Talk:Ben Swann: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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*The lede is a summary of the body. The body describes numerous incidents in which Swann made demonstrably false claims of fact, or emphasized demonstrably wrong interpretations of facts while purporting to report the news. As that is the very ''definition'' of "fake news", it is perfectly acceptable to summarize those numerous incidents as Swann having "... repeatedly spread conspiracy theories and fake news..." Remember, accurate summation is not [[WP:OR]], and is required by both [[MOS:LEDE|our guide to writing ledes]] and [[WP:COPYVIO|our policies governing copyright]]. I would also point out that literally hundreds of people have pushed to have [[creationism]] or [[intelligent design]] labelled a scientific theory, or to have the "pseudoscience" label removed. The number of people who believe a falsehood has no bearing on the truth of that falsehood. <span style="text-shadow:grey 0.118em 0.118em 0.118em;">[[User:MPants at work|<span style="color:green;">'''ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants'''</span>]] [[User_talk:MPants at work|<small>Tell me all about it.</small>]]</span> 15:38, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

::None of the cited sourced describe his claims in that way. Can you give a few examples so we can discuss them? Baranof (the author of the claim in question) was asked in another section for examples to support similar claims, but gave none. --[[Special:Contributions/74.195.159.155|74.195.159.155]] ([[User talk:74.195.159.155|talk]]) 17:30, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

:::See [[WP:SKYBLUE]]. If it is reliably sourced that he repeatedly made untrue claims of fact while purporting to report the news, then it is perfectly acceptable for our lede to claim he "repeatedly spread... ...fake news..." because "false claims made under the guise of reporting the news" equating to "fake news" is as obviously true as "the sky is blue". Even if the sources never call it "fake news". Hell, even if the sources never explicitly state that the claims were false, so long as no reasonable reading of the source could conclude that the claims were true, we can label it "fake news". If our job was to precisely parrot the sources, then every article would consist of nothing but quotes and section headers. Even then: this article would still make it abundantly clear to anyone without an axe to grind that Swann is a conspiracy theorist and a pusher of fake news. <span style="text-shadow:grey 0.118em 0.118em 0.118em;">[[User:MPants at work|<span style="color:green;">'''ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants'''</span>]] [[User_talk:MPants at work|<small>Tell me all about it.</small>]]</span> 19:24, 23 July 2018 (UTC)