Britain Has No Fake News Industry Because Our Partisan Newspapers Already Do That Job

[Denzil_DC]

Fake news sites have struggled to take hold in the UK political sphere, seemingly because traditional British news outlets are already incredibly adept at filling the market with highly partisan news stories that stretch the truth to its limits.

BuzzFeed News analysed the hundred most shared news stories on social media for a variety of topics relating to British politics over the last 12 months, taking in major events such as the EU referendum, the appointment of Theresa May as prime minister, and Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election as Labour leader.

In countries such as the US and Italy, completely fake stories with no basis in fact have come to dominate political debate on social networks such as Facebook. Such material – with headlines such as the infamous “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President” – is usually produced for political or financial purposes by websites that have little pre-existing online footprint.

...

But equivalent analysis of UK social media habits reveals the most popular dubious stories on British politics were almost always the work of long-established news outlets and relied at most on exaggeration rather than fakery. The evidence suggests that rather than reading complete lies, British audiences appear to prefer stories that contain at least a kernel of truth, even if the facts are polluted or distorted.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/fake-news-sites-cant-compete-with-britains-partisan-newspape

You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.

--Humbert Wolf

[nycbos]

1. Jim Hacker has a good explanation of this.

[Denzil_DC]

2. Cracking example from the Mail:

[T_i_B]

3. One thing I do see happening....

Last edited Sat Feb 18, 2017, 06:29 AM - Edit history (1)

...is newspapers copying the worst aspects of websites like Breitbart and The Canary, so we end up with a vicious circle of clickbait headlines and porky pies.

It makes it increasingly difficult to make good decisions at the ballot box when there is so much misinformation about and you can't trust what the media is telling you.

An example of this that's local to me is fracking. INEOS are seeking permission to explore for shale gas in my local area, and it would be nice if more scientific facts on the subject were readily available. The trouble is, information on the subject is all too often presented from extremely biased standpoints on both sides, so you end up mistrusting both sides! It also doesn't help that at this stage in the process residents are being urged to focus on very NIMBY-ish objections such as traffic levels in order to block the proposal rather than the more serious concerns such as groundwater and subsidance, so the bigger concerns that people might have about fracking are not being addressed.

[Denzil_DC]

4. Eye-catching headlines have been a feature of print media for years,

and might attract a few more sales when they were reliant an newsstand displays.

But the move to being more reliant on online advertising has driven the current media culture into a constant competition for clicks (it's been interesting, and somewhat encouraging, to see that BuzzFeed, which a couple of years ago I'd never have taken seriously as an outlet, is now managing to do some decent, serious journalism alongside the listicles and other froth that help to fund it).

At best, "scoops"-- EXCLUSIVE! BREAKING!-- are hyped, meaning there's no scope left for highlighting real scoops, and at worst, cuts in newsroom staff and the constant rush to be first mean that decent investigative journalism is a rarity and errors are constant.

Sorry to hear about the poor coverage of fracking in your area. There are plenty of verified examples of cock-ups and severe long-term side effects in the US programmes to point to, if you can find ways to get them to a wider audience.

[T_i_B]

5. There are many condradictory claims made about issues

And as such it can become difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. The claims made about the effects of fracking are a prime example of this.

It doesn't help for instance when representatives of INEOS get shouted down at meetings, or when anti-fracking groups make a point of portraying a small increase in road traffic in a rural area in the most hysterical terms possible.

Thing is, I'm not convinced one way or t'other, but I know this could have enormous benefits and also enormous drawbacks. The thing that worries me most is the potential effect fracking would have on all the old mine workings around here as the area I live in was extensively mined in the past. In fact if you start looking at local history, coal mines are the main thing you have to look at. The real history of my local area is to be found mostly in old mine shafts.

[Denzil_DC]

6. Yeah, Jim Ratcliife's got his eye on Scotland as well.

There's a moratorium on fracking up here at the moment (Ratcliffe's INEOS also owns a petrochemical plant at Grangemough on the Forth which is already processing imported shale gas), supposedly while we await technical reports, but I hope it never goes ahead. We don't need the extra production - there've been major new finds off Shetland recently, and oil prices (though they're now recovering) don't make much sense of the economics, let alone the horrible mess these fracking works have left behind elsewhere.

We've got similar issues in the places in Scotland where INEOS has exploration licences - some of his areas of interest include greater Glasgow, which is riddled with old abandoned mineworkings, and that's not an isolated problem, due to the nature of coal/oil-bearing geology.

[T_i_B]

7. One of the enticing things about fracking....

Last edited Sat Feb 11, 2017, 05:58 AM - Edit history (1)

...is the potential it has to reduce our reliance on oil and to keep fuel prices low.

And you're right about coal / oil geology being a big part of this. One reason why people don't want INEOS to be allowed to test for shale gas is that the people with an understanding of the local geology (and the history of the local mines, which were not gas free) fully expect INEOS to find exactly what they are looking for.

Issues relating to old coal mines are sure to be at the top of INEOS's concerns, and should also be at the top of the list of concerns of anyone else concerned about fracking.

Oh, and if you have any sort of passing interest in coal mining, then this map showing the extent of coal mining operations in the UK should keep you occupied for a very long time. http://mapapps2.bgs.ac.uk/coalauthority/home.html A key item to tick is "Mine Entry". This will produce a series of red crosses indicating old mine shafts. These can indicate anything from small bell pits through to massive industrial deep mines.