{"id":33896,"date":"2018-05-01T07:02:47","date_gmt":"2018-05-01T12:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33896"},"modified":"2018-05-01T07:02:47","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T12:02:47","slug":"where-it-all-began-the-dawn-of-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33896","title":{"rendered":"Where It All Began: The Dawn of \u201cFake News\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/05\/01\/where-it-all-began-the-dawn-of-fake-news\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Where It All Began: The Dawn of \u201cFake News\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"socialtwo\">\n<div class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 a2a_default_style left-social\" data-a2a-icon-color=\"unset\">It has long been suggested that the first full-blown example of \u201cfake news\u201d\u2014where patently false information is intentionally presented in a phony but utterly believable \u201cnews media\u201d format in order to sway public opinion\u2014occurred during the watershed 1934 California gubernatorial election.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>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\u2019s West Coast performing flea. As Lieutenant Governor he was jettisoned into the incumbency when Governor James \u201cSunny Jim\u201d Rolph died of a heart attack in June of 1934, just months before the election.<\/p>\n<p>His chief opponent, Upton Sinclair, a prairie socialist and muckraker, was the celebrated author of \u201cThe Jungle,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s factories.<\/p>\n<p>Given the overall popularity of FDR\u2019s New Deal, and the fact that the American Left was still feeding off table scraps of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the notion of \u201celiminating poverty\u201d was properly considered not only necessary but feasible.<\/p>\n<p>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 &amp; Baker.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Where It All Began: The Dawn of \u201cFake News\u201d It has long been suggested that the first full-blown example of \u201cfake news\u201d\u2014where patently false information is intentionally presented in a phony but utterly believable \u201cnews media\u201d format in order to sway public opinion\u2014occurred during the watershed 1934 California gubernatorial election. The two principals were Republican [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101,5493,20005,2779,20007,383,20008,20009,2799,20006,20010],"class_list":["post-33896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-california","tag-counterpunch","tag-david-macaray","tag-fake-news","tag-frank-merriman","tag-great-depression","tag-louis-b-mayer","tag-metro-goldwyn-mayer","tag-socialism","tag-upton-sinclair","tag-whitaker-baker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33897,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33896\/revisions\/33897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}