President Obama slams social media for pushing fake conservative news

Our president slammed social media yesterday as responsible for allowing "fake news" stories to receive more clicks than real news. Obama was parroting a BuzzFeed story, yes BuzzFeed, that claimed that more fake news stories were clicked on social media than actual news. The allegation by BuzzFeed and the president implies that fake news allowed Trump to get elected. Whoa! Back it up now. Let's take a closer look.

President Obama needs to take a closer look at the fake news industry

There are several problems with this analysis. First, BuzzFeed should not throw stones. They represent the fount of nonsense on the Internet. Small point, but nonetheless it had to be said. Second, the mainstream media has lost credibility with a vast majority of Americans. Only 32% of Americans trust the media. The rest think they are dishonest.

This is true because many news stories that are trumpeted as significant rest on anonymous sourcing or badly flawed political polling. The mainstream media campaigned for Hillary Clinton and constantly attacked Trump using whatever sources and polls it could get it hands on, many of which were flat out false and wrong. The president should condemn a media that was so dishonest, but he does not.

As for fake news, there is no doubt that it's out there. A publisher of fake news did take credit for electing Trump, but one should take that claim as seriously as his websites, not at all. Some of the fake sites are run by conservatives, but by no means do conservatives have a monopoly on fake news sites. Far from it, if anything, it's the reverse. One of the main websites listed by BuzzFeed is the Burrard Street Journal (read BS Journal). This is a website run by liberals designed to trick conservatives into circulating its stories.

As pointed out by the Stream.org, another liberal website that spins fake news typically designed to fool conservatives is the World News Daily Report. This website bills itself as a website for conservative Jews and Christians. Another website called YourNewsWire.com also attempts to mislead conservatives. Finally MrConservative.com is worth mentioning as a typically liberal website that gains clicks by often mocking conservatives, but occasionally pushing story lines that conservatives might share.