David Roberts tweets:
Every ‘winger-driven faux story now has two phases. First headline: “Faux story!” Second: “Faux story becomes huge story!” Pathetic.
This is actually a bit truncated. The steps are:
- Faux Story
- Why is the Em-Ess-Em ignoring this huge Faux Story?
- After days or weeks of flood-the-zone coverage across multiple conservative media outlets, some significant portion of the base is convinced that the faux story is true and/or significant.
- Mainstream press takes note of (3) and speculates about the political and electoral consequences
- Panicked Democrats react as though the faux story is true and/or significant
- See, we told you it was a huge story!
Lather, rinse, repeat.
10 responses so far ↓
1 @calixte // Aug 25, 2010 at 9:13 am
Meanwhile, non-faux stories are ignored.
Thx for this short introduction to faux-news cycle.
2 Dan Devine // Aug 25, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Yes, this seems to be a trend. I’m currently interested in how to effectively block this strategy.
I think the immediate elevation to main-stream media and debunking is the best strategy that counters as I’ve seen so far.
1) Elevate the story and get the initial spreaders out as quickly as possible. If this is a real story, the facts should be determined. If this is a plant, identify the source and force them to defend.
2) Go immed. to the authorities who can debunk this, go strong and hard. If it’s a real story, these folks will be able to confirm. If a plant, these folks will show it as being without merit.
3) Invite the initial source of the story to refute. Be polite, but force them to make their case.
Case in point that demonstrates this, the “Terror-Baby” threat. CNN immediately took this story and contacted the FBI to debunk. The initial source of the story was then invited to make a fool of himself on CNN.
Seems like this is the only way to debunk, out the story fast before it has time to fester and take on legs.
DD
3 Julian Sanchez Explains How Your Nutlog Newscycle Sausage Gets Made | 【Google Club】google,gmail,adsense,android // Aug 25, 2010 at 5:41 pm
[…] at his eponymous blog, Julian Sanchez performs an essential service for all of us living in the Age Of The Ground Zero Terror Mosquerade, by outlining the simple […]
4 Julian Sanchez Explains How Your Nutlog Newscycle Sausage Gets Made | Political Diet // Aug 25, 2010 at 7:21 pm
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5 New News News « The New Print // Aug 25, 2010 at 8:05 pm
[…] News News August 25, 2010 tags: news, writing by slickricks Julian Sanchez pithily summarizes “The New News Cycle” in far fewer words than I usually achieve. David Roberts tweets: Every ‘winger-driven faux […]
6 southpaw // Aug 26, 2010 at 9:09 am
The implication seems to be that Democrats are culpable for panicking and overestimating the impact of faux news stories. I’d submit that the longer a faux news story goes unchallenged by people who know what they’re talking about, the more devastating its consequences.
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8 Scott // Aug 27, 2010 at 10:21 am
The reality based community unwittingly becomes part of the story making it “irrefutable.” See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_theorem
9 The Sham News Cycle // Aug 29, 2010 at 8:07 pm
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