The News from Facebook Stats

News sources have produced a discussion about fake news and a lot of statistics showing nearly everyone gets their news from Facebook.  Will Oremus from Slate clarified the Pew Research Report that led to the conclusion that "nearly half of the people on Facebook get their news from that platform".  Oremus looked at the report, as should any serious researcher, and came to the conclusion that the report is often incorrectly cited.  Not that many people actually get any news from Facebook, and it looks like he is right for more reasons than he cited.

The report says "social media" is often a source for about 18% of people who use it.  The term social media means Facebook, Twitter and a whole bunch of other sources.  But, the first page of the report also says 56% never, or hardly ever, get their news from social media.  Second, social media postings are often made by news outlets themselves.  If someone subscribes to ABC news on Facebook or Twitter are those people getting their news from the social media or ABC?  ABC writes it, puts video into it and delivers it to outlets.  They are the source of the news.  If I watch ABC News on their website, it is basically the same content, but the delivery vehicle is different.  If I watch it live on TV, or do on-demand TV from FIOS, I still am getting the news from ABC, not FIOS.

Where this becomes more important is with fake news and the responsibility for content on delivery channels.  Fake news is a misnomer.  If I write a story on social media that says "I heard that my cousin went to jail for DUI." Is that fake news if he didn't go to jail?  If a staffer for Hillary Clinton writes that Donald Trump didn't pay any income taxes -ever- and ABC picks that up and writes a story that they have sources that say Donald Trump has never paid income taxes, that is news, but its it fake news?  The difference is in the source of the news.  If one person heard about his cousin going to jail when he didn't, that is an internal family problem.  The ABC story is different because they have a responsibility for the content.  We excuse this too often as news reporting, when publishing a knowingly false story carries legal penalties.  

What complicates this further is state-sponsored news.  The China News outlet says their Navy picked up a drone out in the South China Sea because they thought it might be a navigation hazard for shipping there.  News outlets in the U.S say this drone was seized in international waters in an act that amounts to piracy.  Which story is fake news?  They both are.  State-sponsored news agencies deliver supporting material for narratives, story lines they want us to believe.  Big chunks of our news come from bending news to fit the narrative.  Is that fake news?  You bet it is.

The Presidential election reminds me that news outlets used to be better at detecting and reporting the real story and not the narrative bending news.  They have lost that ability and the trust of their readers because they just do what Facebook does, conveying what they hear about my cousin and Donald Trumps taxes, without checking on the real story.  Now the Russians come along and hack the Democratic National Committee, releasing that information to the public. Are those emails fake news?  No, they aren't.  A good investigative report might have discovered the inconsistencies of what both parties said in public and what they said in private.  As it is, we have only ourselves to blame for only having one side of that story.