Author: Mathew Ingram

The rise of “fake” news, and the role that platforms like Facebook played in that rise, has become one of the defining issues of the 2016 election. Did hoaxes and misinformation help Donald Trump win? And if so, what — if anything — should Facebook do about it? Who is to blame?

What makes this issue so difficult is that hard answers to those questions are difficult to come by, if not impossible. And finding solutions is not likely to get any easier.

Let’s take the first of those questions: Did fake news help Trump win? We simply don’t know. Some believe that false stories about Hillary Clinton murdering people or similar hoaxes definitely swayed the electorate, while others believe all these stories did was confirm biases that voters already had.

Those who argue that fake news did play a role point to evidence that these kinds of stories were hugely popular on Facebook, and were spread far more widely than “real” news stories.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Here’s Why Fake News Is More Popular Than Real News”

Twitter appears to have blocked the accounts of several right-wing users, including some associated with white-power groups, as part of a move to respond to user frustration with hate speech and harassment. But it threatens to draw Twitter further into a quagmire over what is acceptable speech.

According to a number of news reports, users who have been banned include Pax Dickinson — a former Business Insider executive who was let go for making sexist and racist comments — as well as Richard Spencer, who runs a so-called “alt right” organization called the National Policy Institute, which advocates for racial separation.

As a matter of policy, Twitter doesn’t comment on actions taken with respects to specific accounts. But the company has taken a number of steps recently to try and rein in bullying and harassment on the service, including rolling out an expansion of its “mute” feature.

Twitter’s co-founder and part-time CEO Jack Dorsey said recently that abuse “has no place on Twitter” and he intends to stamp it out.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Here’s why Twitter banning “alt-right” accounts is a risky strategy”

Steve Bannon doesn’t look like a media mastermind, or the head of a sinister cabal of right-wing racists. He wears cargo shorts and rumpled dress shirts, and likes to call people “dude.” But the chairman of Breitbart News how has an unprecedented amount of influence over the new President of the U.S., and that has some people very worried.

Before Donald Trump became a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, most people had probably never even heard of Breitbart, the site Bannon took charge of in 2012. Others probably dismissed it as a haven for right-wing conspiracy theorists, like Alex Jones’ InfoWars.

Now, however, Bannon has been named chief strategist for the incoming president. And the rise of Trump, a candidate who Breitbart promoted unceasingly during the campaign, has lent a legitimacy to the site that the company is busy capitalizing on at breakneck speed. It recently announced plans to expand its operations both in the U.S. and in Europe.

A former Breitbart spokesman who left the company earlier this year said that the site “will be as close as we are ever going to have — hopefully — to a state-run media enterprise.”

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Breitbart News will be the closest thing to a state-owned media entity”

As critics slam Facebook for the role they believe it — and in particular its penchant for fake news stories — played in the election of Donald Trump, CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to resist any attempt to pin some of the blame on his company. But in doing so, he misses the point.

Over the weekend, the Facebook co-founder took to the site to respond to some of those criticisms. He said he “cares deeply” about the fake news problem and wants to get it right. But he also said that he doesn’t believe fake news contributed to the election’s outcome.

“Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what people see is authentic,” Zuckerberg wrote. And since only a very small amount of those hoaxes relate to politics, and an even smaller number related to Clinton specifically, he argued that “this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.”

The Facebook CEO also scoffed at the suggestion that the company is actually a media entity, or that it should behave like one, something many have argued for some time.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Mark Zuckerberg continues to miss the point on Facebook and media”

It’s bad enough that media companies of all kinds are struggling with declining revenue, fragmented audiences and the increasing power of intermediaries like Facebook. Now add to that a president who has shown himself to be actively hostile towards the press and the First Amendment.

What does that future look like? It looks like a pitched battle between a man who made his own media rules and rode them to victory, and a traditional press that has lost much of its power.

Many media outlets are still licking their wounds over their failure to predict that Trump might win, a victory that came despite a wave of fact-checking and reporting on his numerous falsehoods and ethical failures. The only exception to this is cable television, which made so much money from covering him that introspection over the outcome is unlikely.

But even cable giants have to contend with a media landscape that has fractured and heaved to the point where alternative media players and social media arguably played a far larger role in the election than any mainstream media source, including television.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “President Donald Trump vs. the media is going to be an epic battle”

The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has triggered a frenzy of blame and finger-pointing unlike anything we’ve seen in decades. Racists are to blame! Democrats who didn’t vote are to blame! It’s the media’s fault! No, it’s Obama’s fault!

There’s another name that some critics would like to add to that list — and possibly even put at the top of the list — and that is Facebook [fortune-stock symbol-“FB”].

Why Facebook? After all, didn’t millions of people vote for Donald Trump of their own free will? Surely no one is suggesting that Facebook somehow rigged its news feed to convince people to vote for Trump? No, no one is suggesting that. But there are other ways to influence an election.

In particular, there are those who argue that Facebook fueled Trump’s rise by circulating a host of fake news stories about political topics, and ese stories helped tip the scale in his favor.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Here’s why Facebook is partly to blame for the rise of Donald Trump”

If you are looking for a word to describe the feeling in the nation’s newsrooms after a Donald Trump win, “shell-shocked” would probably be a good one. How is this possible, when every poll and prediction site said that Hillary Clinton would win? How could everyone have gotten it so wrong?

The inescapable fact is that most of the mainstream media got it wrong because they simply couldn’t believe that Americans would elect someone like Donald Trump. Denial can be a powerful drug.

In part, that’s because much of the East Coast-based media establishment is arguably out of touch with the largely rural population that voted for Trump, the disenfranchised voters who looked past his cheesy exterior and his penchant for half-truths and heard a message of hope, however twisted.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Here’s why the media failed to predict a Donald Trump victory”

If you spend enough time on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, it’s easy to convince yourself that both are just giant echo chambers, where users with specific political views talk to each other, and different viewpoints are ignored. But new research shows that’s not always the case.

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think tank located in Washington, D.C., being exposed to differing views through social media can actually cause people to rethink how they view a political issue. Not always, but sometimes.

The Pew study found that 20% of those surveyed said that they had modified their stance on a social or political issue because of something they saw on social media, and 17% said that viewpoints they encountered through social media had changed their views about a specific candidate.

Democrats were a little more likely than Republicans to say they had modified their views as a result of something they saw on social media, the study said.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Seeing different viewpoints on social media can actually change minds”

As the U.S. election approaches, after one of the most divisive campaigns in recent memory, everyone has their own version of who is to blame for Donald Trump. Some blame the party itself, some the economy — but many seem to blame the media for helping promote him, or at least not doing enough to stop him.

Is that really fair? Yes and no. There’s no question that certain media outlets, especially cable news networks, played a key role in helping the former reality-TV star reach a broader audience. But the truth is much more complicated than just “CNN and Fox News created Donald Trump.”

Whether because he cleverly managed to spot the weaknesses in the current media environment, or simply stumbled onto a plan that wound up working, Trump and his campaign succeeded in doing what amounts to an end-run around the traditional media.

In the past, media outlets like the New York Times or CNN were in an a position of power relative to political candidates, especially those like Trump — someone without any kind of traditional political track record or campaign support. If they didn’t cover you, you effectively didn’t exist.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “How Donald Trump took advantage of a broken media landscape”

If you are playing poker, you’d better hope your opponent isn’t being bankrolled by a billionaire with a long memory and almost infinite patience. That’s at least one potential lesson to be learned from Gawker Media’s long-running legal battle against former wrestler Hulk Hogan.

Gawker founder Nick Denton said Wednesday that the bankrupt company has agreed to settle the case. Court documents show that Gawker will pay Hogan a total of $31 million.

That’s still a fairly huge sum, but it’s significantly less than the $140-million judgement that Hogan and his backer — Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel — won in a Florida jury trial.

Gawker is also paying two other individuals who sued the company a total of $1.2 million. Shiva Ayyadurai sued Gawker for questioning his claim that he invented email, and Ashley Terrill sued because of a Gawker story about the dating app Tinder.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Gawker Media agrees to settle Hulk Hogan case for $31 million”

The fact that print-based advertising revenue is declining is no surprise to anyone following the media industry. But what is hitting publishers like the New York Times particularly hard is that this drop isn’t at a steady pace—instead, it’s actually been picking up speed.

In the first quarter, for example, the newspaper’s revenue from print advertising fell 9%. In the second quarter, it dropped 14%. And in the latest quarter, it fell almost 19%.

On the plus side, the Times‘ digital-advertising revenue climbed 21% in the latest quarter. But despite that growth, it still remains a much smaller number: The Times made $44 million on various forms of digital advertising, including native or sponsored content, but almost twice that much from print advertising.

The company said that growth in digital came from its in-house native advertising business, and also from video (among other things, the paper is being paid an estimated $3 million by Facebook to produce regular video clips for the social network’s Facebook Live feature).

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “The New York Times scrambles to avoid the print advertising cliff”

They’re almost a web fixture: Those spammy-looking links at the end of news articles, with photos of former TV stars and headlines like “What she looks like now will amaze you!”

But despite the fact that many readers—and news companies, for that matter—hate them, they’re probably not going away anytime soon.

Depending on the size of the outlet and the amount of traffic they can generate, a contract with Outbrain or Taboola—the two largest providers of such links—can mean millions of dollars in guaranteed annual income. And if your print advertising is declining 30% in a single quarter, that sounds great.

To take one prominent example, Time Inc. (which owns Fortune magazine), signed a deal with Outbrain in 2014 that was worth an estimated $100-million to the magazine publisher over three years.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “There’s a simple reason for all those Taboola and Outbrain links”

It’s getting harder and harder to believe Facebook when it says it’s not a media company. The social network just said that even if an image or a story posted on the site breaches its community standards, it will leave the post up if it is deemed to be “newsworthy.”

But how will Facebook determine whether something is newsworthy and therefore deserves not to be deleted by the site’s censors? That remains unclear.

The site’s responsibilities as a media entity were also highlighted Friday by a report that some staffers wanted to delete posts by the Trump campaign because they believed they should qualify as hate speech, but were ultimately over-ruled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the decision to allow Trump’s posts to remain resulted in complaints that the founder and CEO was bending the site’s rules for the Republican candidate. Some employees who work reviewing content on the site reportedly threatened to quit.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Facebook will decide what is newsworthy, says it still isn’t a media company”

For some time now, the New York media world has been waiting breathlessly to see who would be anointed as the next publisher-in-waiting at the New York Times. On Tuesday, the waiting ended when the paper said Arthur Gregg Sulzberger had been chosen as the new deputy publisher, and thus the expected future publisher.

There wasn’t any white smoke from a chimney the way there is with a new Pope, or anyone waving from a balcony the way the royal family likes to do it in Britain. But in New York media circles it was pretty much the same thing, since the Suzlbergers are about as close to royalty as you can get.

The winning candidate, AG (as he likes to be called) has been just one of the potential kings in waiting, since there are several branches of the family, each with an heir interested in the top job.

This competition among cousins is one of the reasons why media watchers have been awaiting the naming of a successor to current publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. Would it be AG, who is the current publisher’s son? Or Sam Dolnick or David Perpich, who are his nephews?

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “The Sulzberger dynasty tightens its grip on the New York Times”

What if newspapers hadn’t rushed headlong into digital, spending billions to put up free websites, but instead had focused on strengthening their print operations? Could they have avoided some of the carnage many have suffered in the past decade?

It’s a tempting scenario, one put forward by veteran media writer Jack Shafer in a piece at Politico, based on a recent study of the newspaper business. But it is fatally flawed.

The study, by University of Texas researchers Hsiang Iris Chyi & Ori Tenenboim, is entitled “Reality Check.” It looked at the online readership of 51 major daily newspapers in the U.S. (excluding national papers like the New York Times and USA Today).

The researchers found that few of these metropolitan dailies have seen any growth in their online readership since 2007. More than half have actually lost readers since 2011, and the average paper’s digital readership is about a third the size of its print readership.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Sticking with print would not have helped newspapers avoid death”