‘Fake news’ isn’t the problem — mainstream news with an agenda is, by Cathy Young.

Critics on both the left and the right argue that the outcry about “fake news” is a manufactured crisis intended to smear and ostracize dissident, non-mainstream media — especially since some of the critiques lump together publications that contain real if slanted reporting … with sites that publish actual hoaxes (such as a story about Pope Francis endorsing Trump) or satire. …

No, mainstream publications don’t knowingly publish falsehoods. …

However, most junk journalism does not take the form of outright “fake news” but of tendentious reporting that focuses on some facts while downplaying or omitting others. And here, the mainstream media are indeed often guilty of bias. …

The Rolling Stone article about the fictitious fraternity gang rape, treated as gospel by the rest of the media for ten days until a lone blogger and then a columnist for the libertarian magazine Reason finally pointed out some of its major and obvious problems (such as the fact that the alleged victim claimed to have been raped for hours while lying amidst shattered glass from a tabletop, yet was able to run out of the fraternity house afterward and did not require medical attention).

Indeed, the first New York Times report on the Rolling Stone story being questioned largely defended it.

And this is not the only example. While the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo. was certainly not “fake news,” a Justice Department investigation showed that the initial media narrative of that tragedy — one in which Brown was stopped for walking while black and shot dead while surrendering with his hands up — was completely false.

(Wilson realized that Brown could be a suspect in a strong-arm robbery at a store, and the shooting occurred when Brown put up a violent resistance and tried to grab the officer’s gun.)