Fact-checking Fake News - "It's easy to lie with statistics; it is easier to lie without them."
What is fact? And what is fiction? What might be seen as a fact by one person is seen as fake news by somebody else. Depending on political orientation and cultural background people quickly categorize news as fake or fact. When beginning of November 2016 right-wing fanatics constructed “pizzagate”, they were claiming that owners and customers of a popular pizza restaurant in Washington were running a covert pedophile operation, directed by a group of people around Hillary Clinton. The mainstream press agreed that this was a fake news smear campaign constructed to damage Hillary Clinton’s reputation and the liberal agenda. Nonetheless, a significant group of the US population took the rumor at face value, see my previous blogpost . Even “facts” published in highly respected newspapers such as the New York Times can be seen as fiction by other news media. For instance, in a recent article in the New York Times , whistleblower Ed Snowdon was depicted as a puppet of Ru...