First DACA Deportation or Giant Fake News Outrage?

[Seriati]

So here's CNN's version of the story, which is running under the headline, "This man's deportation is testing Trump's murky stance on DACA."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/politics/juan-manuel-montes-bojorquez-deportation/index.html

Meanwhile, multiple headlines are much more one-side and expressly say things like "First protected Dreamer deported under Trump," and others that flat out state that a Dreamer was deported or that Trump is violating his promise.

Now when you read the actual article, you find out that the young man was caught sneaking back into the US.  As a DACA recipient his status is voided if he leaves the country without pre-clearance, which he did not have.  What was he doing out of the country?  He claims he was deported, in the first place, but there is no record of that and it's a very self-serving statement in this context.   Of course, if that were true he could have filed his law suit from Mexico and been a national hero to the left with almost unlimited legal resources behind him. 

What really gets me though, is the liberal politicians expressing their outrage.  Absent any new facts this is an open and shut case and the headlines are all bunk.  This seems like a bad facts case to get behind.

[DonaldD]

Personally, I love how the term "fake news" - which was originally used to describe propaganda inundating social media, mostly slandering Clinton - has been co-opted by Trump and the alt-right.

Sure, you can disbelieve Montes Bojorquez because his claim is seemingly conveniently self-serving.  Your analysis might even be true.  But ignoring past bad acts and legal overreach by ICE, border services and other 'security' departments of the USA federal government is also more than a bit convenient.

[Seriati]

I don't have to "ignore" anything to make the claim that the conclusive headlines on a disputable item are highly questionable for the media.  These are the same people that would say something like, the alleged bomber Timothy MacVeigh up until he's convicted (and sometimes after).

So what's different here, other than the politics?

[Gaoics79]

I always thought the "fake news" meme was hilariously hippocritical, tone deaf and bound to bommerang on those who started it. It's not unlike the recent outcry for (and against) filibustering of judicial nominees and "nuclear option" - hyperpartisan screeching that helps neither side.

And yes, this is exactly the kind of manipulative "story" that I see routinely in every major newspaper I follow. It is certainly "fake" although I wouldn't call it "news" frankly.

[yossarian22c]

Fake news was a backlash against things made up completely, it wasn't a term for news with spin.  "Fake news" wasn't directed against fox news but against the articles that were completely fabricated, like "Pope Endorses Trump."  This story is what I would consider "click bait;" a misleading attention grabbing headline that doesn't accurately reflect the details of the story.  However it isn't fake because it is a real story, someone sitting in their basement didn't just make up this kid and post a story about it. 

[Fenring]

And yes, this is exactly the kind of manipulative "story" that I see routinely in every major newspaper I follow. It is certainly "fake" although I wouldn't call it "news" frankly.

I think a good baseline for how to read headlines should probably be to inspect whether there is any editorial or interpretive content whatsoever in the headline. If the headline reads as "man is deported" and that fact is true, we could call it a news story. If it reads as "man is deported, sparks outrage" we're getting into editorial territory, even if it happens to be true that someone somewhere might be outraged. "Man is deported, Trump's law is tested" is not a news story but a pure editorial that is using a piece of news as its setting. It might be a good exercise to read MSM headlines (or even first paragraphs) to see how many of them can be said to state merely the fact of an event, and how many include color commentary or interpretation baked into them.

I just quickly checked the front pages of Fox News and CNN, and of their top 10 headlines each zero of the ones on Fox are "news" by my definition above, and on CNN I could find maybe one or two that were "news" (i.e. that omitted all editorial content in the headline). Pretty much what I expected. By contrast, BBC News had a far greater proportion of headlines that merely cited facts. It would be fantastic if people began to simply shun all MSM sites and publications that include editorial material under the "news" moniker. The problem is that the non-news content tends to be partisan and likely feeds into the egos of the readers more than reading news does. It's almost literally like going to get a hit of drugs, and I would encourage comparisons of most MSM sources to pushers (and this sets aside entirely motive). But if only people stopped consuming this stuff they might be forced to clean up and sell something legitimate. As it is that won't be the way things get done. Maybe eventually a competitor will appear that will refuse to do these things and will win the market. I can dream, can't I?

[Fenring]

Fake news was a backlash against things made up completely, it wasn't a term for news with spin.  "Fake news" wasn't directed against fox news but against the articles that were completely fabricated, like "Pope Endorses Trump."  This story is what I would consider "click bait;" a misleading attention grabbing headline that doesn't accurately reflect the details of the story.  However it isn't fake because it is a real story, someone sitting in their basement didn't just make up this kid and post a story about it.

Despite how the term "fake news" may have originated, I think one can now read the term as meaning something else equally important. While the rendering of it as meaning "a made-up story" is certainly important to keep in mind, I think the far more insidious usage, which jasonr is alluding to, is where a real event is related with spin already in the content of the reporting. This makes it "fake news" not because the event is fake, but because the article is not news but rather editorial. So instead of meaning "it's news, but the content is made up" it would mean "it is falsely being called news." The latter usage is to my mind the more important one to emphasize, because while the odd person does believe certain outright false stories, more often than not what they will never change their minds on are stories with some true content but that are spun to support 'their side.' Twisting of the truth is much harder to resist than being told blatant lies. Both are dangers, nonetheless.

[NobleHunter]

Montes is claiming he was only in Mexico because he was deported. The DHS is saying they have no record of deporting him but they also initially said they had no record of his current DACA status. It seems less certain this is an open and shut case.

[url][/https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/04/18/first-protected-dreamer-deported-under-trump/100583274/url]

[DonaldD]

Despite how the term "fake news" may have originated, I think one can now read the term as meaning something else equally important.

I think it clearly means several different things: propaganda made up from whole cloth, served up to the those willing and able to suspend their critical thinking; factual reporting with a POV that is different from that of those readers who are then too willing to label the reporting as "fake"; all reporting that occurs in a media distributor whose overall POV differs from that of the reader who is willing to label all that reporting as "fake".

Of course, the problem is that the word "fake" needs to be completely redefined in order to use it to characterize the reporting described in the last to scenarios - and unfortunately, the word has too much staying power in people's minds, so they inherently conflate the new "definition" with the accurate definition, leading to statements like the content of the OP and the title of the thread above.

[Wayward Son]

Of course, one problem with the broad definition of "fake news" is that it applies to all news sources--MSM, Alt-Media, Right-Wing Media, etc.  I can't think of a single source that doesn't require critical reading, and some that absolutely demand it.

You might as well simply call it "news."

[Gaoics79]

I think Fenring articulated what I was trying to get at better than I did. It is "fake" in the sense that it is not really "news" but an editorial dressed up and repackaged in news form.

Another similar phenomenon I notice in this genre is the copycat story - when something newsworthy happens newspapers try to scrape up other "stories" - many completely unrelated - to keep a certain narrative going. Sometimes this seems to be just a trick to hold peoples' interest ( I guess they figure if one story got lots of attention maybe others like it will do the same) but other times you get a whiff of something more nefarious and manipulative going on.

Following the United Airlines story these other stories started popping up. One was about a couple who were kicked off a plane due to trying to sit in Economy Plus seats they had not paid for. Another was about an Air Canada plane that had lost part of its wheel on takeoff but landed safely.

In the case of the first story, it didn't seem newsworthy at all to me. It was just the papers trying to shoehorn it into a general genre of stories that I guess they thought would sell papers. The second story seemed even more manipulative because there didn't seem to be any point to it. As an aside, it was noted by several individuals in the comment section of the article that contrary to what the headline and story stated, this occurrence was not actually uncommon and was not a significant safety hazard. So if those commenters were correct - the story was a misleading attempt to shoehorn a common occurrence into some kind of general "air industry screwup" narrative.

The airline example above I think falls more into the category of drumming up fake "news" to sell papers. But there are other examples that are far more nefarious. For instance, the National Post routinely runs articles lambasting Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, using the pretext of some current event. It's always the same basic story - "JT slips on banana peel outside parliament, questions raised about his competence..." whatever. Add to this problem the fact that modern newspapers online don't segregate commentary / editorials from "news" the way physical papers do and the lines become blurred indeed especially as most consumers move from physical papers to digital.

[DonaldD]

when something newsworthy happens newspapers try to scrape up other "stories" - many completely unrelated - to keep a certain narrative going.

I have also seen the trend of taking the same story, and changing the headline around, presumably in order for you to reopen the same page driving clicks.  As yossarian said, another type of click bait.

[Gaoics79]

https://www.thestar.com/business/2017/04/21/airline-turbulence-is-unlikely-to-ease-olive.html

After a string of gaffes, it seemed that United Airlines had exhausted every possibility in the undignified treatment of passengers. But no. Two weeks ago it violently dragged a 69-year-old passenger chosen at random by a computer, Dr. David Dao, off an overbooked flight bound for Louisville from Chicago.

That same day, a Canadian couple flying United from Houston to Calgary was surprised midflight when a scorpion dropped from the overhead storage bin. It stung Richard Bell as he tried to sweep it off his tray table.

That a predatory arachnid was able to elude the indignities inflicted by security on other passengers might seem a uniquely United story.

But during the same period as the United incidents, Air Canada bumped a 10-year-old boy from an overbooked flight from P.E.I. to Costa Rica. The pilot of an Air Canada Rouge jet lost consciousness as his plane was preparing to land at Pearson International Airport. And last weekend, an Air Canada jetliner managed to land safely at Heathrow despite a missing rear wheelit had left behind in Canada, unbeknownst to the pilot.

Sighhhhhh....

[Pete at Home]

Personally, I love how the term "fake news" - which was originally used to describe propaganda inundating social media, mostly slandering Clinton - has been co-opted by Trump and the alt-right.

Sure, you can disbelieve Montes Bojorquez because his claim is seemingly conveniently self-serving.  Your analysis might even be true.  But ignoring past bad acts and legal overreach by ICE, border services and other 'security' departments of the USA federal government is also more than a bit convenient.

You think this crap didn't happen under Obama? I saw two fathers deported away from their American children in 2011 for the exact bloody reason -- that they forfieted their rights because of some visit to Mexico. 

Love the way the left uses the term "coopt" as if forced deportation, torture, sexual harassment, etc is only genuine news when your political opponents do it. Nothing quite as absurd as a sanctimonious pimp.

[DonaldD]

Reading comprehension, Pete - "co-opt" was used to describe how the term "fake news" has been highjacked.  Don't try to somehow link the term to deportations and pretend that was how it was used in the passage you quoted.  That is either dishonest of you or simply abysmal reading comprehension.

[Pete at Home]

Reading comprehension, Pete - "co-opt" was used to describe how the term "fake news" has been highjacked. 

Check this out -- I say it's ridiculous to claim copyright on a generic term like 'fake news" and Donald acts as if I didn't understand that he was claiming copyright on it.

So it's not fair to point out when the left uses fake news because they made up the term "fake news."  It belongs to them.  So you can't point out when they lie and systematically brainwash, because that's co-opting.

Don't try to somehow link the term to deportations a

I didn't.  The fakery here is the misleading insinuation that these types of deportations are new to Trump.  Love the whole Obama hope contrast.  And I was writing about my clients' deportation travesties since before the Trump campaign was a glint in Bill Clinton's eye.

[cherrypoptart]

Since the left always accuses the right of doing exactly what the left itself is actually doing it only makes perfect sense that they would come up with the term fake news and throw it at the right knowing all the time that's exactly what they are engaging in themselves. It's then hilarious when the left says that you can't call us fake news because we called you fake news first and that's just a pathetic five year old's playground insult to try to insult someone with the exact same insult they just used on you. In other words, while this is all very serious it is at the same time all very childish as well. But pretty hilarious if you take a step back and just dispassionately observe.

[Gaoics79]

I don't know to what extent "fake news" influenced the latest election. I certainly know that the Democrats would have us believe that it was a major factor in their loss - which is the kind of self-serving non falsifiable assertion I'd expect from them in the circumstances, just as the Republicans have always made similar claims about media bias when they have lost elections.

As Pete points out, there is no patent on "fake news". The two phenomena described on this thread are different, but both equally consistent with the label applied. The form that the Democrats are most concerned about (which I see as the lesser of the two) is certainly easier to identify - which is why it's less insidious than more subtle (but widespread) methods of propagnda. While this form may have been used more against their party in this particular election cycle, I expect it to be used by both sides in the next cycle and for it to equalize and become a general propaganda tactic for both right and left sources in the coming years. When you consider the nature of social media and the way "news" spreads on those platforms within ideologically homogenous and closed off groups, it becomes something of an inevitability I think. Maybe the right got there first this time around, but I guarantee you the other side will catch up.

Certainly, Facebook and other networks already excel at delivering customized feeds of "news" to their members designed to fulfill those users' individual preferences. It's alot like what the newspapers have done (feeding their ideological niches) but at 10x the efficiency. In a newspaper, even one that fits your ideological preference, there is always the danger that you may run into something contrary or unappealing to your world view. This becomes far less likely to happen through a personalized social media feed.

It's one of the things I absolutely loathe about social media in general. When you talk about the toxic demagoguery infecting our political system (and here in Canada we are not immune) I have no doubt that social media is accelerating the process. I consider the decision to delete Facebook one of the best ones I have ever made. 

[Pete at Home]

Yossarian, I understand the distinction that you are trying to make in good faith, but I don't think that the left used the term so restrictively either.  The Machine cried out "Fake News" when conservatives said that Obama had encouraged illegal voting.  And yet that's clearly a valid interpretation of the interview, where Obama fails to correct or reproach an interviewer who asserted outright in the voting context that "undocumented citizens" should vote without fear:

RODRIGUEZ: Many of the millennials, Dreamers, undocumented citizens — and I call them citizens because they contribute to this country — are fearful of voting. So if I vote, will immigration know where I live? Will they come for my family and deport us?
OBAMA: Not true. And the reason is, first of all, when you vote, you are a citizen yourself. And there is not a situation where the voting rolls somehow are transferred over and people start investigating, etc. The sanctity of the vote is strictly confidential in terms of who you voted for. If you have a family member who maybe is undocumented, then you have an even greater reason to vote

[JoshCrow]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/22/us/american-airlines-video-confrontation-trnd/index.html

It seems like suddenly there's an epidemic of Airlines Behaving Badly. The funny thing is, there's basically no way you can expect me to believe that this sort of thing just started happening last week. It's just that now we get to hear about every incident.

What haven't we heard about in a while? Cops shooting black people. I guess they stopped, right? Lol. The media can turn this stuff on and off like a faucet and make the everyday seem like a crisis unfolding.

[LetterRip]

JoshCrow,

there are literally millions of stories that can be run each night.  If there is public interest in a topic, there will tend to be more reports on that topic.

[TheDrake]

The problem, though, is on the part of the story both sides agree on: Montes tried to sneak back into the US on February 19 and was caught by Border Patrol. DACA requires individuals to get pre-clearance to leave the country, and so Montes' re-entry then showed he had left without authorization and voided his status, DHS said.

The agency also disputed another fact of Montes' case, regarding when he entered the country. Montes' attorneys say he came to the country when he was 9 years old, roughly 13 years ago. But DHS says the first record they have of Montes is in 2010, when he entered the US and agreed to a deal that allowed him to avoid expedited removal. He was then cleared for DACA four years later.

It seems the lawsuit should make both of these issues clear - was he in Mexico voluntarily? Also, if he arrived when he was 9, what reason would he have to roll down to Mexico 14 years later and risk not getting back?

But this ensures plenty of spin by all outlets. Those applauding deportation will inevitably cry Mexican collusion if the judge rules the man can stay.

[JoshCrow]

JoshCrow,

there are literally millions of stories that can be run each night.  If there is public interest in a topic, there will tend to be more reports on that topic.

"public interest" does not create a perception of crisis - the media does that.

[Fenring]

JoshCrow,

there are literally millions of stories that can be run each night.  If there is public interest in a topic, there will tend to be more reports on that topic.

"public interest" does not create a perception of crisis - the media does that.

You are both right, in that the media is the one to propagate the crisis however they can't do so willy nilly. There is a current they have to observe and if it doesn't happen to flow where they intended they have to follow the current and show that story. It would be awkward for a media network to ignore what the public is clamoring for and push some story of their own. It might happen, but it's not good business. Generally the public will accept the narrative put forward of "this is important to you right now!" but that doesn't mean that the media companies are free to literally invent what a person wants to see. There is an equilibrium they try to reach between intercepting public interest and making it 'their story' and between pushing something they want to.

[yossarian22c]

Yossarian, I understand the distinction that you are trying to make in good faith, but I don't think that the left used the term so restrictively either.  The Machine cried out "Fake News" when conservatives said that Obama had encouraged illegal voting.  And yet that's clearly a valid interpretation of the interview, where Obama fails to correct or reproach an interviewer who asserted outright in the voting context that "undocumented citizens" should vote without fear:

RODRIGUEZ: Many of the millennials, Dreamers, undocumented citizens — and I call them citizens because they contribute to this country — are fearful of voting. So if I vote, will immigration know where I live? Will they come for my family and deport us?
OBAMA: Not true. And the reason is, first of all, when you vote, you are a citizen yourself. And there is not a situation where the voting rolls somehow are transferred over and people start investigating, etc. The sanctity of the vote is strictly confidential in terms of who you voted for. If you have a family member who maybe is undocumented, then you have an even greater reason to vote

Well for a lawyer (speaking of Obama) that is a negligent ambiguity of the implication in the first sentence.  Obama clearly should have said if you are citizen then you should vote without fear of your undocumented relatives being deported.  But I have no idea what story you are referring to that was called "fake news" by the mainstream of the left and the popular media.

Personally I think the blurring by using the same term, (and the implicit equivocation) of editorialized/sensationalized headlines with fully fictional news stories is poor (1984ish) semantics.  If you want to call "spin news" fake then we should call made up news fictional news.  The two are distinctly different.  Articles with "click bait" headlines where anyone with 6th grade critical thinking and reading skills would be properly informed after reading is a whole different entity compared to a completely fictional story written to play on peoples emotions and biases.

 

[Pete at Home]

Snopes identifies the story as fake news even while linking to the interview.

I think your interpretation of Obama's response as merely negligent is reasonable, but not the only reasonable interpretation. 

All news is spun, but news that intentionally misinformed and misleads is not more honest for using a kernel of truth to support the big lie.