Avoiding fakes news: Why and How

Why you should care about fake news?

Truth is you should not. You should care about interesting articles and contempt the literacy level of journalists. Yes this is shameless journalism bashing


Anyway this is not about "how and why" avoiding fake news it is much more about the questions how and why are not equivalents and that they lead to a real problem.

First I challenge you to read press article every day. You will see especially among the ridiculously pedantic french self designated fact checkers les decodeurs from the reference newspaper lemonde that most of the articles on fact checking are titled with why...? and this is the majority.

Now let's look at how often people ask why vs how in google trends (experience reproduced with same result in french).


Basically people want to know HOW and news like to tell us WHY.

I am gonna develop a saying from one of my physic teacher that I respect for saying:

Why is a question of religion calling for an opinion, How is a question of science calling for an explanation of the mechanisms.


Asking why man evolves from primates? is not the same as How man evolves from primates? .

If your answer the HOW question you will leave to the persons an examination of the mechanisms, letting readers build their own personal opinions. And honestly I find it normal for persons to actually doubt, refute and criticize the evolution. A good theory does not get discredited by opinions but by facts, and I would accept as progress if someone would come to give a better alternate equally simple explanation of the origin of humanity on earth. His/Her motive I could not  care less. To be simple religions do not provides simpler predictive and check-able mechanisms.

Good debates comes from discussing on what matters : the facts and mechanics, not your motives.


The funny part of evolution is funnily that it get rids of any design or motive to explain evolution, it is a non opinionated mechanism regarding purposes based on randomness. The evolution says that there is no need for an intention to obtain human on earth. It just kicks God of the creation of Human, which basically

The strength of Darwin was to answer the question how can we explain the variation of the species and ignored the question why.

It actually is not an atheist theory, it is God agnostic. It does not deny the existence of God, it just states whether God exists or not he is not involved in the process.

And well religions contempt randomness as much as journalists. They want to be the smart guys unveiling you the hidden motives behind news. News and media are all opinionated. I do not mind. No readers mind. We all like opinionated people with whom we can build a nice utopia.

But I think and notice that all readers even if leaning in the same direction as a media wants to make their opinions by themselves. They ask google how. We are better all left checking facts by ourselves.

How should therefore be present in more wording of news and article than why.

Does it means WHY does not matter?

Today I saw an article that the cours constitutionnelle invalidated the decision of  the parliament on making Google pay tax as any other companies on the territory.

It took me 4 pages of google specialized search to have access the document on the motivation of the decision. Because, the motivation of this institution have to be based on the constitution. And I wanted how it was possible. For this I needed the answer to the question why.

Bonus here is the answer : Google has been cleared of paying tax because else it would break the rules of egality in front of the law. Google does tax dodging (illegal evasion) but they must be authorized do tax dodging since it is the norm. Every one does it, so they cannot forbidden to do it.


That is much more the information I was looking for. Basically this country is the farm of the animals where physical citizens cannot do what moral entities can. Some animals are more equal than others but that does not bother the experts of the constitution.

So, are there really any fake news at all in the beginning?

I have done an unnice claim about journalists. Sure I hate the way they write in any language, but this purely an opinion without any grounds. My trollesque opinion is that they are educated yet idiot that do not understand the difference between how and why.

However, I should be ashamed. This does not matter at all.

Here we have a problem that does not require hidden motives of journalists, or complex mechanisms to analyse the problem. Why is not a good question here.

What we can guess from google trends by opposition to a frequential analysis of the title is that there is a gap between what people ask and what media answer.

And I think that it is as simple as that : news are seen as fake because the offer is not in conjunction with the demand.

Journalists question motivations too much in regard of mechanisms when something happens and are not curious enough of the motives of actors when they take a decision. Maybe, medias ignore the raise in literacy of their readers and may need to speak to their readers as smart people.




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