| | | | | Happy Friday, and welcome to the final (mostly) Stelter-free edition of the Reliable Sources newsletter this week. I'm Tom Kludt. Brian will return on Sunday.
| | | The Facebook fake news detector that wasn't | | You may have seen reports this week that Facebook had started testing a feature that placed warning labels on suspect stories in an effort to fight back against the scourge of "fake news" on the site.
That wasn't quite right. Turns out the red warning labels that appeared above some apparently fake news links in the News Feed were not Facebook's doing, but rather the result of a plugin that was the handiwork of a third party.
With Facebook awash in bogus news stories that are often indistinguishable from credible articles, the plugin seemed like a useful tool for those browsing the social media behemoth.
Dubbed the "B.S. Detector," the plugin appended a label warning users that a story came from a site that "is not a reliable news source." B.S. Detector also provides a reason for the warning; perhaps the story came from "state-sponsored news," for example.
But before it could take off, B.S. Detector was stymied. We learned this afternoon that Facebook began blocking links to the B.S. Detector. And then, about two hours later, TechCrunch reported that the links had been reenabled
So to recap:
-The stories suggesting that the plugin was a trial run by Facebook turned out to be false.
-Facebook was cracking down on third parties who are cracking down on fake news.
-Facebook has since dropped that crackdown for reasons that are yet unknown.
Nobody said vanquishing fake news would be easy!
| | | Another "Snap" decision by Facebook? | | In Facebook news that isn't related to fake news, Business Insider reported this afternoon that the social media company is "working on a new feature that will showcase lists of curated content from publishers directly in the News Feed."
More from B.I. reporter Alex Heath: "The feature is called Collections and functions similarly to Snapchat's Discover section, which showcases news stories, listicles, videos, and other content submitted by handpicked media partners. Facebook has approached media and entertainment companies in recent weeks to create content for Collections, but has not given a time frame for when the feature will be made available."
CNNTech's Seth Fiegerman breaks it down for us: "The move would be just the latest example of Facebook borrowing from Snapchat's playbook. Facebook has tried to clone Snapchat with standalone apps Poke and Slingshot (RIP), introduced scannable codes and disappearing messages for Facebook Messenger and rolled out Instagram Stories (a carbon copy of Snapchat Stories)." | | | Senator... POTUS... Media mogul? Not so fast | | This apparent scoop from Mic's Jake Horowitz lit up Media Twitter late this afternoon. Citing "multiple sources who spoke on background because they were not authorized to speak for the president," Horowitz reported that President Obama "has been discussing a post-presidential career in digital media and is considering launching his own media company."
But before you get too excited... White House communications director Jen Psaki splashed several buckets of cold water all over the story, telling Horowitz that Obama "has no plans to get into the media business after he leaves office." As if that message weren't clear, Psaki reiterated it in a tweet after the story was published.
So much for that! At least it made Friday afternoon Twitter more interesting.
Personally, I think Obama would have more fun owning an NBA team, anyway.
Now we shift our attention away from the current president and toward the next one... | | Our efforts to find out more about Trump's "major news conference" on December 15 continued apace today. Hope Hicks tells me the transition team "will have more details on the event next week." The biggest question: Will Trump take questions from reporters?
Broken record alert: Virtually all presidents-elect hold a news conference within days of their victory. And Trump, lest we forget, previously mocked Hillary Clinton for eschewing news conferences. Trump's last presser on the campaign trail was on July 27. | | | The friendly confines of Fox News | | Trump did, however, take questions from a pair of Fox News hosts this week. Last night, Trump chummed it up with his buddy Sean Hannity. He also gave a pre-taped interview to Ainsley Earhardt that aired this morning.
Flashback to the summer: For an extended stretch in the heart of the campaign, Trump gave more than a dozen interviews to Fox News while ignoring requests from basically every other TV outlet.
It isn't a mystery why Trump prefers Fox over other networks. Just take a look at some of the questions Earhardt posed:
--"The 'Thank You America Tour,' why is that important to you?"
--"Mitt Romney, if you pick him, what can you say to the American public?"
--"No more announcements this week you said. What about next week?"
And then there was this question from Hannity:
"Since you've been elected, some people have had a hard time dealing with it, and poor kids on college campuses have their professors giving them cocoa and aromatherapy and pet therapy, coloring books and Play-Doh. They're apparently very upset. They couldn't deal with it. Anything you'd like to say to them to reassure their sensitive feelings that it'll be OK?"
| | | Margaret Sullivan on Trump's "post-truth world" | | There's been plenty of reaction to Trump supporter and CNN commentator Scottie Nell Hughes declaring in a radio interview yesterday that there is "no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, of facts."
Few have been better than the latest column from Margaret Sullivan, who also takes issue with former Trump campaign manager and ex-CNN commentator Corey Lewandowski's complaint at a panel last night that journalists "took everything that Donald Trump said so literally."
Sullivan writes:
"Yes, Corey, but Trump is not a guy at a bar; he was the Republican nominee for president of the United States and will pretty soon be the leader of the free world, such as it is...These surrogates' disdain for facts should not be surprising, given Trump's own casual relationship with verifiable truth...These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink." | | More than a few media observers have questioned why the press uses the term "alt-right" to describe the burgeoning movement. To many, it sounds like a euphemism for individuals who are often aggressively nationalistic, racist and anti-Semitic.
The Anti-Defamation League weighed in today, saying it "defines the alt right as a loose network of people and groups that promote white identity and reject mainstream conservatism in favor of politics that embrace implicit racism or white supremacy and anti-Semitism."
The ADL's conclusion?
"Part of the media's job is to inform the public about current political and social developments. The media should continue to use the term alt right but always provide the context for it. The term will not go away just because people don't think it's proper. We need to make sure that alt right is correctly identified as part and parcel of the white supremacist movement."
| | | "Dangerous situation" for A.P. reporter | | The A.P.'s executive editor Kathleen Carroll said this week she had to yank a reporter who was covering Trump off the campaign trail due to what she described only as a "dangerous situation."
Erik Wemple has the lowdown over at WaPo.
"Like many people who've had people on a campaign trail, we had — if you were at a pen at a Trump rally and confronted with language that most of us didn't learn at home," Carroll said. "We had to pull a couple of people, rotate a couple of people out when racist, sexist — the most vile language I've ever heard."
"The one that we did pull out we pulled out because it was becoming a dangerous situation for that person, but we were with every candidate all the way, every minute," Carroll said.
Wemple asked the AP to elaborate but the wire service wouldn't say anything, citing a "policy to refrain from commenting on security matters." | | | Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | Brian Stelter emails a preview of this Sunday's edition of "Reliable": "I'm about to board a plane and catch up on a week's worth of news. Did I miss anything interesting?
Here's the lineup for Sunday's show: Salena Zito, John Huey, Frank Sesno, David Zurawik, Amy Goodman, and Van Jones. See you Sunday morning, 11am ET!"
(You all knew we couldn't keep him away completely, right?) | | | A quiet autumn for the nets | | Brian Lowry emails: The major networks' play-it-safe strategy hasn't yielded many new hits -- and appears to have sacrificed further buzz and media attention to programs like "Westworld," which wraps its first season on Sunday (look for a review of that on Sunday night). The main exception: "This is Us," an NBC drama that's one of the few shows outside its network's creative wheelhouse.
Be sure to read Brian's typically sharp take on the matter...
And then read his latest review... | | | Raspberries for "Mariah's World" | | Lowry previewed "Mariah's World," the upcoming reality series about pop diva Mariah Carey, and it sounds terrible.
"To say that 'Mariah's World' is a predictable train wreck serves more as promotion than criticism...Those who watch such fare for the kitsch factor will have plenty in which to wallow, as Carey conducts most of her direct-to-camera interviews provocatively draped across a couch, looking a bit like Cleopatra being ferried across the Nile...Carey is shown cavorting on a yacht in Capri, Italy, and fretting about agreeing to do the show at all, citing how 'little privacy' there is in entertainment. One might ask why she would then agree to the prying eyes of cameras -- including footage of her young children -- but if there's one guiding rule for E! and Bravo shows (sister networks that will simulcast the premiere), it's perhaps best not to overthink them."
Read the rest here.
| | From Lisa Respers France:
--2016 was an excellent year for African-Americans both in front of and behind the camera in Hollywood -- but don't kill off #OscarsSoWhite just yet.
--"La La Land" won the New York Critics' big award.
--Country star Luke Bryan reached out and touched a concert-goer in the front row. And the slap was caught on camera.
--Chris Pratt has been posting photos with his "Passengers" co-star Jennifer Lawrence... and cutting her out of the picture.
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