Comment by MetaWhirledPeas
3 years ago
I completely agree. This almost feels like a state-sanctioned act. Isn't "Fake News" the theme of the last six years? It's undoing pieces of our society. This is just one more log on the fire.
Wikipedia, despite all odds, has proven the most effective distributor of facts of our time. Shame on those who undermine its credibility.
No, "Fake News" is a term coined to allow a blanket dismissal of anything made public that political leaders don't want to be heard. There certainly can be factual falsehoods in news, and it is worth evaluating how well news organizations are reporting facts... but "Fake News" was the opening salvo before following up with stating that fact-checking is insulting.
Let us not validate the concept by embracing the term. It is a weasel word for people who want to promote their own flavor of misinformation.
As far as Wikipedia goes, this shows a loophole that needs to be closed. I'm amused by it - I can also understand why others are not.
One nit:
"Fake News" is now exactly as you describe: "a term to allow a blanket dismissal of anything made public that political leaders don't want to be heard."
However, IIRC, the original coinage of the term was about disinformation and/or news organizations that consistently traded in misinformation or disinformation.
The speed with which it got co-opted by political leaders as a blanket dismissal was impressive. I'm not sure it even lasted months in its initial meaning.
> However, IIRC, the original coinage of the term was about disinformation and/or news organizations that consistently traded in misinformation or disinformation.
Correct. I recall it initially as a left-leaning term coined in response to the "alternative facts" incident.
The website reporting this is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Tone
But the story is perfectly real: the link to the community discussion on Wikipedia checks out.
Chinese state media do enjoy reporting – often intelligently – on Wikipedia's foibles (I've been quoted by them a number of times). And I have sometimes wished Western media were equally diligent about digging up stories like this, rather than always reflexively singing Wikipedia's praises. Wikipedia would actually profit from the scrutiny, as I and some Signpost colleagues pointed out at the 2015 WikiConference:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Journalism_and_the_o...
(The Signpost is the English Wikipedia's community newspaper, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost )
But it is also clear that this Sixth Tone article is designed to support a political narrative. I would not completely exclude the possibility that it was a state-sponsored effort. The apology the user posted (in Chinese) on the English Wikipedia (someone linked it below) does read quite wooden (I had DeepL translate it). On the other hand, this may simply reflect cultural differences.