Stan15,

Your comments reads like fake news to me.

You have told 'a story that is presented as being a genuine item of news but is in fact not true and is intended to deceive people' (Macmillan Dictionary 2009-2019. s.v. fake news).

Of coarse, the biggest fake news story of this century, possibly any century, has been the Trump-Russia collusion story.

For the better part of three years, hardly a day went by without there being yet another story of how Trump had been compromised by Putin, how Trump won because of his Russian collusion, how Trump was repaying the favour, pissing on beds etc etc etc.

The left media ( that is, most of the media) reported from anonymous sources with supposed inside knowledge about how the latest 'revelation' was going to finally bring down Trump. And when it didn't they just moved on to the next 'revelation'. In the desire to get him, nothing was out of bounds. Truncate footage of fish feeding. Report the wrong date on documents to alter timelines.

Yet in the end, it was all made up. Mueller, much to his own chagrin, reported that none of it, NONE OF IT, was true. There was no collusion. Russia didn't alter the election. Russia didn't support Trump. Trump wasn't 'owned' by Putin or anyone else.

All fake news. Yet millions, including not a few here, utterly believed the fake news. And what happened when it was revealed as such? Was there circumspection or recanting. Was there reappraisal of the state of the media that people rely on.

Not a bit of it. The believers simply moved on to believing the next fake news story. And when it fails, they'll move on to the next.

/cont

/cont
For example, on these pages there is a thread running about 11,000 scientists. But its fake news. There were possibly as few as 50 scientists related to that story. But the believers don't care. The fake news will be believed because it fits the narrative.

That's why fake news works. Because the believers want it to be true. They care little for the facts. They care only for the story. Lies by government and leaders have been around since Sargon the Great. But this different. This is the media reporting lies as though it's truth, or making up lies itself, in the service on a political narrative and in the service of protecting the power of a particular class.

It's new and it works, because so many people aren't interested in finding the facts for themselves. They want to be told fairy-tales so long as the fairy-tales reach the right conclusion.

The only hope here is that the 'fake-newsers' are being outed and people (not those here, obviously, but elsewhere) are recognising that they've been lied to. In the US, polling shows most people hold journalists as a group in contempt. The election of Trump, and Morrison and the victory of Brexit, showed the people ignoring the fake news stories spread by the media.

Michael Crichton had a parable of a man who opens his newspaper and reads an article on a subject he's very familiar with. He realises that the article and the facts within are rubbish, all fake, all construed to make a political point. And he's disgusted by it and the people who lied.
Then he turns the page and sees a shocking article on a subject he knows nothing about. He believes every word of it. That's why we have fake news.

AC report the criminal do not give him air
So define fake news?
Ok Hitler's Germany first started its mass production, constructed lies to challenge the truth
And it worked! some even in the last day of Berlin, in the rubble hung innocents who just wanted to live, in the name of a mad demiGod
America brought it home, polished it off, waiting for someone to use it
See Sky/Fox news, see Rupert's hobby, playing monopoly with politics, powered by fake news
Now yes, some of us believe without reserve fake news exists, the other side uses it,only the other side
Fake News has robbed us all, of the once treasured truth

Dear mhaze,

You never desist, do you? Your little one dollar brain is so fixated on so-called facts that it prevents you from thinking critically. I suppose that's just the product of being ignorant and uneducated. I'm just glad it's you and not me that has a one dollar brain. I thank my lucky stars every day that I was fortunate to get a million dollar brain.

Armchair Critic,

<<But you ruined your great first comment with the second. And not to put crap on religion, but you went from logical to airy-fairy and lost that newly-found 'well-grounded' status that you'd somehow managed to find in your first comment. The topic of your comment crosses over into the 'fake news' discussion as well.>>

+ 'not to put crap on religion, you went from logical to airy-fairy'. That is fallacious reasoning. You have dumped on me an Ad Hominem (Tu quoque) Fallacy of personal inconsistency. You claimed the second part of my argument that God sends the rain is flawed. You have pointed out that the argument between first and second paragraphs is not demonstrating consistence.

However, you did put 'crap on religion' by your disparaging comment of Jesus' statement that He sends the rain.

Making such a claim, without demonstrating it is so, is erroneous reasoning. It's an Ad Hominem (Tu quoque) Fallacy, http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/11/Ad-Hominem-Tu-quoque.

You are the one demonstrating Christophobia when it comes to the source of rain, http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/christophobia.