{"id":5087,"date":"2017-02-20T10:02:04","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T15:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5087"},"modified":"2017-02-20T10:02:04","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T15:02:04","slug":"fake-because-fake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5087","title":{"rendered":"Fake because Fake"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Friday presser (NYT’s transcript here<\/a>) was too much to let get by with just one post on it.\u00c2\u00a0 Trump had been railing that the leaks about Russia ties with General Flynn were “Fake news.”\u00c2\u00a0 He was then asked the question:<\/p>\n

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And on the leaks, is it fake news or are these real leaks?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

His reply was interesting.<\/p>\n

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Well the leaks are real. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the one that wrote about them and reported them, I mean the leaks are real. You know what they said, you saw it and the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.<\/strong> So one thing that I felt it was very important to do \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and I hope we can correct it. Because there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nobody I have more respect for \u00e2\u20ac\u201d well, maybe a little bit but the reporters, good reporters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

First, it’s not much of a clarification.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s not the\u00c2\u00a0 point here.\u00c2\u00a0 My point is about Trump’s argument for why the news is fake.\u00c2\u00a0 From what we have here, it looks blatantly circular.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, perhaps, it’s a weaker induction.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps it’s something of this form of inductive inference:<\/p>\n

So much news is fake<\/p>\n

Therefore, it’s reasonable to take this news as fake.<\/p>\n

That’s not a form of circular reasoning, but it certainly has a greater burden of proof on it.\u00c2\u00a0 Showing that X is fake news requires only refuting X, but showing that there is so much<\/em> fake news requires a lot more — you need to refute X, Y, Z and so on.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s what was Trump’s case for the premise:<\/p>\n

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It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very important. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mind bad stories. I can handle a bad story better than anybody as long as it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true and, you know, over a course of time, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll make mistakes and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll write badly and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m OK with that. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not OK when it is fake. I mean, I watch CNN, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much anger and hatred and just the hatred.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So in this case, the argument that so much news is fake is dependent on his sample from CNN and how angry they are with him.\u00c2\u00a0 That may mean it’s less a news show and more an opinion piece or a panel discussion, but how is that a case that it’s fake news?<\/p>\n

A short note on what argumentative burdens one takes on when charging an other with an error.\u00c2\u00a0 A point about dialectical points in argument.\u00c2\u00a0 We are reasoning about how we are reasoning together, and in these cases, the argumentative burdens, when charging another with an error, is to demonstrate to them in manners they can see what the error is.\u00c2\u00a0 Failing to do that fails a dialectical burden in argument.\u00c2\u00a0 But here, I think, Trump’s not interested in whether his argument moves media-types or academic professors, he’s interested in taking this message “to the American people”.\u00c2\u00a0 The point, then, is that he’s playing to an onlooking audience with these arguments — he doesn’t take it that he really needs to fix the premise that so much of the news is fake… that premise has been established by the right wingers for ages.\u00c2\u00a0 Trump’s just reaping what’s been sown by the culture of aggression toward the media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Friday presser (NYT’s transcript here) was too much to let get by with just one post on it.\u00c2\u00a0 Trump had been railing that the leaks about Russia ties with General Flynn were “Fake news.”\u00c2\u00a0 He was then asked the question: And on the leaks, is it fake news or are these real leaks? His … Continue reading Fake because Fake<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[1970,2045,2119,1101,2104],"class_list":["post-5087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-begging-the-question","tag-begging-the-question","tag-donald-j-trump","tag-fake-news","tag-on-begging-the-question","tag-trumpism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5089,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5087\/revisions\/5089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}