The late-night comedians have been passing themselves off as ‘newscasters’.
Via Heat Street:
The mainstream media continues to freak out over the spread of “fake news” on Facebook and other social media platforms such as Twitter and reddit. Hillary Clinton’s late campaign thinks this is a problem.
The Democrat party seems to think people with Facebook accounts are to blame for Hillary’s decision to ignore crucial swing states in the final weeks of the campaign, that likely cost her the election.
But the media hasn’t bothered to ask why such sites gained traction. Our media has cultivated false news for years. Understandably, people stopped caring about the “journalistic ethics” the media claim to possess.
The CBS morning show, hosted by Charlie Rose, recently ran a segment on the rise of fake news, based on a story posted on BuzzFeed. The website claimed that Facebook users shared more “fake” news stories than “real” news stories by the end of the election.
Was the story true? Timothy Carney from the Washington Examiner found holes in Buzzfeed’s model which thus complicated the narrative BuzzFeed was trying to present. On examination, Buzzfeed had ignored real statistics to present their own version of a narrative, not the facts.
On the same CBS show, Charlie Rose interviewed former “fake news” pundit and left-wing icon Jon Stewart about the election. During his Daily Show years, Stewart styled himself as both a serious pundit and a comedian, allowing him to walk the line between fake news and satire.
The show’s set, and Stewart’s demeanor, mirrored that of a network news program. His cast did on-location interviews, which were often heavily edited to present their own liberal point of view. But long after Stewart’s show ended, he is still being propped up as an important voice in journalism.