Right Reason

The blog of Dr Glenn Andrew Peoples on Theology, Philosophy, and Social Issues

Tag: fake news

Christian Today got loads of clicks with this one weird trick

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On January 17, 2017

In church history, media, theology and biblical studies

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Note: When this article was first written it made reference to Christianity Today. This was an error. In fact the website in question is Christian Today. My apologies for the initial error.

Clickbait. Clickbait is everywhere. What happened next will blow your mind. You won’t believe what this guy said. Personal trainers hate this guy for telling everyone this one weird trick to lose weight. OMG, #5 on this list gave me chills!

Sometimes clickbait is blatant, as in examples like those. Other times it’s in the wording, where you can argue that there’s a sense in which the headline is true, but the writer knows quite well that people will understand it to mean something that is blatantly false yet titillating.

I expect clickbait from some places, as well as headlines and even stories that spin things so extremely that they basically amount to what is being dubbed fake news. Yes, Huffington Post, I mean you.

Now here’s a recent tweet from Christian Today:

That looks pretty clear, right? Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is going to express remorse over The Reformation. I don’t think there’s any honest doubt about what those words will be taken to mean by most readers: The Archbishop of Canterbury, to a considerable extent at least, regrets that the Reformation happened. Typical. What a wishy-washy, Ecumenical liberal who doesn’t think theological distinctives matter. He’s basically a Catholic! Anglicans, huh? What else would you expect?

Bait laid. Next come the clicks for which the bait was laid. And when you click on the link, you’re taken to the story, with this headline:

Oh. So… he doesn’t regret the Reformation. He regrets that it was accompanied by violence. Well. How about that?

Actually, CT used as its source a story from the Daily Mail (yes, really), which is entirely about violence and people being burned to death etc, something Welby regrets.

Decide for yourself whether or not this constitutes clickbait. The answer will shock you!

 

Lying for choice? Keeping the pro-life violence narrative alive

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On December 3, 2015

In ethics, social issues

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UPDATE: A couple of days later, this dishonest post by “Exposing Men’s Rights Activism” has been shared 470 times by people who did not check the facts.  No doubt this number will continue to rise. After I pointed out the errors, they have removed the word “mass,” to their credit. This leaves them making the claim that there were three shootings on that day. Of course there were far more than three. There are more than eighty shooting deaths per day in the US. Indeed the only reason for saying that there were three mass shootings was to claim (falsely) that the high profile case in San Bernadino was not the only one. The respectable thing would clearly be to remove the false post altogether. Moreover, they have not acknowledged their initial factual error, they have deleted my comment where I point this out, and they continue to claim that the attack happened at a women’s health clinic, perpetuating a false version of events. Truth is the real casualty in all this.

Some abortion rights advocates have started fabricating mass shootings at abortion clinics.

Anyone who actually looks into the phenomenon of violence against abortion clinic staff, carried out by those who think abortion is wrong, knows that the reality is much smaller than the perception. Such incidents are rare and in severe decline, the facts show. Obviously whether or not abortion is morally permissible is quite independent of incidents like this, but still, some proponents of abortion rights do try to silence the vocal critics of abortion because of such incidents, as I mentioned recently. Unfortunately, however, whether or not the allegations about these incidents are even true is starting to matter less, it seems.

Perhaps noticing the lack of actual widespread violence against people who work at abortion clinics and trying to boost the numbers, or perhaps just trying to link the opponents of abortion to the recent terrible mass shooting in San Bernadino California, or heck, more likely just using somebody else’s tragedy to further your own social and political cause (no, not a crass thing to do at all….), the Facebook group “Exposing Men’s Rights Activism” today shared a tweet from Jamie Kilstein, reading “F**k. Not seeing this on the news cause they are covering another mass shooting. #america.” If I read this correctly, it means “Oh no. The news isn’t covering this mass shooting because they are covering a different one.” Kilstein in turn was sharing a tweet from Houston Feminist: “There has been a shooting in #houston at Clinica Hispana, a women’s health clinic. #hounews.”

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