{"id":43057,"date":"2019-01-21T19:55:23","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T00:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43057"},"modified":"2019-01-21T19:55:27","modified_gmt":"2019-01-22T00:55:27","slug":"buzzfeed-question-time-and-the-purpose-of-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43057","title":{"rendered":"Buzzfeed, Question Time and the Purpose of Fake News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Buzzfeed, Question Time and the Purpose of Fake News <\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Careful \u201cleaks\u201d, planted stories and social media witch-hunts remind Trump how precarious his position is, whilst simultaneously distracting the public \u2013 both pro-Trump and anti-Trump \u2013 from real issues.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

L<\/strong>ast week BuzzFeed published a front page story, under a \u201cBREAKING\u201d banner, headlined: President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the article, Buzzfeed reporters Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier claim to have been told, by two anonymous sources, that Robert Mueller\u2019s \u201cRussiagate\u201d investigation had evidence Donald Trump had instructed his lawyer to lie to Congress. That would be a felony, and obviously an impeachable offence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reaction of the news media and associated twitterati<\/em> was as quick as it was predictable. MSNCBC, CNN, the BBC, The Guardian<\/em>\u2026the usual suspects. They were all over it within hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then, less than a day later, Robert Mueller\u2019s spokesperson Peter Carr issued this statement<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BuzzFeed\u2019s description of specific statements to the special counsel\u2019s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen\u2019s congressional testimony are not accurate,\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Despite this, BuzzFeed is sticking to its guns. Insisting that Mueller\u2019s statement is vague, and therefore does not undercut the heart of their story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the mainstream media are sensing the tone though and jumping ship. The Washington Post <\/em>\u2013 not known for their pro-Trump slant \u2013 ran an editorial pointing out the scarcity of Mueller\u2019s public comment<\/a> (this the first statement Mueller has ever issued concerning evidence or claims in the press), and arguing that the rush to refute the BuzzFeed article means it is probably completely false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buzzfeed, Question Time and the Purpose of Fake News  Careful \u201cleaks\u201d, planted stories and social media witch-hunts remind Trump how precarious his position is, whilst simultaneously distracting the public \u2013 both pro-Trump and anti-Trump \u2013 from real issues. Last week BuzzFeed published a front page story, under a \u201cBREAKING\u201d banner, headlined: President Trump Directed His Attorney […]<\/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":[23436,512,23910,655],"class_list":["post-43057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-kit-knightly","tag-media","tag-mint-press-news","tag-propaganda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43057","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=43057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43058,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43057\/revisions\/43058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}