A major new Gallup report that was issued on January 16th headlined “American Views: Trust, Media and Democracy” (it’s issued in conjunction with the Knight Foundation) and it finds that “Internet-only news websites” are the least-trusted of all newsmedia.
54% trusted “Your local newspaper.”
52% trusted “National network news.”
51% trusted “Major national newspapers.”
46% trusted “Cable news.”
38% trusted “News aggregators.”
36% trusted “Internet-only news websites.”
How did you learn that Saddam Hussein was “only six months from developing a [nuclear] weapon”? It was from the U.S. President, and from all of the stenographic ‘news’media, which was all of them, but especially the most-trusted ones: newspapers, TV, radio, and magazines. They enabled George W. Bush to invade and destroy Iraq, and more.
How did you learn that Libya should be invaded? It was from the same ones. They enabled Barack Obama to invade and destroy Libya, and Syria, and more.
How did you learn that dictatorship ended in Ukraine in February 2014’s “Maidan revolution,” instead of that that democracy ended in Ukraine then, and that it was instead a U.S.-engineered coup d’etat which happened there, no authentic ‘revolution’ at all. And this major-media lie thus ‘justified’ and led to the destruction of Ukraine, by U.S. President Obama.
The fake ‘news’ that affected history the most came from newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio. But the truth (such as you’ll see documented at those last links, the first of which is to a news-report which was produced by a lone individual from observers on the ground who had uploaded from their cellphones etc.) was available only at “internet-only news websites” — the type of sites that Americans respect the least.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Is the US about to become the world’s largest oil producer? Our feature story says yes. To follow we have Trump’s offshore leasing program; record Russian gas production; Saudi Arabia’s gasoline price hike; Germany shuts down a nuclear reactor; Australia’s industry to power down during heatwave; Coal growth in Asia; the Snowy hydro project a “write off”; UK releases plans for coal phase-out; North America’s largest lithium battery; the wind (almost) always blows somewhere in Europe; fossil-fuel burning without the CO2; Scotland’s plans to combat coastal erosion and the struggle to save chocolate from climate change extinction.
PARIS – How can societies combat the stream of false, often fabricated information that surges across the Internet and through social media, polluting political debates almost everywhere?
That question has bedeviled defenders of democracy at least since the 2016 US presidential election. And at a New Year’s press conference outside the Élysée Palace this month, French President Emmanuel Macron offered his own answer.
Macron’s goal, it seems, is to curtail “fake news” by law. He is promising that, by the end of the year, he will introduce a bill to crack down on those spreading misinformation during any election period.
But France already has a repressive law banning the publication or broadcasting of disinformation in bad faith. Under Article 27 of the famous Press Law of 1881, disseminating false information “by whatever means” is punishable by a fine of up to €45,000 ($55,000) in today’s currency.
The Press Law, however, applies only to information that has “disturbed the public peace,” which can be very difficult to define, let alone prove. Another law, part of the electoral code, provides for punishment of one year in prison and a fine of €15,000 for anyone who uses false information “or other fraudulent maneuvers” to steal votes. But this provision applies primarily to cases of electoral fraud.
Macron’s challenge, then, is to craft legislation for the digital age. Although he didn’t explicitly say so in his recent speech, he is clearly targeting the kind of Russian interference that played a prominent role in the 2016 US presidential election, and also threatened his own presidential campaign last spring.