing false claims. The emails come from family, friends or acquaintances who either don't know that they are repeating falsehoods, or don't care. Some of these messages have been circulating for years, despite being debunked by us and often by other myth-busting sites as well. So do we, the public, get the politicians we deserve? That's a question worth pondering before sending on that viral email that so perfectly confirms your opinions, but which you haven't really checked out for factual accuracy.

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The Fox Charade: How the News Organization Pretends to Be Populist While Fueling Partisan Flames

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Danny Schechter - May. 13 (Opinion) - You can almost hear the growling in the background as the masters of attack politics go into action, virtually every hour on the hour, on the Fox News Channel. The issues they focus on are carefully selected by top executives and then broken down into highly politicized message points. Their dominant emotion is annoyance as expressed in sarcasm and scowling; contempt is the underlying attitude. The other side is usually not just wrong but plain stupid, almost unbelievable in its softheaded naiveté, and distance from reality. A "what do you expect" question invariably tops off the argument that always ends with the Fox host a winner and the Democrat or social critic a loser on every level. Standing on a podium driven by self-righteous certainty, the finger-pointers view the people they talk about, and talk down to, as below the intelligence threshold of people even worth arguing with.

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What's Inside Glenn Beck's Brain?

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - Apr. 06 (Cartoon) - A map of all the obsessions and conspiracies that fueled his soon-to-be-gone Fox News show.

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The Last Democrat

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Driftglass - By Driftglass - Dec. 06 (Opinion) - The problem with President Barack Obama is not that he is a socialist or a communist or a secret radical or a Muslim or Kenyan Usurper: it is that there are millions of Americans who are racist enough to swallow this bilge and ask for seconds.

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U.S. Orders Diplomats to Stop Telling Truth Until Further Notice

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

borowitzreport.com - By Andy Borowitz - Dec. 02 (Comedy News) - In the first major policy fallout from the WikiLeaks disclosures, the State Department has ordered all U.S. diplomats to “cease and desist telling the truth until further notice.” “We are working overtime to try to make sure that leaks like these don’t happen again,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters. “But until we’ve got the leaks plugged, it’s incumbent on all our diplomats to put on their lying caps.” Secretary Clinton noted that since many US diplomats are major political donors with long careers in the business world, “this shouldn’t be a reach for them.”

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16 of the Dumbest Things Americans Believe -- And the Right-Wing Lies Behind Them

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Sarah Seltzer - Nov. 13 (Opinion) - Americans are often misinformed, occasionally downright dumb, and easily misled by juicy-sounding rumors. But while the right wing is taking full advantage of this reality, the left worries that calling out lies is "rude." Remember when Congressman Joe Wilson stood up during Obama’s State of the Union address to falsely shout “you lie?” He was chastised soundly by the pundit class. But mostly he drew heat for being impolite, and was compared to Kanye West and other famous “interrupters.” Revisiting Wilson's foolish tirade underscores the state of our upside-down political world. He shouted “you lie” in the face of truth, but President Obama is hesitant to speak up when he’s being slandered with bald, glaring untruths. The dark irony will continue as the Republicans take over the House this winter and the rumors and insinuations from extremist right-wing pundits keep circulating. It feels like no one with a loud enough megaphone has the courage to call a spade a spade, or more accurately a lie a lie.

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The Day D.C. Went Sane

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Howard Kurtz - Oct. 31 (Opinion) - It may not have had the biting edge of its hosts' late-night comedy shows, but Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's rally drew a huge crowd that went crazy for sanity.

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Serving up a hot cup of sanity

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Oct. 31 (Opinion) - I didn't get a chance to watch all of yesterday's rally, but from what I could tell, the Stewart/Colbert event had very little to do with politics, literally nothing to do with the elections (none of the speakers even mentioned voting), and everything to do with the sense that the basics of our civil discourse are badly off track.

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The Rally to Restore Sanity: Nonpartisan, but political

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Alex Pareene - Oct. 30 (Opinion) - Jon Stewart didn't lie. His "Rally to Restore Sanity" was aggressively non-partisan. But while none of the participants had anything to say about the upcoming midterm elections (besides a brief shout of "vote!" by American treasure and '60s civil rights marcher Tony Bennett), there was a quiet political message. And, honestly, it's a message that Democrats should be happy with.

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The Young March Toward Cynicism

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Real Clear Politics - By David Paul Kuhn - Oct. 12 (Opinion) - Comedian George Carlin once said, "Inside every cynical person there is a disappointed idealist." Now the mostly young, disappointed and liberal will come to Washington. Many more will arrive for the party. Stewart and Colbert do want to make a serious point. But their audience has been told everything is a laughing matter. It might now prove difficult to convince them that some things are not a joke.

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WATCH: Stephen Colbert and Farmworkers Take Fight To Congress

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Crooks and Liars - By Jackie Mahendra, Stephen Colbert - Sep. 25 (Opinion) - Remember those fed-up farm workers who teamed up with Colbert to highlight the hypocrisy of nativist arguments? Well, not only did they get Colbert to go out to the fields to harvest beans and corn, but they got him to testify before Congress! In the latest development from the United Farm Workers ? creative "Take Our Jobs" Campaign -- Stephen Colbert testifed before the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security: Click here to view this media [H/t Heather Via Huffington Post: Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert is testifying before Congress today about immigration during a hearing called " Protecting America?s Harvest ." Colbert is appearing with United Farm Workers (UFW) President Arturo S. Rodriguez before the House Judiciary Committee?s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. In August, the comedian spent a day working at a corn and vegetable farm in New York state after Rodriguez appeared on his show to ...

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Glenn Beck Attacks

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

beck.cnnbcvideo.com - Mar. 11 (Comedy News) - Fox host Glenn Beck spent much of the last week claiming that a normal, everyday progressive, Janet Barnes, along with her pinky, commie, leftycrat Facebook friends were all linked to Stalin, Elvis, Joe Biden's cousin, and the guy who came up with the idea of taxes.

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Nation Shudders At Large Block Of Uninterrupted Text

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

theonion.com - By None Listed - Mar. 10 (Comedy News) - Dumbfounded citizens from Maine to California gazed helplessly at the frightening chunk of print, unsure of what to do next. Without an illustration, chart, or embedded YouTube video to ease them in, millions were frozen in place, terrified by the sight of one long, unbroken string of English words.

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The New Great American Pastime

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Craig Silverman - Oct. 09 (Opinion) - Fact checking, along with its kissing cousin “calling bullshit,” is becoming one of the great American pastimes of the Internet age. We are in the midst of a blossoming of new forms of fact checking, particularly those that rely on crowdsourcing. This is a crucial addition to the discipline, because the traditional form of fact checking, which was primarily developed...

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Glenn Beck Is No Howard Beale

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - By Steve Rendall - Jun. 01 (Opinion) - Fox News’ latest sensation Glenn Beck has invited comparisons of himself to Howard Beale, the barking-mad TV host in 1976’s black comedy Network, who urged viewers to throw open their windows and shout, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take

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US Media and the Memory Hole

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Norman Solomon - Apr. 10 (Opinion) - Dominant media have blotted out countless painful memories - national or personal - if only by treating them as irrelevant or incidental to news and concerns that really count. All in a day's work: part of the mix of organized forgetting. “The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing," Aldous Huxley observed. "Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth." And, of equal relevance to the brave new world of U.S. mass media in 2009: "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."

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Amy Poehler's Hillary Clinton On Secretary Of State Selection

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - Dec. 07 (Review) - To the delight of viewers, new-mom Amy Poehler returned to "Saturday Night Live," reprising her role as Hillary Clinton to address her selection as Secretary of State "Would you rather fix the economy or travel the globe? Point Hillary!" She touched on leaving her Senate seat: "It has been such an honor to serve you, the citizens of New York. Who am I kidding this is not my home state... Pack up the house in Chappaqua Bill! What's that? We never unpacked? Even better!"

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Obama Win Causes Obsessed Backers To See How Empty Lives Are

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Onion - Nov. 06 (Comedy News) - The revelation that Obama's candidacy was the only thing that gave their lives any meaning has caused many supporters to wander aimlessly, unsure of what to do with themselves.

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