This is instructive as to fake news and how its spun and although you’ll need to read the entire thing to understand how this “story” grew legs and developed, the tell-tale is in the fact that the authority cited (so as to lend weight and gravitas to the story) the FCC (the equivalent of Australia’s Media Authority,) doesn’t regulate cable television, just free to air. It’s down hill from thereThe entire thing has been constructed so as to insinuate that cable channel Fox News is central to the story when in fact it was a Fox affiliate in Florida.
Like I said, you’ll need to read the entire thing to get a handle on it.
“…It’s like the “Big Lie” – the propaganda technique made infamous by Nazis Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels in World War II – on steroids, thanks to the advances in technology and communications.
One of these insidious Big Lies has landed in my Twitter notifications scores of times in recent months. Because it alleges that it is the result of a court case, it has a patina of credibility.
In February 2004, FOX News won a legal appeal that declared that FOX News had no legal obligation to be truthful in its reporting. The court agreed that FOX had indeed been untruthful but ultimately agreed with FOX’s argument that the FCC’s policy against the intentional falsification of the news is not a legal mandate, requirement[,] or regulation and that FOX may falsify news reports.
Say wha–? I knew immediately that something is fishy here. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is the central government agency that has oversight of and enforcement power over broadcast media – as in individual terrestrial broadcasting stations (radio and TV) and the commercial broadcast networks. It does NOT have regulatory power or authority over cable television channels, including news entities like Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, which distribute their programming via cable TV, satellite, and the internet, not via over-the-air broadcasting.
It took me about 30 seconds to locate an analysis of this Twitter claim by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact’s Punditfact. The fake Twitter meme about Fox News began in 2014 initially on Facebook, and Punditfact thoroughly investigated it later in 2014 and labeled it “false.”
Punditfact’s deconstruction of the claim is detailed. The full report is available online here and should be read by anyone interested in the truth. It is a case history of a lie that started or took root on Facebook and quickly became entrenched in the rest of social media, to be recycled ad nauseam. It is now well into its third year of widespread dissemination..” The anatomy of a fake tweet aimed at Fox