The ascent of Donald Trump has proved Neil Postman’s argument in Amusing Ourselves to Death was right. Here’s what we can do about itOver the last year, as the presidential campaign grew increasingly bizarre and Donald Trump took us places we had never been before, I saw a spike in media references to Amusing Ourselves to Death, a book written by my late father, Neil Postman, which anticipated back in 1985 so much about what has become of our current public discourse.At Forbes, one contributor wrote that the book “may help explain the otherwise inexplicable”. CNN noted that Trump’s allegedly shocking “ascent would not have surprised Postman”. At ChristianPost.com, Richard D Land reflected on reading the book three decades ago and feeling “dumbfounded … by Postman’s prophetic insights into what was then America’s future and is now too often a painful description of America’s present”. Last month, a headline at Paste Magazine asked: “Did Neil Postman Predict the Rise of Trump and Fake News?” Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2017-02-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
A head-to-head debate between the executives leading Facebook and Google’s efforts to court publishers revealed sharp divisions between the two internet companies’ approaches to stemming “fake news” and disinformation. Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal
[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2018-03-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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At a press event in New York City, Google announced today that it's rolling out the Google News Initiative, in which it's investing $300 million over the next three years. The goal is to help publishers make money and to combat "fake news," which consists of several products designed to help... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2018-03-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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This month, MIT scientists published a paper that found lies spread six times faster than real news on Twitter. This week, Jordan Erica Webber tries to understand why this happensSubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-03-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook has been fighting something of a losing battle against the problem of fake news, but media mogul Rupert Murdoch thinks he has come up with a solution. He says that the social network should pay "trusted" publishers for the provision of news content. Facebook recently said that it wants... Continue reading at Betanews
[ Betanews | 2018-01-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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David Bowie's son, director and screenwriter Duncan Jones, has launched a book club in tribute to his late father. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-01-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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It’s easy enough to believe that this is an especially awful moment for truth—in part because it is. But in a new book Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, Kevin Young shows that the concepts listed in his title have been around in America for a very... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2017-11-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In opening the Sharjah International Book Fair professional program, IPA president Michiel Kolman cites freedom of expression in 'a world of fake news.' The post IPA’s Chief Calls on Publishers To Be ‘Stewards of Truth’ appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2017-10-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Lies have become alternative facts and truth irrelevant in the face of power, while we all give up our privacyIn Book 8 of The Odyssey we read that the gods weave misfortune so that later generations have something to sing about. It wasn’t a god but a conman who now leads me to describe how –... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-10-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook came under fire after it admitted that it published 3,000 Russian-linked advertisements designed to influence the US Presidential Election. Those ads pointed to Pages that trafficked in fake news, which has been one of the social network's b... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2017-10-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Intimidation, grooming, exploitation: we pay too high a price for the internet’s wonders. The state has to introduce far tougher regulationThe stupidest article I ever wrote, in the 1990s, forecast that the internet would benefit just two groups of people: lawyers and pornographers. I was wrong.... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-10-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Frankfurt Book Fair, opened this year by Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, also kicked off discussions of the role of books in an era of fake news. The post Download: Wednesday’s Frankfurt Book Fair 2017 Show Daily appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2017-10-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook is still working out how to reduce the reach of fake news and misinformation on its site and today, it starts testing a new feature that sounds like it might be pretty useful. When an article link is shared in someone's News Feed, there will... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2017-10-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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One of the problems with Facebook -- and the internet in general -- is that it has been incredibly democratizing in terms of who is able to publish news and other messages online. Democratization of anything is usually perceived as a good thing, but as the genuine problem of "fake news" (i.e.... Continue reading at Betanews
[ Betanews | 2017-10-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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As part of a wide-ranging investigation into how Russian-linked operatives harnessed social media during the 2016 U.S. election, lawmakers are homing in on Google services including YouTube and Gmail.The Senate has called Alphabet Inc.'s Google to testify Nov. 1, along with executives from... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2017-10-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The opportunity for children’s non-fiction lies in offering “trust and authority” in a world of fake news, paid for ads and internet misinformation, DK’s chief executive Ian Hudson has said. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-09-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Nine days after Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg dismissed as "crazy" the idea that fake news on his company's social network played a key role in the U.S.’s November election, then-President Obama pulled aside the youthful tech billionaire and delivered what he hoped would be a... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2017-09-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The next battleground in Facebook's war against fake news is the link previews on shared posts from publishers. Product manager for news Alex Hardiman announced in a blog post that non-publisher pages can no longer overwrite link metadata--such as headlines, descriptions and images--in Graph API... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2017-07-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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‘So my $15m book deal got cancelled because a few snowflakes were upset over something I said about children. Well, diddums’This is the book people said couldn’t be published because I was so dangerous. Well, you don’t get to silence The World’s Most Dangerous Faggot that easily. Have I said... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-07-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Rightwinger said his book – self-published after he was dropped by Simon & Schuster – had sold 100,000 copies, but data shows fewer than 20,000 salesRightwing controversialist Milo Yiannopoulos has branded reported low sales of his new book “fake news” after official figures revealed the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-07-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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“Fake news” is old news — people have been showering contempt on journalists long before the last presidential election. Nonfiction books like “All the President’s Men” might honor the profession. But in the public imagination — as well as novels, movies and TV shows — reporters are usually... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2017-06-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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