News

Our news media is currently under attack and is among the least trusted institution in the country.

Not sure calling it an institution is accurate but generally the public has a low opinion of it.

The problem it has is that it includes almost everything the purports to be news.

If you have ever been involved in a story that makes the news, you know that what gets published is inaccurate, not necessarily malicious but definitely inaccurate.

What you hope is that they get the basics correct, the who, when, what, where and hows.

They can't print or report everything and a lot of people won't even talk to them because they don't want to take the time or be involved.

Now the other problem is they need to sell their story.

So take a headline going around today.

Voters withdraw registrations because of voter fraud probe.

Sounds sort of important until you see its based on a single state and involves a few hundred people.

One statistic quoted is that the number is up a ridiculous percentage, because going from 5 to a couple of hundred is that increase.

Well, I don't know who these people are and I don't know if they are doing it out of fear or out of protest.  Some of that may still come out but the story is getting pretty big headlines and for those who only read headline (way too many of us) it is effectively fake news.

Now we have a phenomena on the Internet that is the equivalent of what headlines did to sell papers called click bait.

You get paid for how many visitors click on your site.  So you just need to get them there in order to make money.

Its one of the reasons fake news got so crazy and it is just something we need to live with now.

Sigh.