[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by Damien

Not much detail into what they're actually doing. I don't like the idea of the government having much control, if any, over the media.

But let's be clear what fake news is. It is not The Guardian, The Sun, The New York Times or The Daily Mail. All of these are legitimate papers which have an editorial process. They might make mistakes, they might be disingenuous, they might take things out of context and give errorless impressions but they rarely invent news. You'll be hard pressed to find an example of any of them outright making something up with the full knowledge they were doing so at the time.

Fake news is literally fake news. It's news spread on social media that was invented by some troll or political agency somewhere. A quote that some Tory said circling on social media that they never said, a report from RT about rigging in the Scottish Election which they made up, Pizzagate or something else like that.

The Government shouldn't be deciding if The Sun has been disingenuous or not. It should be trying to stop foreign agents using the internet to spread fabricated stories which sow discord in the country but I don't know how they can do that.

There is no attempt to control the media here, just to correct untrue stories as far as I can see.