Home » Posts tagged 'fake news' (Page 6)

Tag Archives: fake news

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

France’s fake news law will be used to silence critics, win elections

June 5, 2018

France’s fake news law will be used to silence critics, win elections

New laws targeting so called ‘fake news’ will actually be used to target and take down real news outlets in the long run so the powers-that-be will be able to remain in control as usual

(INTELLIHUB) — There is really only one reason a law would be put into place to stifle so-called ‘fake news’ and that is so the real purveyors of fake news, like CNN, can continue to push theirs.

The people at the top of the pyramid who are actually running the entire show appear to have it all figured out. In a world where down is up and up is down fake news appears almost everywhere but the real fact of the matter is that most of it comes from mainstream sources, like CNN. So, withal, I have to ask: Will the new laws be used to crackdown on sources like CNN that always publish garbage or will the powers-that-be let agencies like CNN roll with whatever smut they like while other smaller but more trustworthy outlets get targeted over ‘fake news’? Will the powers-that-be use the law as a weapon to remove controversial reports?

The AFP out of Paris reports:

France is the latest country attempting to fight the scourge of fake news with legislation — but opponents say the law won’t work and could even be used to silence critics.

The draft law, designed to stop what the government calls “manipulation of information” in the run-up to elections, will be debated in parliament Thursday with a view to it being put into action during next year’s European parliamentary polls.

The idea for the bill came straight from President Emmanuel Macron, who was himself targeted during his 2017 campaign by online rumors that he was gay and had a secret bank account in the Bahamas.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The ‘fake news’ story is fake news

May 19, 2018

The ‘fake news’ story is fake news

Judy Woodruff of PBS News Hour

Almost every day on public radio or public television, I hear reports about how fake news is undermining our democracy. These high-minded reporters and anchors seem truly to believe that a feverish menace is overwhelming the minds of once-sensible people.

This story is itself fake news for several obvious reasons. We’ve never had more good information than we have now; people are as well-informed as they want to be. There will always be outlets purveying lies; that is the nature of communication. And the insistence on the “fake news” issue is an effort to assign Trump’s victory not to those who brought it to us (the electorate, and the incompetence of the Clinton campaign) but on some nefarious agents.

The fact that we have more and better information today than ever almost goes without saying. When I started in the news business more than 40 years ago, few reporters carried tape recorders, largely because they worked for a guild and were never subject to correction. Today there are countless outlets, thanks to the internet, and important events are almost always recorded. The amount of data we have on public figures is vast compared to even ten years ago.

We can all argue about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing; but we are today awash in information. That information is more reliable than it has ever been before. My own work on Palestine and the Israel lobby has shown me that global consumers can get more accurate information about that conflict than they’ve ever had. Yes, as we assert here all the time, the mainstream US media is in the tank for Israel; but it’s not as if better information is not available at your fingertips, much of it from Europe and Palestine, often citizen video.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Before You Tell Me What You “Know,” Tell Me Your Sources

May 9, 2018

Before You Tell Me What You “Know,” Tell Me Your Sources

We can no longer trust data and conclusions being published as impartial by institutions that were once trustworthy.
When someone says they “know” what’s happening on the ground in Syria, how can we assess the validity of their claim to knowledge, i.e. their claim to “know” “facts” or (gasp) “truth”?
When someone says they “know” the U.S. economy is growing and unemployment is at record lows, what is the basis of their claim to knowledge?
Before you tell me what you “know,” tell me your sources. We all know how this works nowadays: the sources are rigged or gamed to support the pre-selected narrative.
In “fake news,” the sources are designed to appear legitimate via official-sounding institutional titles for the source organizations and human “experts” / researchers, and the data that’s presented to support the “fake news” is also designed to be indistinguishable from legitimate data.
The cursory consumer of such content will be inclined to grant the institution, source and data as equal in legitimacy to other accepted sources. For example, if we read that the United Nations Labor Information Council has collected data showing the U.S. unemployment rate is actually 7.2% rather than the official 3.9%, the invocation of the UN and the precision of the data point suggests a legitimate source and data base.
But it’s “fake news;” there is no United Nations Labor Information Council (at least not to my knowledge).
Official sources have learned that the most effective way to propagate the sanctioned narratives is to rig or game the data and/or its interpretation. Thus the bailouts of the U.S. “too big to fail” financial institutions in 2008-09 were purposefully obscured; it took independent researchers to assemble all the bailout guarantees and publish the staggering total of over $16 trillion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Where It All Began: The Dawn of “Fake News”

May 1, 2018

Where It All Began: The Dawn of “Fake News”

It has long been suggested that the first full-blown example of “fake news”—where patently false information is intentionally presented in a phony but utterly believable “news media” format in order to sway public opinion—occurred during the watershed 1934 California gubernatorial election.

The two principals were Republican incumbent, Frank Merriman, and his Democratic challenger, Upton Sinclair. Merriman, a nondescript political lightweight with no national profile, was viewed more or less by the RNC as the Party’s West Coast performing flea. As Lieutenant Governor he was jettisoned into the incumbency when Governor James “Sunny Jim” Rolph died of a heart attack in June of 1934, just months before the election.

His chief opponent, Upton Sinclair, a prairie socialist and muckraker, was the celebrated author of “The Jungle,” the best-selling expose of the Chicago meat packing industry. Because the nation was still in the stranglehold of the most debilitating economic depression in its history, Sinclair reasonably chose to base his campaign on the EPIC (End Poverty in California) project.

Put simply, EPIC was an ambitious socialist program whose goal was universal employment. Among other things, EPIC promised massive public works programs, the reorganization of the agriculture industry into farm co-ops, and virtual state control of California’s factories.

Given the overall popularity of FDR’s New Deal, and the fact that the American Left was still feeding off table scraps of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the notion of “eliminating poverty” was properly considered not only necessary but feasible.

In addition to Merriman and Sinclair, there were two other notable players: Louis B. Mayer, the powerful overlord of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), whose dominion over the movie industry permitted him to comport himself like the Sun King (think of Harvey Weinstein magnified 100 times). and the advertising-public relations firm of Whitaker & Baker.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Paradise in LA LA Land

April 21, 2018

 Paradise in LA LA Land

More is revealed with each passing day.  You can count on it.  But what exactly the ‘more is of’ requires careful discrimination.  Is the ‘more’ merely more noise?  Or is it something of actual substance?  Today we endeavor to pass judgment, on your behalf.

Normally, judgment would be passed on a Thursday, but we are making an exception. [PT]

For example, here in the land of fruits and nuts, things are whacky, things are zany. Last month, State Senator, Dick Pan, introduced Senate Bill (SB) 1424, which would require California based websites to utilize fact checkers to verify news stories prior to publishing them.

Who exactly these fact checkers would be – the moral servants that would save the world from the ills of fake news – was conveniently missing from the bill. Ironically, the control freaks in California state government can’t control themselves; they want to muck around with people’s lives unconditionally.

Nonetheless, screwball proposals like this out of Sacramento fall into the mere noise category – for now.  We estimate it will take another Presidential election cycle, or two, before such nonsense is taken seriously by the majority of state lawmakers.

At the local level, there are more demanding problems that require more demanding solutions.  Here in Los Angeles County, according to something called the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, there is now a homeless population of precisely 57,794.  For perspective, Chavez Ravine (i.e., the Dodger Stadium), has a capacity of 56,000.

This army of indigents, roaming about the LA LA land paradise, has become a significant embarrassment for local leaders.  Haphazard urban campsites litter the bank tops of the colossal, concrete Los Angeles River Channel between Downtown Los Angeles and Downtown Long Beach.  The massive collection of tents and makeshift shelters has become too much to ignore.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fake news, algorithmic sentinels, and facts from the future

April 17, 2018

Fake news, algorithmic sentinels, and facts from the future

The suggestion that social media outlets need to police so-called “fake news” rings true on its face. Who wants to read news coverage known to be false? But what rates as “fake news” will be harder to define than we think.

And, putting algorithms in charge of policing those vast information flows claiming to be news will almost certainly not solve the problem. In a piece reflecting on artificial intelligence (AI) on the 50th anniversary of the release of the film, “2001: A Space Odyssey” writer Michael Benson tells us that “[d]emocracy depends on a shared consensual reality.”

Well, actually everything we do in groups, whether it’s democracy or going to a hockey game, depends on shared consensual reality. And, therein lies the problem. We are now in a fight not over opinions concerning the import of agreed upon facts, but over the consensus itself—whether scientific findings can be trusted, whether corporate-owned media can be believed, whether “objective” reporting is even possible, whether the history we were taught is indeed the “true” history of our country and our world.

Which consensus prevails will be crucial to every facet of our society. It is true that consensus views are constantly being challenged by events. To the extent that events can be fit into consensus views, the consensus can survive. In fact, the consensus can be tweaked when necessary. The idea that free trade is always good has been tweaked in the past to admit that it is not good for everyone and that those who lose their jobs need special assistance. The consensus survived and free trade agreements continued to flourish.

Now, the consensus is vanishing. Large parts of society do not believe that the current system serves them well. Wealth is being shifted up the income ladder as middle- and low-income families find their wages stagnant or declining.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New Project Aims to “Fact-Check the Fact-Checkers” Accused of Liberal Bias

March 29, 2018

New Project Aims to “Fact-Check the Fact-Checkers” Accused of Liberal Bias

Reston, VA – With the rise of the term “fake news,” many individuals have turned to self-proclaimed fact-checking sites like Snopes and PolitiFact; the objectivity of these sites tends to be questioned by conservatives as having a covert liberal bias.

On Tuesday, the conservative Media Research Center unveiled a new project entitled “Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers,” which is designed to “ensure the fact-checkers themselves are reliable, or exposed as liberal partisans if they aren’t.”

The Media Research Center explained in its announcement:

Sometimes you have to check the fact-checkers.

More and more, major news outlets are relying on “fact checkers” to, allegedly, ensure that the news is factual, sources are reliable, and statements are accurate.

In theory, this is admirable. In practice, it has proven to be simply another opportunity for the media to push their leftist agenda.

Fact checking groups — such as PolitiFact — routinely cast judgments while failing to disclose their own left-wing bias. Their allies in the media try to cast these groups as neutral third parties when, in fact, they are card-carrying members of the liberal echo chamber.

It’s no wonder that the public has so little faith in the fact-checkers. A 2016 Rasmussen poll found that an astonishing 62% of American voters think the fact-check-ers are biased.

The Media Research Center is flipping the script on these faux-fact-checkers. It’s time to turn the tables and give the public the real facts.

While Americans attempt to separate truth from propaganda, especially in regards to politics, some of these reportedly neutral third-party fact checkers— accused by conservatives of having a progressive bias— has left some consumers unsure of their reliability.

“In an era of ‘fake news’ and inaccurate reporting, it is important now more than ever that the fact-checkers themselves are exposed for their biases,” MRC President Brent Bozell said in a statement.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

truth in media, fact checking, fact checkers, fake news, media research center, snopes politifact, objectivity, bias, misinformation, news, media

How Liars in US ‘News’-Media Build on Prior Lies in US ‘News’

March 6, 2018

How Liars in US ‘News’-Media Build on Prior Lies in US ‘News’

How Liars in US ‘News’-Media Build on Prior Lies in US ‘News’

The means by which the vast majority of Americans are deceived to believe fake ‘news’ that’s based on fake ‘history’, will be described here, so as to enable America to be understood correctly, as a fake ‘democracy’, the perpetual-war-for-perpetual-peace nation that the entire world considers to be by far the most dangerous nation, the biggest threat to world peace, anywhere on this planet. The system of mass-deceit in America, will be the subject, and examples will be cited here as embodiments displaying this system of mass-deceit — the mass-deceit that enables the U.S. Government to be the world’s most aggressive, most destructive, not only in Iraq, and in Yemen, but shamelessly, and repeatedly, destroying worldwide, with no respect for international laws that this Government blatantly violates, and is never held accountable for having violated. How is this mass-deceit, and total impunity, to be understood correctly, truthfully? That’s the question addressed here.

TIME magazine’s cover-story, “VOICES FROM THE RUBBLE: Syrians on living in the line of fire”, issue-date 12 March 2018, was co-authored by Wendy Pearlman, who recently published a book of narratives from many Syrian-war victims who blame Bashar al-Assad (whom the U.S. Government wants to overthrow) for the miseries they’ve suffered since the “Arab Spring” started in 2011. Her co-authored article in TIME reads like a brief version of her sole-authored book. To read either the book or the article is to receive the impression that Assad must be a monster, and that he certainly is an extremely unpopular person in Syria. However, both impressions are demonstrably false.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

United States as energy exporter: Is it “fake news”?

March 4, 2018

United States as energy exporter: Is it “fake news”?

Much of the media coverage of the American energy industry implies that America has become a vast and growing exporter of energy to the rest of the world and that this has created a sort of “energy dominance” for the country on the world stage.

Whether such reports qualify as so-called “fake news” depends very much on three things: 1) How one defines “fake news,” 2) whether writers of such reports qualify the words “imports” and “exports” with the word “net” and 3) which energy sources they are discussing.

In this case let’s define “fake news” as claims that official, publicly available statistics show plainly to be false. By that criterion anyone who claims that the United States is a net energy exporter would certainly be guilty of propagating “fake news.”

Energy statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that in November 2017 (the most recent month for which figures are available) the United States had net imports 329.5 trillion BTUs of energy in all its forms.* That’s down from a peak of 2.74 quadrillion BTUs in August 2006, something that is certainly a turnabout from the previous trend. But all claims that the United States is a net energy exporter must be labeled as unequivocally false.

It turns out, however, that most people making misleading claims about America’s energy situation don’t actually say or write things which are technically false. What they do is use language which intentionally or unintentionally misleads the reader or listener.

For example, the claim that the United States is an exporter of crude oil is true. But that claim is entirely misleading. While the United States exports about 1.5 million barrels a day (mbpd) of crude oil, it also imports 7.5 mbpd.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Washington has Engaged in Information Warfare, Including Fake News and Trolling, for Years

February 27, 2018

Washington has Engaged in Information Warfare, Including Fake News and Trolling, for Years

The howling in government and the corporate media and among many liberals about an alleged Russian information war, with bots, trolls and fake news being placed in social media to mislead and incite Americans against each other, might lead one think, like Sen John McCain, that we are practically at war with Russia. Yet it’s all actually pretty silly. After all, our own government has been playing this game for decades, both abroad, and also right here inside the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” and against us American citizens.

I know. I was a victim of such an attack, though initially, I didn’t realize what was happening.

Back on August 25, 2005, I published a piece in In These Times titled Radioactive Wounds of War about the devastating damage caused by the US military’s use of depleted uranium weapons in its brutal assault leveling Fallujah, the Iraqi city of 300,000 people that was destroyed by US marines in 2004 as retribution for the killing of four US contractors by the Iraqi insurgents who at the time controlled the city, and for their humiliating defeat of a smaller Marine assault on the city earlier in the year.

At the time I was and had been a contributing editor at ITT, a publication for which I had written regularly since it was founded back in 1978, and was listed on its masthead as such.

As I recount in an article published in Counterpunch on November 19, 2005, titled R.I.P In These Times, the left-liberal news magazine had been promptly bombarded with letters criticizing my article after it came out.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How WaPo, BuzzFeed, And Soros-Backed Group Pushed The Phrase “Fake News” Until It Backfired

February 16, 2018

How WaPo, BuzzFeed, And Soros-Backed Group Pushed The Phrase “Fake News” Until It Backfired

In the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s tragic school shooting in Parkland, Florida, several major news outlets published a report that the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was a member of a white supremacist organization. In fact, the MSM was hoodwinked by 4chan users into publishing fake news.

In fact, the stories are still up despite the Broward County Sherriff’s department declaring that there are “no known ties” between the shooter and the hate group.

Jordan said Thursday that his office has arrested militia leader Jordan Jereb at least four times since January 2014 and has been monitoring the group’s membership.

He says his office has “very solid” information on the group and “there’s no known ties that we have that we can connect” 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz with the group. –TampaBay.com

And while the MSM’s enormous mistake was simply a case of terrible journalism, those very outlets participated in a seemingly coordinated effort to brand any media with a divergent opinion as “fake news,” with a little help from their friends.

In a recent Tedx talk at the University of Nevada, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson revealed some of the earliest efforts to seed the phrase “fake news” into the public lexicon by a little nonprofit group funded in part by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and Google.

The group, “First Draft,” announced a partnership on September 13, 2016 “to tackle malicious hoaxes and fake news reports,” said Attkisson. “The goal was supposedly to separate wheat from chaff, to prevent unproven conspiracy talk from figuring prominently in internet searches. To relegate today’s version of the alien baby story to a special internet oblivion.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Garbage In, Garbage Out: Tech Journalism, Fake News and the Russia Threat Narrative

February 13, 2018

Garbage In, Garbage Out: Tech Journalism, Fake News and the Russia Threat Narrative

“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question … Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.”
George Orwell, 1945, ‘The Freedom of the Press’ 

When leading media platforms in new technology and innovation, that proclaim to be the cutting-edge in tech and digital culture commentary, earnestly promote establishment narratives in deference to the US intelligence community, embrace a pattern of dumbing down which is increasingly conspicuous, and now, given the ominous proliferation of technological trajectories which all of us will be required to adapt to while approaching the third decade of the twenty-first century: does a hyper-liberal bias pose as much of a problem in tech journalism as it does in the larger sphere of corporate mainstream press?

And when it is verging on the kind of mainstream media malpractice seen in recent months, when major outlets would rush to judgment over anti-Russian stories, why might this become a more harmful problem in tech reporting than you might think?

At a time when mainstream media has become an extension of the military-industrial complex, when those who espouse freedom, civil liberties, and human rights have given in to mass surveillance, censorship, and perpetual war — by hyper-liberal tech journalism I refer to the abundance of popular media publications online (and in print) that collectively share a focus on a less-formal alternative to traditional journals in how they cover emerging technologies, innovation, multimedia, and science.

My focus will be on a number of the popular (large audience) platforms such as Wired, The Verge, Motherboard, Ars Technica, and MIT Technology Review.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dutch Official Admits Lying About Meeting With Putin: Is Fake News Used by Russia or About Russia?

February 12, 2018

Dutch Official Admits Lying About Meeting With Putin: Is Fake News Used by Russia or About Russia?

EVERY EMPIRE NEEDS a scary external threat, led by a singular menacing villain, to justify its massive military expenditures, consolidation of authoritarian powers, and endless wars. For the five decades after the end of World War II, Moscow played this role perfectly. But the fall of Soviet Union meant, at least for a while, that the Kremlin could no longer sustain sufficient fear levels. After some brief, largely unsuccessful auditions for possible replacements — Asian actors like China and a splurging Japanwere considered — the post-9/11 era elevated a cast of Muslim understudies to the starring role: Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, ISIS and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and “jihadism” generally kept fear alive.

The lack of any 9/11-type catastrophic attack on U.S. (or any Western) soil for the past 17 years, along with the killing of a pitifully aged, ailing bin Laden and the erosion of ISIS, has severely compromised their ongoing viability as major bad guys. So now — just as a film studio revitalizes a once-successful super-villain franchise for a new generation of moviegoers — we’re back to the Russians occupying center stage.

That Barack Obama spent eight years (including up through his final year-end news conference) mocking the notion that Russia posed a serious threat to the U.S. given their size and capabilities, and that he even tried repeatedly to accommodate and partner with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is of no concern: In the internet age, “2016” is regarded as ancient history, drowned out by an endless array of new threats pinned by a united media on the Russkie Plague.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Are European Governments So Terrified of ‘Fake News’?

February 12, 2018

Why Are European Governments So Terrified of ‘Fake News’?

  • When Swedish authorities representing a Swedish left-wing government and media announce a project to prevent “fake news” from “decisively influencing” the 2018 elections, this ought to set off loud alarm bells among Swedes. Who determines what constitutes “fake news” anyway? Is it not the very essence of “fake news” when a media outlet refuses to report mass sexual assaults, because the perpetrators happen to be foreigners from third world countries?
  • A British Cabinet Office spokesperson told Sky News: “The Government is committed to tackling false information and the Government Communications Service plays a crucial role in this”. Perhaps their “rapid response fake news unit” should begin with Theresa May herself, who falsely and against all factual evidence continues to claim that Islam is a religion of peace and that ISIS is not Islamic.
  • Meanwhile, European citizens continue to face costly legal prosecution for refusing to accept the fake news about Islam propagated by people such as Theresa May.
  • “I also thought that Islam was just a normal religion, but then I read the Koran and became shocked by the hatred that exists there, the misogyny… The more Islam takes over, the more we compromise. Islam is a totalitarian ideology, which means dictatorship. So, I believe that our democratic system is in danger… I hate no people. What I hate is ideology, Islam. One can criticize fascism or Nazism, but why not Islam? Why should Islam have any protection status?” — Denny, on trial in Sweden for “incitement to hatred” for calling Islam “a fascist ideology” on Facebook. If found guilty, he faces up to two years in prison.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fake News by Omission: the Haiti Example

February 10, 2018

Fake News by Omission: the Haiti Example

“I’m happy to have a president that will bluntly speak the truth in negotiations,” Eric Prince commented on Breitbart News. “If the president says some places are shitholes, he’s accurate.”  Thus did Mr. Eric Prince pay homage to Mr. Donald Trump. Prince of course being the renowned founder of Blackwater, the private army which in September 2007 opened fire in a crowded square in Baghdad, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and seriously wounding 20 more.

Speaking of Haiti and other “shitholes”, Prince declared: “It’s a sad characterization of many of these places. It’s not based on race. It has nothing to do with race. It has to do with corrupt incompetent governments that abuse their citizens, and that results in completely absent infrastructure to include open sewers, and unclean water, and crime. It’s everything we don’t want in America.”

Like the US media, Prince failed to point out that on two occasions in the recent past when Haiti had a decent government, led by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which was motivated to improve conditions, the United States was instrumental in nullifying its effect. This was in addition to fully supporting the Duvalier dictatorship for nearly 30 years prior to Aristide.

Aristide, a reformist priest, was elected to the presidency in 1991 but was ousted eight months later in a military coup. The 1993 Clinton White House thus found itself in the awkward position of having to pretend – because of all their rhetoric about “democracy” – that they supported the democratically-elected Aristide’s return to power from his exile in he US. After delaying his return for more than two years, Washington finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only after obliging the priest to guarantee that he would not help the poor at the expense of the rich – literally! – and that he would stick closely to free-market economics.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Post navigation

← Older posts Newer posts →

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress