Believe none of what you read

Here’s a chart by BuzzFeed showing the overwhelming prevalence of fallacious news stories during the presidential campaign. In the final three months leading up to Election Day, the 20 best-performing false election stories from fake and hyperpartisan fringe sites generated more shares, comments, and likes on Facebook than the 20 best-performing stories from the major news sites.

BuzzFeed News

In light of the flood of misinformation, Facebook has pledged to remove advertisements from sites that put out misleading information.

“We have updated the policy to explicitly clarify that this applies to fake news,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. “Our team will continue to closely vet all prospective publishers and monitor existing ones to ensure compliance.”

In a world where more than three in five Americans get their news from social media, with more than two in five getting it specifically from Facebook, social platforms have a lot of leverage in controlling the distribution of content. Nearly resistant to face-checking or other evaluations of the truthfulness of its content, fake news articles have the potential to spread among link-minded communities of individuals. It’s a vicious feedback loop, one that keeps glowing the embers of our political divisions.

Researchers say that the heavy consumption of partisan news contributes to political ignorance. A study, published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, argues that online ideological news exposure is driving a wedge between facts and beliefs. Analyzing survey data from the 2012 presidential election, the study authors found that frequent use of the Internet to acquire information was linked with a number of high-profile misperceptions, including erroneous beliefs about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the birthplace of President Barack Obama.

“The emergence of the Internet as a primary source of political information has transformed many Americans’ experience of the news, giving voice to previously marginalized political factions and creating outlets for explicitly ideological reporting,” said the authors. It raises fundamental questions about the prospect of an informed electorate.

Today, the Washington Post interviewed a fake news writer, whose articles have circulated on Facebook throughout the election. Paul Horner, the 38-year-old proprietor of a “Facebook fake-news empire” has been behind a string of successful viral hoax stories in recent years. His stories, the Post writes, have even been linked to by Donald Trump’s son Eric and once-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Now, Horner says he might have played a role in getting Trump elected.

“My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me,” he said. Horner said his articles were popular because Trump’s supporters had no interest in validating the information.

“He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Horner certainly deserves blame for feeding the beast. People’s political identities are notoriously resistant to dissonant information. They are more likely to seek out news that accommodates their preexisting outlook on the world. Misinformation is like a drug that enables addiction- once hooked, it’s impossible to be weaned off.  Lies take the place of well-grounded facts; truth becomes obscured in an hyperpartisan ecosystem with no boundaries.

There’s ample evidence to suggest that some groups are more vulnerable than others to this phenomenon.  In fact, Republican who viewed conservative news sites were more likely to believe lies than those who visited liberal sites, according to the study cited above. Denizens of conservative sites were ten times more likely than non-viewers to believe misleading information. Democrats who visited liberal sites were a bit more than three times more likely than non-visitors to hold misinformation. The vulnerability to fake news is bipartisan, but it skews more to conservative Internet surfers.

And it certainly doesn’t help when the President-Elect calls a notorious conspiracy theorist and promoter of wildly false news “amazing.” Alex Jones, provacateur and operator of Infowars.com, said that Trump also called him to thank him for his and his audience’s support.

Trump’s ad spending is weak and pathetic

The New York Times has produced a revealing graphic showing the drastic differences in television advertising spending between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. While many predicted the 2016 election would break previous spending records on both sides, the race as it currently stands is far from historic. It was only just in mid-August that Trump finally started airing commercials, and his ad spending is tremendously behind Clinton’s. According to NBC, Clinton is quadrupling him in spending.

Trump’s spending is also anemic compared to previous Republican nominees. Romney spent over $470 million in ad buys in 2012, compared to Trump’s $40 million.

Trump, however, is making a play during the final two weeks for a few swing states. He has $2 million of advertising booked in Virginia, a state he only started focusing on in early September and where he’s currently losing by 10 points. He is also trailing in every other swing state on the map. He also has been throwing money around in Pennsylvania, where he is down 8 points.

Trump’s ad spending can be summarized in four words: too little, too late.

Cable news contributed to Trump’s political rise. Now, they are starting to regret it

One of the reasons why Donald Trump has a chance of being president is his expertise in getting media coverage. He instinctively knows how to get the TV cameras on him, drawing on sensation and controversy to keep them rolling. Trump has been doing this for a while. As he described in The Art of the Deal:

One thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hunting for a good story, and the more sensational the better….The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you….

Sometimes they write positively and sometimes they write negatively. But from a business point of view, the benefit of being written about have far outweighed the drawbacks….

Meanwhile, TV networks have been all but compliant in giving him the spotlight. Trump told the New York Times last September that free advertising was so easy to come by that “it’s like nothing I’d have expected. When you look at cable television, a lot of the programs are 100% Trump,” he said, “so why would you need more Trump during the commercial breaks?” Many networks have received controversy for their non-stop coverage of Trump. Some critics go as far to say that they deserve blame for Trump’s political stardom.

One media figure, CNN President Jeff Zucker, now regrets airing Trump speeches in full. “If we made any mistake last year, it’s that we probably did put on too many of his campaign rallies in those early months and let them run,” Zucker said at a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School. “Listen, because you never knew what he would say, there was an attraction to put those on air.”

With the cameras rolling, Trump was getting a platform to speak ad nauseam about whatever was on his mind. He could talk about jailing his political opponent, suggest blatant falsehoods like Muslims cheered 9/11, and make outrageous demands by calling for a “complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the country. He’s not afraid of getting that extra coverage, because in his mind any coverage is good coverage. Cable news networks, looking for higher ratings, are all too quick to oblige him.

He even knows how to fool the media into delivering him that coverage. Last month, Trump was expected to admit that President Barack Obama was born in the US, thus putting a stop to the massive birther conspiracy first pushed by the GOP nominee himself. Instead, Trump put on a master class in trolling by pitching his DC hotel, followed by twenty minutes of bringing up veterans to endorse him. By the time the media figured it out, it was too late. Trump finally admitted Obama was natively born only just before leaving the stage. Reporters, angry at Trump for pulling a bait-and-switch, were quick to denounce him. Jake Tapper called Trump’s sly promoting “a political rick-roll.”

Trump knows every trick in the book to getting the cameras on him and keeping them rolling. Zucker, like many others yet to come, are admitting now that they got caught in Trump’s charade. Perhaps the GOP would have never been in this position if they had figured it out sooner.

The RNC says it supports Trump, doesn’t spend any money to help him

More bad news for Donald Trump, this time on the spending front:

A POLITICO analysis of campaign finance records reveals that the committee has not spent anything on commercials boosting Trump since he emerged as the party’s likely nominee.

That’s a stark departure from recent elections. In 2008 and 2012, the RNC spent tens of millions of dollars on so-called independent expenditures — principally TV ads, but also direct mail and phone banks — supporting its nominees or attacking their Democratic rivals.

The lack of air cover has prompted grumbling from Trump aides and allies, many of whom believe that the RNC was never fully supportive of their candidate and that it’s now turning its back completely on the anti-establishment nominee as his poll numbers crater.

The Trump campaign itself has spent very minimal on advertising. In fact, until mid-August his campaign had spent $0 on general election TV advertising. Although he has since then invested in some advertising in battleground states, Hillary Clinton is outspending him on the airwaves by a 4-to-1.

NBC News

Trump’s polling numbers have only worsened after a 2005 tape of him making lewd comments surfaced. According to polling projections from FiveThirtyEight, Trump has a 13% chance of winning the race. He is losing in every battleground state, and also in purple states like Arizona.

Perhaps those margins would be less if Trump toned down his outbursts, prepared for the debate, and stopped attacking members of his own party.

The Dallas Morning News broke its 75 year tradition by endorsing Hillary Clinton. Will it matter?

Today, for the first time since World War II, the Dallas Morning News has endorsed a Democrat. The paper, which has a long streak dating back twenty elections of endorsing Republican candidates, broke its trend by supporting Hillary Clinton.

“There is only one serious candidate on the presidential ballot this Novemeber,” the paper wrote on Wednesday. The editorial board criticized Trump for his open hostility to conservatism, his excessive fear-mongering, and his “astounding absence of preparedness.” His periodic insults and tweeting tirades showed his lack of restraint and judgement, the paper wrote.

This all leads to the question: Do newspaper endorsements matter? Given that newspaper readership is declining, maybe not. More Americans are turning to other platforms to stay abreast of current events. Only one in five US adults get their news from the paper, fewer than the number of people who stay informed by listening to the radio, reading online, or watching television.

Pew Research Center

Research also shows that print endorsements of presidential candidates have limited effects on boosting support. The level of influence hinges on the ideological leaning of the paper’s readership. A working paper by Brian G. Knight and Chun-Fang Chiang found that a paper’s bias determines the leverage of its endorsement. Endorsements of Democratic candidates by left-leaning papers are less influential than an endorsement by a right-leaning or neutral paper. The authors find that endorsements from highly partisan papers have little or no influence.

“Taken together, these results suggest that voters do attempt to learn from the media when choosing between candidates,” they wrote, ” but, at the same time, discount information from sources that are perceived to be politically biased.”

Readers view the media source’s ideological leaning as a proxy for whether they can trust the paper’s endorsement. Voters know how to interpret and respond to cues generated by paper endorsements. They can actively tune out any perceived bias in media coverage. A liberal endorsement of a Democrat, or likewise for a conservative paper and a Republican candidate, can be viewed as merely preaching to the choir and an inevitable fact given the leaning of the paper. Unbiased and equal weighting of both candidates be damned.

But what about a surprise endorsement of a candidate by a paper with a consistent political ethos that contradicts the endorsed candidate? Will the Morning News’ endorsement generate a larger impact on voter sentiment toward the two candidates because it was unexpected?

The answer seems to be yes, but highly dependent on the nature of the endorsement. A recent paper by Agustin Casas, Yarine Fawaz, and Andre Trindade found that unexpected endorsements, specifically those that came as a surprise, do affect parties’ winning probabilities. The authors find that surprise endorsements have “a large and potentially decisive effect in tied contests.” Endorsements of Republicans by left-leaning papers, and endorsements of Democrats by right-leaning papers like the Morning News, have a large effect on the candidate’s winning probability.

…newspapers with a greater propensity to endorse Democrats (quartiles 3 and 4) have a large effect when they instead endorse the Republican candidate (that is, when their endorsements come as a surprise). Likewise, when we use the coarser classification, Democratic endorsements from newspapers with a low probability of endorsing Democrats (quartiles 1 and 2) increase Obama’s winning probability. Even though we would require more observations to test the simultaneous effect of both measures, our evidence here suggests that consistent but surprising endorsements might be those with the greatest effect on candidates’ winning probabilities.

The research suggests that, while traditional endorsements of candidates by newspapers with similar ideological beliefs have little influence, unexpected surprises where a conservative paper endorses a Democrat do have some effect. Although, it might have little effect anyway considering how few people actually rely on print to get the news.