The Washington Post has been under fire for its publication of an article entitling “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.” The article by Craig Timberg relied on a controversial website called PropOrNot, which published what is little more than a black list of website that the authors deemed purveyors of fake news including some of the largest sites on the Internet like Drudge Report. However, the previously unknown group was itself criticized for listing “allies” that proved false. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton ramped up the call for action against “fake news” which she described as an epidemic. Now the Washington Post has published a rather cryptic correction to the fake news story. The controversy is the subject of my latest column in USA Today.
The organization listed a variety of news sites as illegitimate. It included some of the most popular political sites from the left and right Truthout, Zero Hedge, Antiwar.com, and the Ron Paul Institute. It even includes one of the most read sites on the Internet, the Drudge Report. Notably, it also included WikiLeaks, which has been credited with exposing political corruption and unlawful surveillance programs.
The Washington Post is the largest newspaper to buy the clearly biased list as the work of objective “experts” — ignoring that the site relies on anonymity of those contributors. When the Post ran the story, some were eager to push the story as a reason why they lost the election. The former White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer tweeted, “Why isn’t this the biggest story in the world right now?” The reason is that it was facially absurd.
The Post has now added the following “correction”:
Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.
One of the spins offered by the Clinton camp was that the election loss was not (1) the establishment engineering the primary win for Clinton; (2) the selection of the ultimate establishment figure when all polls showed people wanted an outsider; (3) the record low polls of Clinton for popularity and honesty; or (4) the continual missteps of Clinton or her staff in just being honest in dealing with various scandals. Instead it was the “fake news” problem. When this has been raised during speech appearances in the last few weeks, I have repeatedly asked people to point to the fake news that influenced the election. They often cite the FBI investigation but that is not fake news. It was real news. They also cite Wikileaks. However, while Clinton and DNA head Donna Brazile suggested that emails were tampered with, they produced no proof of any such false emails on Wikileaks.
When the New Yorker pressed the anonymous spokesman (a curious position) for ProporNot, he struggled to explain why conservative sites like Drudge were put on the list.
Yet, when pressed on the technical patterns that led PropOrNot to label the Drudge Report a Russian propaganda outlet, he could point only to a general perception of bias in its content. “They act as a repeater to a significant extent, in that they refer audiences to sort of Russian stuff,” he said. “There’s no a-priori reason, stepping back, that a conservative news site would rely on so many Russian news sources. What is up with that?”
Now there is hard journalistic work. The Post insists that it had other sources, but what would prompt the reliance on this anonymous band of obvious amateurs?
I have been highly critical of sites like The National Report, a group of truly juvenile idiots who get a thrill by just placing false news stories. Those sites are the Internet version of graffiti and should be addressed by servers. I have also encouraged lawsuits for defamation and false light when available. However, there are thankfully few adults who actually get a kick out of tricking people into posting false stories. They are the same type of people who love to watch fire departments rush to false alarms. It gives some weird sense of worth to degrade others by tricking them.
The current controversy is different. Many people in Washington are irate over Wikileaks — not because the email were untrue but because they proved what many had long suspected . . . that Washington is a highly corrupt place full of truly despicable people. For people who make their living on controlling media and information, it was akin to the barbarians breaching the walls of Rome. So the answer is to call for government regulation to combat what will be declared “fake” news or propaganda. It is only the latest effort to convince people to surrender their rights and actually embrace censorship.
This was one of my favorite articles by Professor Turley all year. I wanted to applaud.
Once again, the hard Left relies upon ascribing evil tendencies to the right – in this case it’s that Wikileaks is fake news for the mere reason that it embarrassed Hillary Clinton, not that it was fake or erroneous. And they are now claiming that conservative media sites are Russian propaganda machines because they simply cannot, or will not, address the issues raised. They just cannot resist demonizing the messenger. And they are showing a very troubling trend in promoting censorship of opposing views.
As for truly fabricated stories, do people actually believe that fake news is a recent occurrence? “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” “I am not a crook!” “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep it. The Affordable Care Act will save average American families $2500 a year.” It was a video that instigated the attacks on our American Embassy in Benghazi. I did not deny over 600 requests for additional security. “You mean, did I wipe it with a cloth?” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” “Hands up, don’t shoot!” Michale Brown had his back turned. They gave Freddie Gray a rough ride on the way to the precinct.
All of the above were completely fabricated stories, and, yes, they did create international effects. It’s not new. You can’t stop it besides sue for slander or libel or have an investigation and try to get the truth out. And trying to criminalize “fake news” will either put most of Congress and other politicians behind bars, or it will inevitably be weaponized by the Left to try to go after embarrassing information discussed on conservative media.
There has been no evidence that the Russians put Trump into the White House. Julian Assange has assured us that his source is not “The Russians.” He has never been proven to have released false information. Notably, Brazile and Hillary Clinton have not produced any evidence that Wikileaks data dumps have been false or altered in any way.
And if we do get information that “ze Russians” were behind hacking damaging emails from Podesta et al, I ask you this. If you found out your husband cheated on you because someone hacked his phone and put it online, would you forgive him because if not for the hacker, you never would have known? Pretend you don’t know the information? Not change your opinion of him because it’s unfair that a hacker exposed his lying, cheating ways? Or are you righteously mad as hell at him because of what you found out?
Many of us have tried to explain how Obama’s policies have harmed us. We have explained our sincere concerns with both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The hard Left has refused to listen to us. They are trying to intimidate us as voters, censor us, cheat by frightening the electoral college for their very lives and the lives of their loved ones, and viciously attack us. We have been lumped together as deplorable Nazis, and that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever not to vote for Hillary Clinton besides the Russians, misogyny, fake news, anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, or any other “ism” or “phobia” or “ist” I’ve failed to mention here. You name it, if you run against or disagree with a Democrat, you’ll be called it.
We are watching the rise of the Fascist Left. We already have rebels bolting from the Hard Left like we had Conservatives stand up against book burning. It just becomes too ugly and vicious to stand. I used to have a lot in common with the Left on many issues, but until they clean up their act and stop this tiresome ad hominem, (as well as trying to murder the middle class with making health care unaffordable and putting cancer therapy beyond many people under the lovely auspices of helping the poor) they’ve lost me.
I watched a very moving admission of contrition by a Democratic Strategist on Megyn Kelly. Her name escapes me. But she said that she had been one of those people arguing about how wonderful Obamacare was, dismissing concerns, claiming that her side wanted to help the poor the most. But she said she didn’t have premiums and deductibles become so high that after they came out of her paycheck she couldn’t put food on the table. But the reality is that’s exactly what happened to the unsubsidized middle class under Obamacare. And she was one of the coastal elites who blew them off and didn’t care about them. She said she was part of the problem that drove them away from the Democrats, and she was very sorry. I was very moved by her frankness, and by her taking responsibility. Clearly, the Democratic Party is moving in a very different direction than her. I hope her conscience remains keenly aware of the damage her party has done, and that she, too, moves away or clamors for change.
Those sites are the Internet version of graffiti and should be addressed by servers.
Addressed by servers??? Er, how would that work?
From Glenn Greenwald:
“THE PHRASE “FAKE NEWS” has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as “terrorism” and “hate speech”; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.
One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets – a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry Fake News, despite the Post article itself being centrally based on Fake News. (The Post this week finally added a lame editor’s note acknowledging these critiques; the Post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to “vouch for the validity” of the blacklist even though the article’s key claims were based on doing exactly that)….
Now we have an even more compelling example. Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming – with no basis whatsoever – that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored. That lie – and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth – was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic’s David Frum, and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald…”
find at Glenn Greenwald’s twitter
Darren,
I’ve tried to get a post in and there’s no way it will go through. If you have time will you please check for it?
Thanks,
Jill
Jonathan, I take three issues with your analogy of fake news with graffiti.
One: Graffiti almost never has any relation to false information being communicated, ,making it very importantly different than fake news’ harm.
Two: Graffiti’s problem is about being a message where none is allowed; that’s not the issue with fake news, which is on the internet where messages are allowed. It’s about the content – different issue.
Three: By labeling false stories ‘graffiti’ and calling for them to be treated as such, it’s dangerous to free speech.
The idea of free speech is that messages are supposed to allowed, and compete with each other. Once you set the precedent of bypassing the rational competition between the messages and established the paradigm of a simply ‘bad’ category like graffiti to remove without any consideration of its message, you have paved the way for the anti-American, authoritarian suppression of free speech by declaration.
All throughout the primary season Bernie Bros were posting stories from fake newspapers. I saw it every day on my Facebook stream. Typically the papers had a fake headline and blurb regarding Hillary. But if one bothered opening the paper, and checking its content, there was little if anything there aside from the fake story.
Then, throughout the fall election season, the Trumpers on my Facebook stream were posting fake stories every day. In most instances they seemed to know the stories were fake. Yet the Trumpers continued posting fake news as though it was just normal campaign tactic.
And now Professor Turley tells us none of this ever happened..??
With regards to Wikileaks, only the biggest of fools presume that Julian Assange has American interests at heart. Assange is ‘not’ an American! And Assange has made it clear that he considers the U.S. an ‘evil empire’. So that fact that Wikileaks singled-out Hillary suggest thats Assange (and Russia) believe that Trump will destabilize America. That is, of course, their goal.
Good of you to recall what ‘Bernie bros’ were doing.
I remember the national scandal for an extended period when one man held up then put down a chair.
That simple act – which included the other Bernie supporters calming the man and getting the chair on the ground – was represented shamelessly by the media and other Hillary supporters as major rioting.
Some claimed Bernie directly or implicitly supported rioting, or at least condoned it by inaction.
And many, many other such examples of ‘fake news’ attacking Bernie’s campaign.
Maybe you need to look elsewhere besides Facebook. That doesn’t lend any credibility to your argument. Maybe YouTube, after all, John Kerry was ready to invade Syria over a YouTube video.
My post has nothing to do with facebook. It was a phony attack that got huge coverage in the newspapers and on tv.
Craig – Jimmy Dore did a great segment on the NV “chair throwing incident” that the MSM kept running. Unless I’m mistaken only NPR issued a retraction.
Thanks.
The “fake news” meme may be the beginning of a broader push to require “licensing” of journalists. This would be in an attempt to shut down unregulated blogging, podcasting, etc.
If they can convince the public that “fake news” is an existential threat to the planet, right up there with climate change, they might be able to push this through.
Republicans specialize in creating the problems and then offering their phony solutions. Watch for attacks on the filibuster, justified by the abuse of the filibuster… by Republicans.
Did you know government is harmful and corrupt, so you should elect Republicans?
Just look at government under Republicans, and you will see clear proof!
Now here are some enterprising software developers; from CBSNews
“The latest attempt to curb fake news comes in the form of a plug-in called the “B.S. Detector.” The plug-in, which works on Chrome and Mozilla browsers, flags content from fake news sources using a constantly-updated list of known fake news sites, propaganda mills and “promoters of kooky conspiracy theories” as a reference point. The tool labels fake news links with a red banner that reads, “This website is considered a questionable source.”
The question becomes, how much longer will this – or something like it – be an optional plug-in, vs. an integral part of all browsers by act of Congress?
We will see soon enough if Trump finds this idea too attractive not to use for his own purposes, or on the opposite end of the spectrum if he goes actively after these speech control travesties that are now the rage in the Democrat party. This stuff is straight out of the McCarthy era; plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Oh yes, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-fake-news-developers-work-on-fix/
The establishment is positively scared stiff. The mask is really coming off.
The mask is being put on, by the real propagandists in this country, the plutocratic right-wing.
Just saw this news alert from NYT. Seriously? The White House is wanting to make it “official” to blame Russia for Hillary’s defeat? WikiLeaks has already said it was not Russia. There are reports out there in the so-called ‘fake news’ suggesting that it was indeed our own US intelligence agencies that leaked the information to WikiLeaks exposing DNC and Clinton corruption – not the Russians.
————————————————
NEW YORK TIMES BREAKING NEWS
President Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to produce a full report on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election
Friday, December 9, 2016
President Obama has ordered American intelligence agencies to produce a full report on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, his homeland security adviser said on Friday. He also directed them to develop a list of “lessons learned” from the broad campaign the United States has accused Russia of carrying out to steal emails, publish their contents and probe the vote-counting system.
I’ll bet the “lessons learned” report is about paving the way for government ‘censorship’ of the internet. They want to get this done before Mr. O leaves office. Just watch.
Yes, CNN is breathlessly screaming about this as well. USGinc. would possibly like to turn off the electricity to Russia (for example). Of course, the US would need to first prove Russia had hacked our election! CNN actually told their story in that order!!!
Wouldn’t you need to prove Russia had interfered first? Wouldn’t you think before you used this as a pretext for war? Why no, of course not. The US doesn’t need proof of anything to start a war, especially when nukes are involved! And naturally, USGinc. does not solve problems through international, peaceful mechanisms. That’s just not who we are!
This is sickening. We do not need to go to war, let alone go to war over fake news propagated by a war mongering govt. and their lapdog media. We have seen this before, time again, as the USGinc. wreaks havoc in the world, with the help of the MSM. I hope this lying and warmongering won’t keep working any longer for our citizens.
Wikileaks exposed this govt.’s many lies. One concerns the reason for invading Syria. We were told it was for humanitarian reasons, not for regime change. Turns out it was for regime change and we have created a humanitarian disaster there.
We must stop and evaluate these reckless claims by this govt. and the MSM. They have been shown to lie to us and they are lying again. Their lying matters. It results in death.
The govt. and the media need to stop spreading their death dealing lies and citizens should not silently acquiesce to the harm that will come to our people, the Russian people and all others caught in the middle of a war which has no business occurring in the first place.
Have they learned anything? No. But as citizens, we can learn and this needs to stop.
I was wondering since Clinton got benched if Obama would get the order to proceed with upping the hostilities against Russia. Sure looks that way now. Maybe in the next couple of weeks they’ll work to set events on a “scale of no return” option. Russians have made it clear they are not going to stand for missiles on their border, and anyone who thinks they should is just plain stupid. And probably voted for Clinton (Issac). This doesn’t end well.
Here’s a sample paragraph of the report on Russian interference with anything and everything the
powers that be are trying to sellpublic desperately wants.As you can see, a few words have been blocked out for security reasons, but, hey, you can take Obama’s word for it.
Again, do a simple Google search of how many times the USA government servers have been seriously hacked this year, and how many were huge government bureaucracies like the IRS, the NSA, the military, etc.
Once you see the list, how long it is, and how serious are the alleged hacks, two things scream out at you if you’re not a paid Democrat shill or if you’re not a blind Democrat sycophant/idolator:
1. In spite of the hack list number and severity, the only hack that puts a burr up Obama’s and the Government’s back side is the hack that helped take down their horse in the POTUS contest.
2. The hack list is so long and so serious that Congress should consider impeachment hearings against Obama for criminal negligence for his ignoring of internet security, or criminal charges after he leaves office if such is possible.
Joseph Jones – China has 2 large buildings full of hackers working round the clock. It is common knowledge in the tech community and I am sure someone pushed it up the line to Obama.
This is why Trump uses social media to bypass the mainstream media and takes his message directly to the people. Statistics show that less than 20% of the population actually use Twitter. So when Trump tweets something, the press picks it up and makes it a huge story (usually with a negative spin towards Trump), thus Trump’s message now reaches substantially more than a mere 20% of Twitter users. Brilliant.
And so, of course, there is now talk of attempting to ban Trump’s continued use of Twitter and Facebook if ‘they’ determine Trump’s tweets or messages violate user policies.
Another cause of the push to censor “fake news” is the MSM’s fear of competition. With their revenues & public standing already in decline, alt. media has become an existential threat to traditional news outlets. They long for the day when they “controlled the narrative” –that golden age when their role as a govt. transmission belt went largely unrecognized.
“Fake: newz is often whatever exposes the oligarchys’ wrongdoing. The other kind of fake news is newz created by the govt. and disseminated to deceive our citizens.
Since when is a reporter unable to comment on his own story as this reporter claimed? WaPo is further claiming they can’t be held to the standard of fact checking the “experts” they cite in their own story. Of course they should fact check their experts. If the “experts” cannot back up their claim and provide their methodology then the WAPO has no business presenting them as “experts”. In short, this is not journalism. It is propaganda with a dose of threat (as propernot suggests the FBI check into the sites).
Naked Capitalism has begun a legal proceeding against the WAPo. On their site they give information about their complaint and the WaPo’s extraordinary inaccurate response. Wikilleaks gave verification for every e-mail. This verification may be checked and affirmed by any person. It isn’t a matter of he said, she said. They are verified and people have resigned over those very e-mails.
Not to be underestimated is the amount of fake news put out by WAPO and other MSM sites themselves. Pumping up the lies about yellow cake, aluminum tubes and ties to al queda with Saddam has resulted in the death and wounding of at least hundred of thousands of people, the destruction of an entire society and the creating of the refuge crisis we see everyday. Untold death and destruction has come from those actual, known lies, which the MSM deliberately spread.
So rather than censor sites which expose the wrongdoing of the powerful, maybe we could learn the rules of logic. Those rules would apply to any source we encounter, MSM or not!
Thank you for deconstructing this JT! Job well done.
“Since when is a reporter unable to comment on his own story as this reporter claimed?”
When the government is involved?
How long will it take for these people to get it into their heads (and accept) that SHE LOST, HE WON!! Wasn’t anyone’s fault.. it was because the American people were sick of her LIES, her CHEATING, her DISHONESTY, and the CLINTON’S on the whole. Not Comey, not the Russians – just the people are sick of HER!! END OF STORY… now GO AWAY!
That’s the problem with sociopaths like the Clintons, they don’t have a conscience to tell them the right thing to do. So this nonsense will continue.
Great post, Professor Turley, and an important one for the WaPo article and Hillary and the DNC, to name a few, are indicative of something truly sinister going on and how ironic that it’s the Democrats that have their hand in the till. For people to still defend that sorry excuse for a political party is on a par with defending the other one.
“The current controversy is different. Many people in Washington are irate over Wikileaks — not because the email were untrue but because they proved what many had long suspected . . . that Washington is a highly corrupt place full of truly despicable people.”
************************
And many of those lovely folks live in Nothern Virginia which has led many of us native Virginians to conclude they are about as authentic to the Commonwealth as Olive Garden is to authentic Italian cuisine. Can succession be forced? How about a sale to Maryland?
Nah, we got too many of them as it is…
Media-created scandals, like fireworks, fade quickly, and “fake news” won’t last either. The definition of it has expanded so quickly that the media will spend more time arguing about what it means than in trying to get rid of it. Believe me, free press defenders shouldn’t worry. I’m sure that the NYTimes story linking the tragic warehouse fire to greedy landlords in San Francisco would qualify as “fake news” to some of the more hysterical alarmists. But that story wasn’t “fake news” because it wasn’t news at all. It was just the usual partisan manipulation of documented facts to have a “meaning” that promotes a political position. But stories that are genuine lies are rare, are easily discovered and the liars who create them should be exposed. I don’t think that will lead to flat out censorship, however.
“DNA head Donna Brazile . . .” Freudian slip?
Interesting side note. Jake Tapper who blasted Pizzagate as somehow being fake news is married to this woman
https://www.washingtonian.com/2015/02/06/jennifer-tapper/
Favorite date-night restaurant:
Buck’s Fishing and Camping.
Favorite restaurants with the kids:
American City Dinner and Comet Ping Pong
Comet Ping Pong was originally founded by James Alefantis and Carole Greenwood in 2006. It was placed on the same block as another restaurant that they co-owned together, Buck’s Fishing and Camping, so they could easily move back and forth between the locations
Anonymouse – Keep talking about it so this story stays alive and not buried as the press wants it to be.