At the end of the day, it is clear that before we rush to place fact checking organizations like Snopes in charge of arbitrating what is "truth" on Facebook, we need to have a lot more understanding of how they function internally and much greater transparency into their work.
That advice was published in Forbes four days before the New York Times went with its two stories dismissing the attacks on the Snopes operation as totally false and ignoring the contrary material without explanation.
What's the Problem?
These examples show that mainstream media continue to ignore their complicity in what they decry as "fake news."
Traditional broadcasters and print outlets use many dubious "news" sources that foster the current crisis whereby public-relations techniques, propaganda, and political dirty tricks are destroying civic discourse.
Many of these problems are rooted in a servile and otherwise unprofessional adherence to the ideological, political and financial agendas of an outlet's ownership, as I have observed over four decades in communications and law.
The apparatus is further supported by vast numbers of bureaucrats in journalism and academia who provide a veneer of respectability to research about "fake news" that cannot withstand in-depth scrutiny. As one of many examples, the School Library Journal published a column Nov. 26 (Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a "post-truth" world) touting the Snopes, Zimdars and other dubious sources cited here. The column was by Joyce Valenza, an assistant professor of teaching at Rutgers University, who one can charitably say may not be on the front lines of relevant research.
The problems are especially acute for JFK assassination and 9/11 researchers, who must contend with ongoing institutional bias of mainstream and alternative outlets and their personnel who are as quick to decry what they term "fake news" as "conspiracy theory."
The good news, however, is that the bold spirits in these communities are tested, determined and otherwise well-positioned to identify both facts and fakery for the betterment of all.
(Article changed on January 20, 2017 at 03:09)
Cross-posted at Justice Integrity Project with additional sources
(Article changed on January 24, 2017 at 05:21)
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