Dave Ross calls for extreme vetting of Facebook content

I wish someone would have at least some sympathy for those of us in the mainstream media.

Ross: President Trump may have sabotaged himself

First of all, we have to put up with that term “mainstream media.” Which implies that somehow we still control the news.

Oh, every so often a mainstream news anchor will attempt to reassert some control, as Scott Pelley did Monday night.

“It has been a busy day for presidential statements divorced from reality,” he said.

But the president no longer has to worry about what news anchors think because he can do his own live broadcasts. He just goes on Facebook.

Facebook controls the agenda now for pretty much any big story.

When people post complaints about the so-called “mainstream media” spreading inaccurate news, what’s their evidence? The thousands and thousands of times those incorrect stories were shared on Facebook.

That’s the real mainstream media — a website with 1.86 billion editors who mostly publish stories they haven’t read in hopes of being “liked.”

And that has changed the way mistakes are handled. Back when the mainstream media was the mainstream media, it could at least attempt to correct its mistakes.

But today, those mistakes feed a social media culture that thrives on not correcting them, because that could make an outrageous story boring.

And if you, as a Facebook user, don’t forward outrageous stories, you don’t get likes, and if you don’t get likes you’re a failure, and that goes on your permanent record.

I have an idea, though. Are you ready?

I call for a total and complete ban on forwarding any story on Facebook unless it goes through a process of what I call extreme vetting. Except of course for stories released by the White House which, of course, you can trust as is.

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