Even if the MSM isn’t lying about the facts, it’s still purveying fake news because its Leftist values permeate everything from story placement to language.

PragerU is back with another of its excellent videos, this time about fake news. In it, Andrew Klavan offers his three-point rule of thumb for identifying the fake news that constantly spills from the mainstream media.

He makes an important point about fake news, which is that it’s not always about fake facts, which only occur some of the time. Instead, the real issue is that all of the time, every single time, the overwhelmingly Progressive atmosphere in which the mainstream media exists leaves reporters unable to avoid serious confirmation bias. This confirmation bias leads them to impose values on the facts, and these values are invariably hostile to conservatives and supportive of Progressives, no matter how badly those Progressives behave.

I agree with everything Klavan says. However, after you’ve watched the video, I’ll add one more thing I think he missed:

What Klavan missed is that there is a type of fake news that the media consistently uses that goes beyond what he identified. Klavan identified two primary tactics: (1) assigning relative values to stories (e.g., front or back page status) and (2) using emotionally colored adjectives (e.g., calling Tea Partiers racists or Occupy people heroes). [Read more…]