FAKE NEWS experts want to guide us ... as if we don`t already know

Now here come the FAKE NEWS experts:

"After Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, the BBC ran a quiz asking readers to distinguish fake news stories from real ones. [The BBC, no less, the biggest propagandists on the planet.]

They asked, for example, which of these widely reported stories was an actual event:
(1) Putin issues international arrest warrant for George Soros (2) Black Lives Matter thug protests President Trump with selfie…accidentally shoots himself in the face. (3) Passenger allowed on to flight after security confiscate his bomb If you can’t pick the correct answer, that’s because it’s virtually impossible to differentiate true headlines from false. They all look equally implausible, but then headlines are meant to grab attention by highlighting the striking or unusual (answer 3 is the real one, if you’re interested)...

I`m interested in who says number 3 is the truth and who says number 1 and number 2 is NOT the truth. I certainly am not going to believe an article like this now am I?  -  nor should I -   if I have my critical faculties intact.  I`m sorry, you`re fighting a losing battle here.

But there`s more:

Much of the debate has centred on how the technology itself needs to be refined to combat this problem. But blaming technology alone implies a rather credulous population with little knowledge of how media works and liable to believe anything they’re told.

The ability to make informed decisions isn’t dependent solely on the information one is fed, but on evaluating that information, understanding its provenance, and appreciating that its mediation influences its nature...

At a time when universities are struggling to justify their position, the heightened need for critical literacy skills in tackling fake news and media manipulation highlights the central role that higher education can play for society as a whole.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/fake-news-solution-education-not-regulation

Ho Ho. The higher education establishment  is trying to carve out another wee niche for itself.

Technology baloney !

I`m sorry Ms Higher Education you`ve missed the boat completely. People have always lived in their own bubbles surrounded by like-minded bubblers and don`t need advice from you. They have always talked to each other about the news and got their information from each other as well as official sources. They have also criticised those sources but not much of that got into the mainstream. Really the only difference with Facebook is that it happens faster and criticisms of the mainstream media cannot be contained.

Now that commentary on the news can happen as fast as official news sources themselves, the mainstream is struggling to TELL US WHAT TO THINK.