From Pine View Farm

All the News that Fits 0

It’s time to stop worrying about “fake news” and start worrying about fake newspapers.

Snopes reports that wealthy right-wing donors are setting up websites pretending to belong to local newspapers and designed to look like local newspaper websites for newspapers that do not, in fact, exist. Here’s a snippet (emphasis added):

The issue is not the creation of conservative content. The issue, according to Kathleen Bartzen Culver, the director for the Center of Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is disguising conservative activism as journalism. “I have no problem with advocacy organizations creating content that reinforces the positions they take on public policy issues on the left, right or center. The issue comes in when they’re not transparent about that advocacy,” Culver told us via phone. “In this case, if you have a conservative take on a policy issue and you want to promote that take, go ahead. But just claim it for what it is.”

Remember, just because you see it on a computer screen, it ain’t necessarily so. Check the bona fides of sources you use for news.

One technique is to check the purported news stories for links to sources; no links indicate dubious or nonexistent sources. Also, links from random Facebook Frolickers and twisty Twitter Trolls are hysterically unreliable.

H/T to The Bob Cesca Show for this news item.

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