Talk:Manufactured journalism

In order to increase traffic to this SourceWatch article, as well as SourceWatch -- in light of the fact that there are numerous variations on manufactured journalism -- and to help out those poor, overworked search engines -- I am creating redirects to the following:

fake news, fake reporters, fake journalism, faux journalism, phony journalism, phony journalist, manufactured propaganda.

What is the difference between 'Manufactured journalism' and 'Fake news'? Is fake news a subset of the former, including VNRs, ANRs, paid pundits? Just wondering if we could come up with a working SW definition / distinction. -Diane

There are definitely some subsets. Perhaps some examples will explain my opinion best.

In the case of Jeff Gannon, who was masquerading as a White House 'correspondent', 'manufactured journalism' originally applied to the messenger less than to the message. So, we have a fake reporter pretending to be a real one in, of all places, the White House. The key here is the masquerade.

But then we learned that this was a very elaborate scheme and that the 'message' Gannon was providing was real news for the most part but purloined from other sources and plagiarized, with Gannon taking credit. Here we have real news reports from legitimate news organizations and reporters being hijacked by a fake reporter to advance a political agenda, often demonizing the opposition along the way.

Then, we have Talon News, a fake news organization, syndicating its hijacked news "reports" to GOPUSA, Hawaii Reporter, MensNewsDaily.com, etc. My research into Talon clearly indicated that Gannon was not the only "reporter" with questionable credentials.

Once Talon was outed, its news feed business was assumed by Cybercast News Service (CNS), which was formerly "Conservative News Service", operated by the Media Research Center, which has its own agenda. CNS now provides the news feed for GOPUSA.

The true underlying purpose for the whole enterprise has not been explored for some unknown reason. The intent to advance a Republican slant goes without saying, just as it continues with CNS news "stories" selectively portraying people and events. There is, IMHO, much much more to this story.

However, I see "fake news" as something a bit different. It is totally about deception. It is about creating propaganda and promoting an agenda (i.e. message) disguised as news -- which is not news -- regardless of the format in which it is presented or whether the presenters are actual news personalities or actors. It is pure fabrication from beginning to end, with the "consumer" totally unaware.

Artificial Intelligence 12:39, 14 Oct 2005 (EDT)