Fake news was a problem during the election. Many people circulated stories that were untrue, not knowing that they were untrue. With the continuing decline of mainstream journalism, which typically tries to verify facts, the ubiquity of fake news is alarming.
Google and Facebook have promised to stop subsidizing fake news sites.
Mark Zuckerberg continued to insist that fake news did not change the outcome of the election, but Facebook acted nonetheless to cut off the source of funding for these sites.
“But such reassurances have buckled under mounting criticism. On late Monday, Zuckerberg acted, joining Google in taking the most serious steps yet to crack down on purveyors of phony stories by cutting off a critical source of funding — the ads that online platforms have long funneled to creators of popular content.
“The move has raised new questions about long-standing claims by Facebook, Google and other online platforms that they have little responsibility to exert editorial control over the news they deliver to billions of people, even when it includes outright lies, falsehoods or propaganda that could tilt elections.
“Such claims became increasingly unsustainable amid reports that News Feed and Trending Topics, two core Facebook products, had promoted a number of false, misleading and fantastical political stories, such as an article saying Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump, which was shared by over 100,000 users. There were “vote online” memes that assured Democrats in Pennsylvania that they could cast their ballots from home and a widely shared news release claiming Hillary Clinton’s health disqualified her from serving as president.
“Over the weekend, the No. 1 Google hit for the search “final election count” was an article from a little-known site claiming that Donald Trump had won the popular vote by 700,000 votes. (Clinton won the popular vote).
“Facebook, Google and other Web companies have sought to walk a fine line: They don’t want to get into the practice of hiring human editors, which they believe would make them vulnerable to criticisms of partisan bias and stray from their core business of building software. Yet outsiders, as well as some within Silicon Valley, are increasingly clamoring for technology giants to take a more active role in policing the spread of deceptive information.”
In a related story, the Oxford Dictionarieschose “post-truth” as the international word of the year, one among many new additions to the language. It beat out “alt-right.”
“The use of “post-truth” — defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” — increased by 2,000 percent over last year, according to analysis of the Oxford English Corpus, which collects roughly 150 million words of spoken and written English from various sources each month.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
many people circulated stories that were untrue… By this, I hope you include the candidates? Too many candidates ran on, “Let me tell what is wrong with that guy…” (Most of which was incorrect) rather than, “Let me show you what I can do for you…”
And it had nothing to do with party affiliation! Both sides were too busy slinging mud, so there was little or no time spent on actual issues…
Blaming Google and Facebook is not really fair in all of that. They did not run the radio or tv campaigns (or internet adds). And as far as “fake news” goes, each reader should be held accountable for checking out the FACTS. After all, they ARE using the internet already, right?
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YEP!
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You notice they agreed to “crack down” (in theory anyway) after the election.
They didn’t do it before or during the election because like cable news they were all making a lot of money on the election. It was driving traffic.
Tech companies are just companies. There’s nothing inherently different or ethical or public-spirited about them. Ask anyone who works for one.
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I’ll admit that I don’t do Facebook and have only a passing knowledge of some work-related pages. And I use Google pretty much for travel, restaurant and consumer item research. But based on those two experiences, I’ve come to the conclusion that anyone who relies on them for news and self-education probably gets what they deserve. The frightening part is that their misinformed voting or non participation in voting affects us all. They are both symptomatic of a criminal intellectual laziness that pervades modern life.
And, as I have written before, let’s get rid of the term “alt-right” and replace it with what it is: fascism. Also, get rid of the Orwellian “post-truth” and use words that are accurate like “willfully ignorant” or “empirically not empirical” or, for my Southern Californian friends, “delusion adjacent.”
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GregB
Was it any different when they got the News from a tabloid headline . How many ever bothered to even read the article . If they read the article was it any different than today’s manufactured news .
“They are both symptomatic of a criminal intellectual laziness that pervades modern life.”
By modern life, I hope you are referring to post paleolithic because these problems have been with us for ever. Two ways to view the electoral collage . As a means of preserving power or that the people really can not be trusted to make an educated decision.
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College
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Electoral collage works for me! You might have something there.
I had an exchange with my college advisor recently who noted that, in more than 45 of teaching, he has noticed a pervasive sense of self-absorption and lack of intellectual curiosity in the past few years that is distinct and different from previous classes. He finds his students less able to make critical arguments and, moreover, a lack of interest in do so at all.
I find the same thing in my interaction with the groups I meet with and speak to. When I discuss policy and process they tend to block out what I say with an ideological wall. Discussion of objective process is automatically viewed with suspicion and not accepted as fact. For example, when I use the example of sequestration to illustrate the stagnancy and decline of federal funding in research and other areas, it is viewed by many as “liberal” and therefore not truthful.
We are in agreement that this has been a problem throughout human history. But I sense something is fundamentally changing and I anecdotally attribute it to the issues like social media and the perverse language it is creating. I do stick by my characterization of “intellectual laziness” however. Constructive argument and dialogue is a dying art. But thankfully not here. We can agree to disagree on this point, but I completely understand, respect, and on many levels agree with the point you made.
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GregB
Possibly that change has occurred outside of the educational institutions and the media . Possibly the lack of strong social movements, organizations like Unions or Immigrant associations that used to disseminate information and facilitate activism is responsible. Those discussions were heard around the dinner table by youth. The Plutocracy has been very successful in portraying all issues as individual problems and individual failures. Isolating individuals in their own problems.
Those same youth that seemed so apathetic ,”self-absorbed and lacked intellectual curiosity” some how seemed pretty willing to hear Sanders message. His vote was not the college vote, but the under 45 vote. My kids all out of College for some time exhibited a political awareness I didn’t think was there. Bernie did with economic issues for millennial’s what the Vietnam war had done for boomers . Many of whom obviously went on to become a big disappointment.
(Just trying to embarrass Diane into giving me the five minute edit button.)
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Joel, all great and pertinent points. I hope we agree on the danger of accepting and using words like “post-truth” and what it implies.
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I think we do . On certain things one would have to be delusional to reject the obvious untruths when presented with a minimal of evidence. This would probably apply to most of what comes out of Trumps or Republicans mouths (my bias) . On most policy, perhaps truth is a little less certain.Requiring constant questioning as well as detailing winners and losers . We are all too familiar with the “truths” being peddled by ed reformers some of them may even believe them along with the general public. Same with trade, healthcare,markets… … …
The willingness of the media including print media to not thoroughly challenge and discredit the first, nor research and investigate the second is where the problem lies. Truth may vary depending who wins and who loses and who is telling the narrative . We all know that international trade is good. It gets stickier when we have to say for whom.
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Or, either use social media for the original intent of connecting with people you rarely see. Or don’t use social media at all.
I’m of the latter camp. I believe, like many things, the original intent of social media was a good one: connect people. But I believe that it has reached a tipping point where it does more harm than good. Social media is used by individuals to promote their opinions, often to no positive good. People post things that they would be reluctant to say in a face-to-face setting. Then, when confronted about these posts, they don’t want to have the conversation.
Facebook is a leading cause of depression (because people compare their own experiences to what they see others doing on Facebook) and infidelity (easy to re-connect with that long lost ex who provides attention to someone who’s dissatisfied). I’ve seen both occur personally.
More and more people are talking about how much richer their lives are without social media. How much stress it saves them. How it makes their true friendships stronger.
And, as a teacher, social media is hugely addicting for kids. The sense of self-importance and social acceptance that are tied to these things is tremendous. As is the bullying. Our Restorative Practices facilitator said that if it wasn’t for social media, she would not have a full-time job.
I admit to bias. Social media is one of my least favorite things in the world. There are positives to it, but I firmly believe that it has become a net negative for many things that are far more significant than fake news stories.
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The “original intent” of social media (or at least of the Zuckerberg type) was never anything other than data mining and monetizing the personal information gathered therefrom.
That’s why, when Mark Zuckerberg was still at Harvard and asked by a fellow student whether people actually gave him so much personal info, he responded, “Yes, the dumb f-%#s.”
It’s not about “connecting people” (even though social media has that ability), but rather about monetizing their identities and minds.
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Is a “Restorative Practices facilitator” a counselor? I’m sorry, Steve, but this old lady just wants to laugh.
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I’m off Facebook for the most part. I unfriended just about everyone but a few family members. All I saw was old high school jocks trying to relive the glory days and stalker exs who think it is 30+ years ago. Plus a colossal waste of time.
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“Fake News” also occurs in the main stream media. Here is a good account why Trump was elected. This is an excerpt but explains a lot.
The opinion page of the NYT: “When Reportage Turns to Cynicism” by David Bornstein and Tina Rosenberg
“…But the news coverage that helped Trump the most wasn’t about the campaign. It began long before it — decades before his candidacy, in fact. Trump was the beneficiary of a belief — near universal in American journalism — that “serious news” can essentially be defined as “what’s going wrong.”
A lot has gone wrong across the country, especially for Trump’s core supporters, the white working class — who have suffered serious economic and social dislocation. Many feel powerless and resent elites and journalists, whom they find arrogant and condescending. Trump gave voice to their grievances and placed their personal struggles within a larger narrative of national decline — a decline that, he said, was so sharp and frightening that revolutionary change was needed, and only he knew how to deliver it.
To make his case, Trump recounted a near-daily vision of a government hopelessly broken and corrupt, cities that had become “hellholes,” military leaders who resembled the Keystone Kops, immigrants flooding into the country stealing jobs — when they’re not raping and killing. In America’s inner cities, he said, you saw: “Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing, no homes, no ownership. Crime at levels that nobody has seen.”
Crime is, in fact, at unusual levels, but it’s unusually low levels — close to the lowest rate in 45 years. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than their native-born peers and twice as likely to start businesses. In many parts of the country, the public institutions that people count on every day like schools and hospitals have improved, thanks to a wide range of reforms and initiatives. In the past few years, there have also been steady gains in employment and wages, although work is less predictable than in the past and many Americans remain insecure and discouraged.
The state of the union is mixed. So why did so many people accept Trump’s dark vision? One answer is that it fits with what they feel from the news. In this case, it doesn’t matter if it’s left- or right-wing news. Where can you count on finding stories every day about violence, social dysfunction and government incompetence and scandal? When is the last time you read a news story about government competence? What are the images from the news that readily come to mind about African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims or immigrants? Do you picture people with aspirations who are studying, making contributions, building businesses? Or do you picture lawlessness, drug use, dysfunction?
For decades, journalism’s steady focus on problems and seemingly incurable pathologies was preparing the soil that allowed Trump’s seeds of discontent and despair to take root. Today, this problem is magnified by the fragmentation of news sources and a proliferation of fake news. One consequence is that many Americans today have difficulty imagining, valuing or even believing in the promise of incremental system change, which leads to a greater appetite for revolutionary, smash-the-machine change, as we have seen in this election…”
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Agree, Carol. I don’t do Facebook &, of course, do not believe everything I read online, w/the same cynicism & analysis I have always used in reading print news or in watching the news. Of course, I’m sure that most–if not all–readers of this blog do that, as well. Having said that, mainstream media is just AWFUL–MSNBC was particularly odious & biased during this election cycle. I found myself, at times, watching Fox News, which, at times, did more coverage on Bernie than either CNN or MSNBC! Of course, this has been years in the making–remember when we complained about the Michelle Rhee coverage (& how she was painted as such an education hero) by CNN & MSNBC, & that they wouldn’t give equal time to Diane, & the one, biased, rude interview that Randi Kaye DID do had to be edited?
(&, in answer to the question of why CNN was doing this was because, I’d found that, at the time, a WALTON was the Chairperson of Worldwide CNN-?!)
&–do you remember seeing the fabulous coverage of the first Save Our Schools D.C. March? No? Neither do I–because MAINSTEAM MEDIA DID NOT COVER IT!!! (Yes, I am yelling,here.)
Oh, wait, I forgot–the little bit of coverage it received was only due to Matt Damon’s speech (which rattled Arne Duncan–Matt was the only one who was offered a meeting w/Arne–& that would have occurred before his speech {we could guess, meant to dissuade Matt from speaking at all}).
So–msm has been suppressing the news or–in the case of the past election cycle–indeed, feeding us fake news (such as calling the CA Dem Primary for HRC THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ACTUAL ELECTION DAY). And, I might add, the CA people I’ve spoken with are pretty ticked off about this & what’s still happening–that is, it seems the vote count–as of yesterday–had still not been completed/finalized in CA.
Finally, msm is as complicit in the general election results as any other source. That having been said, I will continue to read newspapers & watch local news, but I will not–& don’t have to–watch CNN & MSNBC. (However, I exonerate Chris Hayes–NOT Matthews–he deserves to be fired–& Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC–they were both pretty fair, I thought.) Anyone think we can ease up on Anderson Cooper?
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The only time my rural county is ever in the local news is when someone who looks pathetic has something horrible happen to them. If it bleeds, it leads.
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This is a step in the right direction, though not a big or particularly substantial one. Still, it’s better than nothing, I suppose. When one specious article appears in the media over a reasonable interval of time, it is easy to refute it; social networking, however, has enabled a blizzard of this dross, and it has inarguably time to do something about it….
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“Post-truth” might be the word of the year. But “resistance” is the word of the end of the year– and next year.
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So, purely from a “What if” scenario. What would your reactions have been had Clinton won, and Trump supporters would protest and rally, cries like “Not my president?” Would you have supported those as much as you support the current protests?
Or is it you support these because your choice did not win? It seems such a double standard…
If ONE side has the freedom to protest against the outcome (because their favorite did not win), would the other side not have the same right to go out and block iinterstate highways, tear down property in protest?
I’m in the same situation as many of you (I do not like trump or what he stands for, either, and I am a Republican!). But the election IS the election, and the current system IS in place. Democrats have had ample opportunity over the last 20 years to work on getting the changes put into place – but did nothing about the Electoral College.
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Rudy,
Dem control for 20 years?
Did you forget that George W. Bush was President from 2001-2009 and that Republicans have controlled one or both houses of Congress since 1994?
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Nope, did not forget that`. But even with a Republican president, the Democrats have had the majority more often than not. And I do not recall (maybe age related) at any time in the past twenty years that the Democrats started the process to do away with the Electoral College.
It would have been more believable if the Democrats had been working on the removal over the past, say, 8 years. The republicans, right or wrong, have been consistent with their intent to repeal ACA, even though there was no possible way to do that. But they voted on it on a regular basis, keeping their intent out there, in the public eye.
There was nothing to stop the Democrats from doing the same thing – if they really are so deadset against the Electoral College. If it really is a matter of conviction rather than opportunity…
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Rudy,
You can’t blame Democrats for not abolishing the electoral college when they haven’t controlled Congress for many years. Do you know how our government works and what it takes to pass a Constitutional amendment?
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As a matter of fact, I do know how that works. I was in this country when the ERA amendment was popular. The Republicans have not been in the majority either – but that does stop them from a public vote on repealing ACA. Now the cry to remove EC gives the perception of sour grapes.
Republicans (Like them or not) have been the ACA from the very beginning, so for them it has nothing to do with, “Our candidate lost, let’s blame the system…” They know the quest for repealing would not go anywhere (With a Democratic Senate, where a vengeful Senator Reid would stop Republican proposals from being brought to the floor, so blaming the Republicans for being obstructionist does not make a lot of sense, when the same thing took place under a Democrat majority in the Senate).
basically, what we have is a sandbox full of kindergartners who want to dominate the box, and are not keen on sharing their toys. Sometimes your kids get to run the playground, sometimes my kids get to run the playground. It really is up to you and I, as voters, to let the kids know they can be sent home at any time for misbehaving – and be serious about it!
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Rudy,
Are you posting comments all day while you are at work?
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I am posting comments when I am not working… I have the “fortune” of either using up vacation hours or losing them (close to 100). So I take time during the day to burn through that. Does that have any impact? I do not see you asking that question of others who post often…
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Rudy,
You post every few minutes and you have a day job. Not many readers have as many comments as you.
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I rerad fast. I write fast. I have a good memory. For your peace of mind, I do have a time tracker on my equipment, so that will let me know how much time a day I spent on work.. And that one is still winning handily over time spent here…
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Fair enough questions: kind of like the well-documented R obstructionism of the past 8 years– I am not talking about that. I am talking about the many aspects of Trump’s presidency that might well undermine basic democratic principles and constitutional values. And as for my double standard, let’s shift back to public education since this is a site to discuss that: I would have resisted any of HRC’s privatizing tendencies (as I have for a long time) Now that Trump is about to name his cabinet and make policy proposals, it will be critical for some pro-public-schools Republicans to stand up to his attempts to set us even further down the road to losing one of the bedrock democratic institutions since its earliest days: public education. As recent ballot victories in Massachusetts, Georgia and Washington state have shown, the grassroots can be mobilized across party lines when it comes to educating our children, supporting our teachers and preserving and really improving our schools.
I contend that most people who voted for Trump certainly don’t want to see their local schools decimated or turned over to the privateers– they want them to flourish and thrive, and educate their community’s children and future citizens. They might have supported the candidate and helped to elect him President, but surely they won’t watch helplessly as the impending privatization agenda is railroaded through the Congress by his new Education secretary. Well, they had better speak up sooner than later. As the old Irish proverb goes: you never miss the water till the well runs dry.
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That I understand. I have two Republican legislators who both claim to be stand for public education. One I know for sure he does (His wife is on staff at the local school district), the other one wrote it on his flyers.
As far as school choice is concerned, that does not exist in most places as it is. You go to the school assigned to you by the local District. If you do not want to be at that school (No matter what the reason), you have to ask permission from the Board to see if they will allow that.
I do not consider that school choice.
Where my kids grew up, there really was a choice, and it did not make any difference in costs. Both schools received the same amount of money per student from the state.
here, however, there is so much politics going on with the desire to choose a different school. All sorts of things have to balance out: Not too many of a specific color, not too many of a specific social/economic group, not too many…
If my granddaughter wants to go to X school because that is were most of her friends go, why should that be stopped and weighed?
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Rudy, don’t you recall the adult tantrums thrown by Republicans, yelling out “You Lie!” when Obama was giving the State of the Union Address, Mitch McConnell’s publicly stating they would do everything in their power to interfere with his agenda, and their obsession with blocking, and their unconcealed racial panic at having a Black man as President?
Poor memory, or just inconvenient facts that get in the way?
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It is absolutely essential that we speak up and resist any move that smacks of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and/or religious intolerance. Where there is room for compromise, fine; governing requires skill in the art of compromise. Sometimes it seems like campaigns would try to make the voter believe that every bill is ideologically pure. Nobody ever has to accept something they do not agree with in order to get something they rate as more important at the time.
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Several things:
1. It was one single reoublican, and he was reprimanded by the leadership.
2. Reid made a similar statement, promising to stop anything republicans came up with
3. I resent the innuendo that the issue with obama was his skin color.
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Rudy,
Have you heard of the brother movement? Was any white president harassed into producing his birth certificate?
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No.
You are aware that it was a democrat president who imprisoned Americans from Japanese descent?
And was pretty close to doing the same to Americans from German descent?
And that it was the democrats who supported eugenics?
So let’s agree that both parties have some things to. R ashamed of, and have responsibilities not to make those kinds of decisions.
Let’s see how the next two years go, and if things go wrong, we can change congress to a different relationship.
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Rudy,
You have the silliest way of changing the subject when you are caught in the wrong. You said that Republicans did not obstruct Obama because he was black. I brought up the birther issue, which was intended to humiliate Obama. You respond that FDR imprisoned Japanese during WW2. Non sequitur.
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It was not THE republicans that created the birthed issue. SOME did. The majority of republicans i know were as angry about that as democrats were.
That had nothing to do with the presidents color. The same argument was made against McCain.
You referred to blocking, but forgot to mention Reid did the same.
I’m not changing the subject, I’m establishing the FACT that both parties have done things no one is proud of.
Pointing out those things dies not improve anything.
Learning to find ways to work together will.
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Rudy, as unfortunate as it may be, the Republican party is now identified with racism, misogyny, xenophobia , and religious intolerance with an unhealthy dose of nationalistic fervor to top it off. Now it is up to the Republican party to disavow itself of these morally repugnant , dangerous ideas. They have allowed fringe philosophy to dominate and shut down any conversation across political lines. The Democrats are identifying areas where they hope to be able to work with the Republicans; I hope the Republicans are smart enough to reach across the aisle if necessary to stop Trump’s agenda when it veers from what they know is in the best interest of the country. If he surrounds himself with advisors who have operated on the fringes because of their extreme views, we should all be nervous.
As for the rest of us,… I read an opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune (from the Washington Post) today offering advice from a European perspective recommending that we concentrate on issues with a defined outcome. As we found in this election cycle, local and state issues are much easier to influence from a grass roots perspective. The people can make their voices heard when their lives are immediately affected
(Massachusetts, Georgia, Washington,…). We may have little effect on national educational policy, but we can rally against arbitrary school closings in our own communities.
For a man who has apparently never done anything that didn’t benefit him or his family, Trump can hardly expect a lovefest in the streets, nor do we owe him one. As I have said before, I respect the office and our system of government; the man has done nothing that would lead me to respect or trust him. As long as he functions within the confines of the law and endeavors to make himself worthy of the position, I have no complaint. So far, there is nothing that is happening in the streets that leads me to believe that the vast majority of protestors have any intention of action beyond peaceful protest. they still have that right.
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What would your response be to a statement like, the democrats will be known as the party which refuses responsibility for wrong doing, a party which has a habit of throwing staff under the bus and claiming credit for accomplishments attained by those who are now dead and cannot speak!”
That is what is actually stated by some of my European friends – who have no friendly word for trump, either, by the way.
When I look at the three men picked so far, could you really make your statement as a generalization?
Interview on NPR this morning. Not flattering overall, on Flynn, but not a word against him re equality.
Jebsen and pompeo? You may disagree with their stand on illegal immigrants, but you cannot use the same description.
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“What would your response be to a statement like, the democrats will be known as the party which refuses responsibility for wrong doing, a party which has a habit of throwing staff under the bus and claiming credit for accomplishments attained by those who are now dead and cannot speak!”
Huh? I have no idea what you are talking about or what your European friends have to do with it. Taking credit for someone else’s work or blaming an underling for your mistakes doesn’t seem to be a failing limited to anyone class of people, In government or ordinary life, how one views such claims can depend on where one sits. As one who has been stepped on, I am well aware of that. I suppose the dirt involved in politics is why I used to claim I was not interested in being political. I just wanted to shut my door and teach. I was not interested in or really aware of the infighting. Big mistake. I was incredibly naive. In any case, I can’t really put this type of behavior in the same class as racism, misogyny, xenophobia and religious intolerance.
As to Trump’s cabinet choices, again one’s perspective can color one’s view of choices. No one would accuse him of making mainstream choices. Pompeo? I am not a fan of the tea party. I have no idea who Jebsen is. In any case, I make no judgement about his cabinet choices. I hope the Republicans will allow Democrats to question them during confirmation hearings. There is time to hear more about the candidates, but I do not believe that the American public wants a government of far right ideologues. The election results do not support that position. Less than 25% of those who voted chose Trump and you and I both know they are far from all racist, misogynist, xenophobic, and/or religiously intolerant. I hope the system will protect against some of the worst choices possible.
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I guess that “brother movement” should really read, “birther” movement? That one I have heard about. And it is a waste of time, money and energy.
Apart from that, what disappointed me in the entire Obama story, is the fact that he only leaned on his “blackness,” and pretty much ignored his “whiteness.” As his grandparents, I would be extremely hurt. He wrote about his father, his father’s dreams and such – but nothing about the grandparents who raised him, mentored and modeled him.
His claim that he “could have been a Devon Martin” makes no sense what so ever. He did not grow up in such an environment. I would see that as an abuse of his father’s ethnicity – and totally, again, ignoring the rest.
My kids are mixed kids. The have an American mother, and a Dutch father. For all reality linked supposes, most black people in the U.S. are not African-American. Obama truly was: African father, American mother.
I have a few friends in the local Liberian community. They are African. When one of their kids marries an American, there kids will be African-American.
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You miss the point, Rudy. If Barack Obama had been walking down his street and confronted by a white vigilante, do you really think it would have made any difference to the white man that Barack had a white mother? The question would not even have occurred to either one of them. Can’t you just see a black teenager pleading with some bigot, “But my mother is white!”
FYI: Mixed race and mixed ethnicity are different animals. I can skirt by calling myself a mutt because I have a trace of native American blood. I suspect that I am mostly of German extraction, but that is no longer relevant since my identity is as an American. (I should probably say as a citizen of the U.S. since there are two continents of “Americans.”) The rest of me seems to be pretty solidly northern European. My ancestors, being among the first wave of invaders, do not feel the need to call themselves European Americans. Because many black Americans choose to honor their continental African roots by calling themselves African American is their business. We have spent most of out time as a country making sure that they knew they were different.
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Most of the black Americans I know (and work with) are not excited about the term. They are, according to them, black Americans. Even our equity director, who is of Jamaican heritage, dislikes the term.
To help you understand: there is only one race – the human race. So, unless there are mixes between the human race and extra terrestrials, we are but one race. Ethnicities are where we have the problem.
What is referred to as racism is actually ethnocentrism, but hey, that does not sound near as evil, does it?
By the way, “The term African-American has crept steadily into the nation’s vocabulary since 1988, when the Rev. Jesse Jackson held a news conference to urge Americans to use it to refer to blacks. “It puts us in our proper historical context,” Jackson said then, adding in a recent interview that he still favored the term.”
It was a political move, made up by ONE person for purely political reasons. It has become a politically correct term ever since. Not historically or genetically correct, but hey, who cares about facts when make-belief works to ones advantage?
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Dang, I never knew my ethnic heritage was Caucasian! And here I thought I was largely German American! Do you mind telling me the cultural heritage that goes with being Caucasian? FYI: People of any racial group may belong to any ethnic heritage. For census purposes the U.S. government recognizes five racial groups: American Indian or Alaskan Indian,Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and white or Caucasian. Apparently not everyone agrees with your usage as the one and only “true” meaning of the word race.
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They are actually referred to as ethnicities – not races or racial. But again, why bother with facts?
I spent a good year teaching our SIS person how to pronounce that word.
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Rudy,
Your one example of antiTrump violence (if that is what it was) is dwarfed by the thousands of incidents of hatred and violence against blacks, women, Muslims, Hispanics, immmigrants, and Others. Trump incited and encouraged hate speech and violence. To her credit, Hillary Clinton NEVER did. If you want to continue defending this man, it’s your right. But please don’t say that Hillary was the same. She conducted herself with dignity in the face of the lowest, dirtiest, vilest campaign in modern American history.
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Thousands? Are we talking this year or throughout history?
Is it really a matter of frequency?? How many do you need for it to count? Ten? Hundred? Five? What a silly way to look at this.
I don’t care if people want to protest. But right now, the protests against trump have caused more financial damage. And damage against people that have NOTHING to do with trump.
Violence is w r o n g, end of story. It does not matter what or why, but showing your disagreement about something by using violence? When is the last time something got solved that way?
If you really want to be fair and balanced, denounce ANY kind of violence, no matter who uses it.
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Rudy,
You probably didn’t notice when a black church was burned and TRUMP was sprayed on its wall
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Good rules to follow…
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/11/18/teachers-election-online/
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Of course “They don’t want to get into the practice of hiring human editors…” It would upend the whole gig economy.
Many of us who use social media to organize have been bothered by the fact that we’ve been feeding the beast that intends to eat us.
We’re going to have to figure this one out before we elect a despot king and his heirs to the throne. Oops–too late.
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Censorship is a violation of our Freedom of Speech. Are Facebook and Google so superior everyone that they are to become the THOUGHT POLICE for the country? If you had read through the list you see there are “news sources” from both sides of the aisle included. CURATED NEWS like Facebook and Google are advocating bring America closer to STATE RUN NEWS like you have in China, North Korea, etc. Is that what you want to see?
As educators isn’t our job to teach our children how to make decisions based on multiple sides of an argument. Some of those sources may be “out of the box”, but that is the element that separates us from the computers? If our children are not able to think outside the box they will fall behind as they are required to compete in the world. Educators in Japan have already started recognizing this fact. If students do not keep the ability to learn things on their own and to be imaginative they will become human robots. Entities to be controlled, not capable of free thinking.
America exists today because of the ability to think complex thoughts that were often incendiary and unpopular. Where would we be today if our brains were not exposed to radical ideas? A flat Earth perhaps would still be taught. Spoon feeding selected information to citizens is commonly seen in communist, socialist, marxist, fascist, totalitarian societies and dictatorships because it makes the citizens easier to control. Is this something we should encourage? Don’t we want our children, ALL of our children, to be the best they can be? Are we teachers or programmers if we allow for this filtered information to exist?
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Actually, neither Google nor Facebook wants to become the “thought police.” It’s the “voices” out there who are clamoring for “better control” by the providers of social media outlets.
One of the problems we have in our computer network is the “phishing” scams. No matter how often we tell our users NOT to respond to those, we average about 10 – 15 per week! We tell people not to give their password out to ANYONE, not even our tech department staff. And yet…
Too few people check facts for themselves, and allow themselves to be led down the rabbit hole.
Neither Facebook nor Google can stop these people from going where the click takes them. Of course, when I lived here in the 70’s, National Enquirer was seen as a “reliable and trustworthy news source.”
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Sounds like you need a better graymail filter.
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This is NOT fake news. Seems like Trump is bringing in Wall Street to be his advisors. How is this going to help the average person? I’d like some Trump supporter to explain this to me.
WALL STREET SETTLES IN
Trump administration looks to be an “investment banker’s dream” reports Politico:
“Former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin has been seen at Trump Tower amid rumors that he’s the leading candidate for Treasury secretary. Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross appears headed to the Commerce Department. Steve Bannon, another Goldman alum, will work steps from the Oval Office. If Mnuchin drops out, as some rumors suggest he may, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon remains a possibility as Treasury secretary, and will serve as an outside adviser if he doesn’t get the job … ‘You would have to go back to the 1920s to see so much Wall Street influence coming to Washington,’ said Charles Geisst, a Wall Street historian at Manhattan College…”
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Whoops–of course I meant to type “mainstReam” media.
A Freudian slip, perhaps? (Because I AM steamed!)
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The fake news is only part of the problem. The fake news–paid advertisements–were posted all mixed in with people’s “news” feeds. In traditional media there is at least some separation.
Trump planned his whole strategy around this. Look at this real news article. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/27/donald-trumps-risky-plan-to-use-the-internet-to-suppress-hillary-clintons-turnout/2591103784/=hybrid_content_1_na
“We have three major voter suppression operations underway,” another campaign official told Green and Issenberg. The campaign is targeting young white liberals, young women and black voters with negative ads focused on Hillary Clinton’s politics, Bill Clinton’s past and comments Clinton made in the 1990s about black criminals.
In San Antonio, a young staffer showed off a South Park-style animation he’d created of Clinton delivering the “super predator” line (using audio from her original 1996 sound bite), as cartoon text popped up around her: “Hillary Thinks African Americans are Super Predators.” The animation will be delivered to certain African American voters through Facebook “dark posts” — nonpublic posts whose viewership the campaign controls so that, as Parscale puts it, “only the people we want to see it, see it.”
This, explicitly, is Trump’s get-out-the-vote operation — or, sometimes, don’t-go-vote operation. It’s online, Facebook posts and social media. It’s an unusual way of going about it, but Trump’s team thinks it will work.”
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Everyone admired President Obama when he made such fruitful use of the social media. And now trump gets blasted for doing the same thing???
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Rudy,
Obama didn’t use social media to attack the free press or belittle others.
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The issue was not the PURPOSE of the usage, but whether or not it was done successfully. And on that one, BOTH used it successfully, showing the danger of the use of such channels.
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There’s no equivalency between Obama and Trump. I don’t remember Obama accusing Mexicans of being rapists and criminals, of accusing McCain or Romney of being crooks who should be locked up. Who was the guy who peddled the birther garbage for 5 years and then later tried to blame his birther propaganda crap on the Democrats and Hillary??? Trump is the demagogue, not Obama. Very big difference.
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You are talking about CONTENT, the issue was the usage… and the success it brought.
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Rudy, you can’t conflate content with use. That’s like saying use of an axe for murder or to use one to cut down a tree for firewood are the same thing.
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I’m looking at impact and influence. Too many people take social media at face value – without checking facts.
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Separate, not conflate. We need the ability to edit our remarks!
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Extreme false equivalence. Not even laughable.
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There is no reason for Facebook not to reinstate the 27 editors it fired in August.
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And what flavor would you like those editors to be? Liberals? Conservatives?
Either way, one part of the country will still be unhappy!
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i prefer real journalists that report observable reality, i.e truth, but as to the unhappiness of readers who prefer to read only the news that is ‘fitted to their own worldview,’ there is the internet where liars of all persuasions proliferate. LOL… love alliteration.
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cross posted http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Why-Facebook-and-Google-ar-in-General_News-Decline_Facebook_Funding_Google-161117-811.html#comment630129
HENRY A. GIROUX writes
“Nowadays, facts and truth are becoming [more] difficult to uphold in politics (and in business and even sports).” Certainly, in the age of Trump there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the appeal to reason, informed judgment and facts is at odds with the current political culture. That is, truth and evidence have gone the way of the electric typewriter, or so it seems.
Americans seem to have a growing fondness for ignorance, an attitude that reinforces the downsizing of the civic function of language. Falsehoods and deceptions no longer appear marginal to political debate but now seem to shape much of what is said by the presidential candidates. This is shockingly true for Trump, who has organized much of his campaign around endless fabrications, sending fact checkers into a frenzy of activity. When Trump is caught in a falsehood, he simply ignores the facts and just keeps on lying. His followers could care less about whether he deceives them or not.”
“One of the apparent advantages of online news is persistent fact-checking. Now when someone says something false, journalists can show they’re lying. And if the fact-checking sites do their jobs well, they’re likely to show up in online searches and social networks, providing a ready reference for people who want to correct the record.
But that hasn’t quite happened. Today dozens of news outlets routinely fact-check the candidates and much else online, but the endeavor has proved largely ineffective against a tide of fakery.
That’s because the lies have also become institutionalized. There are now entire sites whose only mission is to publish outrageous, completely fake news online (like real news, fake news has become a business). Partisan Facebook pages have gotten into the act; a recent BuzzFeed analysis of top political pages on Facebook showed that right-wing sites published false or misleading information 38 percent of the time, and lefty sites did so 20 percent of the time.
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Headline: Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’ from The Washington Post
“…Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that’s how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it…
“But a Trump presidency is good for you from a business perspective, right?
It’s great for anybody who does anything with satire — there’s nothing you can’t write about now that people won’t believe. I can write the craziest thing about Trump, and people will believe it. I wrote a lot of crazy anti-Muslim stuff — like about Trump wanting to put badges on Muslims, or not allowing them in the airport, or making them stand in their own line — and people went along with it!…”
http://wapo.st/2gilNEq?tid=ss_mail
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It really is up to voters. Unfortunately, voters don’t want to work too hard nor really care to have their views challenged.
Van Jones had an excellent series “The Messy Truth” where he went out and talked to voters. One Trump guy was threatening armed civil war if Hillary was elected. He was wild-eyed and ready to jump out of his sofa as his views were challenged by Jones. An these are the “normal” voters.
These people just repeated Trumpian talking points based on false news and never seemed to get past the rhetoric Trump fed them. They refuse to even consider an opposing view or rational thought. Not only are we post-truth, we’re post-reason. The problem Democrats have now is a large block of voters who do not want to consider facts, discussion, and complexity. If you try to discuss anything in depth, you get blank stares followed by alt-right talking points. I gave up, at least until the Trump supporters realize they’ve been played as fools and duped.
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“The problem Democrats have now is a large block of voters who do not want to consider facts, discussion, and complexity. If you try to discuss anything in depth, you get blank stares followed by alt-right talking points.”
That is what a lot of Republicans thought about the Democrats, too. And I am sure I can find you a Democrat like the Republican you described. How would like for me to classify that as, “All Democrats are like that…?” And I know some nutty ones, too!
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Rudy, if that were true, how did we end up with Trump? Did you ever hear him discuss any issue thoughtfully? I didn’t.
Did you ever hear him tell lies? Did you ever hear him insult others, both Republicans and Democrats?
I didn’t hear that from Hillary.
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I really did not hear a lot from Clinton about plans – other than, I have a plan… Of course, that was Bill’s slogan when he ran for the first time, “I have a five year plan to…”
Back to 2016. I can honestly say that I have listened to about as much Clinton rhetoric as I have heard trump’s (And Sanders, for that matter).
But other than, “Fair share… Fair Share… and I will make tuition free and give everything else and the kitchen sink away,” no real plans how that was going to happen.
BOTH candidates were so busy telling us how bad the other candidate really was…
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Trump is a bully. Hard to have a reasoned discussion with a man who is arrogant, ignorant and a bully. Didn’t you hear him insult all the Republicans and threaten to jail her? Is that reasonable discourse?
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Rudy,
More false equivalences. I encourage you to watch Van Jones’ documentary. While there may be a few progressives who refuse a discussion, you just haven’t been around enough Rust Belt Trumpettes. It can be unnerving.
False equivalences normalize the abnormal. It is why we have Trump. In a few years after conservatives and Trump destroys American freedoms and progress while using the government as a personal ATM for the wealthy, an email server in Hillary’s basement will seem silly and insignificant.
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I have to remind myself that it was not much more than a decade ago that Dan Rather lost his job because he did not check out a story about Bush II. We recently elected one of two people to president, either of which ran commercials that were way worse than the sins of Rather. Our media outlets need a filter, or government will someday step in and create that filter the way Napoleon did in the French Revolution. Marat will be silenced but not marytred. Freedom depends on a public that wants to know information and to use it to make a good decision. People better control themselves, or they will lose that freedom.
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Here is some of Trump’s fake news, according to the New York Times:
Mr. Trump said on Twitter Thursday night that he helped save a Ford plant from leaving for Mexico. The company, though, never planned to move the factory.
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This is information from the Huffington Post regarding the Ford company:
“…Fields has maintained that shifting small-car production to Mexico, where the company can reduce its labor costs, would not result in any layoffs for Ford’s U.S. workers because the company is simultaneously investing more in domestic production of bigger vehicles.
“There will be no job impact whatsoever with this move,” Fields said.
The head of the United Auto Workers complained in April that the new factory in Mexico did represent “jobs that could have and should have been available right here in the USA,” but both the union and the company have pointed out that Ford is making significant investment in its U.S workforce.
In its November 2015 contract with the company, for instance, the UAW said it secured more than $1 billion worth of investment from Ford for production at its two plants in Kentucky. …”
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I heard a report on the network news this morning about this tweet. Ford discussed moving some small car production to already existing production facilities in Mexico in order to make room for expansion of the line for the Escalade(?) in the Kentucky plant. Trump had nothing to do with the decision making.
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Here is some real news. I don’t understand why thinking people voted for him.
November 18, 2016
The New York Times
NYTimes.com
BREAKING NEWS
Headline: “Donald Trump has reached a $25 million settlement over accusations that Trump University cheated its students out of money”
Friday, November 18, 2016 4:34 PM EST
Donald J. Trump has agreed to pay $25 million to settle a series of lawsuits stemming from his defunct for-profit education venture, Trump University, finally putting to rest fraud allegations by former students, which have dogged him for years and hampered his presidential campaign.
The settlement was announced by the New York attorney general, just 10 days before one of the cases was set to be heard by a jury. The deal, if approved, averts a potentially embarrassing and highly unusual predicament: a president-elect on trial, and possibly even taking the stand in his own defense, while scrambling to build his incoming administration.
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Too bad he reached a settlement. That would have been a riveting trial.
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Here is what columnist Paul Krugman of the NYT has to say:
“During the campaign, Donald Trump often promised to be a different kind of Republican, one who would represent the interests of working-class voters who depend on major government programs. “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” he declared, under the headline “Why Donald Trump Won’t Touch Your Entitlements.”
It was, of course, a lie. The transition team’s point man on Social Security is a longtime advocate of privatization, and all indications are that the incoming administration is getting ready to kill Medicare, replacing it with vouchers that can be applied to the purchase of private insurance. Oh, and it’s also likely to raise the age of Medicare eligibility…”
………….
How much has to happen before people learn?
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