As a whole, Americans believe that fake news is also a bigger problem for the country than racism, illegal immigration, terrorism, and sexism.
Americans who say fake news is a “very big problem” outnumber those who say the same about “climate change,” according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.
“Many Americans say the creation and spread of made-up news and information is causing significant harm to the nation and needs to be stopped,” the survey revealed, with a full fifty percent of the population describing it as a very big problem as opposed to 46 percent who say the same of climate change.
U.S. adults believe that the majority of the content of made-up news and information falls into two major categories: politics/elections (73 percent) and entertainment/celebrities (61 percent), Pew revealed.
A bulk of Americans sense an ideological motivation behind the creation of fake news, with 86 percent of the population saying that “the desire to push an agenda or viewpoint” is a key reason why news is manipulated.
As with many issues, when it comes to fake news there are sharp divisions along partisan lines, Pew found. “In general, Republicans, the highly politically aware and older Americans express higher levels of concern about the impact of made-up news than their counterparts,” the report stated.
In fact, among Republicans and those who lean Republican, 62 percent believe that fake news is a “very big problem” as opposed to just 40 percent of Democrats or those who lean Democrat who say this.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The fakest Fake News is climate alarm, which will only become an actual concern when the planet starts cooling, but still not for the reason the alarmists will be saying. They will just switch back to saying that it is people who are causing the cooling and we need to stop burning fossil fuels immediately, the same as they said in the 1970s.
The late self-admitted faker-in-chief Stephen Schneider led both the “oil burning is freezing the planet” movement, and immediately after that the “oil burning is burning up the planet” movement. His perfidy still lives on in the funding structure he helped Al Gore put in place where no money goes to anyone who fails to support the radical left’s anti-fossil-fuels agenda.
The three Stanford Malthusians–Schneider, Holdren and Ehrlich–may be the three most damaging intellectual frauds in human history. Malthus was an ECONOMIST whose theory that population growth must create poverty has been contradicted by every era of human existence and was understood by Malthus himself to be a failed theory, though he didn’t know why. He failed to understand that human ingenuity is itself a resource, so that population growth in-effect creates more resources than it consumes (a phenomenon that was not fully understood until Julian Simon sussed out the actual numbers in his great book The Ultimate Resource).
The three Stanford Stooges were not doing physical science at all. They were doing economics, fabulously wrong and completely failed economics. Their supposed “science” was all fabricated to tell a tale that supported their economic errors, as Schneider admitted: “Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
He advocated for making whatever scientific claims would garner public support for what he saw as necessary policy actions, but his convictions about policy were not based on science at all. They were based on his completely incompetent economic views, thinking that human population and economic growth were gobbling up the planet, making it necessary to unplug the economy by unplugging fossil energy supplies, oh and by the way being anti-nuclear too.
None of these three morons was EVER doing science. Total fake science news, and Schneider institutionalized it by creating the climate funding system that is still in place today (administered in Obama’s second term by Holdren). At least $125b now and not a penny ever goes to anyone who fails to support the Malthusian agenda: anti-CO2, anti-energy, anti-economic growth, anti-population. 100% political funding of 100% fake news.
The thousands of scientists who go along also accept the Malthusian doctrine. “If we are wrong about CO2 it’s okay because the policies we advocate, reigning in economic growth, will save the planet from being gobbled up by humanity.” So they happily take the money and think of themselves as do-gooders, without concern about whether their scientific claims are valid or not.
It is wrong to call these people “neo-Malthusians,” as is commonly heard. They are actually paleo-Malthusian. Compared to them Malthus was a neo-Malthusian. He came to understand that he had been very wrong, but today’s Malthusians are completely unreflective. They don’t even admit that their man-vs-nature eco-religious beliefs are actually simple old-timey Malthusian economic ideas and they have no awareness of how completely backwards those ideas are now understood to be by people who actually do economics.
The whole “climate science” field is actually doing economics, not science. Just really really bad economics, dressed up with fake science rationales on the excuse that the resulting anti-human policy prescriptions are just what the world needs anyway, so don’t fret whether the science is valid or not.
You can’t fool all of the people all of the time but with the right giveaway programs you can fool enough Dems to get the job done. Of course eliminating the Electoral College and allowing all felons to vote would help make it happen much more often.
I doubt we will see a poll from PEW asking about agenda science, agenda news, or agenda court rulings.
With NPR demanding an apology from the American People to Al Gore for the flooding that he predicted, what are we to think?
Fake News squared ??
Years ago papers like the New York Times disgracefully perverted the truth by either distortions or simply ignoring what should have been front page news – not hearsay or opinion but brutal acts by those they were siding with politically. I remember two horrific incidents that happened in 1977 and 1978. They involved family and friends of someone I knew and respected. The NYT ignored the first and distorted the second to fit their narrative. Now what the NYT was doing has become pervasive in the mainstream media.
Actually the term “fake news” is misleading. It is often a blend of truths, half-truths and lies. It includes far more than just fake or made up stories. It easily misleads naive and uninformed people. There are a few important warning lights:
if a report speaks of “unnamed sources,” do not believe it;
if it does not refer the reader to a source for the complete text or address where you can check the actual words and their context, do not believe it;
if the article is filled with sensational language and emotive words, do not believe it.
if there are serious flaws in the reasoning (logic), do not believe it.
This is the best exploration of the issue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit
(Yes, it’s Wiki, for a quick overview)
Not much fake news. The problem is they spike most of the important stories.
Windows 10 “news” is true entertainment about the British Royal Family, dogs, Congress, Trump, the weather.
Things that matter are not covered as much.
Politics is slanted. They call you for those polls. They do want to know what you think and what you care about, not because they think you have any wisdom, but so they can craft those idiotic election messages with check marks for what their candidate stands for. They elect who they want.
I got to thinking about Brexit (I’m from the UK originally) and it occurred to me that “brexit chaos” is the same as the “climate crisis”. It doesn’t actually exist either in the real world.
Sure, there are some electrons doing spasmodic circles in the brains of elitists twits and their toadie media elitist twits, with cash going in their direction but, other than that, Brexit doesn’t actually exist either when it comes to normal, non-parasitic people.
Is there a living descendant of Guy Fawkes that could finish the job this time?
Conditions must be pretty rough,when 30% of Liberals acknowledge the media lies.
For even our progressive comrades to notice means the lying is blatant and obvious.
Fake news is spin,so many spinners so few facts.
What ever happened to Who,When,Where,what,why?
The reporting has gotten so bad that we are left with the conclusion;
“Somebody did something somewhere”.
Liars never prosper,but they can gain some short term advantage from misleading you.
Media has been lying,mostly by omission, for year.
This is why they are trending to ward bankruptcy,the public stopped buying years ago.
Now the advertisers are following the public.
This isn’t news. For years polls have shown that concern about climate change is pretty low for most Americans. Of course for high-strung Americans it’s at the very top, right next to a bunch of other imaginary problems like “social justice”, “income inequality”, a “woman’s right to choose”, and “right-wing extremists”. For them everything is a crisis of roughly equal proportion. For laid-back Americans, things like low unemployment, a strong economy, inexpensive energy, law and order, family values and backyard barbeques are high priority.
The new “Woke” generation has “woken up” to the understanding that they are being fed an unrelenting stream of marketing – politica,l commercial and ideological, by every mass media outlet that is essentially for hire.
Those, however, that call themselves ‘woke’ are in fact mesmerised by the media that tell them:”You are not asleep. You are not dreaming. This is real, wake up and take another dose of progressive propaganda You are not asleep. This is real. Because we all say so, so it must be true.. You are not dreaming…”
” … “Many Americans say the creation and spread of made-up news and information is causing significant harm to the nation and needs to be stopped,” the survey revealed, with a full fifty percent of the population describing it as a very big problem as opposed to 46 percent who say the same of climate change. … ”
>>
Solve the former and you’ve implicitly solved the latter.
We have a problem when newspaper editors and politicians start deciding what is fake news.
What Maltha said at that moment in time was correct, and basically it is
still true. Obviously if a people cannot feed themselves, and are unable
to produce sufficient goods to enable them to then buy food, quite
obviously they and the World does have a problem.
Solution, well there are many, cheap energy would go a long way to help
with solving the problem, as if their standard of living rose to match the
Western countries with a provision for pensions for the aged , this would
help remove the need to have lots of children in the hope that enough
survive to look after Mum and Dad.
But in the short term then Condoms are needed, although Cultural problems
will then occur, remember the Catholics in Northern Ireland who could
not seem to understand why the Protestants were better off, because they
had far less children.
Today of course we have the potentially far greater problem with the people
of the Islamic faith. In say 20 years time the Politics of Europe will look
very different from today, unless of course like the Jews, Pogroms occur.
Sad but I am afraid true.
MJE VK5ELL
But what about fake news about fake climate science about fake warming by fake fakers faking fakery?
Do not miss Manhattan Contrarian’s take on Michael Bloomberg:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-6-10-the-best-part-of-not-being-a-progressive-is-not-having-to-feel-guilty-all-the-time
Well the split is because so many democrats (not all) are completely uninformed.
The NYT , Guardian , LA Times , BBC , CBC , ABC will print or report any scary climate story they can get .
The way to finish off the scary global warming scam is to flood these “news ” outlets with over the top scary climate fiction and the public will get even more sick of being subjected to the bias .
The NYT will be under water in 3 years etc etc .