Stop Faking It

“Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that’s how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it.” I don’t necessarily agree with this guy’s assessment of what factors drove the election results, but it’s pretty interesting to hear from a fake news writer.

+ It’s difficult to measure the impact of fake news. There’s a lot more evidence that the James Comey letter had an impact. And that’s not me talking. That’s Corey Lewandowski’s opinion. I think the outsized coverage of that letter was the most important media-related moment of 2016.

+ “The fact that Gawker is no longer engaged in massive character assassination of people and invading their privacy means it’s a better world.” GQ’s Jason Zengerle pays a visit to Charles Harder. And the Lawyer Who Killed Gawker, Isn’t Done Yet

+ The level of trust we have in media will become a massive issue as we enter the Trump era. The president-elect has already made several critical comments about the coverage he’s gotten from the NYT. Are his complaints valid? Philip Bump checks the stories (and the Tweets) to find out.

+ Here’s the NYT on the incredibly troubling crackdown on journalists in Turkey.

+ I am both a critic of the media, and a staunch supporter of journalism. The growing divide between working class Americans and journalists is very dangerous. I’m a lot less worried about the spread of fake news than I am about the attack on real news.