“LBO news” is what I call “Lie-By-Omission news” (yes, I coined that name myself). News that is partially truthful, but also a lie-by-omission due to what they don’t include. They’ll tell you only the parts that they want you to know, and leave out parts that might cause you to go the other direction, or are otherwise inconvenient for their argument.
Common LBO news outlets would be Fox News (the most famous and vilified), Breitbart, TruthOut, DailyKOS, Alternet, Occupy Democrats, and so on. (Yes, liberal LBO news outlets are greater in number, but market share and influence is roughly equal.)
Some recent high-profile incidents (i.e.: “pizzagate”) notwithstanding regarding fake news and it’s effects, I find LBO news to be much more insidious and detrimental to our overall civility and discourse. To the foundation of our society, really. They feed our current atmosphere of hyper-partisanship, and that is not doing us any favors.
Fake news attracts a few crackpots, to be sure, but most people are at least somewhat skeptical when the really outrageous stuff is presented. Even most extreme conservatives do not believe that Hillary Clinton was involved in a child sex ring. I mean, c’mon.
LBO news, on the other hand, appeals to whole slews of people who are almost salivating at the chance to further their own agenda and point-of-view, but are otherwise intelligent and basically decent people. They only hear what they want to hear, so they latch onto any reasonably sounding (to them) report and run with it as if it is complete gospel and proves their side is the righteous side. If you continually share any of these sources as your citations, then you are part of the problem of hyper-partisanship, and it doesn’t matter which side of the political aisle you are on.
An example of how LBO news influences thought and perception: Physical attacks after the recent election. A radio host that I respect, who is basically middle-of-the road, was telling the story of his adult son who is extremely liberal. His son laps up all the information presented by the liberal LBO sites mentioned above, and was under the impression that all the physical violence was completely one-sided… Trump supporters and conservatives attacking liberals. He honestly believed that because that’s all he saw.
The radio host, being more moderate, had been seeing scores of reports from both sides and in both directions. He talked with his son, showed him some of the videos and news stories, as a matter of balance, and the son was shocked. His son said, “I had no idea. I never saw any reports like this.”
He didn’t see anything because he consciously chose to have his bias confirmed, rather than be truly informed. This is a great example of why I find LBO news sites to be far more detrimental than fake news sites.
Now, are LBO news sites lying? Maybe sometimes, but not automatically and not necessarily. There’s usually at least a kernel of truth in there. Sometimes everything they say is true, just incomplete. Where they are being deceptive… intentionally deceptive, in my opinion… is in what they DON’T say.
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