Dan Rather launches gutsy newsgroup to counter fake news & alternative facts

[babylonsister]

http://m.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/24/1620059/-Dan-Rather-launches-FB-newsgroup-to-counter-fake-news-alternative-facts-and-it-s-taking-flight?detail=facebook


Dan Rather launches gutsy newsgroup to counter fake news & alternative facts
Jan 25, 2017 2:41am EST by Leslie Salzillo

American journalist and esteemed news anchor Dan Rather announced a new social media page in the midst of January’s flying fake news and alternative facts. The Facebook news page is called “News and Guts” and if it’s anything like Dan Rather’s posts this past year, it’s going to be a sledge-hammer on the new administration.

In a recent post, Rather states:

Journalism, real journalism, deep-digging reporting without fear or favor, is as important now, if not more so, than any time I can remember.

Over the past year, Dan Rather has built a Facebook page following of over 1.3 million people. It’s a place where he shares his political commentary along with posting news stories from other respected sources. He says during weeks like in early January when confirmation hearings were coming in fast and furious, there is only so much that he can do on one page and there are far more articles that deserve attention as well as great reporters he’d like to spotlight.

I got into news in the first place to be part of something noble and bigger than myself. For those reasons, I am starting a second Facebook page called News And Guts, a digital news feed of sorts. It's also the name of my digital news and production company. The goal is to inform, innovate, and inspire. This Facebook page will be under the stewardship of a very talented group of reporters who work at my company. These are men and women who know real news. They've reported with me around the globe from dangerous and difficult datelines. I trust them and so should you.

Rather says the audience may find the tone of the new page “a little more free-wheeling” than his own. He also says he wants the page to be a two-way street that encourages the thoughts, articles, and stories, which the page followers want to see covered.

In an era of fake news, false equivalence, and too much fluff, let's take a stand together to demand better, and bring attention to all those doing great work.

In just weeks, News And Guts has garnered over 350k followers. To visit, click here: News And Guts
https://www.facebook.com/newsandguts/

Yep, we’ll take more of this please.

[Phoenix61]

1. Thanks!

431 thousand plus followers.

[myrna minx]

2. K&R

[Dulcinea]

3. Great!

A lot of people don't like Dan Rather, but I have always liked him.

[chillfactor]

4. THANK YOU!

I have bookmarked the page.....people are really upset with a wall that first, will do no good, and second the taxpayers will be stuck with the cost. The Mexican president has said repeatedly that Mexico will not pay for the wall.....That is like the Soviet Union asking this country to pay for the Berlin wall....it isn't/didn't happen.

[Mark.Gray]

5. Outstanding!

As the son of two professional journalists, I am genuinely happy to learn that Mr. Rather will use his experience to launch a defensive counter-strike against the most stunningly deceptive and manipulative administration in our history...

[inanna]

6. This needs more recs. n/t

[Initech]

7. Man how do I be a part of this?

[babylonsister]

17. Do you do FB?

If not, I'm sure you'll be seeing a lot of what's posted over here.

[SticksnStones]

8. The dignity and tenacity of Dan Rather is awe inspiring.

Nuff said.

[malaise]

9. This shold have 500 recs

Yeeeeeees

[Hekate]

10. Now following. Thanks for the tip.

[Raster]

11. Kick for visibility!

[Generator]

12. Love it!

Even though I don't do facebook.

[Stellar]

13. WOW...I'm joining!

[Aristus]

14. I just clicked to like and follow this page.

Knowledge is power!

[bucolic_frolic]

15. Dan Rather never quits

he just has a nose for journalism and keeps going

may we all take a lesson

[llmart]

16. I'm following and liked his page...

I have no use for the TV news. Haven't in a very long time.

[thegoose]

18. The last of the real journalists

I just liked the FB page.

I had the opportunity to meet him when I was managing a professional TV event in DC back in 2007. He was our keynote speaker.

I brought his autobiography of his childhood that my Dad gave to me. When Dan saw the cover, he laughed and said, "There's a special place in heaven for people who've read that book." Evidently it was not a big seller, but he inscribed it anyway.

Thank you for all you do, Dan!

[Cha]

19. Thanks for this and the link, babylonsister! I liked

it.. couldn't see how many LIKES there were? Imagine a lot!

We were wishing for this, too!

[Moosepoop]

23. Right now it shows 527,413 "likes"

and 573,190 people "following" the page

[Cha]

34. Thank you for that, Moosepoop!

[red dog 1]

20. K&R...Thanks for posting

I just clicked to Like and Follow "News and Guts"

[hedda_foil]

21. Thanks! Following.

[randr]

22. Too bad it is FaceBook property

Come on Dan bring the truth to the masses that support net neutrality and open discussion

[leftyladyfrommo]

24. Dan Rather is under attack, too.

I saw one headline from Fox News making fun of him because he was fired over fake news. Which, if I am not correct, was proved to be correct after all.

And I saw another source touting the same thing.

The alt Right is afraid of him. And well they should be. People out there believe what he says.

[Blanks]

27. There is a movie "Truth"...

where Robert Redford plays Dan Rather.

It's an interesting movie, but what you have to keep in mind about the 'Bush Letter' is that the letter itself was under attack because the font that was used in the letter didn't exist at the time that the letter was written.

Once the font was discovered, that was all that they talked about. They stopped discussing the likelihood that the content of the letter was correct. The producer of the segment was fired, the team dismantled and Dan Rather 'retired'.

Many believe that it was a setup by Rove.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_(2015_film)

[mnhtnbb]

33. Much better than the movie is the book written by Mary Mapes--the producer--

upon which the movie was based.

on p. 7 of her book she writes:

I was told that the first posting claiming the documents were fakes had gone up on Free Republic before our broadcast was even off the air! How had the WEB site even gotten copies of the documents? We hadn't put them online until later. That first error-filled and overblown entry, posted by a longtime Republican activist lawyer who used the name "Buckhead," set the tone for what was to come.

There was no analysis of what the documents actually said, no work done to look at the content, no comparison with he official record, no phone calls made to check the facts of the story, nothing beyond a cursory and politically motivated examination of the typeface. That was all they had to attack, but that was enough.

and on p. 8

I talked to our document analyst Marcel Matley, now back in San Francisco, who said he had seen some of the comments and dismissed them out of hand. "They aren't even looking at the quality of copies I did," Matley said. He disdained the anonymity of the postings, saying that any real analysts would use their name and credentials. And he pointed out something that would be a huge problem for us in the days ahead: that in the process of downloading, scanning, faxing, and photocopying, some computers, copiers, and faxes changed spacing and altered the appearance and detail of fonts. He thought that this basic misunderstanding of how documents changed through electronic transmittal was behind the unfounded certainty and ferocity of the attack on the documents.

In retrospect, Matley was right and our story never recovered from this basic misunderstanding. Faxing changes a document in so many ways, large and small, that analyzing a memo that had been faxed--in some cases not once, but twice--was virtually impossible. The faxing destroyed the subtle arcs and lines in the letters. The characters bled into each other. The details of how the typed characters failed to line up perfectly inside each word were lost.

And these faxed, scanned, and downloaded documents were the only versions of the memos ever made public. A comparison of one of the documents before faxing and after faxing is in Appendix 1.

She goes on to say though

As I watched the postings pile up and saw the words quickly become more hateful, it dawned on me that I was watching the birth of a political jihad, a movement conceived in radical conservative back rooms, given life in cyberspace, and growing by the minute. It fed on political anger and the deep-seated belief that CBS News was a longtime liberal stronghold out to get the president.

[bigtree]

25. k&r

[bdamomma]

26. K&R

I will join on facebook

[IronLionZion]

28. Make Investigative Journalism Great Again!

A lot of different areas of America are being made great again to resist Trump.

[dreamland]

29. Who knew that real journalists do exist.

So many journalists are in the pockets of corporate machines that the truth is not reported anymore.

[longship]

30. Rather was featured on Rachel Maddow's program last night. Again!

Well worth a view.

R&

[BlancheSplanchnik]

31. YAYYYY!!!!

Ohhhh thank you Dan Rather!!!!!!

[Guilded Lilly]

32. K&R with boots on!

[Cha]

35. KO on blotus and the press..

[OxQQme]

36. I'm late to the party---kicking this n/t