fake news
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A Scientologist’s Response to “Critics”
Journalists always seem to get their panties in a wad, downright insulted that Scientologists, when asked to “respond to their critics” don’t immediately fall all over themselves in a rush to kneel at the feet of said journalists in fawning supplication, begging to be liked and hoping for approval.
A&E: When You Pay for Hate Speech That’s Exactly What You Get
It’s obvious why journalists are wary of those who offer to trade information for profit— such people are all too likely to say what they think the person paying them wants to hear, regardless of the truth. Put in cruder terms than in the SPJ’s Code: “You get what you pay for.”
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American Media: Stop Sensationalizing Religion
When a reporter takes on the subject of (someone else’s) religion, he or she does not usually understand what he or she is reporting on, or is relying on biased/slanted data and ignoring the sensibilities of their intended audience.
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Breaking News: Scientologists Eat Salad!
How well I remember that morning in 1985 when I awoke to see a piece produced by a local Portland, Oregon TV news show marveling at the fact that Scientologists, like other humans, eat salad.
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Reader Beware: Fake News Is Cheap and Easy
The data is fascinating and rather unnerving at the same time. In about an hour’s time, Mr. King created a fake news website, put together a fake news story by re-using a popular one he had seen, created a fake news page on Facebook, created a fake ad promoting the fake news from his fake page, targeted the ad to the groups most likely to salivate over it, specified his budget of about $50.00 and then clicked “place order.”
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Fake It Till You Make It: How Mass Media Manipulates
Fake News has become a staggering problem. Public trust in media institutions has declined sharply in the wake of numerous scandals fueled by fabricated stories in the news and on social media.
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Fake News Isn’t News and It Isn’t New
Some years ago, my local Church of Scientology was in a legal battle with an individual who was violating the law. We took him to court and eventually won. What we didn’t win was the battle with fake news.
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Groping for Clarity in This High-Speed, High-Stakes World
With trending, “hashtaggy” topics now an easy way to measure public mood, product sponsors, employers and others hyper-sensitive to public reactions can pull the plug on a service, product, program or career faster than, well, than a house of cards can fall.
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How to Fight Fake News in the Post-Journalism Era
There are still plenty of problems to fix in the world, but stupefying viewers with incessant catastrophes on a 24-hour news cycle has obviously degraded the integrity of news media as a national institution.
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If I Were to Tell the Story of You
Pretend for a moment that I am a journalist. You’ve become something of a big deal, a hot topic. Lots of important people are mixing it up with you and it’s got the media all abuzz, so I want to do a feature piece on you. Sounds good, right? But I don’t want to interview you personally.
