Transport Sector, China and Asia-focused Research

Charles De Trenck

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

United kingdom Industrials / Thematic (Sector/Industry)

This is not just often coming from Trump, Putin, China’s leadership or a slew of unverified stories on the Web, but is a pervasive and age old behavior pattern that has existed since before the written word. Moreover, it is not simply "Fake News" as a category of news to be compared against “real news”. There have always been angles on and different shades of the news – it is simply perhaps that internet distributed news has increased purported news flow and lowered barriers even more!The real debate, in my view, should be about many sub-categories of "Fake", as in not true data, news and analysis.We have misleading, massaged and spurious data, news and analysis throughout our daily life.Take this last weekend and the N California Oroville Dam Spillway burst, which led to last minute evacuations Sunday and Monday of up to 188,000 people. Up until a week ago few  would have imagined that a Dam that was not even on Governor Brown’s $137bn infrastructure upgrade list would lead by Sunday night to a main Spillway suffering  major damage but still releasing  water at 100,000 cubic feet per second (original design 150,000 cubic feet/second), and that a second emergency spillway would be unusable due to massive erosion – and that total repair costs when the time comes could mount to perhaps $0.2 – 0.5bn (likely cost way above press estimates listed at $100-200m).  We would not have expected this. Unless we happened to listen to a report on this risk some 12 years ago...<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/02/13/officials-were-warned-the-oroville-dam-emergency-spillway-wasnt-safe-they-didnt-listen/?utm_term=.c0d6258ba6f9" target="_blank">Link to Story</a>The near disaster may be a case of initial faulty (or missing) analysis based on insufficient accurate information. The dam is fine. The problem was the spillways!  Final determinations on costs will likely come in several months only.In a twist of irony, Trump six months ago claiming there was no California drought was technically incorrect at the time. A few months later, and he now turns out to have been correct.  It was all about timing, in this case.Instead of railing against “Fake News”, we should focus more on the categories of “Fake”. Here is how I would simplistically breakdown classifications: 1) Data, 2) News, 3) Analysis, and 4) Perceived Trends/Long Term Trends.

This is not just often coming from Trump, Putin, China’s leadership or a slew of unverified stories on the Web, but is a pervasive and age old behavior pattern that has existed since before the written word. Moreover, it is not simply "Fake News" as a category of news to be compared against “real news”. There have always been angles on and different shades of the news – it is simply perhaps that internet distributed news has increased purported news flow and lowered barriers even more!The real debate, in my view, should be about many sub-categories of "Fake", as in not true data, news and analysis.We have misleading, massaged and spurious data, news and analysis throughout our daily life.Take this last weekend and the N California Oroville Dam Spillway burst, which led to last minute evacuations Sunday and Monday of up to 188,000 people. Up until a week ago few  would have imagined that a Dam that was not even on Governor Brown’s $137bn infrastructure upgrade list would lead by Sunday night to a main Spillway suffering  major damage but still releasing  water at 100,000 cubic feet per second (original design 150,000 cubic feet/second), and that a second emergency spillway would be unusable due to massive erosion – and that total repair costs when the time comes could mount to perhaps $0.2 – 0.5bn (likely cost way above press estimates listed at $100-200m).  We would not have expected this. Unless we happened to listen to a report on this risk some 12 years ago...Link to StoryThe near disaster may be a case of initial faulty (or missing) analysis based on insufficient accurate information. The dam is fine. The problem was the spillways!  Final determinations on costs will likely come in several months only.In a twist of irony, Trump six months ago claiming there was no California drought was technically incorrect at the time. A few months later, and he now turns out to have been correct.  It was all about timing, in this case.Instead of railing against “Fake News”, we should focus more on the categories of “Fake”. Here is how I would simplistically breakdown classifications: 1) Data, 2) News, 3) Analysis, and 4) Perceived Trends/Long Term Trends.

International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG LN)

International Consolidated Airlines Group

The Pathology of Fake News ... We Are All Perpetrators