Important lessons from time spent with my dog

It’s been another hard news week. It seems like that’s becoming the norm in modern American society. No matter which news outlet you favor, there are a slew of heartbreaking or alarming stories. Even if you simply pop on your phone to get directions or check your bank account, it’s hard to avoid the headlines. 

Fake News Freakout!!!!!! Four

By Cory Vaillancourt • Fake News Editor | It’s the most wonderful time of the year! That’s right, it’s time for our annual installment of the Fake News Freakout, in which we take stories that sprout from a small grain of truth, harvest them, and then process them into a multi-layered cake of mockery and silliness frosted with fraud. 

Serving ‘something larger than themselves’

“Stray from the truth, and whoever corrects you can be dismissed as ‘the other side.’ The strategy runs on a dangerous assumption — that we’re not all in this together.”

— Time magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year article

When it was reported that Time magazine had named the “guardians” as their person of the year, I have to admit to the sin of pride.

The guardians it was referring to were reporters and journalists, those with media outlets large and small who toil daily to inform on important and fundamental issues so that we might be better citizens.

Fake News FREAKOUT!! Part Three

This is my third Christmas as a member of The Smoky Mountain News staff, and this is also the third installment of the FAKE NEWS FREAKOUT. Conspiracy? No. Coincidence? Likely. 

But since there seems to be some lingering confusion over what fake news is not (stuff you don’t agree with) and what fake news actually is (the stories below), submitted herewith for your amusement are a number of genuine fake news stories gathered from around the region this past year. Co-conspirators Holly Kays and Jessi Stone contributed to this fake news report, which is fake. 

Don’t rely on fake Fox News

By Norman Hoffman • Guest Columnist

It is truly amusing to see an apparent “conservative” say that liberals are out of touch with reality because they don’t watch Fox News. I tend to watch several networks and frequently have found that what Fox talking heads are saying does not match the facts. Not only do they tend to have a strong bias to saying what conservative want to hear, their “facts” are often wrong or distorted. 

Fake news freakout! All of this really happened in 2017*

Last year it was still just a quaint, silly little term — fake news.

2016: A Year.

The tidal wave of negative political news in 2016 was staggering in its magnitude and emotionally overwhelming. Thankfully all that is behind us. But we can’t say adios to the year’s local news until our writers and editors sift through those events and mold them into our annual tongue-in-cheek spoof awards. With apologies in advance to those who can’t take a joke, here’s our tribute to the people and events that left an indelible mark on 2016.

FAKE NEWS FREAKOUT!

In keeping with the theme of The Smoky Mountain News spoof awards in this week’s edition, I thought now might be a good time to talk to you about fake news.

Historians discover lifeless remains of the truth

So this, perhaps, is how we in the traditional — and dare I say legitimate — media will meet our demise: fake news.

And just this past Saturday I was so optimistic that traditional journalism was somehow going to survive. I was visiting my daughter and some friends at Appalachian State and had a conversation with a college senior who is doing an internship at a High Country newspaper. He was full of that youthful excitement about journalism and was unrestrained about his desire to pursue a print newspaper job after seeing the effect his stories had in the small community his newspaper serves. I came home thinking of my own ambitions at that age and believing that young people like him would surely help our industry continue to do its important mission in our democratic society.

2014: Newsworthy award winners

cover2014 is all but in the rearview mirror now, and all the stories reported over the last 12 months are headed for the history books or perhaps a less-lofty final resting place. But lest we forget just what made 2014 such a great year for news, here’s our annual tongue-in-cheek awards, a tribute to those people and events that held our interest for at least a few moments during the past year.

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