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Is there a campaign of deliberate misinformation

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I was reading this article in the Independent today which suggests that on key issues the public are woefully misinformed. Key issues like benefit fraud (where people grossly overestimated the extent of).

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-public-wrong-about-nearly-everything-survey-shows-8697821.html

 

Some on here talk of the mediabeing inthrall to the 'politically correct liberal elite', but surely when media outlets are deliberately skewing information so that the public are calling for clampdowns on benefits this suggests that the media are biased to the right. And is this deliberate & co-ordinated, or just a coincidence?

Whay do people think?

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Yes and it is obvious on many levels. There are media-outlets in this country that are completely and utterly in one corner of the political paradigm and therefore hate everything about the other corner.

 

I am not a newspaper reader any more, mainly because of that. But take the Daily Mail, some consider it a respectable source for information yet each time someone quotes a Daily Mail article here that has political connotations it is tremendously easy to rip the article apart. That equals either VERY poor journalism, or deliberately obtuse journalism.

 

In the Independent and the Guardian, newspapers traditionally accused of being lefty papers in this country, that doesn't happen nearly as much. The Guardian is obviously on the social liberal part of the spectrum, but all their politically opinionated material is firmly within the columns and opinion pieces.

 

There is also a big issue with the availability of information, it is frequently too difficult to get accurate numbers on anything, leaving a lot of speculation. Even at the level of the national budget there are countless 'other' categories that are completely non-transparent.

 

In terms of information management the public service in this country is light-years behind and it will remain that way until it is taken as a serious issue.

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Of course there is. Why do you think it took years for the phone hackers to be prosecuted? They still pretty much print what they like. Even the BBC is a propaganda machine. It you want unbiased news, it takes some finding.

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Of course it's deliberate, and increasingly obvious, but still many people believe everything they read in the popular press and see on television.

 

The good thing is that there are now other sources of information which enable those who care to, to get a fuller, more rounded picture.

 

The article is right in that statistics should be better taught in schools, showing how easily figures can be manipulated, and also media awareness, showing up bias etc.

 

People need to become a lot more 'media savvy,' and politicians might like to try telling the truth once in a while.

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Some on here talk of the mediabeing inthrall to the 'politically correct liberal elite', but surely when media outlets are deliberately skewing information so that the public are calling for clampdowns on benefits this suggests that the media are biased to the right. And is this deliberate & co-ordinated, or just a coincidence?

Whay do people think?

 

I don't believe there is deliberate political bias, more a bias towards writing stories that their target readership will want to read and share, therefore getting more money for advertising in their papers / websites.

 

The Mail Online website is one of the most successful advertising platforms on the planet, with it's deliberately written headlines designed as "clickbait", even when they directly contradict them later in the story.

 

The Express would lose a portion of it's readership who strongly believe that Diana was murdered if they suddenly u-turned and supported the official line rather than the weekly "we need answers" type headlines. The problem is that when a paper toes a single line so much, they eventually become a parody of themselves, as has happened to the Express with their Diana and Maddie coverage.

 

---------- Post added 12-05-2014 at 13:31 ----------

 

Of course there is. Why do you think it took years for the phone hackers to be prosecuted? They still pretty much print what they like. Even the BBC is a propaganda machine. It you want unbiased news, it takes some finding.

 

I don't think there is such a thing as unbiased news. Everybody puts their own spin on everything they report, from the minor (inflection / emotion) to the major (choice of interviews, ignoring facts).

 

The normal response is "they should just report the facts", but even that can and is subject to bias and interference. Example - two sides in a war kill 10 people in one day in virtually identical circumstances - which one do you report first? Some people will take the fact that the people they agree with were reported second as clear evidence of bias.

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I was reading this article in the Independent today which suggests that on key issues the public are woefully misinformed. Key issues like benefit fraud (where people grossly overestimated the extent of).

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-public-wrong-about-nearly-everything-survey-shows-8697821.html

 

Some on here talk of the mediabeing inthrall to the 'politically correct liberal elite', but surely when media outlets are deliberately skewing information so that the public are calling for clampdowns on benefits this suggests that the media are biased to the right. And is this deliberate & co-ordinated, or just a coincidence?

Whay do people think?

 

Its not just the media, its also political parties, ask the leader of each party a question and you will get a different answer from each of them, which means some are deliberately withholding, twisting or don't know the facts.

 

Regarding benefits fraud, how can anyone know the extent of it, they can only express an opinion because they can't possibly know if they have caught everyone committing fraud.

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Of course it's deliberate, and increasingly obvious, but still many people believe everything they read in the popular press and see on television.

 

The good thing is that there are now other sources of information which enable those who care to, to get a fuller, more rounded picture.

 

 

The people that are giving us the information are generlly more wealthy than the average person. So does that affect their view point? I think so.

Do rich people driving around in their big cars and avoiding tax tax share the same experiences as those earning less than £7 per hour?

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Of course it's deliberate, and increasingly obvious, but still many people believe everything they read in the popular press and see on television.

 

The good thing is that there are now other sources of information which enable those who care to, to get a fuller, more rounded picture.

 

The article is right in that statistics should be better taught in schools, showing how easily figures can be manipulated, and also media awareness, showing up bias etc.

 

People need to become a lot more 'media savvy,' and politicians might like to try telling the truth once in a while.

 

In other words read as much as you can get your hands on and sooner or later you will read something that you find believable, it might not be true but to the reader it will be true.

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In other words read as much as you can get your hands on and sooner or later you will read something that you find believable, it might not be true but to the reader it will be true.

 

That is where information literacy comes into play, a massively undervalued skill that should be taught in all secondary schools.

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That is where information literacy comes into play, a massively undervalued skill that should be taught in all secondary schools.

 

You will have to help me out here, I've just looked up information literacy but I didn't really understand how it would help me decide which story out of several is the truth.

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That is where information literacy comes into play, a massively undervalued skill that should be taught in all secondary schools.
I'd sooner support critical appraisal (rationalism, I suppose) by way of skill that needs (extra-)teaching.

 

My main criticism of mass media in the UK is not so much its bias (for one side of a story vs the other), as the increasingly vacuous and insular character of the events/information being reported.

 

Witness the ever increasing popularity of tabloid weeklies à la Closer, and what 'news' they are based on increasingly polluting mainstream news. Which modern social media trends and habits are not doing anything to mitigate.

 

I sometimes get this feeling when watching the news (BBC, C4, France24, France 2), that an idiocracy is just around the corner :(

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I was reading this article in the Independent today which suggests that on key issues the public are woefully misinformed. Key issues like benefit fraud (where people grossly overestimated the extent of).

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-public-wrong-about-nearly-everything-survey-shows-8697821.html

 

Some on here talk of the mediabeing inthrall to the 'politically correct liberal elite', but surely when media outlets are deliberately skewing information so that the public are calling for clampdowns on benefits this suggests that the media are biased to the right. And is this deliberate & co-ordinated, or just a coincidence?

Whay do people think?

 

Except the independent?

 

---------- Post added 12-05-2014 at 14:43 ----------

 

Its not just the media, its also political parties, ask the leader of each party a question and you will get a different answer from each of them, which means some are deliberately withholding, twisting or don't know the facts.

 

Regarding benefits fraud, how can anyone know the extent of it, they can only express an opinion because they can't possibly know if they have caught everyone committing fraud.

 

Or that the answer is one of opinion and not of fact.

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