There are OpEds so easy to poke fun at that the activity is not fun.
It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it, so this piece in Frankfurter Allgemeine entitlled "Our daily disinformation" needs some poking.
With a stylish lead-in complimenting The Matrix, we get the all the world's knowledge at your fingertips overview.
Off to the net is in danger of turning from a medium of information into a vehicle of disinformation (Our xlation of Das Netz droht von einem Medium der Information zu einem Vehikel der Desinformation zu werden.)
The choice of words in the German sentence setting up the bad, bad net is noteworthy. Medium of information is positive, the German "medium" is a bit more upscale, linguistically speaking, than the English "medium". And the German "Vehikel" is downright pejorative, it denotes not just a vehicle but is much closer in meaning to "contraption" or, for the modern reader, to a "monster truck" than a classy, comfy ride.
A list of the best of the best conspiracy theories and whack jobs on the net follows this intro. Can you guess whether the moon landing is mentioned?
The K-Landnews TheEditor felt a bit slighted, not being mentioned in the list of whack jobs.
This is still bearable, fun, but then we get to the loss of influence by the old fountains of information that had a "sender" (a known named source), like the market square, the newspaper, radio, TV, a web site, or a blogger.
You can take it from here, friends. Use the terms Facebook, intermediary, chain mail, alleged facts, search engines, conspiracy, ignorance, to reconstitute what the OpEd says. You will not go wrong, no matter in which order you use the list of terms.
Anything else we would like to add?
Yes, the OpEd was penned by the digital products chief at the paper.
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