Washington Post: Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say
The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.
Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.
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Update: Report: Russian propaganda efforts propelled fake election news (The Hill)
WNU Editor: This is rich .... the main stream media claiming that fake news (especially from Russia) has an impact that can surpass and overwhelm what the major TV networks, New York Times/Washington Post, wire services (Reuters, AP, etc.), social media platforms of the candidates and the political parties, Google/Facebook/Twitter, and finally .... even the U.S. government .... can deliver to the American public in the form of news. That the American public are too stupid to know the difference .... and because they are too stupid someone must now step up to decide what web sites should be banned?!?!?! Are you kidding me?!?!?! Especially after this election cycle where the biases and corruption of the main stream media have been revealed. Sighhhh .... I just cannot make this stuff up.
Update: The EU parliament now wants to jump onto this bandwagon .... EU Parliament Urges Fight Against Russia's 'Fake News' (RFE).
3 comments:
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
H.L. Mencken
PizzaGate is still trending with over 17.8 million shares a week in the US, 19x the viewership of the NYT.
Most of the "fake news" sites during the election were run by teens in Macedonia and Romania, who make up to or more than $30,000 a year running those sites.
Now that Trump has won, many are going back to their "bread and butter", fake medical sites.
"At a Morgan Stanley investors’ conference in San Francisco today, the chief executive officer of CBS, Les Moonves, found the silver lining of this year’s tumultuous election season as only a businessperson can. The latest chairman of the company said, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” and called Donald Trump‘s presence in the race a “good thing.”
http://www.mediaite.com/online/cbs-ceo-on-trump-campaign-it-may-not-be-good-for-america-but-its-damn-good-for-cbs/
People forget, all US News is a "for profit" model. That's why Corporations regularly "greywash" Op-Ed's and News Stories and 99% of US news is mere clickbait,
"After the commercial, we will reveal the 17 foods in your fridge that may be killing your family!!!!!!!!!!!!!".
Propaganda, Omitted and biased reporting by the MSM is the major problem, if the mainstream media produced content that was real and honest without bias the people would have no need to seek alternative sources. The situation we have now is the MSM media is controlled in the US by 6 Corporations they all seem to be pumping out the same basic narrative, the way the media treated Obama and Clinton with kid gloves and now are treating Trump with a hammer. The attack on fake news is not so much an attack on fake news but on anyone that puts forth an alternative to the mainstream narrative. Internet is the new reformation it opens up for regular people to news and ideas, verses the constant stream of propaganda we have been bombarded with over the last hundred years. When you have people like Rupert Murdoch controlling hundreds of media outlets in multiable countries, you get his truth and not much else. The fake news narrative is nothing but a witch hunt, perpetrated by people and organizations that are losing control and are having a harder time hiding their corruption and agenda. There is fake news out there but much of it comes from the MSM a real problem, but after this election the credibility of the MSM is in the dumper and it looks good on them.
I don't know how much the viewers of this blog use Facebook or other forms of social media, but I have seen an inundation over the last year of completely bogus - not slanted, but deliberately fabricated - "news" stories. These fictions were routinely re-posted and went viral, believed by tens of thousands of people as having actually taken place. The BIAS in media is worthy of discussion, but we cannot look the other way when these "alternative" media sites blatantly lie and intentionally rile people with fabricated information. We all know that "The Weekly World News" and "The Onion" are entertainment, but other "Media" sources are not so easy to vet...
WNE, sadly yes, apparently a lot of Americans are too stupid (or too lazy) to know the difference or take the time to vet their information. And there is a difference between slanted information and outright-false information. Still, banning any information, false or not, is a mistake.
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