#'at this newspaper we work WITH the police' that's an actual quote a journalist said to a cop in a show i watched

[navree]

one day there's gonna be a crime drama on television, or a movie about an investigation of a crime, and it's gonna be fucking normal about the concept of journalism and reporters, i'm speaking that into existence rn

[thinkveganworld]

This is an article I wrote a while back, “Brave New McWorld.”  It ran widely in various Internet publications.

BRAVE NEW MCWORLD By Carla Binion Rutgers political science professor Benjamin Barber says in "Jihad vs. McWorld" that today's corporate culture spins a shimmering scenario of "corporate forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize people everywhere with fast music, fast computers, and fast food -- with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous theme park: a veritable McWorld tied together by communications, information, entertainment and commerce." In this fast-paced, mesmerized McWorld the public attention flits rapidly from one important news story to the next. Now we see Impeachment; now we don't!  Now we see Seattle; now we're off to something else!  The public has no time to digest and assimilate news events and their lessons. The corporate spin on globalization is eerily cheerful, despite the fact that the gap between rich and poor is widening.  Barber says government leaders are intimidated by today's market ideology.  No one dares question the conventional wisdom about free trade.  The conventional wisdom says that globalization is inevitable, and that our democratic traditions are obsolete. Barber quotes Felix Rohatyn:  "There is a brutal Darwinian logic to these markets.  They are nervous and greedy.  They look for stability...but what they reward is not always our preferred form of democracy."  Capitalism wants to tame democracy, says Barber, and capitalism does not mind tyranny as long as it secures "stability." In the same interview where George W. Bush failed to name the leaders of four different countries, Bush also said he thought the coup in Pakistan was a good thing because it would help bring "stability" to the region.  If Bush recommends tyrant's coups to "bring stability" to other nations, would he also favour tyrannical oppression for "stability's" sake in this country? The message of globalization is that democracies are old-fashioned and that "tyranny to secure stability" is bright and shiny new.  No matter how much confectioner's sugar the globalization flacks sprinkle on the message, this is not good news for the ever-shrinking American middle-class.  It is especially bad news considering the very rich have used violence and deception to control and divide the working class throughout this nation's history. In McWorld, can we still learn from history? Important lessons from history as recent as the Seattle demonstrations have been obliterated by the McNews networks. Network news did not cover the fact that a Seattle physician reported that the rubber bullets police used on peaceful demonstrators tore off part of a person's jaw and smashed the teeth of many nonviolent protesters.  Peaceful demonstrators had tear gas injuries, including damage to eyes and skin.  One Seattle reporter was thrown to the pavement, handcuffed, and thrown into a van, even though the correspondent showed credentials.  Corporate owned news networks did not interview the nonviolent protesters who were injured by "stability" enforcing police. Like terrorist death squads in third world countries, U. S. vigilante police sometimes ignore legal formalities and practice unlawful torture on nonviolent strikers or peaceful protesters.  Folksinger Woodie Guthrie once sang, "Well, what is a vigilante man?  Tell me, what is a vigilante man?....Would he shoot his brother and sister down?"(1) Apparently for Seattle police, the answer was yes. In McWorld, not only is democracy out of date, but labour concerns are also antiquated.  However, for those of us not living entirely in a McWorld-induced trance, it is useful to reflect on the way U. S. corporations and certain government agencies have tried to divide and oppress the working class at previous moments in history.  A close look at corporations' long-term oppression of the middle class indicates where unbridled capitalism will take McWorld's cheerful tyrants in the future. Corporate and government leaders have long used police and National Guardsmen and even federal troops to break strikes and crush progressive movements. The copper miners' strike of 1892 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho was broken when the governor brought in the National Guard, reinforced by federal troops. Union leaders were fired, scabs were reinstated and six hundred miners were imprisoned.  (That is about the same number of people arrested in Seattle. Senator-activist Tom Hayden said that of the 587 arrested in Seattle, virtually all were nonviolent.) For a Carnegie Steel workers' strike in 1892, the governor of Pennsylvania brought in state troops to protect strikebreakers and crush strike leaders, arresting the entire Strike Committee.(2)  If anyone doubts corporate/government leaders would use such force to bring "stability" today, we only have to once again remember Seattle -- if McWorld will stop spinning long enough to allow the memory to resurface intact, that is. In 1885, a labour meeting was held in Chicago's Haymarket Square.  A bomb exploded, wounding sixty-six policemen and killing seven.  Historian Howard Zinn writes, "Some evidence came out that a man named Rudolph Schnaubelt, supposedly an anarchist, was actually an agent of the police, an agent provocateur, hired to throw the bomb and thus enable the arrest of hundreds, causing the destruction of the revolutionary leadership in Chicago.  But to this day it has not been discovered who threw the bomb."(3)  Seattle's violent disruptions might also have been instigated by provocateurs, but even contemplating such a question is taboo in today's McCulture. Lack of evidence in the Haymarket incident did not matter. Police arrested eight "anarchist" leaders.  A jury sentenced them all to death.  George Bernard Shaw and other prominent Americans were outraged because they considered the trials a railroading.  There was a march of 25,000 in Chicago, and 60,000 people signed petitions to Illinois Governor Altgeld, who later pardoned the three prisoners who had not already died.  Will future McWorld leaders even allow a George Bernard Shaw to speak or 25,000 to march without shattering their jaws with rubber bullets? In more recent history, during the 1960s, the FBI used surveillance and agents provocateurs to foster division within protest organizations.(4) Senate hearings in the 1970s (the Church committee hearings) showed that the FBI worked to discredit and destroy certain civil rights and women's liberation groups.  The Senate report showed that FBI informants infiltrated leftwing groups, disrupted their plans, and even encouraged members to kill one another or tried to destroy their personal lives.(5) The Church committee report states that the FBI wiretapped Martin Luther King, Jr., and made a systematic effort to knock him "off his pedestal and to reduce him completely in influence."(6)  The FBI smeared King, lying about him to congressmen and university officials.  Thirty-four days before King was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, he received an anonymous tape in the mail -- a tape that recorded King's extramarital affairs.  The Senate report showed that Assistant FBI director William Sullivan wrote King a letter saying:  "King, there is only one thing left for you to do.  You know what it is.  You have just 34 days in which to do it."(7)  King understood this to mean Sullivan was urging him to commit suicide.  This is what tyrants do in order to "stabilize" the disenfranchised. Corporate/governmental brutality toward nonviolent protesters is nothing new in this country's history.  The mainstream media's neglect is not unusual either. Journalist Michael Parenti reveals how the mainstream press often shows an anti-labour, anti-protester bias.  For example, major newspapers have no "labour" section to go along with their business section.  Strikes and protests are usually covered from the management or corporate viewpoint. One study of ABCs "Nightline" found that over a forty-month period covering 865 programs, guests were overwhelmingly conservative, white, male, government officials, or corporate executives.  "Only 5 percent represented public interest groups.  Less than 2 percent were labour leaders or representatives of ethnic minorities."(8)  The news blackout on Seattle was just more of the same from corporate McNews media. Benjamin Barber says that the old masters were visible tyrants.  Today's masters are invisible and "sing a siren song of markets in which the name of liberty is invoked in every chorus."  The new masters tell us that oppression is liberty, and war is peace, and tyranny is stability.  The "liberty" of McWorld may be good for consumption, says Barber, but it may not be of much use to civic liberty. Robber baron Jay Gould once said in reference to a Knights of Labour Strike, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."  Gould meant that he was willing to stir up conflict among workers and encourage violence in order to oppress average Americans who dared to stand up for their rights.(9)  Gould's mentality might seem outdated, but the *fruits* of his thinking are not substantially different from what occurred in Seattle. Day after day we see cheery, breezy fluff on the McNews channels.  We are fed shimmering portraits of smiling corporate leaders who assure us globalization is good for the country.  Just beneath the glowing skin, gleaming teeth and glib snake oil spin of your friendly McWorld salesman lurks the soul of Jay Gould.  Let us watch and see where trading tyranny for "stability" will take us over the next few years.  Let us not be McMesmerized into forgetfulness. (1)  Bertram Gross, FRIENDLY FASCISM, 1980. (2)  Howard Zinn, A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 1980. (3)  Zinn, A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 1980 (4)  Cathy Perkus, ed., COINTELPRO, The FBI's Secret War on Political     Freedom, 1975. (5)  Kathryn S. Olmstead, CHALLENGING THE SECRET GOVERNMENT, 1996.;   (Olmstead's source is:  U. S. Senate Select Committee, Intelligence    Activities, vol. 6, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 18 November 1975,    26.) (6)  U. S. Senate Select Committee Report., vol. 6, 31. (7)  U. S. Senate Select Committee Report, vol 6, 33 (8)  Study by William Hoynes and David Croteau, prepared for Fairness and     Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), February 1989. (9)  Gross, FRIENDLY FASCISM, 1980.

[stephsmith321]

SMITH v. PALISADES NEWS

Originally published on v. PALISADES NEWS September 30, 2019

STEPHANIE SMITH, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. PALISADES NEWS et al., Defendants and Appellants.

Court of Appeals of California, Second District, Division One.

Filed September 30, 2019.

Attorney(s) appearing for the Case

Jassy Vick Carolan, Jean-Paul Jassy and Elizabeth H. Baldridge for Defendants and Appellants.

Katie Townsend ; Davis Wright Tremaine, Kelli Sager , Rochelle Wilcox , and Nicolette Vairo for Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 21 Media Organizations as Amici Curiae for Defendants and Appellants.

Law Offices of Ben Eilenberg and Ben Eilenberg for Plaintiff and Respondent.

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

WEINGART, J.*

I. INTRODUCTION

Plaintiff Stephanie Smith is a mother of five young children, and lives in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. She also owns warehouses in the Inland Empire used for large scale marijuana farming, and before her cannabis real estate ventures was found guilty of performing liposuction without a license. After her warehouses and personal residence were raided by law enforcement, the mash-up of motherhood, prior criminal history, and large-scale cannabis production proved to be journalistic catnip. Numerous press articles appeared—locally, nationally, and overseas—talking about the police raids and describing Smith as a suburban mom and alleged drug “queenpin” who made millions in connection with a huge marijuana growing operation.

In response to the police activity and resulting press coverage, Smith issued several public statements. She also gave a press interview. She described herself as a well-known and recognized leader in large-scale cannabis real estate development. She denied any wrongdoing by her or her tenants. She argued that authorities were out of touch with modern thought about cannabis and needed to change their approach to stop thwarting the public’s embrace of legalization. She also embraced the term “queenpin” as complimenting her cannabis industry leadership.

After the initial flurry of press coverage and Smith’s public statements, defendant Palisades News (a small community newspaper in Smith’s residential neighborhood) published an article about Smith that largely referenced prior coverage from other, much larger, news organizations. Smith responded by suing Palisades News for defamation. Palisades News filed a special motion to strike under the anti-SLAPP statute.1 There being no dispute the Palisades News article involved protected activity, the trial court focused on whether Smith had shown the required probability of prevailing on her defamation claim. The court, believing Smith was not required to show Palisades News acted with actual malice, found she had demonstrated a prima facie case and declined to strike the claim. For the reasons explained below, we reverse.

II. BACKGROUND A. The Parties

Defendant Palisades News is published both in print and electronically. Defendant Sue Pascoe is the newspaper’s editor, and writes articles for the publication including the one about Smith at issue in this matter. Defendant Matt Sanderson also works for the newspaper, and was tangentially involved in publishing the article about Smith.

Plaintiff Smith holds herself out as a commercial real estate developer and landlord. While she does not operate a cannabis distribution business herself, she leases buildings to commercial cannabis operators. Smith has publicly commented that renting to cannabis businesses is more lucrative than renting to other tenants, with demand so high that in one instance she received triple the rent she initially asked. She previously worked as an office manager for a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. Following patient complaints of botched operations, she was found guilty of a misdemeanor for assisting in liposuction procedures without a medical license. In 2013, she was sentenced to 3 years of probation.

B. The Law Enforcement Raid of Smith’s Properties and Subsequent News Coverage

On December 13, 2017, police raided three warehouse buildings belonging to Smith, as well as Smith’s home in Pacific Palisades. That same day, local television channel KTLA reported that police were stating the warehouses contained very large and sophisticated marijuana growing operations with tens of thousands of plants. KTLA also reported police said Smith paid for the buildings in cash, and that she had not obtained the required permits for a marijuana business. KTLA reported police were saying a search warrant was served at Smith’s home, that she was detained pending further investigation, and that police expected to arrest her.

Also on December 13, 2017, the local CBS News affiliate ran an article on its website under the headline “Mom, 43, Made Millions Per Month on Pot-Growing Operations, Police Say.” The article said “San Bernardino police busted a major marijuana grow operation” and that “officials say the drug kingpin behind the grow was actually a drug queen—and a mother from a ritzy Pacific Palisades neighborhood.” The article reported the operation had more than 24,000 plants, and that while this type of “huge operation is normally associated with a druglord, . . . this stash belonged to 43-year-old mom Stephanie Smith of Pacific Palisades, police said. Smith was making millions of dollars per month running the operation, sources said.”

The Associated Press reported on the raids on December 13 and 14, 2017. The December 13th article stated that tens of thousands of marijuana plants were seized from several locations in San Bernardino, including a building near police headquarters. The article further reported that Smith owned the buildings where the raids occurred, and that she was arrested on suspicion of illegally cultivating marijuana. The December 14th article said police “raided a weed `fortress’ on Wednesday, seizing 35,000 marijuana plants and shutting down an operation they believe was bringing in millions of dollars a month.” The article said that Smith owned the searched properties, but “she was not arrested or charged with a crime.”

On December 18, 2017, the Daily Mail (a United Kingdom newspaper) reported on the raids under the headline “EXCLUSIVE: California drug `Queenpin’ is spotted shopping for designer bikinis days after police seized 18,000lbs of marijuana from her multi-million dollar weed fortress which she says is a `proper business.’ “Smith gave an interview to DailyMailTV, saying she was going to get a license in San Bernardino once they were available. Smith asserted she ran a proper business, and therefore was not concerned about possible criminal charges or jail time. The Daily Mail also referenced Smith’s conduct and conviction in the liposuction matter. The San Bernardino Sun, The Washington Times, Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, Seattle Times, Daily Caller, and FoxNews.com also ran articles about the police raids, which repeated many of the statements above.

On December 20, 2017, Smith released an official statement. The statement, from which some later articles quoted, said Smith was “disappointed to explain that these military style raids are the way City leaders handle zoning issues,” and “[s]torming into my home and pointing assault weapons at me . . . because a building I own doesn’t have the proper zoning permits is not acceptable. . . . Attempting to smear me as an illicit drug lord is laughable for countless reasons, the least among them is that medical marijuana is legal and the voters in California have asked for over a decade that our representatives create laws that work for safe access—not work against it. . . . The raids on our local cannabis businesses, who want to be regulated and taxed and have asked repeatedly for local government to simply follow the laws approved by the citizens, is clearly out of step with the will of the voters and a sensationalized military response to a respected, peaceful female entrepreneur is an abuse of power. [¶] The age of prohibition has ended and I welcome a more sensible approach to cannabis regulation. Professionals in the cannabis industry, including landlords, growers, producers and processors, can only hope that the powers that be do not continue to react in such an expensive, heavily armed, and contradictory manner that directly thwarts the will of the majority of our citizens.” Smith also posted photos of the raid online, accompanied by a statement that “[r]aiding a woman and toddlers with SWAT in full gear and guns is absurd.” Various press outlets printed portions of this additional statement.

Smith made a further public statement on December 22, 2017 via Facebook where she embraced the description of her as a “queenpin”—”The government attempted to smear me as a #QueenPin. They thought associating me with cannabis would embarrass me. They were wrong. Being a leader in cannabis is no different than being a leader in any other legitimate industry. I accept the complement [sic]. I am a Queenpin indeed. . . .” Smith went on to give her own description of a “queenpin” as a “non-stop doer,” “advocate to many, and community leader,” and a “[s]trong, accomplished, determined fighter. . . .” She closed by asking if there are “[a]ny other Queen Pin’s out there?” with the hashtags #QueenPin, #MyRights, #Notavictim, #Survivor, and #SHARE.

C. The Palisades News Article

On January 2, 2018, the Palisades News published an article about Smith entitled “Palisadian Stephanie Smith Gains Marijuana Notoriety.” The article began by saying Smith “was busted on December 13 for operating an allegedly illegal marijuana-growing operation in San Bernardino.” The article went on to reference prior coverage, including from KTLA and CBS News. It noted that “[a]ccording to KTLA, police issued a search warrant for Smith at her home . . . and she was detained there. [¶] The case received national media attention, with headline writers calling the attractive 43-year-old a `queenpin.’ CBS News reporters said police reported that `the huge operation is normally associated with a drug lord’ and `Smith was making millions of dollars per month running the operation.'” The article also relayed that “KTLA reported that Smith had paid cash for two warehouses and a home for the operation.” It further discussed that “[t]his was not Stephanie Smith’s first brush with the law” and provided details about the prior liposuction matter.

The day after the Palisades News article, Smith made another public statement. The statement did not reference the Palisades News article. Smith described herself as “a well known and recognized leader in large-scale cannabis real estate development. . . .” She claimed “[t]he tenants in my buildings were compliant with the laws of the State of California and had applied for licenses from the City of San Bernardino multiple times only to have their applications rejected for technicalities. . . . In attempting to terrorize my family and smear me as an illicit drug lord, the Mayor [of San Bernardino] embarrassed himself and showed that he [is] out of touch with modern thought about [the] cannabis industry. . . .” Like her prior statements, the January 3, 2018 statement was reported in the press.

D. The Defamation Lawsuit

Smith did not serve Palisades News with a retraction demand within 20 days of the article’s publication, but asserts she did so later at some unspecified point in time.2 On March 14, 2018, Smith sued the Palisades News, Sue Pasco, and Matt Sanderson (collectively hereafter Palisades News) for libel/defamation, false light, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Smith did not sue any other news organization or reporter, including those organizations and reporters whose statements the Palisades News repeated in its coverage.

Smith claimed the Palisades News article contained three defamatory statements: (1) that she “was busted on December 13 for operating an allegedly illegal marijuana-growing operation in San Bernardino”; (2) that she was making “millions of dollars per month running the operation” and the operation was of a size normally associated with a “drug lord”; and (3) that Smith “paid cash for two warehouses and a home for the operation.” Smith claims these statements were false because she did not operate a cannabis business but was merely a landlord. Smith also asserts she did not make millions of dollars a month and did not pay for the operational sites in cash. She further alleged that to the extent the Palisades News was republishing information from other news organizations (which it largely was, including two of the three quoted statements she claimed were defamatory), the newspaper and its journalists knew or had reason to know of the falsity of the statements. Smith claimed the defamatory statements in the Palisades News caused disruptions to her business, and reputational harm with other Pacific Palisades residents.

E. The Ordinance Challenges

Soon after Smith filed the defamation action, two companies controlled by Smith filed suit in San Bernardino County challenging the cannabis ordinances of the cities of San Bernardino and Colton. Smith and her attorney both spoke to the press, and were quoted in articles about the lawsuits and the muddled legal landscape facing marijuana-related entrepreneurs in California following the passage of Proposition 64. The suits challenging the ordinances remained pending during the trial court’s consideration of the defamation claim against Palisades News. Smith also helped spearhead a petition to add an initiative to the City of San Bernardino’s November 2018 ballot concerning the City’s cannabis ordinances and encouraged city residents to vote in the upcoming election.

F. Defendants’ Anti-SLAPP Motion

Palisades News responded to Smith’s defamation lawsuit by filing a special motion to strike pursuant to the anti-SLAPP statute. After taking the matter under submission, the trial court issued a written ruling granting the motion as to the false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims, and denying it as to the defamation cause of action.3

The court found the complaint alleged protected conduct. It further found Smith “is a limited purpose public figure in connection with municipal ordinances governing marijuana facilities” because she sued the cities of San Bernardino and Colton over their ordinances, spoke to the press to advocate her position, and thereby interjected herself into that controversy. The court found Smith was not a limited purpose public figure for purposes of the defamation claim, however, because the Palisades News “article that Plaintiff is a marijuana operator did not pertain to the ordinances that were challenged by Plaintiff in her lawsuits.”

The court found Smith had made a prima facie showing that the statements were defamatory, and was not required to prove actual malice to survive the special motion to strike. Finding the burden shifted to defendants, the court found Palisades News failed to establish any affirmative defense at the special motion to strike stage.

Palisades News filed a timely notice of appeal. We have jurisdiction pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 904.1, subdivision (a)(13).4

III. DISCUSSION A. The Anti-SLAPP Statute and the Standard of Review

Our colleagues in Division Eight of this District recently summarized the application of the anti-SLAPP statute to a defamation cause of action in Dickinson v. Cosby (2019) 37 Cal.App.5th 1138 (Dickinson). We begin our analysis by quoting their cogent summary.

“The Legislature enacted the anti-SLAPP statute to address the societal ills caused by meritless lawsuits filed to chill the exercise of First Amendment rights. (§ 425.16, subd. (a).) The statute accomplishes this end by providing a special procedure for striking meritless, chilling claims at an early stage of litigation. (See § 425.16, subd. (b)(1); Rusheen v. Cohen (2006) 37 Cal.4th 1048, 1055-1056.)

“The anti-SLAPP statute establishes a two-step procedure to determine whether a claim should be stricken. In the first step, the court decides whether the movant has made a threshold showing that a challenged claim arises from statutorily-defined protected activity. (Rusheen v. Cohen, supra, 37 Cal.4th at p. 1056.) Here, the parties agree, as do we, that [Smith]’s defamation claim[ ] arise[s] from protected activities.5 We focus, therefore, on the second prong of the analysis: whether [Smith] has shown of probability of prevailing on her claims. (Navellier v. Sletten (2002) 29 Cal.4th 82, 88.)

“To show a probability of prevailing, the opposing party must demonstrate the claim is legally sufficient and supported by a sufficient prima facie showing of evidence to sustain a favorable judgment if the evidence it has submitted is credited. (Zamos v. Stroud (2004) 32 Cal.4th 958, 965.) `In deciding the question of potential merit, the trial court considers the pleadings and evidentiary submissions of both the plaintiff and the defendant (§ 425.16, subd. (b)(2)); though the court does not weigh the credibility or comparative probative strength of competing evidence, it should grant the motion if, as a matter of law, the defendant’s evidence supporting the motion defeats the plaintiff’s attempt to establish evidentiary support for the claim. [Citation.]’ [Citations.]’ (Taus v. Loftus (2007) 40 Cal.4th 683, 713-714.) We accept as true the evidence favorable to the plaintiff. Further, a plaintiff must establish only that the challenged claims have minimal merit to defeat an anti-SLAPP motion. (Soukup v. Law Offices of Herbert Hafif (2006) 39 Cal.4th 260, 291.)

“We review the denial of an anti-SLAPP motion de novo. (Park v. Board of Trustees of California State University (2017) 2 Cal.5th 1057, 1067.)” (Dickinson, supra, 37 Cal.App.5th at pp. 1154-1155, fn. omitted.)

B. Smith’s Has Not Demonstrated a Probability of Prevailing on Her Defamation Claim 1. Required Elements for Defamation

“A statement is not defamatory unless it can reasonably be viewed as declaring or implying a provably false factual assertion [citation], and it is apparent from the `context and tenor’ of the statement `that the [speaker] seriously is maintaining an assertion of actual fact.’ [Citation.] . . . `California law permits the defense of substantial truth,’ and thus a defendant is not liable `”`if the substance of the charge be proved true. . . .'”‘ `Put another way, the statement is not considered false unless it “would have a different effect on the mind of the reader from that which the . . . truth would have produced.”‘ [Citation.]” (Carver v. Bonds (2005) 135 Cal.App.4th 328, 344.)

A “private person need prove only negligence (rather than malice) to recover for defamation.” (Brown v. Kelly Broadcasting Co. (1989) 48 Cal.3d 711, 742.) However, “[w]hen a defamation action is brought by a public figure, the plaintiff, in order to recover damages, must show that the defendant acted with actual malice in publishing the defamatory communication.” (Denney v. Lawrence (1994) 22 Cal.App.4th 927, 933 (Denney).) Whether a plaintiff is a public figure is determined by the court. (Stolz v. KSFM 102 FM (1994) 30 Cal.App.4th 195, 203.)

2. Public Figure Test

In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974) 418 U.S. 323 (Gertz), the United States Supreme Court recognized two different categories of public figures. The first is the “all purpose” public figure who has “achiev[ed] such pervasive fame or notoriety that he becomes a public figure for all purposes and in all contexts.” (Id. at p. 351.) “For the most part those who attain [all-purpose public figure] status have assumed roles of especial prominence in the affairs of society. . . .” (Id. at p. 345.) Such status is not lightly assumed—for a plaintiff to be deemed an all-purpose public figure, there must be “clear evidence of general fame or notoriety in the community, and pervasive involvement in the affairs of society. . . .” (Id. at p. 352.) Neither party argues, nor does the record demonstrate, that Smith has the requisite level of fame, notoriety, or pervasive involvement in the affairs of society to be an all-purpose public figure.

The second category is the “limited purpose” or “vortex” public figure who “voluntarily injects himself or is drawn into a particular public controversy and thereby becomes a public figure for a limited range of issues.” (Gertz, supra, 418 U.S. at p. 351.) “Unlike the `all purpose’ public figure, the `limited purpose’ public figure loses certain protection for his reputation only to the extent that the allegedly defamatory communication relates to his role in a public controversy.” (Reader’s Digest Assn. v. Superior Court (1984) 37 Cal.3d 244, 253-254 (Reader’s Digest).)

3. Smith Is a Limited Public Figure

The trial court found Smith was a limited purpose public figure in connection with municipal ordinances governing marijuana facilities. It based that decision on Smith suing two municipalities over such ordinances and speaking to the press to advocate her position. We agree that Smith was a limited purpose public figure, but for different reasons. The trial court relied on Smith’s voluntary acts after the Palisades News article. It instead should have focused Smith’s acts before publication, and whether they made Smith a limited purpose public figure at the time the Palisades News article was published. We find Smith’s voluntary prepublication acts made Smith a limited purpose public figure, and for a public controversy broader than the one identified by the trial court.

To characterize a plaintiff as a limited purpose public figure, three elements must be present. First, “there must be a public controversy. . . .” (Gilbert v. Sykes (2007) 147 Cal.App.4th 13, 24.) Second, “the plaintiff must have undertaken some voluntary act through which he or she sought to influence resolution of the public issue.” (Ibid.) Third, “the alleged defamation must be germane to the plaintiff’s participation in the [public] controversy.” (Ibid.) We discuss each of these elements in turn.

a. Existence of a Public Controversy

A public controversy exists when the controversy at issue was debated publicly and had foreseeable and substantial ramifications for nonparticipants in the debate. (Gilbert v. Sykes, supra, 147 Cal.App.4th at p. 24.) Smith does not seriously dispute a public controversy exists here. For some time, there has been a significant and ongoing public debate regarding the legalization of cannabis, how legalization will impact local communities, and how best to regulate the manufacture and sale of cannabis to mitigate any adverse impacts on local communities and their residents. (E.g., Union of Medical Marijuana Patients, Inc. v. City of San Diego (2019) 7 Cal.5th 1171 [ordinance regulating location and operation of marijuana dispensaries “capable of causing indirect physical changes” to city environment and thus subject to environmental review]; City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patients Health & Wellness Center, Inc. (2013) 56 Cal.4th 729, 762 [marijuana regulation is “an area that remains controversial”].)

b. Voluntary Acts to Influence Resolution of Public Controversy

To become a limited purpose public figure, a plaintiff must undertake some voluntary act through which he or she seeks to influence resolution of the public controversy. “It is not necessary to show that a plaintiff actually achieves prominence in the public debate. . . .” (Copp v. Paxton (1996) 45 Cal.App.4th 829, 845.) Instead, “it is sufficient that the plaintiff attempts to thrust him or herself into the public eye.” (Ampex Corp. v. Cargle (2005) 128 Cal.App.4th 1569, 1577 (Ampex).) Smith sought to do exactly that through her public statements following the raid and prior to the Palisades News publication. Smith’s public statements were not confined (as the trial court held) to challenging municipal ordinances, but were a much broader commentary on how laws regulating cannabis are applied and enforced, accompanied by advocacy for a different approach.

Smith contends her public statements were not voluntary because Palisades News forced her to respond to its defamatory and false reporting. It is true that “a defamation defendant cannot create a defense by creating a controversy from the content of defamatory statements” and “a plaintiff does not become a public figure simply by responding to defamatory statements. . . .” (Mosesian v. McClatchy Newspapers (1991) 233 Cal.App.3d 1685, 1702.) But Smith’s argument ignores the actual chronology of events. There was a public controversy regarding cannabis regulation before any alleged defamatory statements. Smith did not simply respond to the Palisades News article. Instead, she released multiple public statements seeking to influence public perception of the police raids and San Bernardino’s approach to cannabis businesses before Palisades News published its article.

Moreover, Smith’s comments preceding the Palisades News article did not just respond to prior press coverage but instead sought to address statements from city officials and influence public perception of the city’s enforcement efforts. These public statements gave Smith prominence in the public controversy concerning cannabis regulation. Smith acknowledged this fact, describing herself as a “well-known and recognized leader in large-scale cannabis real estate development” in a statement the day after the Palisades News article. Smith did not become a “well-known and recognized” figure overnight—her public recognition preexisted the Palisades News article and was not solely the result of the prior press coverage but also her public advocacy.

The lone authority on which Smith relies to claim she is not a limited purpose public figure is Time, Inc. v. Firestone (1975) 424 U.S. 448 (Firestone). In that case, a weekly news magazine published an article about a marital dissolution proceeding between the plaintiff wife and her husband, who were both wealthy and prominent socialites. The United States Supreme Court held the dissolution proceeding was not the type of public controversy to which Gertz referred in describing limited purpose public figures, but instead involved a private family matter. (Id. at p. 454.) Additionally, the wife did not voluntarily inject herself into a public forum—she had no alternative to using court proceedings if she wanted to get divorced. (Ibid.) While she held a few press conferences “in an attempt to satisfy inquiring reporters,” that did not convert her into a public figure. (Id. at p. 454, fn. 3.) The Court based this holding on (1) the fact the press interviews should have had no effect upon the merits of the legal dispute or its outcome, (2) no such effect was intended by the wife, and (3) the press conferences were not designed to inject the wife into “the forefront of some unrelated controversy in order to influence its resolution.” (Ibid.)

The facts here are quite different. Smith was the subject of public police investigation involving search warrants. As discussed above, the subject matter of that investigation—the regulation of cannabis businesses, and where and how they operate—are matters of public interest and controversy. Unlike the plaintiff in Firestone, who did not seek to influence the outcome of the court proceeding, Smith’s comments to the press attempted to impact the police investigation and city officials otherwise involved in that investigation. Her comments also injected Smith into the forefront of related controversies concerning cannabis in an attempt to influence their resolution in a way favorable to her and her business. Smith became a limited purpose public figure when she “actively and openly sought to influence public officials and in that manner affect the public decision process for determining the uses to which land in [San Bernardino] County may be put.” (Hofmann Co. v. E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. (1988) 202 Cal.App.3d 390, 404, abrogated in part on other grounds as recognized in Kahn v. Bower (1991) 232 Cal.App.3d 1599, 1606-1608.)

Smith’s public comments prior to the Palisades News article are much closer to the facts of Denney, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th 927 than Firestone. In Denney, the plaintiff’s identical twin brother committed a murder. The killing generated intense local media publicity because both brothers were sheriff’s deputies. The plaintiff gave the press a photograph to use in connection with a newspaper article and was interviewed twice by a reporter. After these actions, a local newspaper printed a letter to the editor the plaintiff alleged was defamatory. The Denney court found plaintiff was a limited purpose public figure because he “voluntarily involved himself in the public debate and attempted to influence public opinion” by promoting a version of facts favorable to his brother. (Denney, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th at pp. 934-936.)

Following the raid and in the days before the Palisades News article, Smith similarly voluntarily involved herself in the public debate and attempted to influence public opinion by promoting a version of the facts favorable to her. She complained “that these military style raids are the way City leaders handle zoning issues,” and that it was “not acceptable.” She asserted the police actions were “clearly out of step with the will of the voters,” and there needed to be “a more sensible approach to cannabis regulation” that did not “directly thwart[] the will of the majority of our citizens.” She claimed “[t]he tenants in my buildings were compliant with the laws of the State of California and had applied for licenses from the City of San Bernardino multiple times only to have their applications rejected for technicalities.” She expressed pride in “[b]eing a leader in cannabis” and “a Queenpin indeed.”

There are two rationales for the public figure doctrine. One, as discussed above, is that the individual has voluntarily exposed themselves to public scrutiny through their statements and actions, including the increased risk of injury from defamatory falsehood, and must accept the consequences. (Reader’s Digest, supra, 37 Cal.3d at p. 253; Stolz, supra, 30 Cal.App.4th at p. 203.) The second is that “[s]uch persons ordinarily enjoy considerably greater access than private individuals to the media and other channels of communication. This access in turn enables them to counter criticism and to expose the fallacies of defamatory statements.” (Reader’s Digest, supra, 37 Cal.3d at p. 253.)

The record before us bears out the second rationale as well as the first. The press reported on Smith’s public statements before and contemporaneous with the Palisades News article. Following the Palisades News article, Smith continued to be able to publicize her views, including about the lawsuits challenging the San Bernardino and Colton ordinances. She additionally was featured in a favorable March 31, 2018 article in the Los Angeles Times (a publication with far greater reach in Los Angeles than the Palisades News) along with one of her prominent tenants, B-Real of multi-platinum hip-hop recording artists Cypress Hill, where she was able to respond to publicity surrounding the San Bernardino raids.

c. The Allegedly Defamatory Statements Were Germane to Smith’s Participation in the Controversy

Lastly, for the limited public figure doctrine to apply, the alleged defamatory statements must be germane to the plaintiff’s participation in the public controversy. The public controversy at issue (and into which Smith voluntarily injected herself) was much broader than simply municipal ordinances governing marijuana facilities. It encompassed who should operate such businesses, where those operations should take place, what type of permitting and regulatory process should exist for such operations, and how violations of regulations should be policed. The three allegedly defamatory statements were germane to this debate over the permitting process, law enforcement efforts surrounding that permitting process, and whether Smith was the type of individual worthy of licensure.

4. Smith Did Not Make a Prima Facie Showing of Malice

To survive a special motion to strike a defamation claim, a limited purpose public figure like Smith must establish the requisite probability that she can prove the allegedly defamatory statements were made with knowledge of their falsity, or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity. (Ampex, supra, 128 Cal.App.4th at p. 1578.) Smith submitted no evidence, and does not contend, that Palisades News knew anything in the article was false. She instead argues Palisades News acted in reckless disregard of the truth or falsity of the allegedly defamatory statements.

For reckless disregard to exist, there must be sufficient evidence to permit the conclusion that Palisades News entertained serious doubts as to the truth of the statements it published. The ultimate issue is the good faith of the publisher. (Reader’s Digest, supra, 37 Cal.3d at p. 257.) The subjective belief of Palisades News concerning the truthfulness of the publication—that is, the attitude of Palisades News toward the truth or falsity of the material published and not its attitude toward Smith—is what matters. (Ibid.) As examples of actions not taken in good faith, the United States Supreme Court has given examples such as “where a story is fabricated by the defendant, is the product of his imagination, or is based wholly on an unverified anonymous telephone call.” (St. Amant v. Thompson (1968) 390 U.S. 727, 732.) Nor will a defense of good faith “be likely to prevail when the publisher’s allegations are so inherently improbable that only a reckless man would have put them in circulation. Likewise, recklessness may be found where there are obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of the informant or the accuracy of his reports.” (Ibid.)

Smith does not argue the Palisades News article was fabricated, the product of imagination, based on unverified anonymous tip, or that the content of the story was inherently improbable. The record shows that in making the three statements alleged to be defamatory, Palisades News relied on prior reporting from reputable organizations. Indeed, two of the identified statements were expressly attributed to those prior sources—KTLA and CBS—in the Palisades News article.

Instead, Smith argues reckless disregard can be inferred because Palisades News did no independent investigation. For example, it never attempted to contact Smith or the San Bernardino Police Department to determine if the allegations levied by the police were correct. Smith also points to inconsistencies in the prior press coverage (such as whether Smith was arrested, differences in how many others were arrested, and discrepancies in the number of plants allegedly in the warehouses) that she argues should have prompted a reasonable person to do independent investigation.

However, “reckless conduct is not measured by whether a reasonably prudent man would have published, or would have investigated before publishing.” (St. Amant v. Thompson, supra, 390 U.S. at p. 731.) “The failure to conduct a thorough and objective investigation, standing alone, does not prove actual malice. . . . A publisher does not have to investigate personally, but may rely on the investigation and conclusions of reputable sources. `Where the publication comes from a known reliable source and there is nothing in the circumstances to suggest inaccuracy, there is no duty to investigate.'” (Reader’s Digest, supra, 37 Cal.3d at pp. 258-259.) Moreover, the complained-of inconsistencies related to minor, collateral details about the raids.

Because Smith has not made the required showing of malice, we need not address whether she carried her burden to establish that the statements were false, that the Palisades News article caused the damages she alleges as opposed to the prior publicity, or other elements of her prima facie case. To survive a special motion to strike, Smith had to make a sufficient prima facie showing of facts sufficient to sustain a favorable judgment. (Navellier v. Sletten, supra, 29 Cal.4th at pp. 88-89.) Her failure to produce evidence of malice, one of the necessary elements of that prima facie showing, is fatal in and of itself.6

IV. DISPOSITION

The trial court’s order denying the special motion to strike is reversed. The matter is remanded with directions to grant the motion in full and enter judgment in Defendants’ favor. Defendants are awarded their costs on appeal.

ROTHSCHILD, P.J. and BENDIX, J., concurs.

FootNotes

* Judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution.1. “SLAPP stands for `Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.'” (Lam v. Ngo (2001) 91 Cal.App.4th 832, 835, fn. 1.) For clarity, we refer to a “SLAPP” or “anti-SLAPP” motion as a “special motion to strike”—the language used in the statute (Code Civ. Proc., § 425.16, subd. (b)(1)).2. To recover general or punitive damages for any alleged libel, a plaintiff must request correction within 20 days of the statement(s) claimed to be libelous, and the publisher must refuse the request for correction. (Civ. Code, § 48a; Anschutz Entertainment Group, Inc. v. Snepp (2009) 171 Cal.App.4th 598, 640-641.)3. Smith filed a notice of appeal, but that appeal was dismissed on September 19, 2018 pursuant to California Rule of Court 8.100(c) for failure to pay the required filing fee. As Smith did not pursue appellate review of the claims struck by the trial court, we do not further address her false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress causes of action.4. All unspecified statutory references are to the Code of Civil Procedure.5. Section 425.16, subd. (e), specifies categories of protected activity. The Palisades News article included statements made in connection with an issue under consideration or review by an executive body (the San Bernardino Police Department) in an official proceeding authorized by law (a judicially authorized search warrant) (§ 425.16, subd. (e)(2)), statements made in a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest (§ 425.16, subd. (e)(3)) and conduct in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of free speech in connection with an issue of public interest (§ 425.16, subd. (e)(4)).6. Given Smith’s failure to produce evidence of malice, we also decline to address amici curiae’s invitation to recognize a neutral reportage or wire service defense under California law.

[xtruss]

OPINION

Promoting a Bosnian War ‘Rape Hotel’ Means Erasing History

Disgusting individuals. Have they learnt no lessons? Reopening a hotel used for rape as a tourist attraction!

— Ehlimana Memisevic | Sarajevo | August 17, 2020 | BalkanInsight.Com | Balkan Transitional Justice

The Vilina Vlas hotel in 2007. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Aleksandar Bogicevic.

In a summer campaign, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s tourism authority has been promoting a hotel in Visegrad where women and girls were detained and raped during the 1990s war - another attempt to delete past atrocities from public memory.

The Hotel Vilina Vlas in Visegrad was one of the infamous rape camps of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is suspected that at least 200 Bosniak girls and women were held there and repeatedly sexually assaulted and murdered.

One of the victims, who was 17 at the time, told the Washington Post that she was taken to Vilina Vlas by Milan Lukic, widely known as the leader of a Bosnian Serb paramilitary group called the White Eagles (also called the Avengers), together with her 15-year-old sister and an 18-year-old friend.

They were separated and locked in different rooms, according to the newspaper interview. She overheard Lukic telling his soldiers to “question” them, “but not too much”, and laughter in the corridor.

A few hours afterwards, she was raped by Lukic, who told her that she was lucky to be with him, since she could have been thrown into the river with rocks tied around her ankles. She heard a loud cry “when the door across the hall was opened” and recognised the voice of her sister. She never saw her again.

After raping the 17-year-old, Lukic returned her to her family. They stayed in Visegrad as long as they could, hoping that her sister would be returned too. After her mother went to the police station almost every day for a month, searching for her sister, Lukic said to her: “What do you want? At least I returned one of your daughters.”

Lukic was sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to life in prison for war crimes including murder, cruelty, persecution and other crimes against humanity committed in Visegrad in 1992 and 1993.

But even though “there was ample evidence about a large number of rapes, murder and other serious crimes being committed at the Vilina Vlas”, according to Dermot Groome, who led the prosecution of Lukic at the Hague court, he was not charged with sexual violence.

The women who were tortured and abused at the Vilina Vlas hotel, who were, Groom said, “some of the most traumatised people I had ever encountered in my work as a prosecutor”, did not want to cooperate in a prosecution for sexual violence, because of their fears about appearing in court.

The Bosnian state court sentenced a member of the Bosnian Serb police force, Zeljko Lelek, to 16 years in prison for crimes against humanity in Visegrad, including rape. One of his rape victims at Vilina Vlas was Jasmina Ahmetspahic who, after being raped for four days, ended her life (and prevented further sexual assault) by jumping from a window at the hotel.

Despite the judgment, which confirmed the hotel was used as a rape camp, and the witness testimonies at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, government officials and Visegrad’s Serb inhabitants deny ever having heard of rape, torture or murder at the Hotel Vilina Vlas.

Author Edina Becirevic pointed out in her book ‘Genocide on the Drina River’ that rape was part of a systematic, genocidal set of crimes committed with the aim of exterminating the Bosniak population.

As part of the process of the obliteration of memory, an important part of ethnic cleansing, the Serbs who controlled Visegrad after the war reopened the Vilina Vlas as the spa hotel it used to be, without even a change of furniture.

Foreign visitors were encouraged to book rooms. Kym Vercoe, an actress from Sydney, stayed at the Vilina Vlas in 2008. After learning that a hotel was one of the most infamous rape camps in 1992, upon her return to Australia she wrote a play called ‘Seven Kilometres North East: Performance on Geography, Tourism, and Crime’, which deals with “ignorance, geography, tourism, and crime”.

On July 5 this year, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s public broadcaster BHRT reported that the state tourism board, with the support of the municipality of Visegrad, had launched a promotional campaign unde the slogan “We are waiting for you in Visegrad” and provided gift vouchers as a way to attract tourists. The Vilina Vlas is one of the hotels participating in the campaign.

The hotel’s past was not even mentioned. In another report in May 2020, BHRT also praised the rejuvenating qualities of the water at the Vilina Vlas’s spa. “Both the sick and the healthy have come here for centuries, some for health [reasons], some for rest and fun,” it said. With such reporting, the country’s public broadcasting service is participating in memory erasure and denial.

‘Murder of Historical Truth’

Bosnian Serb fighter Milan Lukic makes his first appearance in court in The Hague in February 2006. Photo: EPA/SERGE LIGTENBERG/POOL.

In 1991, Visegrad had 21,000 inhabitants. In what has come to be known as ‘ethnic cleansing’, the town’s Bosniak population, the majority at the time (63 per cent), was almost completely removed.

Out of 14,500 Muslims who lived in Visegrad before the war, around 3,000 were killed, often on the famous 16th Century Mehmed Pasha Sokolovic bridge which served as an inspiration for Ivo Andric’s famous novel ‘The Bridge on the Drina’.

The bridge had for centuries been a ritual place of atrocity, both in myth and recorded history, serving as a kind of public theatre in times of war and upheaval, as Andric put it. During World War II, Draza Mihailovic’s Serb nationalist Chetniks, who are still celebrated in Visegrad, tortured and murdered hundreds of Muslims from the area on the bridge.

In October 1943 alone, around 1,500 Bosniaks were killed at the bridge. After seeing the killings at the bridge in 1992, Bosko Polic, the retired principal of Ivo Andric High School in Visegrad, said: “I read again Ivo Andric’s novel during the war. I would look up from the pages and see what he was describing around me.”

In the spring and summer of 1992, Bosniak civilians were brought to the bridge, murdered, and thrown into the Drina river. The number of killings was so great that Visegrad police inspector Milan Josipovic received “a macabre complaint from downriver, from the management of Bajina Basta hydro-electric plant across the Serbian border”, reported Guardian journalist Ed Vulliamy.

The plant’s director requested to “slow the flow of corpses down the Drina”, since “they were clogging up the culverts in his dam at such a rate that he could not assemble sufficient staff to remove them”.

Mesud Cocalic, who lived about 12 miles downriver from Visegrad in the village of Slap, said he and a group of neighbours buried 180 bodies they had retrieved from the water, identifying 82 of them. The bodies, they said, “were often slashed with knife marks and were black and blue”.

“The young women were wrapped in blankets that were tied at each end. These female corpses were always naked. We buried several children, including two boys 18 months old. We found one man crucified to the back of a door. Once we picked up a garbage bag filled with 12 human heads,” said Cocalic.

Andricgrad, a joint venture by internationally acclaimed Serbian film director Emir Kusturica and the government of Republika Srpska, with additional financial support from the Serbian government, is an attempt to physically recreate the Visegrad of Ivo Andric’s novel.

A theme park mini-town, Andricgrad, is also being promoted in the same tourism campaign as the Hotel Vilina Vlas. But Andricgrad is actually an ideological construct which, as Sarajevo-based human rights activist Hikmet Karcic wrote, “proposes an alternative version of Visegrad’s past that provides historical and cultural legitimacy for its present and underpins the aspirations for its future”.

Rape, torture, and murder are not mentioned in Andricgrad. Kusturica said that the town should be “a symbol of pacifism… to encourage eastern Bosnia as a symbol of peace”.

This “symbol of peace”, whose horrific history projects like Andricgrad and campaign like “We are waiting for you in Visegrad” are trying to repress and deny, was nevertheless a place where some of the worst atrocities of the 1990s war were committed.

To not mention its past means to exonerate those who were responsible for these crimes. To quote the words of Israel W. Charny from in his article entitled ‘A Classification of Denials of the Holocaust and Other Genocides’, not mentioning this past also means the “celebration of destruction, renewed humiliation of survivors, and metaphorical murder of historical truth and collective memory”.

— Ehlimana Memisevic is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Legal History and Comparative Law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Sarajevo. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.

— Dr. Norman Gary Finkelstein

[garudabluffs]

Versatile Forest Whitaker goes from crime boss to music man

“He chose to act, he says, because it allows him to explore his connection to other people.”

READ MORE https://whmp.com/news/030030-versatile-forest-whitaker-goes-from-crime-boss-to-music-man/

'Fresh Air' Remembers Cokie Roberts, A Founding Mother Of NPR    

ROBERTS: “We have a famous story in our family, but it's a very useful story for someone who is a journalist to have as her sort of formative story about the press. My father ran for governor in 1952, but the real sort of race was throughout 1951. The election was in January of '52. So I was 7 throughout the race. I was just turned 8 when he got - when the election happened. It was in Louisiana. It was at a time when it was pretty much a one-party state. You had a first primary and then the second primary was the election. And he came in third - very bitter, unbelievably nasty campaign, nasty by Louisiana standards.

(LAUGHTER) ROBERTS: And well, remember this is the middle of the McCarthy era, all of that. And he came in third. The person who comes in third in a situation like that is very influential in terms of the runoff and how he throws his votes and the rest of it. The counting had gone on all night long. And the phone rang the morning after the election, and my sister, who was 12, answered the phone. And the person on the other end asked to speak to my father, and she said he's asleep and he's been up all night. No, I will not awaken him. And the guy on the other end says, well, what does he think about the election? And Barbara says, well, he knows he lost and...(LAUGHTER)ROBERTS: But then she at 12 had the sense to say, you know, who is this anyway? And he said that he was a reporter for the afternoon paper. And she said, look, I'm only 12 years old. You can't use a word I said to you.(LAUGHTER)ROBERTS: And that afternoon's paper came out with the headline "Source Close To Hale Boggs Concedes Election." So...(LAUGHTER) GROSS: Oh, no.ROBERTS: Oh, yes. And that is a - and that kind of thing happens much more often than any of us would like to believe.”

READ MORE https://www.capeandislands.org/post/fresh-air-remembers-cokie-roberts-founding-mother-npr

https://www.uua.org/worship/words/quote/silent-about-things-matter

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mlk-our-lives-begin-to-end/

“King made a similar yet less direct statement in the Brown Chapel in Selma, Ala., on Monday, March 8, 1965--the same date noted in the News’s photo caption and also the day after protesters met police violence after attempting to cross a bridge on the way to Montgomery, the state capital.

King, who would shortly lead a crossing of the bridge before turning around, said in part: "A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true."

Here’s King’s remark in context as we found it on an East Tennessee State University web page: 

READ MORE https://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2017/jan/06/dan-patrick/half-true-dan-patrick-martin-luther-king-saying-li/

Soon after moving into a small fourth-floor walk-up apartment in Manhattan, Guthrie wrote the war song "Talking Hitler's Head Off Blues".  This was printed in the Daily Worker newspaper: then "In a fit of patriotism and faith in the impact of the song, he painted on his guitar THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS."[2]  Anne E. Neimark (2002). There Ain't Nobody That Can Sing Like Me: The Life of Woody Guthrie. Atheneurn Book

“THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS”    second verse, same as the first                                         Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down

"Illegitimis non carborundum", which is supposed to mean "one must not be ground down by the bastards", although it is largely faux-Latin, with "carborundum" (intended to look like a Latin gerundive) actually referring to silicon carbide, a type of abrasive. “I’ll tell you the weird thing about it,” Atwood told Time magazine about the quote this spring. “It was a joke in our Latin classes.   READ MORE https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/05/handmaids-tale-nolite-te-bastardes-carborundorum-origin-margaret-atwood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7CghaM-ULY

Why We Build the Wall  Anaïs Mitchell 

Released: 2010

HADES “Why do we build the wall? My children, my children Why do we build the wall?” CERBERUS “Why do we build the wall? We build the wall to keep us free That? s why we build the wall We build the wall to keep us free” HADES How does the wall keep us free? My children, my children How does the wall keep us free? CERBERUS How does the wall keep us free? The wall keeps out the enemy And we build the wall to keep us free That? s why we build the wall We build the wall to keep us free HADES Who do we call the enemy? My children, my children Who do we call the enemy? CERBERUS Who do we call the enemy? The enemy is poverty And the wall keeps out the enemy And we build the wall to keep us free That? s why we build the wall We build the wall to keep us free HADES Because we have and they have not! My children, my children Because they want what we have got! CERBERUS Because we have and they have not! Because they want what we have got! The enemy is poverty And the wall keeps out the enemy And we build the wall to keep us free That? s why we build the wall We build the wall to keep us free HADES What do we have that they should want? My children, my children What do we have that they should want? CERBERUS What do we have that they should want? We have a wall to work upon! We have work and they have none And our work is never done My children, my children And the war is never won The enemy is poverty And the wall keeps out the enemy And we build the wall to keep us free That? s why we build the wall We build the wall to keep us free We build the wall to keep us free

Wealth Is A Moral Hazard    

“We’re told that public benefits create moral hazards because they make people dependent on the government, and there’s nothing worse (according to this common theory) than giving a poor person the sense that they don’t need to work for a living.” .

READ MORE https://www.wvpe.org/post/michiana-chronicles-wealth-moral-hazard

“Let It Be”: The truth behind Paul McCartney’s heavenly visit from Mother Mary

"Despite its intensely personal meaning, McCartney has remained good-natured about some of more pious interpretations.”

READ MORE https://aleteia.org/2017/12/29/let-it-be-the-truth-behind-paul-mccartneys-heavenly-visit-from-mother-mary/

Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down - Kris Kristofferson

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/the-irishman-martin-scorsese-nyff-review-890718/

[robotsforcake]

Yanked this off fark, it's not mine:

Author is on twitter as @suitedjustice

I’ve been working on a project to summarize Trump’s first 100 days, but there’s just so much of it that I’ll have to post it in 10-day blocks. I tried to be as crisp as possible here, as again, there’s a lot to work with. If I missed anything substantial, let me know. Also, if you like this, let me know and I’ll post days 11-20 when the time comes.

Day 1: Reads 16-minute inauguration speech he falsely claims to have written himself. In that speech, inadvertently quotes movie villain Bane from Batman. Announces the Alt-Right’s theme of America First as policy and philosophy. Cites American ‘carnage’, without going into detail as to what that might entail. Falsely claims it stopped raining when he began to speak. Passes over long-time inauguration parade announcer Charlie Brotman, replacing him with no one. Six journalists are arrested while covering the inauguration and charged with felony rioting. Trump signs emergency order increasing mortgage costs for first time home buyers.

Day 2: Climate change data on White House website scrubbed. Trump calls National Park Service Director Michael T. Reynolds and orders him to produce photos showing a more crowded inauguration. He lies to the press about the size of the crowds at his inauguration, then complains when the press calls him on that lie. Gives speech at CIA headquarters. Brings along a claque of staffers unrelated to the CIA to cheer and clap at his words. Later claims he received the “greatest standing ovation since Peyton Manning won the Super Bowl.” Protocol calls for government employees to remain standing until the president asks them to sit Outgoing CIA director, John Brennan, calls the CIA speech “a despicable display of self-aggrandizement.” Claims to hold the all-time record of Time magazine covers at “14 or 15.” He has been on 11 covers. Richard Nixon holds the actual record with 55 Time covers. Hillary Clinton has 22 covers.

Day 3: Spokesperson Conway announces Trump won’t be releasing his tax returns regardless of the state of his IRS Audit. She claims that the people don’t care about Trump’s taxes. Conway also introduces the concept of lies as “alternative facts.”

Day 4: Spanish language option on White House website scrubbed. Conway reverses herself and says that Trump will release his taxes once his IRS audit is complete. After lying about inauguration crowd sizes on Day 1, Press Secretary Spicer says “…our intention is never to lie to you.” Spicer claims hiring freeze will halt “dramatic increase” in government employment. Number of federal employees at the beginning of Obama’s terms, 2.77 million; towards the end, 2.66 million. Spicer declines to give the current unemployment rate when asked by a reporter. Trump bans aid to international health organizations, including the World Heath Organization, if they mention abortion. Claims he will cut all regulations on businesses by 75%, that the remaining 25% will be just as strong about protecting the people as before the cut. Claims to have “received many awards on the environment.” The only award that can be verified is a Trump golf course that received one in 2007. In 2011 the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection cited the same golf course for several environmental violations. At a meeting with lawmakers, Trump repeats the false claim that between 3 and 5 million illegal voters made him lose the popular vote. The initial evidence he cites is the anecdote of a 59-year-old golf pro and German citizen, Bernhard Langer, who Trump claims saw a lot of Latin faces in a polling line in Florida. Reporters reached the golf pro’s daughter on Langer’s cell phone. She said “He is not a friend of President Trump’s, and I don’t know why he would talk about him.” An attempt to sue Trump under the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause begins.

Day 5: Retroactively declares his inauguration day, January 20, 2017, the National Day of Patriotic Devotion. Revives the Keystone XL and Dakota Access crude oil pipelines. The Badlands National Park Twitter account goes rogue and begins to tweet global warming stats and other scientific facts. It is shut down. A few other National Park accounts begin to follow suit out of solidarity. White house imposes a freeze on grants and contracts from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, prohibits employees from speaking to the press or on social media. Slaps a similar gag order on US Department of Agriculture scientists. Press Secretary Spicer says Trump’s 306 electoral votes were the most won by a GOP president since Reagan. But after Reagan, George HW Bush won with 426 electoral votes. Spicer calls prospective Attorney General Sessions record on voting and civil rights “exemplary.” Says Sessions “has fought very hard for voting rights, civil rights and on areas of minority rights.” Sessions was considered to be too racist for a federal judgeship in the 1980’s. As a US Attorney, Sessions prosecuted 3 black activists for hand delivering, rather than mailing a small number of absentee ballots. Sessions also called a fellow US Attorney “Boy.” Spicer repeats Trump’s lie regarding 3-5 million illegal votes during the election, citing non-existent “studies and evidence.” A member of the House and a Senator introduce a bill that would prevent the president from launching a nuclear first strike without a congressional declaration of war. A short time after a Bill O'Reilly episode touching on Chicago gun violence airs on Fox, Trump threatens to send federal troops into Chicago. Chicago’s murder rate in 2016 failed to put it in the top 10 US cities.

Day 6: Expands media and social media gag orders to include US Departments of Commerce, the Interior, Transportation and Health and Human services. Trump issues Draft Order designed to reopen CIA.-run “black site” prisons. These secret overseas prisons detained and tortured terrorism suspects for years, before being shut down by President Obama. Trump claims that intelligence officials have told him that torture “absolutely” works. George Orwell’s classic book 1984 hits #6 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Trump tweets that he will be asking for a “major investigation into VOTER FRAUD.” When confronted on ABC with the fact that the Pew reporter he was citing regarding voter fraud said there was in fact no voter fraud, Trump claimed the Pew reporter was “groveling.” Claims that two people were shot in Chicago during Obama’s farewell speech. Police reported no shootings in Chicago on that day. In the same interview, says “We ended up winning by a massive amount, 306.” In terms of electoral votes, Trump’s win ranks 46th out of 58 elections. Says “They say I had the biggest crowd in the history of inaugural speeches.” Estimates for crowds at Trump’s speech are 80% below those of Barack Obama’s in 2009. Says “We have spent as of one month ago 6 trillion dollars in the Middle East.” From 2001 to 2014 the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan–the latter country is in South Asia–cost an estimated $1.6 trillion. Says “You had millions of people that now aren’t insured anymore.” Some 20 million people have gained health care coverage because of the Affordable Care Act. He signs directive to build border wall with Mexico, reiterates that Mexico will pay for it. The deepest channel of the Rio Grande river serves as the US-Mexico border for 1255 miles, longer than the distance from New York City to Orlando, FL. The river is known to change its course rather frequently. Signs another directive increasing detention centers and Border Patrol staff. Signs another directive that threatens to cut off federal funds to cities that don’t actively and vigorously pursue illegal aliens. Another order cuts U.S. funding to the International Criminal Court by 40 percent. The U.S. currently gives zero funding to the International Criminal Court. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago country club doubles membership fees. His hotel business reveals plans for a major US expansion.

Day 7 14 minutes after Fox News calls Chelsea Manning an ungrateful traitor who called Obama a weak leader, Trump tweets that Chelsea Manning is an ungrateful traitor who called Obama a weak leader. Entire US State Department senior management team resigns. All were career foreign service officers who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Infowars, who reported that the murdered Sandy Hook 1st graders were paid actors hired by the anti-gun lobby, and that the Air Force is purposefully creating deadly tornadoes in the Midwest, is granted White House Press credentials. Trump tweets that Mexico should cancel the upcoming summit with the US if they don’t want to pay for the wall. Enrique Pena Nieto, president of Mexico, our close ally, cancels his planned trip to Washington. Trump proposes a 20% tax on goods coming from Mexico. Sellers will increase their prices by 20%, which will be paid for by the US consumer. In Philadelphia Trump says that “the murder rate has been steadily – I mean, just terribly increasing.” Data provided by the Philadelphia Police Department shows a record downturn in violent crimes, with fewer occurring in 2016 than in every other year since 1979. Trump orders his new administration to publish a weekly list of crimes committed by immigrants. The idea is not new. The German newspaper Der Stürmer had a feature known as the “Letter Box”, which encouraged the reporting of Jewish illegal acts in the 1930’s and 40’s. “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile,” -Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s closest adviser. In an interview with Sean Hannity, Trump says that he doesn’t consider waterboarding to be torture. In April of 2009, Hannity agreed to be waterboarded for charity, but has yet to follow through on the offer. Trump draft proposal will ban immigration and to the US from Muslim majority countries Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia. Muslim majority countries Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and the U.A.E. will not be on the banned list. These five countries are where Trump has business interests.

Day 8 Trump signs ban on Muslims from the 7 countries from traveling into the US. Announces that persecuted Christians will be given priority over Muslim refugees. A screenshot is revived of Mike Pence’s deleted December 2015 tweet stating “Calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional.” Dick Cheney says Muslim ban “goes against everything we stand for and believe in.” By a margin of 42% to 39%, Trump voters believe that it would be okay for him to use his private email server for official business. George Orwell’s 1984 hits #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Trump tweets that he has another source for his oft-debunked claim of millions of illegal votes - Gregg Phillips, who has made claims that the Department of Homeland Security hacked the 2016 US election at Obama’s request, and that Israel was the culprit for the DNC hacks. Three paragraph White House statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day makes no mention of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. White Supremacist publication the Daily Stormer praises Trump on this statement for daring to reject “Jewish science fiction” about the Holocaust.

Day 9 Donald Trump calls Vladimir Putin from the White House. Steve Bannon, former publisher of radical right wing website Breitbart, is granted a regular seat at National Security Council meetings. Sample Breitbart headlines include Data: Young Muslims in the West Are a Ticking Time Bomb, and Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy. In 2013, Bannon told a writer for the Daily Beast, “I’m a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down.” The Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will no longer have regular seats on the NSC. Some legal permanent US residents are being stopped from reentering as they return from visits or studies abroad. The Muslim ban will also keep Oscar-nominated director Asghar Farhadi from attending the Oscars. Referencing an article on how the ban will include green card residents, former KKK Grand Wizard and current racist icon David Duke tweets, “Greatest. Year. Ever.” Protesters flood JFK International Terminal in New York, demanding that detainees there be allowed to go free. More protesters assemble at airports in Denver, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle, LA, and Washington DC. Dozens of lawyers show up at various airports to work pro bono to free detainees there. New York judge issues a temporary injunction halting deportations nationwide from Trump’s ban. Similar rulings follow in Virginia, Massachusetts and Washington State.

Day 10 The US Department of Homeland Security says it will comply with judicial orders not to deport detained travelers affected by Trump’s ban. The DHS reverses itself and announces it will defy the court orders, potentially provoking a constitutional crisis. According to White House sources, Top Trump policy director Stephen Miller tells government employees that the public is behind Trump’s ban, and to ignore the hysterical voices on TV. While at Duke, Stephen Miller worked closely with White Nationalist Richard Spencer–the man who was recently punched in the face on air while explaining the Alt-Right, provoking debate amongst the Left as to whether or not it’s okay to punch a Nazi. As chaos and protests continue at airports in the US and around the world, Trump tells reporters “It’s not a Muslim ban. We were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over. It’s working out very nicely.” Trump issues a statement saying, “To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting,” Earlier in the day, Rudy Giuliani, adviser to Trump, told a reporter, “I’ll tell you the whole history of it. When he first announced it, he said 'Muslim ban.’ He called me up, he said 'put a commission together, show me the right way to do it, legally.’ ” A petition calling for Trump to be prevented from making a state visit to the United Kingdom picks up over 600,000 signatures, Once a petition passes the 500,000 threshold, the matter must then be debated in the UK Parliament.

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Soraya Roberts | Longreads | January 2020 |  8 minutes (1,978 words)

“And when they bombed other people’s houses, we / protested / but not enough, we opposed them but not / enough …” On January 3rd, Ukrainian immigrant Ilya Kaminsky quote-tweeted his poem, “We Lived Happily During the War,” after it went viral the day Iranian general Qassem Suleimani was assassinated on the order of President Donald Trump. The poem appeared in his long-awaited 2019 poetry collection, Deaf Republic, about a town that responds to the killing of a deaf child by itself going deaf, a parable of the present-day United States, a country that responds to its own demise (and the rest of the world’s) by blocking its ears. His tweet went up in the midst of increasing tensions between the U.S. and Iran and ahead of the death of more than 50 people in a stampede during Suleimani’s funeral procession. It went up months into bushfires ravaging New South Wales that have destroyed millions of hectares and killed roughly half a billion animals. It went up in the wake of a slew of antisemitic attacks across the country. Last Sunday, while thousands in New York marched in solidarity with the Jewish community, the Hollywood awards season kicked off in Los Angeles with the Golden Globes, and the media started gleefully tweeting about couture as though the destruction of the world had politely paused for the occasion. The timing made me think of a friend who recently asked: What if all the people who went to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker — tens of millions of Americans — protested instead?

“Now’s NOT the time to live happily,” read Kaminsky’s tweet after he extended his thanks for his poetry’s dissemination. He did not squander the moment the way so many of us often do, advising instead that we “write quality journalism & spicy op-eds & protest poems, get out in the street if you’re able. We won’t live happily during another war.”

But aren’t we already?

* * *

In April, when the Notre-Dame threatened to burn to the ground, a bunch of billionaires fell all over themselves pledging to restore the Gothic cathedral (which turned out to be a lot of bluster — the fundraising goal was largely met by small donations). The mega-rich have been comparatively quiet in response to Australia’s bushfires, which are exponentially more devastating, broadcasting their priorities all the louder. Columnist Louis Staples noted that billionaires tend to run businesses with the sorts of carbon footprints that fuel climate change, the clear cause of the conflagrations. “Also Notre Dame is a landmark in a world famous city,” he wrote, “whereas the Australian wildfires have mostly affected rural, sparsely populated areas.” This confers a kind of poetry on their predilection. Notre-Dame is not only one of France’s most powerful religious and cultural symbols, it was also looted during the French Revolution because it was emblematic of the country’s — and the church’s and the monarchy’s — plutocracy. Marie Antoinette lost her head, but so too did Notre-Dame’s statues. That billionaires pledged to rebuild this historic monument to inequity amidst worldwide uprisings against oppression and large-scale environmental destruction speaks to where their allegiances continue to lie.

More than morals, more than guilt, the number one concern of the ultra-rich appears to be rebellion — the threat of those with less coming for those with more. In the New Yorker this month, a profile of the Patriotic Millionaires, “a couple hundred” rich Americans (at least $1 million in income; more than $5 million in assets) who push for policies to address income inequality, had them voicing this fear repeatedly. Tech exec William Battle, who was raised Republican but veered left after Trump’s election, somewhat comically told the magazine (in a whisper, I have to imagine), “We could have — I don’t want to say it, but, riots.” It tickles me to think of a bunch of exceedingly rich idiots walking around with their knickers in a twist of terror over an imaginary enemy, while in reality the horrors of the world largely originate with them. Paraphrasing Walter Scheidel, author of The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-first Century, the New Yorker’s Sheelah Kolkhatar explained, “levelling happens much more often because of the collapse of a state, such as the fall of the Roman Empire; because of deadly pandemics, like the black death of the thirteen-hundreds, which killed so many people that there were labor shortages and workers’ wages went up; and because of mass-mobilization warfare, such as the two World Wars.” Sound familiar? States are too in control to bow to pitchforks; what they can’t control are natural (“natural”) disasters. Fire, flooding, starvation, disease. Which isn’t to say they aren’t trying.

“Disarm the lifeboats.” This is the title Jonathan M. Katz, who made his name reporting on the 2010 Haiti earthquake, chose for his latest The Long Version newsletter. It’s a reference to journalist Christian Parenti’s 2011 book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, which builds on a model of panic proposed by Lee Clarke and Caron Chess. These two academics claim that panic weakens social bonds, reducing the likelihood of crisis resolution, but that it is in fact rare in disaster situations. But people’s enduring belief in this myth — the truthy trope that the public panics in a crisis — ironically leads to actual “elite panic”: powerful people hoarding authority and resources and withholding information. And this panic is actually worse. “Because the positions they occupy command the power to move resources,” Clarke and Chess write, “elite panic is more consequential than public panic.” To get an idea of the sort of consequences they’re talking about, go to any newspaper. It will bear out Parenti’s prediction that elite panic results in what he calls “the politics of the armed lifeboats,” where “strong states with developed economies will succumb to a politics of xenophobia, racism, police repression, surveillance, and militarism and thus transform themselves into fortress societies while the rest of the world slips into collapse.” The failure to mitigate disaster — through cooperation and redistribution, through working together instead of apart — inevitably leads to the collapse of these lifeboats as well.

But in the meantime, as Kaminsky wrote, “I was / in my bed, around my bed America / was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.” Within the center of the country’s plush cocoon, far away from the laps of floods, or the waves of heat, or the growling hunger, or the roving pestilence, we are comfortable enough to be lulled into complacency. Sprawling homes constructed by capitalism have taught us to individualize and to consume, and so in the midst of a crisis, we respond by purchasing self-help, by buying into self-care, by looking after ourselves as a first port of call, as though anything else really comes second, as though after that massage we will actually extend a hand to anyone else. “I believe that each person has the opportunity to offer the gift of their own higher level of consciousness,” Oprah told The Today Show earlier this month. “You can only heal the world when you are healed yourself.” The feel-good cliché is hard to shake because it isn’t entirely wrong. You do have to be well before you can take care of others, right? Aren’t we always told during in-flight safety routines to put the mask on ourselves first? Except we never seem to get further than that. Those in distress, who feel less cocooned, always seem to be fighting alone. In a recent interview with The Guardian, DeRay McKesson discussed the burnout faced by people of color who have been part of Black Lives Matter protests while the larger population sat in bed and watched on TV. “We saw that people were going to say, ‘Oh, my God, people should be in the street,’ but would never join us,” he said. “We saw that people weren’t willing to risk much.” Outside the lifeboat, they got tired, and inside the lifeboat, the messiah — the one on Netflix, I mean — provided a higher calling.

* * *

“In the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) / lived happily during the war.” The last line of Kaminsky’s poem seemed to be host Ricky Gervais’s inspiration at the Golden Globes on Sunday. Before anyone could even take the stage, he castigated the ballroom full of famous faces for living happily, despite some of them — including Michelle Williams and Patricia Arquette — going on to address the war raging outside. “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech,” he warned. “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything.” And yet Gervais himself broke his own rule, pleading at the end of the show to “please donate to Australia.” I consider this about-face a positive sign, the synthetic lifeboat losing buoyancy despite itself. Gervais’s inability to follow his own dictate shows the weakness of the fortress the West tries so hard to enforce in the face of the current calamity; the invisible ruins have suddenly become visible, even when we are watching from our bedrooms. This is the sound of Australia denouncing its prime minister for refusing to acknowledge the climate change, the sound of Americans protesting their president for attacking Iran, it is even the sound of Anand Giridharadas’s viral tweet pointing out that 500 of the richest people in the world could save the planet, if only they would work together.

“Climate scientists have modeled out how global temperatures might shift in different geopolitical scenarios,” wrote environmental journalist Emily Atkin in her newsletter Heated last week. “And the scenario that always ends up with the planet in fiery climate chaos is the so-called ‘regional rivalry’ scenario — to put it simply, the one where everyone is fighting, borders are closed, and rich white-led countries like the U.S. are super racist toward less-wealthy countries filled with brown people.” Which means the opposite is also true, the planet survives in the global community scenario in which everyone is cooperating, borders are open, and all countries are equal. So here’s the choice: You can face guaranteed death in the comfort of solitude, the chaos outside muffled by Disney and Netflix, Justin Trudeau’s beard, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal defection, by any solipsistic interest, really, which does not involve engaging with the external world. Or you can face the cataclysm, you can bathe in discomfort and unrest, you can engage with it in your work and your life along with everyone else, and with them work toward survival. Refusing to rock the boat for fear of making anyone uncomfortable right now does not mean the boat is not still fated to sink in the end. If we keep continuing as we have, the Crisis of the Third Century, in which the Roman Empire almost folded due to combined political, social, and economic crises, could very well become the Crisis of the Twenty-First. In an interview with Chinese Poetry Quarterly in 2011, Kaminsky even compared present-day America to latter-day Rome. “The Roman Empire has produced many things that were valuable to modern civilization. But at what cost to other nations? This is the question anyone living in the U.S.A. today, particularly its authors, should be asking,” he said. “Anyone who reads and writes books should attempt to see with clarity the world they live in, pay taxes in, support by mere being there. Not everyone is guilty, Dostoevsky used to say, but everyone is responsible.”

By which he means: Rock the boat, especially if you’re in it, even if you don’t have a life jacket of your own.

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

[biofunmy]

“We Handed A Loaded Weapon To 4-Year-Olds”

Developer Chris Wetherell built Twitter’s retweet button. And he regrets what he did to this day.

“We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon,” Wetherell recalled thinking as he watched the first Twitter mob use the tool he created. “That’s what I think we actually did.”

Wetherell, a veteran tech developer, led the Twitter team that built the retweet button in 2009. The button is now a fundamental feature of the platform, and has been for a decade — to the point of innocuousness. But as Wetherell, now cofounder of a yet-unannounced startup, made clear in a candid interview, it’s time to fix it. Because social media is broken. And the retweet is a big reason why.

He’s not the only one reexamining the retweet. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told BuzzFeed News he is too: “Definitely thinking about the incentives and ramifications of all actions, including retweet,” he said. “Retweet with comment for instance might encourage more consideration before spread.”

Yet emphasizing that retweet with comment won’t necessarily solve Twitter’s ills. Jason Goldman, the head of product when Wetherell built the retweet, said it’s a key source of Twitter’s problems today. “The biggest problem is the quote retweet,” Goldman told BuzzFeed News. “Quote retweet allows for the dunk. It’s the dunk mechanism.”

Jason Henry for BuzzFeed News

Wetherell’s story begins 10 years ago. He joined Twitter in 2009 as a contractor fresh off a run at Google, where he built Google Reader, a once-beloved RSS aggregator the company has since discontinued. In working on Reader, Wetherell immersed himself in the study of how information spreads online, and built a reputation in Silicon Valley for his expertise. So when Evan Williams, then the CEO of Twitter, wanted to build a retweet button, he called Wetherell.

“I was very excited about the opportunity that Twitter represented,” Wetherell said, noting that he initially felt the retweet button would elevate voices from underrepresented communities.

Before Wetherell joined Twitter, people had to manually retweet each other — copying text, pasting it into a new compose window, typing “RT” and the original tweeter’s handle, and hitting send. With the retweet button, Twitter wanted to build this behavior into its product — a standard practice in tech that, at the time, was performed without much thought.

“Quote retweet allows for the dunk. It’s the dunk mechanism.”

“Only two or three times did someone ask a broader and more interesting social question, which was, ‘What is getting shared?’” Wetherell said. “That almost never came up.”

After the retweet button debuted, Wetherell was struck by how effectively it spread information. “It did a lot of what it was designed to do,” he said. “It had a force multiplier that other things didn’t have.”

“We would talk about earthquakes,” Wetherell said. “We talked about these first response situations that were always a positive and showed where humanity was in its best light.”

But the button also changed Twitter in a way Wetherell and his colleagues didn’t anticipate. Copying and pasting made people look at what they shared, and think about it, at least for a moment. When the retweet button debuted, that friction diminished. Impulse superseded the at-least-minimal degree of thoughtfulness once baked into sharing. Before the retweet, Twitter was largely a convivial place. After, all hell broke loose — and spread.

Jason Henry for BuzzFeed News

Chaos Spreads

In the early 2010s, Facebook’s leadership was looking for ways to drive up engagement. Having previously failed to acquire Twitter, they looked to its product for inspiration.

The allure of going viral via the retweet had drawn publications, journalists, and politicians to Twitter en masse. And their presence shined most prominently during the 2012 election, a big moment for Twitter and a relative dud for Facebook. So Facebook, in a now all too familiar move copied Twitter, adding a trending column, hashtags, and a retweet clone.

“Facebook was doing really well with getting photos of your friends and family, and was looking outward and was saying, ‘What else can we be?’” Josh Miller, a former Facebook product manager, told BuzzFeed News. “Twitter was obviously at its peak, and it was natural for the company to look and say: ‘Wait a minute, the News Feed is about being your newspaper, and it should probably include updates from public discourse, news, personalities, and leaders.’ Facebook didn’t have that in a lot of its content, and Twitter did.”

Eight days after the 2012 election, Facebook introduced its version of the retweet — the mobile share button. And at around the same time, Facebook upped the number of links in its News Feed to encourage more sharing of public content. “It’s kind of an implicit message to people who use Facebook, which is, ‘Hey, News Feed is for links,’” Miller said.

By introducing the button, Facebook invited disaster. And Twitter, which had the same dynamics in place, did too.

An Offensive Conduit

In 2014, Wetherell realized the retweet button was going to be a major problem when the phrase “ethics in game journalism” started pouring into a saved search for “journalism” he had on Twitter. The phrase was a rallying cry for Gamergate — a harassment campaign against women in the game industry — and Wetherell, after seeing that first batch of tweets, watched it closely.

As Gamergate unfolded, Wetherell noticed its participants were using the retweet to “brigade,” or coordinate their attacks against their targets, disseminating misinformation and outrage at a pace that made it difficult to fight back. The retweet button propelled Gamergate, according to an analysis by the technologist and blogger Andy Baio. In his study of 316,669 Gamergate tweets sent over 72 hours, 217,384 were retweets, or about 69%.

Watching the Gamergate tweets pour in, Wetherell brought up his concerns in therapy and then discussed them with a small circle of engineers working in social media at the time. “This is not something we need to think about,” he recalled one saying.

“It dawned on me that this was not some small subset of people acting aberrantly. This might be how people behave. And that scared me to death.”

“It was very easy for them to brigade reputational harm on someone they didn’t like,” Wetherell said, of the Gamergaters. “Ask any of the people who were targets at that time, retweeting helped them get a false picture of a person out there faster than they could respond. We didn’t build a defense for that. We only built an offensive conduit.”

Gamergate was a “creeping horror story for me,” Wetherell said. “It dawned on me that this was not some small subset of people acting aberrantly. This might be how people behave. And that scared me to death.”

Twitter, from that moment, became an “anger video game.” Retweets were the points.

The game took another dark turn during the 2016 presidential campaign, when impulse-sparked sharing caused outrage and disinformation to flourish on both Twitter and Facebook. It’s one thing to copy and paste a link that says Hillary Clinton is running a pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza shop — and share it under your own name. It’s another to see someone else post it, remember that you don’t like Hillary Clinton, and impulsively hit the share or retweet button.

“We have some evidence that people who are more likely to stop and think are better at telling true from false,” David Rand, an associate professor at MIT who studies misinformation, told BuzzFeed News. “Even for stuff that they are motivated to believe, people who stop and think more are less likely to believe the false stuff.”

It wasn’t only politicians and foreign entities that geared their messaging to stoke outrage-sparked sharing, but the press, too. In the rush to get stories that would be retweeted and shared, they disregarded speed bumps that might otherwise cause them to hold on a story, such as in the case of Jussie Smollett, the actor who police say staged a hate crime earlier this year.

The benefits of creating such content accrued disproportionately to the fringe. When someone retweets something, they’re sharing the content with their followers, but also sending a signal to the person they’re amplifying, said Anil Dash, a blogger and tech entrepreneur. The more fringe the original tweeter, the more valuable the retweet.

“If I retweet the New York Times, they don’t care,” Dash said. “But extreme content comes from people who are trying to be voices, who are trying to be influential in culture, and so it has meaning to them, and so it earns me status with them.”

The pursuit of that status has driven many Twitter users to write outrageous tweets in the hope of being retweeted by fringe power users. And when they do get retweeted, it sometimes lends a certain credibility to their radical positions.

The retweet and share, in other words, incentivize extreme, polarizing, and outrage-inducing content.

Jason Henry for BuzzFeed News

Undo Retweet

After a brutal 2016 election season, Facebook and Twitter reformed their policies. But as a new presidential election approaches, their services remain filled with harassment, outrage, and sensationalized news — because the companies have barely touched the machinery itself.

Advertising revenue keeps the system in place. For every dollar an advertiser spends pumping up a piece of sponsored content, it can count on some amount of shares and retweets to expand its audience organically.

“The more users see information that interests them, the more time they’ll spend on the platform; more views will be generated, and this creates the potential for greater advertising revenue,” said John Montgomery, the global executive vice president for brand safety at GroupM, a major media buyer. Without a retweet button, Wetherell said, brands “would certainly be less inclined to have a financial relationship with [a platform]. And when you’re Twitter and that’s vastly your primary source of income, that might be a challenge.”

A full rollback of the share and retweet buttons is unrealistic, and Wetherell doesn’t believe it’s a good idea. Were these buttons universally disabled, he said, people could pay users with large audiences to get their message out, giving them disproportionate power.

“Oh no, we put power into the hands of people.”

To rein in the excesses of the retweet, Wetherell suggested the social media companies turn their attention toward audiences. When thousands of people retweet or share the same tweet or post, they become part of an audience. A platform could revoke or suspend the retweet ability from audiences that regularly amplify awful posts, said Wetherell. “Curation of individuals is way too hard, as YouTube could attest,” Wetherell said. “But curation of audiences is a lot easier.”

Another solution might be to limit on the number of times a tweet can be retweeted. Facebook is experimenting with an approach of this nature, although not in its main product. Earlier this year, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, limited the number of people to which a message could be forwarded to five at a time, in response to quick-spreading rumors and disinformation. “The forward limit significantly reduced forwarded messages around the world,” WhatsApp said in a blog post. “We’ll continue to listen to user feedback about their experience, and over time, look for new ways of addressing viral content.”

MIT’s Rand suggested another idea: preventing people from retweeting an article if they haven’t clicked on the link. “That could make people slow down,” he said. “But even more than that, it could make people realize the problematic nature of sharing content without having actually read it.”

Whatever the solution, Wetherell looks at the retweet very differently than he once did — a lesson that he thinks has broader implications. “I remember specifically one day thinking of that phrase: We put power in the hands of people,” he said. “But now, what if you just say it slightly differently: Oh no, we put power into the hands of people.” ●

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In our weekly recap of news from BOOM! Studios we bring you a look at the upcoming 3rd issue of FIREFLY, a preview of the first issue of the new BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER series, on a first look at a new series based on characters from ADVENTURE TIME, and more.

The week kicked off with a preview of the 3rd issue of FIREFLY. The issue from writer Greg Pak and artist Dan McDaid along with story consultant Joss Whedon will focus on the leader of the Unificators, Boss Moon as she plots revenge on Mal and Zoe.

Look for the issue on January 16th with a main cover from Lee Garbett as well as variant covers from Garbett, Joe Quinones, and Marguerite Sauvage.

The news continued on Monday with the announcement that New York Times bestselling author Gaby Dunn will team up with artist Claire Roe for the graphic novel BURY THE LEDE. The story is based on Dunn’s experiences as a reporter for The Boston Globe, and will be released next October.

On Thursday a preview of the upcoming first issue of the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER series was released.

The series from writer Jordie Bellaire and artist Dan Mora, along with Joss Whedon as story consultant are the team behind the new series that will will re-imagine the TV series from the very beginning. The first issue will be released on January 23rd, 2019 with a few different cover versons including the main cover from Matthew Taylor, variant covers by Kevin Wada, Royal Dunlap, Becca Carey, and Jen Bartel. 

But that’s not all in terms of variant covers, there will also be two interactive covers from Miguel Mercado that will “reveal your inner Slayer or inner Demon“, and two rare variants from Kaiti Infante one that will feature Willow with the other featuring Vampire Willow.

Also on Thursday a preview of the upcoming ADVENTURE TIME: MARCY & SIMON #1 was released. The new six part series from writer Olivia Olson (who actually voiced Marceline on the show) and artist Slimm Fabert will debut in January. The series will pick up where the show ended with Marceline and the Ice King continuing their relationship.

The first issue of the mini-series from BOOM! Studios’ KABOOM! imprint will feature a main cover with art from Brittney Williams and with variant covers by Lisa Dubois, Sofie Drozdova, and Ashley Morales.

On Friday, BOOM! announced that through their Archaia imprint they will release a graphic novel from French cartoonist and illustrator, Margaux Motin.  PLATE TECTONICS: AN ILLUSTRATED MEMOIR is a  story about “detailing a modern approach to life, romance, and motherhood after divorce“. 

The 256 page hardcover has an MSRP of $24.99 USD, and will be released on June 26, 2019 at comic book stores wil traditional book stores getting it on July 2, 2019  Full press releases are below. All artwork courtesy of BOOM! Studios.

BOOM! Studios Unveils The First Look at FIREFLY #3

“Excellent craft and a compelling story come together to create a comic book that Browncoats are likely to be very, very pleased with” – ComicBook.com “[Greg Pak] has a particular skill with group dynamics and sympathetic but flawed warriors, which makes him the ideal fit for this title’s band of well-intentioned misfits” – Paste Magazine

LOS ANGELES, CA (December 10, 2018) – BOOM! Studios today unveiled a first look at FIREFLY #3, arriving in comic book shops on January 16th. New York Times best-selling writer Greg Pak (Star Wars, Ronin Island) and artist Dan McDaid (Judge Dredd), along with series creator & story consultant  Joss Whedon (the visionary writer/director behind Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Marvel’s The Avengers and more) continue the iconic worldwide pop culture phenomenon’s sold-out return to comic books in partnership with 20th Century Fox Consumer Products.

As the crew learns the shocking truth about the actions of their leaders in the Unification War, they find themselves splintered and more vulnerable than ever to the Unificators . . . and an enemy they never expected. Now, discover the untold origin of their leader Boss Moon as she puts her plan into effect to extract revenge on the two people who ruined her life – Mal and Zoe.

FIREFLY #3 features a main cover by Lee Garbett (Skyward), along with variant covers by Garbett, Joe Quinones (America) and Marguerite Sauvage (Archie).

“We’ve always known that Mal and Zoe had to make tough decisions during the Unification war, but Boss Moon is the living embodiment of the consequences. As we learn more about her connection to the captain and his first officer, we’ll also see that sometimes the lines between heroes and villains is even thinner than we ever imagined,” said Jeanine Schaefer, Executive Editor, BOOM! Studios. “Firefly has always explored the nuances of the people we choose as family and how we forgive the past without forgetting it. This is the issue where we’ll see just how strong the bond between the crew really is – and discover more about the past that has defined Mal and Zoe.”

Created by Whedon and set 500 years in the future in the wake of a universal civil war,FIREFLY centers on the crew of Serenity, a small transport spaceship that doesn’t have a planet to call home. Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, a defeated soldier who opposed the unification of the planets by the totalitarian governed Alliance, will undertake any job — legal or not — to stay afloat and keep his crew fed. Thrust together by necessity but staying together out of loyalty, these disparate men and women are seeking adventure and the good life, but face constant challenges on the new frontier, such as avoiding capture by the Alliance, and evading the dangers you find on the fringes of the universe.

FIREFLY #3 is available January 16th exclusively in comic shops (use comicshoplocator.com to find the nearest one) or at the BOOM! Studios webstore. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers, including comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and the BOOM! Studios app.

Available now, Firefly: Legacy Edition Book One collects previously released Serenity comics for the first time under one cover in a new value-priced format as Mal & the crew ride again in these official sequels to the critically acclaimed Firefly television series and Serenity film.

FIREFLY is the latest release from BOOM! Studios’ eponymous imprint, home to a world-class group of licensed comic book series and ambitious original series, including Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Planet of the Apes, Abbott, Mech Cadet Yu, Grass Kings, and Klaus.

For continuing news on FIREFLY and more from BOOM! Studios, stay tuned to www.boom-studios.com and follow @boomstudios on Twitter.

New York Times Best-Selling Author Gaby Dunn & Claire Roe BURY THE LEDE at BOOM! Studios

LOS ANGELES, CA (December 10, 2018) – BOOM! Studios today announced BURY THE LEDE, a new original graphic novel from New York Times bestselling author Gaby Dunn (I Hate Everyone But You) and artist Claire Roe (Batgirl and The Birds of Prey), which arrives in stores October 2019. Inspired by Dunn’s own experiences at The Boston Globe as a reporter, BURY THE LEDE is a timely story about how we find answers in an increasingly complex world and the hidden threats surrounding those truths.

Twenty-one-year-old Madison T. Jackson is already the star of the Emerson College student newspaper when she nabs a coveted night internship at Boston’s premiere newspaper, The Boston Lede. The job’s simple: do whatever the senior reporters tell you to do, from fetching coffee to getting a quote from a grieving parent. It’s grueling work, so when the murder of a prominent Boston businessman comes up on the police scanner, Madison races to the scene of the grisly crime. There, Madison meets the woman who will change her life forever: prominent socialite Dahlia Kennedy, who is covered in gore and being arrested for the murder of her family. The newspapers put everyone they can in front of her with no results until, with nothing to lose, Madison gets a chance – and unexpectedly barrels headfirst into danger she never anticipated.

Dunn has distinguished herself as a New York Times bestselling author, journalist, YouTuber, actress, and comedian. She and her comedy partner, Allison Raskin, created the successful YouTube channel Just Between Us along with the novel “I Hate Everyone But You,” published under Wednesday Books’ inaugural list, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, with a sequel to be published in 2019.

She has written for The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, New York Magazine, The Boston Globe, and Vulture, as well as a finance column for Marie Claire. Dunn served as a writer on ”Big Mouth” (Netflix) and in 2016, co-created and starred in a pilot for MTV, later developing original half-hour pilots for 20th Century Fox, YouTube Red, and FX, as well as joining the cast of “Take My Wife” (Starz) in the role of Brie. She is also the host and creator of the podcast, Bad With Money With Gaby Dunn, which has been featured as one of the “Best New Podcasts of 2016” by The New York Times and Vulture. The show is now in its 3rd season and a book based on the podcast will be published by Simon & Schuster on January 1st, 2019.  BURY THE LEDE is Dunn’s graphic fiction debut release.

“I’m obsessed with ‘ripped from the headlines’ crime shows and am so honored and stoked to be jumping into this genre, especially in a medium like graphic novels which allowed me to collaborate with incredible talent like my editor Dafna Pleban and artist Claire Roe,” said writer Gaby Dunn. “I love working alongside women to make cool stuff about flawed, complex female characters like our book’s heroine (and the women she surrounds herself with). Especially in a genre like crime that is so heavily male, it’s been cool to make such a queer, colorful, realistic-to-my-own-experiences depiction of being a crime reporter.”

Claire Roe is an acclaimed artist from the east of Scotland and studied animation at Duncan of Jordonstone College of Art, graduating in 2013. She has distinguished herself with dynamic work on some of the biggest properties in comics, including Wonder Womanand Batgirl and The Birds of Prey from DC Comics; Halo: Rise of Atriox from Dark Horse;The Wicked + The Divine from Image Comics; and Welcome Back from BOOM! Studios.

“On the surface this is a crime story, but in its heart it is the story of some very flawed women,” said artist Claire Roe. “We rarely get to enjoy these type of women in media, especially if they’re poc and queer, so getting to dive into this world and draw this story was right up my alley. I think true crime lovers will connect instantly with Madison, and will enjoy uncovering the motivations of the beautiful and enigmatic Dahlia.”

BURY THE LEDE is the first release in an exciting slate of adult original graphic novels from BOOM! Studios’ eponymous imprint, home to a world-class group of licensed comic book series and ambitious original series, including Joss Whedon’s Firefly and Buffy The Vampire Slayer; Abbott from Saladin Ahmed and Sami Kivelä; Mech Cadet Yu from Greg Pak and Takeshi Miyazawa; Grass Kings from Matt Kindt and Tyler Jenkins; and Klausfrom Grant Morrison and Dan Mora.

“BURY THE LEDE masterfully blends the thrilling relationships of Killing Eve with the sharp insights of Devil Wears Prada for an affecting reflection on the world around us,” said Dafna Pleban, Senior Editor, BOOM! Studios. “Gaby and Claire bring a different perspective the world of crime fiction, drawing from their own experiences to examine what it really means to be an investigative journalist in a world where it’s getting harder to trust the headlines.”

Print copies of BURY THE LEDE will be available for sale in October 2019 at local comic book shops (use comicshoplocator.com to find the nearest one), bookstores or at the BOOM! Studios webstore. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers, including comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and the BOOM! Studios app.

For continuing news on BURY THE LEDE and more from BOOM!, stay tuned to www.boom-studios.com and follow @boomstudios on Twitter.

BOOM! Studios Unveils A New Look at BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1 

An Exclusive Look at the Hotly Anticipated Pop Culture ReVAMP in 2019

LOS ANGELES, CA (December 13, 2018) – BOOM! Studios today unveiled a first look at BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1, the highly anticipated start of the all new BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER monthly comic book series that will debut on January 23rd, 2019, in partnership with 20th Century Fox Consumer Products. Eisner Award-nominated writer Jordie Bellaire (Redlands) and Russ Manning Award-winning artist Dan Mora (Klaus, Saban’s Go Go Power Rangers), along with series creator and story consultant Joss Whedon (the visionary writer/director behind Firefly, Marvel’s The Avengers, and more), reimagine the groundbreaking pop culture phenomenon from the very beginning in BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1. This is the Buffy Summers you know, who wants what every average teenager wants: friends at her new school, decent grades, and to escape her imposed destiny as the next in a long line of vampire slayers tasked with defeating the forces of evil. But the Slayer’s world looks a lot more like the one outside your window, as this new series brings her into a new era with new challenges, new friends…and a few enemies you might already recognize. The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the Gang – Giles, Willow, Xander, Cordelia and more – faces brand new Big Bads, and a threat lurking beneath the perfectly manicured exterior of Sunnydale High, confirming what every teenager has always known: high school truly is hell. WELCOME BACK TO THE HELLMOUTH, FOR THE FIRST TIME! BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1 features a main cover by acclaimed Mondo illustrator Matthew Taylor, along with variant covers by superstar Kevin Wada (She-Hulk), Royal Dunlap (Spitball), Becca Carey (Bitch Planet), and Jen Bartel (Blackbird). Fans can join the fight between Good and Evil by choosing between two special interactive variant covers from acclaimed artist Miguel Mercado (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers). Hold each one up to your face to reveal your inner Slayer or inner Demon! Will you stand with the Chosen One (#TeamSlayer) or will you side with the Vampires (#TeamVamp)? You can also track down two rare variant covers from artist Kaiti Infante that depict fan favorite Willow Rosenberg on both sides of the battle, one as Buffy’s best friend and the other…as Vampire Willow?! Buffy The Vampire Slayer premiered on the WB Network on March 10th, 1997. The Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated series, which ran for seven seasons from 1997-2003, starred Sarah Michelle Gellar as “Buffy Summers.” Chosen to battle vampires, demons and other forces of darkness, Buffy was aided by her Watcher, Rupert Giles, and a circle of friends known as the “Scooby Gang.” BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER is the latest release from BOOM! Studios’ eponymous imprint, home to a world-class group of licensed comic book series and ambitious original series, including Joss Whedon’s Firefly, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Planet of the Apes, Abbott, Mech Cadet Yu, Grass Kings, and Klaus. Print copies of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1 will be available for sale on January 23rd, 2019 exclusively at local comic book shops (use comicshoplocator.com to find the nearest one) or at the BOOM! Studios webstore. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers, including comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and the BOOM! Studios app. For continuing news on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER comic books, graphic novels and more from BOOM! Studios, stay tuned to www.boom-studios.com and follow@boomstudios on Twitter. And follow Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Your First Look at ADVENTURE TIME: MARCY & SIMON #1 by Olivia Olson and Slimm Fabert 

Discover The Future of Your Favorite Vampire Queen & Former Ice King in January 2019 

LOS ANGELES, CA (December 13, 2018) – BOOM! Studios and Cartoon Network today revealed a captivating first look at ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON #1 (of 6), the start of an all-new limited series in January 2019. Writer Olivia Olson (voice of Marceline on Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time™) and artist Slimm Fabert (Adventure Time™ comic series) unveil the exciting official comic book continuation of the Emmy® Award-winning Cartoon Network animated series by revealing what’s next for the reformed Ice King and Vampire Queen Marceline in comic book form. Marcy and Simon’s friendship has endured over 900 years and through bouts of insanity and amnesia. After the events of Adventure Time™ Season 10, we get to see the Vampire Queen and former Ice King rediscover themselves and their ever-evolving relationship as they tour the Land of Ooo in order to make amends for Simon’s past misdeeds. But the transition from evil Ice King to gentle Simon isn’t without its consequences, and Marcy will have to face her greatest fear once again: losing Simon. A modern day fable, the Emmy® Award–winning animated series Adventure Time™ has become a global success since its premiere in 2010, attracting adult and kid viewers in their millions over the course of 10 seasons. It follows unlikely heroes Finn and Jake, buddies who traverse the mystical Land of Ooo and encounter its colorful inhabitants. The best of friends, our heroes always find themselves in the middle of heart-pounding escapades. Finn, a silly kid with an awesome hat and Jake, a brassy dog with a big kind heart, depend on each other through thick and thin. Adventure Time™ is created by Pendleton Ward and produced at Cartoon Network Studios. BOOM! Studios has been publishing the New York Times bestselling Adventure Time™comic books and graphic novels through their KaBOOM! imprint for middle grade readers since 2012 and been honored with Eisner, Harvey, and Diamond Gem Awards for the series. ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON #1 is Olson’s third writing contribution to the expanded literary world of the eponymous franchise, previously collaborating with her father Martin Olson (the voice of Hunson Abadeer) on The Adventure Time™ Encyclopedia. The two also co-authored Adventure Time™: The Enchiridion & Marcy’s Super Secret Scrapbook, written from a first person perspective through Marceline’s diary entries about when she and Simon first met. Both Adventure Time™ books, published in partnership between Abrams and Cartoon Network, are available now everywhere books are sold. ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON #1 features a main cover by Brittney Williams (Goldie Vance), along with variant covers by Lisa Dubois (Rugrats), Sofie Drozdova (Regular Show) and Ashley Morales. ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON is the latest release from BOOM! Studios’ award-winning KaBOOM! imprint, home to comics for middle grade and younger readers including licensed series such as Over The Garden Wall, Regular Show, Steven Universe, Peanuts, and Garfield, along with original series like Mega Princess by Kelly Thompson and  Brianne Drouhard, Bodie Troll by Jay Fosgitt, Ruinworld by Derek Laufman, and The Deep by Tom Taylor and James Brouwer. Print copies of ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON #1 will be available on January 16th, 2019 at local comic book shops (use comicshoplocator.com to find the one nearest you), or at the BOOM! Studios webstore. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers like comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and the BOOM! Studios app. For continuing news on ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON and more from BOOM! Studios, stay tuned to www.boom-studios.com and follow @boomstudios on Twitter.

Your First Look at PLATE TECTONICS: An Illustrated Memoir

French Illustrator Margaux Motin navigates shifting ground with humor, charm, and wit in June 2019

LOS ANGELES, CA (December 14, 2018) – BOOM! Studios today revealed a first look at PLATE TECTONICS: AN ILLUSTRATED MEMOIR, an original graphic novel that depicts a modern approach to life, romance, and motherhood after divorce from the popular French cartoonist and illustrator, Margaux Motin (But I Really Wanted to Be an Anthropologist), arriving in stores June 2019. At age thirty-five, Margaux’s life is full of upheaval and unexpected twists and turns. She’s divorced, raising a child on her own, and trying to get back on her feet in today’s fast-paced world. Thankfully, she’s got her family, friends, and daughter to tell her exactly what they think at every turn. And when romance eventually returns it takes on the most unexpected shape . . . in that of her best friend! Could her life possibly get more complicated?! “Margaux’s unapologetic portrayal of herself as a single parent suddenly set adrift in the modern world is at once charming, hilarious, and brutally honest,” said Sierra Hahn, Executive Editor, BOOM! Studios. “PLATE TECTONICS is Margaux’s love letter to relearning the lines of who you are and how those lines get redrawn after life-shaking events but inevitably for the better.” PLATE TECTONICS is the latest release from BOOM! Studios’ ambitious Archaia imprint, home to graphic novels such as Mouse Guard by David Petersen; Rust by Royden Lepp;Bolivar by Sean Rubin; Jane by Aline Brosh McKenna and Ramón Pérez; About Betty’s Boob by Vero Cazot and Julie Rocheleau; Waves by Ingrid Chabbert and Carole Maurel; and licensed series like Jim Henson’s The Power of the Dark Crystal and Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: Coronation. Print copies of PLATE TECTONICS: AN ILLUSTRATED MEMOIR will be available for sale on June 26, 2019 at local comic book shops (use comicshoplocator.com to find the nearest one), and July 2, 2019 at bookstores or at the BOOM! Studios webstore. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers, including comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and the BOOM! Studios app. For continuing news on PLATE TECTONICS and more previews from BOOM! Studios, stay tuned to  www.boom-studios.com and follow @boomstudios on Twitter.   BOOM! Studios – NEWS WEEK (December 10th, 2018) @boomstudios #BoomStudios In our weekly recap of news from BOOM! Studios we bring you a look at the upcoming 3rd issue of 

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Facebook can't cope with the world it's created

Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Governments in Southeast Asia use Facebook as public evidence of wrongdoing, imprisoning activists and journalists for expressing dissent.

Facebook does not have an office in Cambodia or Myanmar, and only a small office in Thailand despite its popularity in the countries.

Facebook is affecting Southeast Asia politically just as much as the rest of the world, but the tech giant does not seem to act.

  As Mark Zuckerberg returns from his latest pilgrimage to Beijing, it's time for him to pay more attention to the countries in Asia where Facebook actually matters.

The Facebook CEO has spent years courting Chinese officials in the hopes of winning admittance to the world's largest internet market. But while he's been beating his head against the Great Firewall, Facebook has swept like wildfire through the rest of Asia, with complicated and sometimes dangerous results.

Asia is now Facebook's biggest user base. That has given the company unprecedented political sway across the continent, where it inadvertently shapes the media consumption of hundreds of millions of people.

The impacts are amplified in the region because vast swathes of relatively new internet users turn to Facebook first as their primary gateway to the rest of the web. Meanwhile, it's become clear that the attitudes and policies the Menlo Park-based company adopted when it was primarily a U.S. social network are inadequate, or even perilous, when applied in authoritarian states, fragile democracies, or nations with deep ethnic divisions.

After months of public outcry in the U.S., Facebook has finally agreed to take seriously charges that the social network played a substantive role in shaping the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

On an earnings call earlier last week, Zuckerberg told investors and reporters "how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust," adding that he was "dead serious" about findings ways to tackle the problem. That would be a positive step — but it must also extend to examining Facebook's tricky impacts in the rest of the world.

I'm writing now from Thailand, and I've recently reported in both Cambodia and Myanmar.

In each of these countries, Facebook has become an accidental political juggernaut — providing public evidence used by authoritarian governments to imprison liberals and journalists for expressing dissent, and amplifying the reach of racist demagogues whose dangerous and false diatribes happen to collect a lot of rabid clicks.

In the early, idealistic days of the internet, "the platforms used to maintain they were paper mills rather than newspapers," says Scott Malcomson, author of Splinternet: How Geopolitics and Commerce Are Fragmenting the World Wide Web and director of special projects at Texas-based Strategic Insight Group. But it's no longer possible to think of the internet as a utopian great leveler, a world-flattener that empowers only the virtuous masses.

The reality is that the effects of the digital revolution are complex and varied around the globe.

And in many parts of the world the stakes include life, liberty, and free speech — the most basic of all political rights. Facebook can no longer deny its moral responsibility to try to understand how cyberspace, law, and politics collide in each of the countries where it operates, nor its responsibility to do something about it.

In Myanmar today, Facebook is the internet.

When you buy a smartphone from a sidewalk vendor in Yangon, the seller will activate a Facebook account for novice users on the spot. Many people don't bother with email if they have Facebook — and many people in Myanmar have multiple Facebook accounts.

This is all a staggeringly recent development. The junta that controlled the country until 2011 kept the price of SIM cards artificially very high to put them out of the reach of most people in Myanmar, and thus control the flow of information.

REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

When I first visited Yangon in spring 2014, only about 1 percent of the population of 52 million had access to the internet. A government official who attempted to defend the ethnic categories listed on Myanmar's controversial census — there was no "Rohingya" category, but only "Bengali" — afterward gave me an informational DVD about the census. Today, 46 million people, or 89 percent of the population, access the internet, mostly through smartphones and mostly through Facebook — and there are far fewer stalls hawking bootleg DVDs on the streets of Yangon.

The rush online has given rise to entrepreneurial dreams and a nascent startup sector, but the internet has also given a megaphone to strident political voices formerly on the margins and made them mainstream.

Ashin Wirathu, a monk known as "the Burmese bin Laden" who has called for the expulsion of the Rohingya population, told BuzzFeed News reporter Sheera Frenkel in 2016 that his anti-Muslim Ma Ba Tha movement had gained national momentum due to Facebook. "If the internet had not come to [Myanmar], not many people would know my opinion and messages like now," he said. "The internet and Facebook are very useful and important to spread my messages," such as his call for boycotting Muslim businesses. Earlier this year, Wirathu was banned from making public sermons, but he continues to operate dozens of inflammatory Facebook pages.

The human-rights crisis in Rakhine state has escalated to what the United Nations' top human rights official declared in September was "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing" — citing the Myanmar military's extrajudicial killings, rapes, and other atrocities committed against the Rohingya population. More than 600,000 refugees are estimated to have crossed over the border into Bangladesh, where they must try to survive in muddy refugee camps with little support from any government.

The roots of ethnic hatreds in Myanmar run deep, but a recent flurry of fake news posts — including doctored photos of Rohingya supposedly burning their own homes or attacking Burmese Buddhists — has stoked popular support, or at least tolerance, for the army's hardline approach. Debunked rumors even appear on the Facebook pages of government officials.

"Facebook has become a bit like an absentee landlord in Southeast Asia," says Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division. "When Buddhist extremists start instigating action against Muslims [in Myanmar], looking around for the local Facebook representative is hopeless — there isn't one. Instead, it's sort of, complain into the void and hope some relief arrives before it's too late — and that's assuming you know a language that relevant Facebook staff are conversant in."

A spokesperson for Facebook confirmed that the company has no office in Myanmar or Cambodia, although it has consultants in each country and a regional office in Thailand. In an emailed statement to Foreign Policy, the spokesperson wrote, "We have clear rules on what can and cannot be shared on Facebook, technology that helps prevent abusive behavior, and we work with safety experts and civil society to educate people about our services."

The spokesperson said that a Facebook "product and integrity research team" would be visiting Southeast Asia this month to assess regional challenges. Internally, Facebook has also begun to grapple with how to identify and define "hate speech" in different countries.

In Myanmar, the word "kalar," or "kala," can be used as a simple prefix to refer to things of South Indian origin, like kala beans — or it can be used as a nasty ethnic slur. Richard Allen, a Facebook vice president for public policy, wrote in a blog post this summer about the tricky case of context-dependent words: "The term can be used as an inflammatory slur, including as an attack by Buddhist nationalists against Muslims. We looked at the way the word's use was evolving, and decided our policy should be to remove it as hate speech when used to attack a person or group, but not in the other harmless use cases."

Implementing the guideline was not so easy. "We've had trouble enforcing this policy correctly recently, mainly due to the challenges of understanding the context," Allen wrote. "After further examination, we've been able to get it right. But we expect this to be a long-term challenge."

It's a positive sign that Facebook is studying the way hate speech spreads online in Myanmar, and elsewhere, but that won't undo the damage that's already happened — or give 600,000 refugees a safe place to call home.

What's different about tech as opposed to other global industries — say, automobiles or pharmaceuticals — is that only after the products are released into the world do the developers gain any real understanding of what the existential problems will be. And then it may be too late.

Jatupat Boonpattaraksa, a Thai student activist who joined several peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in 2014, is in jail right now for content he posted Facebook.

Last December, the BBC Thai published a new documentary about the Thai royal family, which contained unflattering information about the then-Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, now King Rama X. Jatupat, a 25-year-old member of Thailand's New Democracy Movement, shared the link on Facebook and quoted some of its content. The next day he was arrested by plainclothes police officers for violating the country's antiquated lèse-majesté law — which outlaws insulting or defaming the monarchy, and which is selectively deployed by the junta that seized power in 2014 to suppress its critics with a veneer of legality. Thousands of people shared the BBC documentary; most of them were not arrested — but Jatupat's prosecution was used to send a chilling message to others.

The day after his arrest, he was released on a 400,000 baht ($12,000) bail. Jatupat turned to Facebook to joke: "The [Thai] economy is poor so they took my bail money." The court ordered him back to prison for the comment, and his subsequent six requests for bail were denied. In August 2017, he was sentenced to five years in prison for the initial Facebook post; after he pleaded guilty, his sentence was commuted to 2.5 years.

Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

Jatupat's case is hardly unique. Before the 2014 coup, six people were in prison on lèse-majesté charges. The junta dramatically stepped up convictions to silence its critics. Between May 2014 and March 2017, at least 90 people were arrested and 45 of them sentenced, according to research by iLaw, a Bangkok-based nongovernmental organization that tracks legislation. What's more, the majority of these recent cases have involved social media — Facebook posts and tweets — turning offhand remarks into prosecutable offenses. In these recent cases, only 17 percent of those arrested were released on bail before their trial dates. Many cases were tried in military courts.

Why is Facebook so useful to the junta? First, its insistence on a "real name-only" policy makes for easy tracking of dissidents. Even in cases where people successfully mask their names, their web of social connections makes them potentially easy to identify. (In the U.S., sex workers have already found themselves inadvertently exposed by Facebook's data-aggregation and friend suggestions.) Hard-to-navigate privacy settings can mean that what people mistakenly think of as private speech, limited to a small group of friends, is often anything but. "If you make a certain kind of comment online, you can quickly be sent to prison in Thailand," says iLaw researcher Anon Chawalawan.

The news isn't all bad. Over the past five years, Facebook helped enable a groundswell of citizen journalism and activism in Cambodia — but a recent experimental tweak to the timeline function pulled the rug out from under regular news posters, at a time when the political tolerance for free speech was already shrinking.

In January 2014, I met Cambodian monk But Buntenh in a small room on the third floor of a ramshackle office building in Phnom Penh. The founder of the Independent Monk Network for Social Justice, he was seated on an embroidered cushion on the floor and surrounded by electric cords charging his various devices: a laptop, tablet computer, and smartphone.

Buntenh had recently begun to organize what he called "monk reporters" to use their smartphone cameras to document peaceful human rights demonstrations in Cambodia's capital — including garment workers marching to raise the minimum wage and families evicted for development projects marching to demand compensation or adequate rehousing. (Many were living in shantytowns, with blue tarp roofs pulled between tent poles.)

"I am trying to encourage monks to become more political," he told me at the time. "We cannot wait for our political parties to change; we must do it ourselves." Buntenh had by then recruited about 5,000 monks to his watchdog army. Their cause took a grave turn on Jan. 3, when military police opened fireon striking garment workers in Phnom Penh, and at least seven people were killed. Photos, videos, and firsthand reports — from the monk's group and from other witnesses — quickly circulated on social media, especially Facebook and Line. That put pressure on Cambodian politicians and caught the attention of domestic and international news media and the foreign brands — Nike, Adidas, Puma, Gap — that were some of the factories' biggest customers. The minimum wage was eventually raised, although the widows and families of the deceased workers were never compensated for their loss in any significant way.

I visited Cambodia a half dozen more times between 2014 and 2016 to report on the evolution of the country's intertwined social justice movements, collectively referred to as the "Cambodian Spring." The internet was absolutely essential to the minimum-wage and land-rights campaigns, and the sharpest knife in the toolbox was Facebook. Activists turned to Facebook for news reports from the Cambodia Daily and Radio Free Asia, for updates from human rights groups like LICADHO, and for messages from march organizers and journalists. A 2016 survey conducted by the Asia Foundation found that more Cambodians said they got their news from Facebook and the internet than from watching TV. "Facebook became the country's most important source of news, giving the government some headaches as its old information monopoly has been circumvented," says Sebastian Strangio, author of Hun Sen's Cambodia.

Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters

These are darker times now in Cambodia, as earlier this year the government arrested the leader of the main opposition party, expelled the staff of the U.S. State Department-funded National Democratic Institute, and forced the independent Cambodia Daily to shut down because of an unpaid tax bill. Facebook didn't change the political winds, but it did inadvertently squeeze remaining channels of dissent.

It's unlikely that anyone in Silicon Valley was thinking of strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen's political repression when Cambodia was selected in October as one of six pilot countries to test out a new timeline feature, which separates news items from personal posts. A Facebook blog post by Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri explained that the goal was "to understand if people prefer to have separate places for personal and public content."

But the BBC has reported that one unintended impact was dramatically shrinking the number of people who would see published items. "Out of all the countries in the world, why Cambodia? This couldn't have come at a worse time," a Cambodian blogger told the BBC, explaining that the number of people who saw her public video had dropped by more than 80 percent. "Suddenly I realized, wow, they actually hold so much power.… [Facebook] can crush us just like that if they want to."

Because Cambodia is a small market of 16 million people, testing a new feature there may have seemed like a perfectly reasonable choice to an engineering product team.

But when your product is not sneakers or toasters, but the single most important way that people in that country receive news and information, it bears a different kind of consideration.

The Cambodia Daily is now attempting a comeback, and this too will depend on Facebook. The journal has recently started publishing Khmer-language essays and voice pieces through its Facebook page, bearing a new motto, "Second Life: A Life Online." It remains to be seen how successful or long-lived the effort will be, but one hopes that its fate won't be determined by Menlo Park suddenly switching algorithms without notice or consultation. As a former Daily staffer told me — via Facebook, naturally — "I really like the idea, but it's a big risk," adding that the publisher "might get arrested for this … maybe."

These three cases are very different. But they all speak to the need for Facebook to localize, diversify its policies, and decide what kind of values and culture it's trying to promote.

In theory, the fourth-most valuable internet company in the United States — worth more than half a trillion dollars — knows this. In a statement emailed to FP, a Facebook spokesperson wrote, "There is no ‘one size fits all' approach that works everywhere, and we are committed to working closely with local organizations to develop education programs, policies and products that meet people's needs in different parts of the world."

But so far, the social network hasn't lived up to its ideals, says Human Rights Watch's Robertson. "They are going to need to build up their capacity to get further into the game, talking with all the stakeholders from civil society, business and government to ensure they know the political and social context and are prepared to respond in a substantive, rights respecting way." He adds: "People entrust their private and public lives to this platform — so decisions need to have customer buy-in, and communications need to reflect two-way dialogue."

For a long time, Silicon Valley espoused a dogma of information neutrality — claiming, falsely, that search engines and social networks were only impartial tools. But, at a time when algorithms can determine whether an entire country sees genuine news or hate-filled propaganda, this idea can't be sustained. "Move fast and break things" was Facebook's mantra for developers until 2014, signaling the twin totems of speed and aggression that animate many programmers and venture capitalists in the U.S. tech industry. Yet it's a lot less appealing when the things being broken are people.

NOW WATCH: I won't trade in my iPhone 6s for an iPhone X or iPhone 8 — here's why

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MUST WATCH: CNN Producer caught on hidden camera, basically admits CNN is an awful journalism outlet that is not to be trusted.

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MUST WATCH: CNN Producer caught on hidden camera, basically admits CNN is an awful journalism outlet that is not to be trusted.

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Mirror

Is this legit? How is this not exploding right now?

It will. It’s 3 am on a Monday night, this will go ham tomorrow morn.

Just about midnight here in California (but this story won’t see the light of day here). Looking forward to seeing this get huge

the world is better because of people like you. think i’ve seen your username before too

I appreciate that, you as well. Keep on the righteous path

He’s a bot

wow, a feel good bot and you can’t even see “his” post history. Really strange shit.

Except here on Reddit. The liberal circle jerk will keep it out of the main subs.

It’s O’Keefe so media will ignore it “cause he’s a criminal and propagandist”.

OANN will be playing this at 11a.m. Eastern

One America News Network said they are going to show the tapes at 11a.m. eastern!

7 hours later and it’s been taken down

Maybe that’s how.

This guy has been popped before for editing videos in ways that change the message and it was really early in the morning. The other thing is that his guy works for CNN Health, but w.e.

in ways that change the message

Any examples? I hear this said but in context his videos have always seemed equally damning. Taking down ACORN put a target on his back during an adminstration known for prosecuting joirnalists and political enemies so saying “zomg community service” doesn’t cut it for me.

Any examples? I hear this said but in context his videos have always seemed equally damning. Taking down ACORN put a target on his back during an adminstration known for prosecuting joirnalists and political enemies so saying “zomg community service” doesn’t cut it for me.

Any examples? How about the one you named yourself. O’Keefe had to pay out $100,000 to one of the former ACORN employees after he handed over the entire unedited videos which the California AG reviewed and found, “no evidence of criminal conduct on the part of ACORN employees nor any evidence that any employee intended to aid or abet criminal conduct.”

He even admitted in that case that he was just trying to damage ACORN and wasn’t acting with any sort of journalistic objectivity.

His entire career is like that. He releases “damning” video evidence which when compared to the raw video prove to be heavily edited segments which misrepresent the stated views of the people he films by removing context or chronologically shifting the video to make it appear bad.

By comparison, O’Keefe makes media outlets like CNN and Fox with their horribly biased and non-journalistic practices look like absolute angels.

You’re acting like the one good employee ACORN had absolves the other horrible employees who willingly helped a supposed pimp who was prostituting out underage girls and never sought help from a child advocacy group let alone the police after the meeting. You’re doing some subterfuge yourself. If O’Keefe’s undercover vids on ACORN encouraged a reform and improved protocol on how employees react to pimps and who they should contact after, then it was worth it bc, apparently, most of the employees don’t have an idea of what is right or wrong, including when it involves pedophilia.

No wrongdoing was found to have occurred by ACORN when the full video came out. That was the findings of the California AG office and the federal Government Accountability Office.

Well, half true. The case in California was a terrible case and Okeefe should be ashamed for not following through on what the workers did after he left. But the Brooklyn DA reviewed the tapes that affected their region and found that although they were heavily edited, the most damning words were still very much in context.

There was 100% wrong doing found at ACORN. You’re a liar. There was no criminal wrong doing. As being an unethical asshole is not against the law. One of the employees caught on tape had gone to the police and had been leading on O’Keefe. There was no way for O’Keefe to know that; the rest of the employees did not. That employee sued him as they lost their job and were doing the right thing.

Which means the rest of them were actively giving advice for criminal conduct and had no intention of reporting it to the police.

Not really, the msm just do to okeefe what they did to center of medical progress. Throw around ‘deceptive edit’ and dont back it up when the full tapes are released.

What part is fake?

It’s a project veritas release. The people who keep getting busted for releasing edited and out of context videos. The odds of this being legit are approaching zero. Basically, nothing this guy releases is true. He literally generates the fake for fake news.

Can you back that up?

Please provide citations.

Mirror

https://youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE

Thank you, good sir.

I’m sure I’m the minority opinion here but project veritas has a history of editing video. I don’t think we should look too much into what they do until they release raw footage. When it cuts to the background images for the “because it’s ratings” part it sounds very different than the preceding lines. CNN does suck 99% of the time but that doesn’t mean any attack against it is credible.

All videos are edited. Every single one. This ‘deceptive edit’ crap falls apart when the full vidoes are released showing it in the same context.

Ok then let’s wait until the full video is released before making concrete judgments.

We do; and they are vindicated every time by those of us who bothered to watch them. Meanwhile useful idiots read an article from Salon that claims they watched the full videos and that the clips were deceptively edited. Releasing the full videos does not get the Democrats to shut up about “doctored” videos; as that is their only deflection of the deep seated corruption within their party and their political allies.

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Can you provide a context in which his comments would be seen as ok?

It’s a business, people are like “The media has like an ethical…” psssshhhhh…

But all the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked about in journalism school, you’re just like, that’s adorable. That’s adorable. This is a business

You honestly couldn’t make up a worse quote if you tried to. Holy shit.

The saddest part is his words wouldn’t be so damning if they weren’t so honest.

Probably the first time he does something honest, and it is going to backfire on him.

But muh context!

I’m sure they must have edited out a part at the beginning where the Project Veritas guy said “let’s play a game where I ask you questions and you make up fake answers that make CNN look as horrible as possible.” Or a part at the end where the CNN guy said “lol jk I really had you going there didn’t I?” Right guys??

HOW DARE HE ATTACK THE STELLAR REPORTERS OF CNN

DON LEMON IS ETHICS INCARNATE

ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE IS A RACIST

So, politics aside. People stopped paying for real reporting and news. Combine the lack of interest in actual reporting, and the media mergers and newspaper buyouts, etc and you get this media environment. It rewards shock headlines and ‘fake news,’ because no one wanted to purchase journalism and even if they did, public trading of news companies means cost cutting and share holder profits are more important than news…. so what?

we have only one model that doesn’t get fucked by this and it is NPR. And NPR ain’t great, because government funding for it got cut years ago and the replacement ‘funding from ‘charitable foundations for agenda reporting,’ and listener donations sucks. So decent reporters bounce out of NPR ASAP and American suffers.

So the market is rewarding sensationalism, and firms are producing sensationalism?

Yes.

But this isn’t anything new. Sensationalist news has been a part of the human experience for centuries.

Media mongrel Hearst from the early 20th century made his fortune off of fake news. It was common in the 19th and early 20th century. Some what died down in the mid 20th century; and became dominant again at the end of the 20th century.

we have only one model that doesn’t get fucked by this and it is NPR.

NPR has a horrible liberal bias. They’ll pick a topic like ‘The benefits of abortion’ and then discuss the topic in a somewhat fair manner. But the bias was built into the topic and no amount of honest discussion can overcome that, especially when 90% of the people talking are liberals.

I really like this response, because I agree, but not exactly in the same way. Your response illustrates a particular problem: You think NPR has a liberal bias, because you are to the right of it. I think NPR has a centrist bias, because I’m to the left of it. Either way, we both think NPR doesn’t represent our views fairly and doesn’t ask questions in an objective way.

NPR leans left; though not as much as CNN. If you were going to give it a scale of -10 to 10 (positive 10 being extreme conservative):

MSNBC: -8

CNN: -4

NPR: -2/-3

Fox: 4

National Review: 8

So if you’re a typical reader of Salon or viewer of MSNBC and you have been duped into thinking you’re somewhat moderate; than you may think NPR is “towards” the center. But there is no doubt that it leans left.

Business Insider did a piece of news source bias a few years back. NPR is, as per their research, not close to centrist but leftist .

This is cool link, however it does not say what you say it does, it says the ‘Audience of NPR is more liberal.’ It makes no conclusions about the content.

As a regular NPR listener, I can assure you that they spend a wildly disproportionate amount of time pushing issues that are only important to a tiny minority of the population (surprise: that would be a varied number of far-left activist groups that send them press releases on the topic). In the particular example I’m thinking of, the cause represents something like 10% of a 5-10% minority in the U.S. I hear the same “news” and “personal interest” stories promoting that issue literally every day. The only things that ever change are the names of the people involved (and maybe one or two minor details). It’s the exact same political narrative, hammered over and over and over again. It is literally no longer newsworthy, yet I still hear it in their “news” coverage every day.

The thing is, I’m sure that NPR doesn’t even realize how disproportionately they’re covering the topic. It’s of particular interest to them and most of their audience because it reinforces their preexisting worldview biases…and the issue has been weaponized and is now being used to attack anyone on the “other” side of that issue.

The thing is that they make no bones about it being liberal, and they are at least good at disclosure. You hear how liberal they are every 15 minutes when the call out supporters.

They also have conservative guests on all the time. Congressmen, PR staff from think-tanks, candidates and staff. They come off as smart, engaged people just looking to make things better. Sure, most of the audience and all the staff think they’re wrong. But it’s opposition, not smears

If you just want to know what’s going on in the world, you could do a whole lot worse.

I stopped listening to NPR during the 2012 election. They would have a “panel” about a political topic. The Moderator would be a hard core democrat. Then he would have 3 panelists on. One who was extremely far left (socialist), one who was a hard core Democrat, and one who was moderate (who they called a Republican). The “Republican” threw Romney and Republicans under the bus on every topic and talked about how Republicans were extreme (the guy supposedly representing Right).

That panel would have been horrible enough had they had a real conservative on there who actually believed in Republican policies (as he would be out numbered 3:1); but the fact that they put up a strawman of a Republican on just so he could provide legitimacy to the program was down right infuriating. Fuck that network.

Thank you for being a voice of reason. The real shock of this video should be the realization that all our media is like this, not just CNN.

Thank you for not going directly to the T_D “fuck MSM, CNN, they’re out to get us”…

I may not agree with most of y’all on a lot of issues, but I do agree that there are loads of issues plagueing(sp?) this country. Media and journalism being pretty damn high up there. Especially the fact that it is a driving force if the polarization and partisanship of politics we have today.

I am a big fan of government funded stuff like NPR/PBS/etc, but the thing I am worried about just as you are is how can this be funded by the [insert political party] without them having undue influence over content and context that is out out…it’s a tough question with a probably even tougher solution.

Every group will deny and try to fight news and reporting that makes them look bad. It’s PR, I get it, but when that party is directly responsible for the funding of said programming, how can one prevent retaliation when they report on the actions (good or bad) of that party.

If liberals can post salon and mother jones articles 24/7 on r/politics, they’ll probably believe whatever CNN told them anyway.

My new favorite is holding the independent up as some holy bastion of new reporting. Its little more than a tabloid

And the Guardian

US liberals like to pretend that UK news outlets are never biased

I would argue that UK news outlets are more biased.

But they’re European. Theyre much smarter than us hillbilly Americans /s

I’m in complete agreement. There is a very scummy element is These English news outlets. Have a read about the phone hack scandals if you want a good laugh

just goes to show how morally bankrupt CNN and the rest of the MSM is.

Cable news, in general, is wet, hot garbage.

Print and other forms of news are just as bad though.

It’s literally all dogshit.

This project verita video is amazing though. Puts it all out right in display.

We have the best undercover journalists, don’t we folks?

Amazing? I thought it was over produced and repetitive. They showed the same lines six times in a row.

That’s project veritas for ya

Still good that this is out there but the editing is crap lol

If everything is bad, where do you get your information?

Consensus and time.

Most of the time, most of the news from all these different “partisan” outlets is actually identical. There’s not much difference in the handling of facts, only the angle or the narrative. So when you’re looking up a story that actually matters, read the same story from 8 different, competing, clashing outlets so that forming a narrative is impossible.

News outlets are dishonest, but they don’t usually fabricate. Their spin is more like a reality TV show being edited, inserting context, or removing relevant facts. Reading all the different edits at the same time quickly reveals what is craft, and what is real. Once you do that, you have the facts.

The news brings you the facts because that’s what you ask for. But that’s not really what people want. Their business model is about offering clarity, interpreting the facts into understandable storylines. They take a complicated, crowded, confusing world, and make it nice and neat. Demand is created for a product that has nothing to do with facts. If the news industry was a gas station, facts would be the gasoline, and narrative would be the snacks and drinks.

“The news” is an entertainment product. News junkies are not informed people, they are just entertainment addicts. If you want to be informed, you have to think like a journalist, not an addict.

e: TV news is especially bad because of the medium. TV is slow, information-light, and non-interactive. Good for interviews and speeches, little else.

At the end of the day, this is what happens if you leave journalism to the free market. State sponsored news would be infinitely worse, of course, but this video is a perfect example of what happens when you try and make informing people a business.

I only trust news that doesn’t use click bait titles, doesn’t use dramatic language, and moves on to something else once the segment is over. That pretty much leaves pbs.

The current media situation is a direct result of the elimination of the fairness doctrine by Reagan, and especially the Telecommunications act of 1996 courtesy of Clinton. It’s astoundingly difficult to get a straight true version of almost any news event these days.

I know what you are trying to say, but I would actually argue it is easier.

With the internet and the democratization of information, it is not that difficult to get actual hard facts and even read spin from all sides and form your own opinion.

I think most people are just either lazy, don’t care, or want to read something from their perspective. With your take, it seems the only logical solution would be some state intervention or some new law, which would not be good.

That is a lot of trust in people. Most people just use the internet to find the “facts” to back their pre-conceived belief and stop there.

Its how we’ve ended up in/with huge echo chambers as the divide in the country grows and grows.

While I don’t necessarily disagree with your statement, and don’t trust people, I just think the vast majority don’t care.

Actually most people don’t give a shit about politics like us, and they shouldn’t. It is difficult to see that when you are passionate about it and caught up in discussion and the news everyday.

I don’t really give a shit about politics either. I just like being well-informed. That means being informed about the shell game that is modern American politics.

I sort of disagree about the internet part. I think the internet contributes to the problem because it allows people with zero critical thinking skills access to reams of truly fake news that they aren’t equipped to deal with. I recall a few months ago my Facebook feed lit up with stories posted by my more conservative friends and relatives about how Clinton was under indictment, and had fled the country in a private jet with the FBI hot on her heels. Then there was the whole pizzagate thing that ended with a guy barging into a pizza restaurant with a gun looking for a nonexistent basement full of pedophilia victims. I don’t know what the solution to all this is because regulating the internet in any way that would alleviate the problem would have massive negative consequences, and would most likely be unconstitutional to boot.

I understand your point, and it is made by many, if not most.

I just completely disagree, and believe you, and others, are blowing it out of proportion. One, I understand many people get their “news” from facebook, but it is not a news source. Rarely are people actually reading the articles posted, just the headlines and others’ opinions and then arguing in the comment section. It is more of an activity than just getting the news.

And ok people are dumb and lazy, but still, the majority of Americans, as they should be, are politically apathetic and actually don’t care about any of this shit. They just want their cute cat videos and memes, go to their jobs pay for their shit and pursue their own happiness. It is tough to see that when you are passionate about politics and see the craziness going on, as am I, but it is true.

And pizzagate was a fringe conspiracy, not believed by many, and I understand that more were open to it being true, but only a very small amount actually actively believed in it. And, overtime, the community who did actively believed in it shrunk, and I believe that is a direct result of continuous research and discussion on the open internet. That guy who went to the pizza parlor clearly was crazy and has some other issues, and was he motivated or spurred by this small fringe conspiracy community? Yes, probably, but again, it was very, very small. I am more concerned about main stream news outlets and the left openly saying the GOP is going to kill people and all republicans are Nazis, which is all accepted and mainstream, and if true, I mean somewhat justifies violence, if they are all Nazis and going to kill people?

So, you speak of trying to find a solution to something that is not really a problem. That is just what scares me, the left and right do that all the time. Err on the side of not making laws or regulations or “solutions”, freedom and the market takes care of it. The internet is much more of solution than contributing to a small problem. That form of thinking, even from a conservative point of view, only leads down the road to regulation and control, and less freedom.

I’d agree with you if I didn’t see people I regarded as reasonable and intelligent falling for this crap on a daily basis. I’ll also reiterate that I’m in no way advocating for more internet regulation, but I don’t buy the free market will fix things argument either. The free market follows profits, and telling people what they want to hear will always be more profitable, than telling simple truth.

Yes, the internet gives critical-thinkers the power to consume a ton of reports and form their own opinions, but most people aren’t doing this. Most people don’t use the internet for investigative or comparative journalism. Most people get their “news” from their television or radio broadcast of choice.

We don’t need new laws to regulate what can and cannot be reported. We don’t need a government agency picking winners and losers by controlling funding or airtime. We need some goddamn leadership. We need a president or other high-visibility leader who can be trusted, who has proven integrity, and who communicates with “both sides” to speak to the importance of holding journalists and media networks accountable.

We need the press to keep the government in check, but we need to keep the press in check. “We”, on average, don’t give a shit, so it’s hard to see this starting with us. The corporate click-bait press isn’t likely to usher a true leader into the White House, and the people there now sure as hell aren’t going to change their tune to their own detriment, so I don’t know how we get here. Sad.

“fairness doctrine” has nothing to do with this. It was a ploy to force radios to give liberal commentators shows that no one would listen to and they would lose money on.

Don’t forget that public trading of media companies means they are beholden to share holders, rather than accountable to the general public for the quality of their journalism.

hiding under the guise of the first amendment to publish stories like this is where it should be wrong, the first amendment shouldn’t protect news agencies from publishing false claims as the effect on public perception could be disastrous to the republic as we have seen this past year. It should be treated as yelling fire in a movie theater

It is absolutely amazing how deluded and ignorant the people over at r/politics can be.

This same video was posted there, and rather than be concerned about a CNN producer laughing at the idea of ‘ethics’ in their reporting, they instead claim that Okeefe only makes fake news. They are burying their heads so far in the sand that they will deny video and audio evidence, that couldn’t possibly be taken out of context, and merely attack the source. (not to mention that their favorite video against Trump, the Billy Bush grab-em-by-the-pussy video, is exactly the same type of video.)

Its the easiest way of dismissing evidence out of had without actually having to look at it.

Exactly why reddit is terrible, you can hide posts you don’t like and popular opinions go to the top.

I mean it’s good for sports and stuff, but terrible for anything opinion-formed.

They are burying their heads so far in the sand

Oh, they’re burying their heads all right, just not in sand.

Why all of the jump cuts? Veritas just opens themselves to all of this criticism. Show us the unedited video from beginning to end if it’s so damning. I will never trust a veritas video that’s not one unedited stream of content. They’ve burned bridges too many times before this to demand any less.

Have you ever watched a single investagative report in your life? All are jump cut because because there can be hours of filler between points. Do you really want to waste your time watching them order hot wings and excusing themselves for a shit?

They could make 2 versions available…

Tell you what. I’ll take 5 minute clips. Not 15-20 seconds. That make you happy?

O’Keefe released hours of raw footage for the Planned Parenthood release; and the useful idiots still ignored them. Essentially reddit was full of leftist saying “Well I read Salon; and they watched the full video and they said the clips were deceptively edited. So clearly they were doctored.”

Hopefully O’Keefe releases the raw video

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PP does actually sell fetal organs though… totaling on avg. $2-3k for all the organs sold in 1 fetus. This is not some conspiracy theory either. There are published receipts and invoices from organ/tissue repository companies ordering these fetal organs directly from PP to then sell to biotech or academic centers.

Shipping tissues is expensive, they aren’t dumping a fetus’s liver into a leftover Amazon Prime box and sending it on 1-week USPS. It involves very expensive refrigeration packages, fast shipping, and so on.

It’s so morally despicable that they’re giving the tissues to science. We should be cremating and burying the 5-gram clump of cells instead.

So because there were “jump cuts” AKA getting to the point because people don’t have time to watch hours long videos, the entire video is fake?

Shouldn’t stop them from releasing the unedited video on the side, just to verify

They did the same thing with the planned parenthood stuff but people still dismissed it because of “dishonest editing” even though the full version showed the same. People just want to ignore whatever goes against their narrative.

Pretty sure all people do this.

The unedited video is likely 100s of hours long and wouldn’t be able to be uploaded as anything other than a .torrent efficiently.

No, but it certainly raises questions about the veracity of the reporting. Isn’t that what people are demanding these days? If something looks sketchy, call it out. Or is that only trotted out when the news goes against one’s own narrative?

the jump cuts are because this is a secretly taped conversation only loosely connected to the topic it is being presented as connected to. You have to remove context in order to present this in a way that gets the message out that the messenger wanted.

They admitted to clickbait and we’re saying it means conclusively there’s nothing real with Russia. It’s understandable since that’s a giant leap.

The same applies to Fox News as well. 24 hour cable news stations are all in it for the ratings and appealing to their base.

Two-sides of the same coin.

Cognitive dissonance

They said the same thing about the abortion videos that they were actually a setup, or maybe factually, a couple of scenes were taken out of context. Even if they were, that doesn’t dismiss the entirety of the content

You mean like how planned parenthood sells baby parts and the DNC was literally ripping up ballots? Sure seems legit.

Wait, are you actually denying that PP sells fetal organs to tissue repository companies? Bc there are actual invoices and receipts showing that these companies purchase fetal organs from PP to then resell to biotech and academic centers. The Congressional report is pretty black and white.

For profit? Yes. Which is what the video was trying to prove.

It wasn’t attempting to prove. It was showings there was probable cause for a criminal investigation. At worse they violated U.S. law, at best they were unethical ass clowns talking callously about a very sensitive subject. Either way it showed a deeply troubling culture at the heart of Planned Parenthood; and the left couldn’t allow that to be viewed by many.

You mean like how the representive from the medical research firm flat out said they were buying body parts? Is that what you’re talking about? Did you watch the unedited film that showed the exact same thing or are you falling for the ‘deceptive edit’ bs.

How about the several investigations afterwards that found no such thing is happening, and a grand jury actually indicting the people who made the video? https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/2-abortion-foes-behind-planned-parenthood-videos-are-indicted.html

Charges were dropped. Update your links.

indicting the people who made the video?

The charges on them keep getting dropped and chamged

Those indictments have all been thrown out. The state AG has been shown to collude with PP to bring those charges

Liberal judges, obviously, government conspiracy to get in on that sweet sweet fetal organ market.

Based on this sub, I have to assume you aren’t being sarcastic, in which case I’m sorry you actually think that way.

I am. People taking Project Veritas as a serious source while condemning CNN is hilarious – CNN’s pretty shit, but not literally-charged-with-a-crime unethical.

Thank God for the sarcasm. And of course, the subs this is exploding on are r/conservative, r/uncensorednews, and r/conspiracy (Would assume T_D but have them filtered out. I’m fine seeing the occasional post from these subs to know their take, but that floods the feed a bit much).

[removed]

Ad Hominem attacks are the only way liberals know how to discuss things.

They are burying their heads so far in the sand that they will deny video and audio evidence

Exactly why the Dems will permanently push undecided voters to the right and continue to lose elections.

The media is not the enemy of the American people!

-The Media

r/politics moderators are removing these videos.

Here is r/politics labeling this as an “Unacceptable Source”.

Here is a working mirror to the video.

R/politics cant stand the truth

They’re awfully militant.

Reddit moderators on r/politics and r/news are typical leftists. They try to control free speech. They give an insight into what this country would be like if the left ever got control.

I take it this won’t be on r/news

Very fake news.

This is Wikileaks style, and it’s only part one

Someone make more popcorn

Well I just finished a bowl, but I can make some more if you’d like. Pop Secret Extra Butter, sprinkled with garlic salt and black/cayenne pepper ok with you?

Drowned in liberal tears I hope?

Where do you think the garlic salt comes from? Sometimes there’s even a hint of patchouli (from the hippies).

Trump is considering escalating our presence in Syria. The Senate is considering huge changes to health care. The Supreme Court just issued a bunch of interesting opinions, including one where Justice Kagan broke with the liberal justices to support a church.

CNN: lol, let’s just continue reporting the witch hunt.

This actually made me laugh. So many other legit angles they could’ve gone with vs Trump but nope. RUSSIA.

I think the REAL scandal here for the left is that a CNN producer was filmed enjoying some Chick-fil-A.

I’m not a conservative, but I’m glad this is coming out. When the media tries to whip people into a frenzy against each other, everyone loses.

Edit: Video source has a history of manipulation for conservative agenda, add grain of salt, remain skeptical of media corporations. Based on post history, /u/MiyegomboBayartsogt may be Russian propaganda shill.

Not everyone loses. Trump wins. Americans willing to work win. The people whipped into hysterical frenzy are losing it, but those indolent bed pressing citizens aren’t doing anything productive anyhow. Getting those types out in the street to pout and protest is probably the first exercise any of them have had in a long while.

You think hard-working people aren’t negatively impacted by shitty media?

So long as deep pockets and corrupt politicians can use the media with impunity to manipulate the electorate, the country is fucked. Sure, you and I might have jobs, but I’d rather strive for the quality of life under a less-corrupt regime than what exists today. Politicians actively use the media to divide the population, which distracts from actually governing the country and solving the problems millions of people have. It’s all about winning, not governing, which means American democracy is just a fucking sham…at least third-world dictators are honest about what they want.

in a normal just world, this would be in /r/all by now. Sadly, those that manages the algorithm is going to keep this from going to /r/all to reduce the red pilling as much as possible.

Two instances of it are right now, including this one. You probably won’t like the top comments on the one much higher up, though.

Wow I forgot about project Veritas. It’s oddly relieving to see them doing their thing without the stresses of the election season. It feels like I can sit back and relax and watch the dumpster fire that is the left.

Between the Russia narrative finally cracking, the democrats starting to eat each other, the Supreme Court ruling and now this, I am chuckling to myself at how right trump was. I really can’t handle this much winning in such a short amount of time. I need time to digest this much positive news. Can’t imagine how die hard liberals must feel.

Trump gambled absolutely everything – all his credibility, his political capital, his entire presidency – in a show down with the media.

Conservatives have been too chicken shit to do this for years, despite the fact we all know the media is mostly leftist propaganda. Trump came along and said, “Yeah, I’ll prove it,” and it’s working. It’s bloody well working. I am shocked how well he has flipped what looked like a hopeless narrative.

The media has lost its credibility. The deep state has been exposed to the disinfecting sun light. The Democrats have been so focused on chasing laser pointers like cats that they haven’t taken a moment to reflect on why they lost.

The Clintons are getting exposed as the snakes they are, and the whole Obama administration is taking a hit retroactively.

This is incredible. And we still might get another 2 Supremes.

tl;dr: Trump decided not to be the classic, well-trained house pet for the left. Is kicking ass. Who woulda thought?

Except the left still won’t see it that way. Still work to be done

The core of the left will never see it that way. We can only hope that a solid majority of the people will see how deluded the left is.

At least 25% of the population is irredeemable, it’s just a fact

deplorables?

No, just delusional leftists who would riot before accepting the rule of law.

Because you asked… I feel very little. There wasn’t anything in the video I didn’t already sort of know. It’s painfully obvious CNN has been hyping the hell out of this story with little to no new useful information. BUT, It doesn’t indicate at all however, that the Russia story is fake, just that CNN, like ALL cable news, is about selling a narrative their audience wants to hear, because ratings are king. I’d prefer CNN devote their time to reporting on the Nepotism, Cronyism, and incompetence of this administration, and shut the hell up about Russia until there is something to report.

CNN devote their time to reporting on the Nepotism, Cronyism, and incompetence of this administration

So stop the hysteria of a made up narrative to pick it up on a different made up narrative? Come on..

Appointing your untrained son in law to bring peace to the Middle East doesn’t smell a little like nepotism to you? You think there is no one more qualified in foreign diplomacy to tackle this task?

He should respond soon. Probably had to look up what nepotism means and is now digging through breitbart articles for an argument to regurgitate.

I feel like a lot of the things he said can be applied not only to CNN but Fox News and all cable news. Just with different agenda.

And BOOM! Just like that, CNN credibility destroyed.

To be fair, they didnt have any to begin with.

[removed]

Did you not hear “mostly bullshit” and “do it just for ratings”? This is called lying when you print false stories. The lies that were printed out a few days ago by CNN got 3 people fired.

CNN is a partisan hack of an organization that acts like it’s the Pravda arm of the DNC.

This concern trolling would not be happening if say, Fox News were caught in this kind of scheming.

Can you quote where the reporter said the leaks are bullshit?

The dude said the Trump –> Russia headlines are bullshit, not that the Trump’s Team –> Russia headline are bullshit. He also justified Russia trying to swing our election, which isn’t exactly a denial of them doing it.

Without fake news and unfounded conspiracies, Rachel Maddow will be selling oranges on the highway

This is going to be spun as out-of-context quotes that are intentionally edited to sound as a bad as possible and there really isn’t any scandal here.

The man just straight up laughed at the notion of journalistic ethics. It looks pretty bad.

He was taken out of context!!! Maybe he was reading from a play script about a jaded and corrupt Fox News journalist. /s

I think you just scored a job at CNN.

I’m just going to go by the fact I’m seeing literally dozens of newish accounts and accounts that’ve never posted in many of the subreddits this story is being posted in trying to deflect and dispute the entire video as a sign that it’s a pretty big deal for CNN right now. Seriously, I’ve never seen this much damage control on all of Reddit. Even this thread is at 58% upvoted since it hit r/all. They are panicking trying to bury this one.

I’ve noticed for months now. They like to infect subs like r/uncensorednews and other alternative subreddits that were created to get away from the shills and astroturfing.

The #1 tactic of these people is to derail conversations and change the topic.

And yet the hardcore Reddit Lefties are still pushing the Russia story. Love it and hate it at the same time. Makes them look incredibly foolish, but in the end hurts America with their ignorance.

Number 1 Trending Video on YouTube right now and it hasn’t even been a day. Of course r/politics is silent. Here’s a comment from there.

Once again, this story is already debunked & confirmed as fake. This was a low-level associate intern who decided to spew bullshit about something he has no idea about. He’s not even working directly on the Russia team. CNN has been absolutely stellar as of late and this retraction just cements that they are an elite organization that goes the extra mile to fact check and verify their sources. Couldn’t be more pleased with the stellar work CNN has been putting out lately

It’s amazing to think that these people believe the media has any reason to have any sort of journalistic integrity. Its a business. I remember during Bernie’s campaign there was a post at the top of r/all about how Clinton was funded by CNN. But now that CNN aligns with their agenda they trust them. Unbelievable.

59% upvoted, LMAOOOO

mirror

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE

1) CNN, Fox News, etc. are all stupid ratings-chasing bullshit. Anyone who doesn’t see that by now isn’t paying attention. It’s been getting worse and worse throughout my life – haven’t really watched any MSM in years, but I’m guessing it’s all pretty abhorrent by now.

2) I don’t really care if news outlets secretly think a story is bullshit or not – but I do care what the FBI thinks. They thought there was enough to warrant an investigation. And now the story has become more about impeding that investigation.

As soon as I saw this video I knew the thread would be brigaded

Damning quotes aside, the most interesting takeaway is how much day to day control Jeff Zucker has over the narrative.

The video was removed

I’m a pretty leftist dude but I think we all have known CNN lost credibility during the election cycle with how they put Clinton on a pedestal.

I mean we all knew it, but this is still one of the most sickening things I have ever seen and still shocking even when you know news is all staged and money driven for agendas. The worst part for me was when he only laughs at the idea of journalistic ethics…

Wow that guy’s gonna get suicided by 4 bullets to the back of the head

Damn this is exciting

R/news is in some hard denial.

CNN isn’t just fake news. They are very fake news. And apparently proud of it. I wonder how the kiddies in r/politics will try and spin this. I mean, he literally says they don’t care about ethics in journalism. It’s kinda hard to spin that.

Edit- oh. They won’t spin it. They will just ignore it apparently. Neato

Edit again- Hi shareblue! Thanks for stopping by to downvote us.

While I must admit I am generally liberal, even I have to say all the Trump-Russia collusion stories are getting old to see. Do I think some of the things that are reported, and some of Trump’s own actions and statements seem a little sketchy? Sure. But ultimately, that’s why there is currently some sort of investigation going on. I don’t need to hear about it every day because at this point there really isn’t too much more to report, and to be honest it just takes away from actually debating the policies that are being put out, especially health care currently. If something comes up in the future from this investigation or otherwise, sure let’s bring it up again and discuss it, but unless/until something like that occurs I would rather see more talk about policies.

While I must admit I am generally liberal, even I have to say all the Trump-Russia collusion stories are getting old to see.

This is the statement that should have the Democrats scared shitless.

It’s also why they’ve been trying to pivot away from the Russian witch hunt but they’re having trouble getting their people to stop. The base is convinced Trump is a traitor and won’t let up.

because they convinced them, what a vicious web we weave….

All of our intelligence says that Russia interfered and Trump says he fired Comey to slow/stop the Russia investigation, it’s not exactly all CNNs fault.

The country should be scared shitless, not just dems.

He fired comey because comey wouldnt hold a presser saying trump wasnt under investigation. Which is true and what comey told him on three diffrent occasions.

Was it dumb? Sure.

Was it interference with the russia investigation? Not even a little bit.

Share exact sentiment.

The worst part to me is how much a lot of the media alienates people, and how much I feel that extends into the everyday political discussion. You see it on all sides. I see it all the time when people call people on the left “libtards” or “snowflakes” and people on the left respond calling people on the right “Nazis” and “bigots” and “racists” and all it does it take away from substantive conversation and instead ignore any possible points that the other side may have because they are from the other side so let’s just call them names instead of actually refute arguments or points they have made.

you are a great, great great person

Concern trolls out in full force tonight.

What really blows me away is how divided along political lines so many people are. If you are 100 percent Democrat or 100 percent Republican on issues as far as the party line goes, you are also 100 percent moron. Every issue deserves discussion. There is nuance in politics which is why most congressmen go to law school.

If anything, this should be a wakeup call to everyone about their favorite news channels.

BREAKING NEWS::::: they’re all this way. They need money to make money. Fox, CNN, Breitbart, Inforwars, all of it is for-profit. They create sensationalized headlines that their viewers care about for some reason, and that’s how you keep eyes on the tube. It’s all despicable, but not surprising.

This is huge. Can’t wait to hear the official ShareBlue narrative on this one.

No mention of this on /r/politics. Head, meet sand.

I CAN’T HANDLE ALL THIS WINNING!!

Link broken???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE

(Why?)

Published at Tue, 27 Jun 2017 04:13:51 +0000

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from Aw Jeez Not This Liberal Crap Again http://strikingtherightbalance.com/must-watch-cnn-producer-caught-on-hidden-camera-basically-admits-cnn-is-an-awful-journalism-outlet-that-is-not-to-be-trusted-3/

[guslawrencealevelmedia]

Press reg

What is regulation? Regulation is a set of rules and guidelines put in place to protect people, especially younger people from dangerous or inappropriate content. In the UK, a democracy we have free speech and therefore a free press which self regulates. The regulation is supposed to protect the public from lies, and provide accurate News and everyones privacy. There some conflict between the right to privacy and the right to impart information and express opinions. Press Regulation has always been criticised for being ineffective. 

How is press currently regulated?, the press is self regulated, it has its own set of rules and guidelines called a Editors code of Practise and a Complaints procedure. Most Newspapers and magazine are overseen by IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation) the new regulator set up by the industry in 2014 to replace the PCC (Press Complaints Commission) after the phone hacking scandal and lesson inquire. Not all Newspapers have joined IPSO as its voluntary. Most Newspapers have joined however the Guardian, Independent, Financial times and the Private Eye haven't. They regulate in a similar way to the PCC editors code of practise. IPSO have been in place for 2 years so it is not yet clear wether they’ll be more effective than the Press Complaints Commission the previous regulator. Nor is it clear wether they’ll be Replaced by IMPRESS. 

Does IPSO protect effectively?, for example the Sun “Queen Backs Brexit”, this quote broke the accuracy clause, the headline was significantly misleading and represented a failure to take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information. IPSO has issued an upheld ruling on the complaints by buckingham palace about an article headlined “Queen Backs Brexit” published on 9th March 2016. IPSO’s complaints committee ordered hat an adjudication be published in full on page two of the newspaper and that headline “IPSO rules against sun queen headline” must also be published on the newspapers front page to a size and scale agreed with IPSO. 

The Mail online posted Bikini photos of Princess Beatrice on holiday which was a serious breach of privacy. The Complaints said that the photographs were taken surreptitiously in circumstances in which she had a reasonable expectation of privacy, on a private leisure boat. the complaints also expressed concern comments on her appearance. she was expressed further concern about readers comments and said that a number of these had made explicit or abusivr reference to her appearance, representing a further intrusion. 

The Press Complaints Commission replaced The Press Council in the 1990′s they received 1000′s of complaints, the majority of the complaints were due to Accuracy and Privacy issues. the Press was deemed out of control, they didn't investigate the phone hacking scandal. The Allegations about the News of the World phone hacking first made in 2002, by the Guardian. They said it was “One Rouge Reporter”. This Phone hacking scandal led to the Leveson Inquiry into the relationship between media, police and the government and media ethics and regulation. Leveson ruled press behaviour had been outrageous and ruined lives. The phone joking didn't just break newspapers own guidelines, it broke the law! The Leveson inquiry was ealing with moral ethics of the press and its regulation rather than just the law. It involved celebrities, police, politicians and recommendations. The Relationship between press, public , phone hacking which had 184 witnesses included the Dowlers and McCans.

Leveson recommended to the Press Complaints Commissions by a new regulator undetermined by Law with the power to fine, the government debated this but then approved it. straight after the press immediately disagreed and then quickly set up IPSO. The Government didn't want to take on the power of the Press with the run unto the election near .  

Will Either of the two protect effectively? Neither of them re independent, IPOS is set up and funded by the Press and IMPRESS is funded by the government  and Max Mosley. Whereas The Guardian and Private-Eye regulate themselves. Ian Hislop who is the editor of the Private Eye says “there are perfectly good laws, journalists just have to obey them. No regulation would’ve stopped the phone hacking, they broke their own codes more importantly the law!.

The Regulators do not regulate on taste and decency becausese it is Subjective therefore the press can be highly offensive. The Sun Posted a Cover of Reeve Steenkamp shortly after she was murdered. The image they used considering she was just murdered was her in a bikini. The Sun obviously used this photo off her to sell copies and target the Male Gaze Theory to attract people, The cover on the Sun didn't actually mention Revva Steenkamps name on the page! 

Freedom of speech for example Katie hopekins in the sun’s controversial article called immigrants “Cockroaches”, said she didn’t care about dead babies. Loads of complaints but IPSO rules that it was ok as an opinion piece. When Hopkins Libelled the Mahmoods, however she and the mail was taken to court and paid our hurndreds so law Works. The Cockroach article has been removed too, not because of IPSO but because of successful targeting of advertising by “Stop Funding hate”.

 It Remains to be seen whether IPSO or IMPRESS will be effective in the future as they have not really had to pass a big test yet. IPSO says they’re winning back the public trust as they help to push apologies and amendments on the front page of the newspaper. However in the future the government could force the two regulators or it could allow them both to run together. Regulating newspaper will become harder in the future as the technology of web 2.0 become more advanced. This means not everything that is posted can be regulated as there are many people posting images or fake news such as the southend news company which is a parody news account which made a headline about Somali pirates taking over the pier. In recent years there has ben an increase in Fake News and even real news being dismissed as Fake by powerful people such s Donald Trump as they disagree with what has been written about them. This means that now there is now even more importance for the press to behave ethically and true fully and this is because press self regulation is effective if every newspaper and source is doing it well. Some believe that before press regulation becomes effective there needs to be a change in press culture and integrity. However the newspaper need to be controversial and have bold ambiguous headlines so they draw in the public t be their newspaper and not a rival as this is what we want as the general public. It is argued that “ No form of regulation will make the press perfect” and that maybe the best regulators could be us the general public with our money because if we disagree with a headline from a paper and then no one buys the paper any longer they will not have the money to keep producing the papers.

[lodelss]

Happily Never After

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | January 2020 |  8 minutes (1,978 words)

“And when they bombed other people’s houses, we / protested / but not enough, we opposed them but not / enough …” On January 3rd, Ukrainian immigrant Ilya Kaminsky quote-tweeted his poem, “We Lived Happily During the War,” after it went viral the day Iranian general Qassem Suleimani was assassinated on the order of President Donald Trump. The poem appeared in his long-awaited 2019 poetry collection, Deaf Republic, about a town that responds to the killing of a deaf child by itself going deaf, a parable of the present-day United States, a country that responds to its own demise (and the rest of the world’s) by blocking its ears. His tweet went up in the midst of increasing tensions between the U.S. and Iran and ahead of the death of more than 50 people in a stampede during Suleimani’s funeral procession. It went up months into bushfires ravaging New South Wales that have destroyed millions of hectares and killed roughly half a billion animals. It went up in the wake of a slew of antisemitic attacks across the country. Last Sunday, while thousands in New York marched in solidarity with the Jewish community, the Hollywood awards season kicked off in Los Angeles with the Golden Globes, and the media started gleefully tweeting about couture as though the destruction of the world had politely paused for the occasion. The timing made me think of a friend who recently asked: What if all the people who went to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker — tens of millions of Americans — protested instead?

“Now’s NOT the time to live happily,” read Kaminsky’s tweet after he extended his thanks for his poetry’s dissemination. He did not squander the moment the way so many of us often do, advising instead that we “write quality journalism & spicy op-eds & protest poems, get out in the street if you’re able. We won’t live happily during another war.”

But aren’t we already?

* * *

In April, when the Notre-Dame threatened to burn to the ground, a bunch of billionaires fell all over themselves pledging to restore the Gothic cathedral (which turned out to be a lot of bluster — the fundraising goal was largely met by small donations). The mega-rich have been comparatively quiet in response to Australia’s bushfires, which are exponentially more devastating, broadcasting their priorities all the louder. Columnist Louis Staples noted that billionaires tend to run businesses with the sorts of carbon footprints that fuel climate change, the clear cause of the conflagrations. “Also Notre Dame is a landmark in a world famous city,” he wrote, “whereas the Australian wildfires have mostly affected rural, sparsely populated areas.” This confers a kind of poetry on their predilection. Notre-Dame is not only one of France’s most powerful religious and cultural symbols, it was also looted during the French Revolution because it was emblematic of the country’s — and the church’s and the monarchy’s — plutocracy. Marie Antoinette lost her head, but so too did Notre-Dame’s statues. That billionaires pledged to rebuild this historic monument to inequity amidst worldwide uprisings against oppression and large-scale environmental destruction speaks to where their allegiances continue to lie.

More than morals, more than guilt, the number one concern of the ultra-rich appears to be rebellion — the threat of those with less coming for those with more. In the New Yorker this month, a profile of the Patriotic Millionaires, “a couple hundred” rich Americans (at least $1 million in income; more than $5 million in assets) who push for policies to address income inequality, had them voicing this fear repeatedly. Tech exec William Battle, who was raised Republican but veered left after Trump’s election, somewhat comically told the magazine (in a whisper, I have to imagine), “We could have — I don’t want to say it, but, riots.” It tickles me to think of a bunch of exceedingly rich idiots walking around with their knickers in a twist of terror over an imaginary enemy, while in reality the horrors of the world largely originate with them. Paraphrasing Walter Scheidel, author of The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-first Century, the New Yorker’s Sheelah Kolkhatar explained, “levelling happens much more often because of the collapse of a state, such as the fall of the Roman Empire; because of deadly pandemics, like the black death of the thirteen-hundreds, which killed so many people that there were labor shortages and workers’ wages went up; and because of mass-mobilization warfare, such as the two World Wars.” Sound familiar? States are too in control to bow to pitchforks; what they can’t control are natural (“natural”) disasters. Fire, flooding, starvation, disease. Which isn’t to say they aren’t trying.

“Disarm the lifeboats.” This is the title Jonathan M. Katz, who made his name reporting on the 2010 Haiti earthquake, chose for his latest The Long Version newsletter. It’s a reference to journalist Christian Parenti’s 2011 book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, which builds on a model of panic proposed by Lee Clarke and Caron Chess. These two academics claim that panic weakens social bonds, reducing the likelihood of crisis resolution, but that it is in fact rare in disaster situations. But people’s enduring belief in this myth — the truthy trope that the public panics in a crisis — ironically leads to actual “elite panic”: powerful people hoarding authority and resources and withholding information. And this panic is actually worse. “Because the positions they occupy command the power to move resources,” Clarke and Chess write, “elite panic is more consequential than public panic.” To get an idea of the sort of consequences they’re talking about, go to any newspaper. It will bear out Parenti’s prediction that elite panic results in what he calls “the politics of the armed lifeboats,” where “strong states with developed economies will succumb to a politics of xenophobia, racism, police repression, surveillance, and militarism and thus transform themselves into fortress societies while the rest of the world slips into collapse.” The failure to mitigate disaster — through cooperation and redistribution, through working together instead of apart — inevitably leads to the collapse of these lifeboats as well.

But in the meantime, as Kaminsky wrote, “I was / in my bed, around my bed America / was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.” Within the center of the country’s plush cocoon, far away from the laps of floods, or the waves of heat, or the growling hunger, or the roving pestilence, we are comfortable enough to be lulled into complacency. Sprawling homes constructed by capitalism have taught us to individualize and to consume, and so in the midst of a crisis, we respond by purchasing self-help, by buying into self-care, by looking after ourselves as a first port of call, as though anything else really comes second, as though after that massage we will actually extend a hand to anyone else. “I believe that each person has the opportunity to offer the gift of their own higher level of consciousness,” Oprah told The Today Show earlier this month. “You can only heal the world when you are healed yourself.” The feel-good cliché is hard to shake because it isn’t entirely wrong. You do have to be well before you can take care of others, right? Aren’t we always told during in-flight safety routines to put the mask on ourselves first? Except we never seem to get further than that. Those in distress, who feel less cocooned, always seem to be fighting alone. In a recent interview with The Guardian, DeRay McKesson discussed the burnout faced by people of color who have been part of Black Lives Matter protests while the larger population sat in bed and watched on TV. “We saw that people were going to say, ‘Oh, my God, people should be in the street,’ but would never join us,” he said. “We saw that people weren’t willing to risk much.” Outside the lifeboat, they got tired, and inside the lifeboat, the messiah — the one on Netflix, I mean — provided a higher calling.

* * *

“In the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) / lived happily during the war.” The last line of Kaminsky’s poem seemed to be host Ricky Gervais’s inspiration at the Golden Globes on Sunday. Before anyone could even take the stage, he castigated the ballroom full of famous faces for living happily, despite some of them — including Michelle Williams and Patricia Arquette — going on to address the war raging outside. “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech,” he warned. “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything.” And yet Gervais himself broke his own rule, pleading at the end of the show to “please donate to Australia.” I consider this about-face a positive sign, the synthetic lifeboat losing buoyancy despite itself. Gervais’s inability to follow his own dictate shows the weakness of the fortress the West tries so hard to enforce in the face of the current calamity; the invisible ruins have suddenly become visible, even when we are watching from our bedrooms. This is the sound of Australia denouncing its prime minister for refusing to acknowledge the climate change, the sound of Americans protesting their president for attacking Iran, it is even the sound of Anand Giridharadas’s viral tweet pointing out that 500 of the richest people in the world could save the planet, if only they would work together.

“Climate scientists have modeled out how global temperatures might shift in different geopolitical scenarios,” wrote environmental journalist Emily Atkin in her newsletter Heated last week. “And the scenario that always ends up with the planet in fiery climate chaos is the so-called ‘regional rivalry’ scenario — to put it simply, the one where everyone is fighting, borders are closed, and rich white-led countries like the U.S. are super racist toward less-wealthy countries filled with brown people.” Which means the opposite is also true, the planet survives in the global community scenario in which everyone is cooperating, borders are open, and all countries are equal. So here’s the choice: You can face guaranteed death in the comfort of solitude, the chaos outside muffled by Disney and Netflix, Justin Trudeau’s beard, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal defection, by any solipsistic interest, really, which does not involve engaging with the external world. Or you can face the cataclysm, you can bathe in discomfort and unrest, you can engage with it in your work and your life along with everyone else, and with them work toward survival. Refusing to rock the boat for fear of making anyone uncomfortable right now does not mean the boat is not still fated to sink in the end. If we keep continuing as we have, the Crisis of the Third Century, in which the Roman Empire almost folded due to combined political, social, and economic crises, could very well become the Crisis of the Twenty-First. In an interview with Chinese Poetry Quarterly in 2011, Kaminsky even compared present-day America to latter-day Rome. “The Roman Empire has produced many things that were valuable to modern civilization. But at what cost to other nations? This is the question anyone living in the U.S.A. today, particularly its authors, should be asking,” he said. “Anyone who reads and writes books should attempt to see with clarity the world they live in, pay taxes in, support by mere being there. Not everyone is guilty, Dostoevsky used to say, but everyone is responsible.”

By which he means: Rock the boat, especially if you’re in it, even if you don’t have a life jacket of your own.

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

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Mirror

Is this legit? How is this not exploding right now?

It will. It’s 3 am on a Monday night, this will go ham tomorrow morn.

Just about midnight here in California (but this story won’t see the light of day here). Looking forward to seeing this get huge

the world is better because of people like you. think i’ve seen your username before too

I appreciate that, you as well. Keep on the righteous path

He’s a bot

wow, a feel good bot and you can’t even see “his” post history. Really strange shit.

Except here on Reddit. The liberal circle jerk will keep it out of the main subs.

It’s O’Keefe so media will ignore it “cause he’s a criminal and propagandist”.

OANN will be playing this at 11a.m. Eastern

One America News Network said they are going to show the tapes at 11a.m. eastern!

7 hours later and it’s been taken down

Maybe that’s how.

This guy has been popped before for editing videos in ways that change the message and it was really early in the morning. The other thing is that his guy works for CNN Health, but w.e.

in ways that change the message

Any examples? I hear this said but in context his videos have always seemed equally damning. Taking down ACORN put a target on his back during an adminstration known for prosecuting joirnalists and political enemies so saying “zomg community service” doesn’t cut it for me.

Any examples? I hear this said but in context his videos have always seemed equally damning. Taking down ACORN put a target on his back during an adminstration known for prosecuting joirnalists and political enemies so saying “zomg community service” doesn’t cut it for me.

Any examples? How about the one you named yourself. O’Keefe had to pay out $100,000 to one of the former ACORN employees after he handed over the entire unedited videos which the California AG reviewed and found, “no evidence of criminal conduct on the part of ACORN employees nor any evidence that any employee intended to aid or abet criminal conduct.”

He even admitted in that case that he was just trying to damage ACORN and wasn’t acting with any sort of journalistic objectivity.

His entire career is like that. He releases “damning” video evidence which when compared to the raw video prove to be heavily edited segments which misrepresent the stated views of the people he films by removing context or chronologically shifting the video to make it appear bad.

By comparison, O’Keefe makes media outlets like CNN and Fox with their horribly biased and non-journalistic practices look like absolute angels.

You’re acting like the one good employee ACORN had absolves the other horrible employees who willingly helped a supposed pimp who was prostituting out underage girls and never sought help from a child advocacy group let alone the police after the meeting. You’re doing some subterfuge yourself. If O’Keefe’s undercover vids on ACORN encouraged a reform and improved protocol on how employees react to pimps and who they should contact after, then it was worth it bc, apparently, most of the employees don’t have an idea of what is right or wrong, including when it involves pedophilia.

No wrongdoing was found to have occurred by ACORN when the full video came out. That was the findings of the California AG office and the federal Government Accountability Office.

Well, half true. The case in California was a terrible case and Okeefe should be ashamed for not following through on what the workers did after he left. But the Brooklyn DA reviewed the tapes that affected their region and found that although they were heavily edited, the most damning words were still very much in context.

There was 100% wrong doing found at ACORN. You’re a liar. There was no criminal wrong doing. As being an unethical asshole is not against the law. One of the employees caught on tape had gone to the police and had been leading on O’Keefe. There was no way for O’Keefe to know that; the rest of the employees did not. That employee sued him as they lost their job and were doing the right thing.

Which means the rest of them were actively giving advice for criminal conduct and had no intention of reporting it to the police.

Not really, the msm just do to okeefe what they did to center of medical progress. Throw around ‘deceptive edit’ and dont back it up when the full tapes are released.

What part is fake?

It’s a project veritas release. The people who keep getting busted for releasing edited and out of context videos. The odds of this being legit are approaching zero. Basically, nothing this guy releases is true. He literally generates the fake for fake news.

Can you back that up?

Please provide citations.

Mirror

https://youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE

Thank you, good sir.

I’m sure I’m the minority opinion here but project veritas has a history of editing video. I don’t think we should look too much into what they do until they release raw footage. When it cuts to the background images for the “because it’s ratings” part it sounds very different than the preceding lines. CNN does suck 99% of the time but that doesn’t mean any attack against it is credible.

All videos are edited. Every single one. This ‘deceptive edit’ crap falls apart when the full vidoes are released showing it in the same context.

Ok then let’s wait until the full video is released before making concrete judgments.

We do; and they are vindicated every time by those of us who bothered to watch them. Meanwhile useful idiots read an article from Salon that claims they watched the full videos and that the clips were deceptively edited. Releasing the full videos does not get the Democrats to shut up about “doctored” videos; as that is their only deflection of the deep seated corruption within their party and their political allies.

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Can you provide a context in which his comments would be seen as ok?

It’s a business, people are like “The media has like an ethical…” psssshhhhh…

But all the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked about in journalism school, you’re just like, that’s adorable. That’s adorable. This is a business

You honestly couldn’t make up a worse quote if you tried to. Holy shit.

The saddest part is his words wouldn’t be so damning if they weren’t so honest.

Probably the first time he does something honest, and it is going to backfire on him.

But muh context!

I’m sure they must have edited out a part at the beginning where the Project Veritas guy said “let’s play a game where I ask you questions and you make up fake answers that make CNN look as horrible as possible.” Or a part at the end where the CNN guy said “lol jk I really had you going there didn’t I?” Right guys??

HOW DARE HE ATTACK THE STELLAR REPORTERS OF CNN

DON LEMON IS ETHICS INCARNATE

ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE IS A RACIST

So, politics aside. People stopped paying for real reporting and news. Combine the lack of interest in actual reporting, and the media mergers and newspaper buyouts, etc and you get this media environment. It rewards shock headlines and ‘fake news,’ because no one wanted to purchase journalism and even if they did, public trading of news companies means cost cutting and share holder profits are more important than news…. so what?

we have only one model that doesn’t get fucked by this and it is NPR. And NPR ain’t great, because government funding for it got cut years ago and the replacement ‘funding from ‘charitable foundations for agenda reporting,’ and listener donations sucks. So decent reporters bounce out of NPR ASAP and American suffers.

So the market is rewarding sensationalism, and firms are producing sensationalism?

Yes.

But this isn’t anything new. Sensationalist news has been a part of the human experience for centuries.

Media mongrel Hearst from the early 20th century made his fortune off of fake news. It was common in the 19th and early 20th century. Some what died down in the mid 20th century; and became dominant again at the end of the 20th century.

we have only one model that doesn’t get fucked by this and it is NPR.

NPR has a horrible liberal bias. They’ll pick a topic like ‘The benefits of abortion’ and then discuss the topic in a somewhat fair manner. But the bias was built into the topic and no amount of honest discussion can overcome that, especially when 90% of the people talking are liberals.

I really like this response, because I agree, but not exactly in the same way. Your response illustrates a particular problem: You think NPR has a liberal bias, because you are to the right of it. I think NPR has a centrist bias, because I’m to the left of it. Either way, we both think NPR doesn’t represent our views fairly and doesn’t ask questions in an objective way.

NPR leans left; though not as much as CNN. If you were going to give it a scale of -10 to 10 (positive 10 being extreme conservative):

MSNBC: -8

CNN: -4

NPR: -2/-3

Fox: 4

National Review: 8

So if you’re a typical reader of Salon or viewer of MSNBC and you have been duped into thinking you’re somewhat moderate; than you may think NPR is “towards” the center. But there is no doubt that it leans left.

Business Insider did a piece of news source bias a few years back. NPR is, as per their research, not close to centrist but leftist .

This is cool link, however it does not say what you say it does, it says the ‘Audience of NPR is more liberal.’ It makes no conclusions about the content.

As a regular NPR listener, I can assure you that they spend a wildly disproportionate amount of time pushing issues that are only important to a tiny minority of the population (surprise: that would be a varied number of far-left activist groups that send them press releases on the topic). In the particular example I’m thinking of, the cause represents something like 10% of a 5-10% minority in the U.S. I hear the same “news” and “personal interest” stories promoting that issue literally every day. The only things that ever change are the names of the people involved (and maybe one or two minor details). It’s the exact same political narrative, hammered over and over and over again. It is literally no longer newsworthy, yet I still hear it in their “news” coverage every day.

The thing is, I’m sure that NPR doesn’t even realize how disproportionately they’re covering the topic. It’s of particular interest to them and most of their audience because it reinforces their preexisting worldview biases…and the issue has been weaponized and is now being used to attack anyone on the “other” side of that issue.

The thing is that they make no bones about it being liberal, and they are at least good at disclosure. You hear how liberal they are every 15 minutes when the call out supporters.

They also have conservative guests on all the time. Congressmen, PR staff from think-tanks, candidates and staff. They come off as smart, engaged people just looking to make things better. Sure, most of the audience and all the staff think they’re wrong. But it’s opposition, not smears

If you just want to know what’s going on in the world, you could do a whole lot worse.

I stopped listening to NPR during the 2012 election. They would have a “panel” about a political topic. The Moderator would be a hard core democrat. Then he would have 3 panelists on. One who was extremely far left (socialist), one who was a hard core Democrat, and one who was moderate (who they called a Republican). The “Republican” threw Romney and Republicans under the bus on every topic and talked about how Republicans were extreme (the guy supposedly representing Right).

That panel would have been horrible enough had they had a real conservative on there who actually believed in Republican policies (as he would be out numbered 3:1); but the fact that they put up a strawman of a Republican on just so he could provide legitimacy to the program was down right infuriating. Fuck that network.

Thank you for being a voice of reason. The real shock of this video should be the realization that all our media is like this, not just CNN.

Thank you for not going directly to the T_D “fuck MSM, CNN, they’re out to get us”…

I may not agree with most of y’all on a lot of issues, but I do agree that there are loads of issues plagueing(sp?) this country. Media and journalism being pretty damn high up there. Especially the fact that it is a driving force if the polarization and partisanship of politics we have today.

I am a big fan of government funded stuff like NPR/PBS/etc, but the thing I am worried about just as you are is how can this be funded by the [insert political party] without them having undue influence over content and context that is out out…it’s a tough question with a probably even tougher solution.

Every group will deny and try to fight news and reporting that makes them look bad. It’s PR, I get it, but when that party is directly responsible for the funding of said programming, how can one prevent retaliation when they report on the actions (good or bad) of that party.

If liberals can post salon and mother jones articles 24/7 on r/politics, they’ll probably believe whatever CNN told them anyway.

My new favorite is holding the independent up as some holy bastion of new reporting. Its little more than a tabloid

And the Guardian

US liberals like to pretend that UK news outlets are never biased

I would argue that UK news outlets are more biased.

But they’re European. Theyre much smarter than us hillbilly Americans /s

I’m in complete agreement. There is a very scummy element is These English news outlets. Have a read about the phone hack scandals if you want a good laugh

just goes to show how morally bankrupt CNN and the rest of the MSM is.

Cable news, in general, is wet, hot garbage.

Print and other forms of news are just as bad though.

It’s literally all dogshit.

This project verita video is amazing though. Puts it all out right in display.

We have the best undercover journalists, don’t we folks?

Amazing? I thought it was over produced and repetitive. They showed the same lines six times in a row.

That’s project veritas for ya

Still good that this is out there but the editing is crap lol

If everything is bad, where do you get your information?

Consensus and time.

Most of the time, most of the news from all these different “partisan” outlets is actually identical. There’s not much difference in the handling of facts, only the angle or the narrative. So when you’re looking up a story that actually matters, read the same story from 8 different, competing, clashing outlets so that forming a narrative is impossible.

News outlets are dishonest, but they don’t usually fabricate. Their spin is more like a reality TV show being edited, inserting context, or removing relevant facts. Reading all the different edits at the same time quickly reveals what is craft, and what is real. Once you do that, you have the facts.

The news brings you the facts because that’s what you ask for. But that’s not really what people want. Their business model is about offering clarity, interpreting the facts into understandable storylines. They take a complicated, crowded, confusing world, and make it nice and neat. Demand is created for a product that has nothing to do with facts. If the news industry was a gas station, facts would be the gasoline, and narrative would be the snacks and drinks.

“The news” is an entertainment product. News junkies are not informed people, they are just entertainment addicts. If you want to be informed, you have to think like a journalist, not an addict.

e: TV news is especially bad because of the medium. TV is slow, information-light, and non-interactive. Good for interviews and speeches, little else.

At the end of the day, this is what happens if you leave journalism to the free market. State sponsored news would be infinitely worse, of course, but this video is a perfect example of what happens when you try and make informing people a business.

I only trust news that doesn’t use click bait titles, doesn’t use dramatic language, and moves on to something else once the segment is over. That pretty much leaves pbs.

The current media situation is a direct result of the elimination of the fairness doctrine by Reagan, and especially the Telecommunications act of 1996 courtesy of Clinton. It’s astoundingly difficult to get a straight true version of almost any news event these days.

I know what you are trying to say, but I would actually argue it is easier.

With the internet and the democratization of information, it is not that difficult to get actual hard facts and even read spin from all sides and form your own opinion.

I think most people are just either lazy, don’t care, or want to read something from their perspective. With your take, it seems the only logical solution would be some state intervention or some new law, which would not be good.

That is a lot of trust in people. Most people just use the internet to find the “facts” to back their pre-conceived belief and stop there.

Its how we’ve ended up in/with huge echo chambers as the divide in the country grows and grows.

While I don’t necessarily disagree with your statement, and don’t trust people, I just think the vast majority don’t care.

Actually most people don’t give a shit about politics like us, and they shouldn’t. It is difficult to see that when you are passionate about it and caught up in discussion and the news everyday.

I don’t really give a shit about politics either. I just like being well-informed. That means being informed about the shell game that is modern American politics.

I sort of disagree about the internet part. I think the internet contributes to the problem because it allows people with zero critical thinking skills access to reams of truly fake news that they aren’t equipped to deal with. I recall a few months ago my Facebook feed lit up with stories posted by my more conservative friends and relatives about how Clinton was under indictment, and had fled the country in a private jet with the FBI hot on her heels. Then there was the whole pizzagate thing that ended with a guy barging into a pizza restaurant with a gun looking for a nonexistent basement full of pedophilia victims. I don’t know what the solution to all this is because regulating the internet in any way that would alleviate the problem would have massive negative consequences, and would most likely be unconstitutional to boot.

I understand your point, and it is made by many, if not most.

I just completely disagree, and believe you, and others, are blowing it out of proportion. One, I understand many people get their “news” from facebook, but it is not a news source. Rarely are people actually reading the articles posted, just the headlines and others’ opinions and then arguing in the comment section. It is more of an activity than just getting the news.

And ok people are dumb and lazy, but still, the majority of Americans, as they should be, are politically apathetic and actually don’t care about any of this shit. They just want their cute cat videos and memes, go to their jobs pay for their shit and pursue their own happiness. It is tough to see that when you are passionate about politics and see the craziness going on, as am I, but it is true.

And pizzagate was a fringe conspiracy, not believed by many, and I understand that more were open to it being true, but only a very small amount actually actively believed in it. And, overtime, the community who did actively believed in it shrunk, and I believe that is a direct result of continuous research and discussion on the open internet. That guy who went to the pizza parlor clearly was crazy and has some other issues, and was he motivated or spurred by this small fringe conspiracy community? Yes, probably, but again, it was very, very small. I am more concerned about main stream news outlets and the left openly saying the GOP is going to kill people and all republicans are Nazis, which is all accepted and mainstream, and if true, I mean somewhat justifies violence, if they are all Nazis and going to kill people?

So, you speak of trying to find a solution to something that is not really a problem. That is just what scares me, the left and right do that all the time. Err on the side of not making laws or regulations or “solutions”, freedom and the market takes care of it. The internet is much more of solution than contributing to a small problem. That form of thinking, even from a conservative point of view, only leads down the road to regulation and control, and less freedom.

I’d agree with you if I didn’t see people I regarded as reasonable and intelligent falling for this crap on a daily basis. I’ll also reiterate that I’m in no way advocating for more internet regulation, but I don’t buy the free market will fix things argument either. The free market follows profits, and telling people what they want to hear will always be more profitable, than telling simple truth.

Yes, the internet gives critical-thinkers the power to consume a ton of reports and form their own opinions, but most people aren’t doing this. Most people don’t use the internet for investigative or comparative journalism. Most people get their “news” from their television or radio broadcast of choice.

We don’t need new laws to regulate what can and cannot be reported. We don’t need a government agency picking winners and losers by controlling funding or airtime. We need some goddamn leadership. We need a president or other high-visibility leader who can be trusted, who has proven integrity, and who communicates with “both sides” to speak to the importance of holding journalists and media networks accountable.

We need the press to keep the government in check, but we need to keep the press in check. “We”, on average, don’t give a shit, so it’s hard to see this starting with us. The corporate click-bait press isn’t likely to usher a true leader into the White House, and the people there now sure as hell aren’t going to change their tune to their own detriment, so I don’t know how we get here. Sad.

“fairness doctrine” has nothing to do with this. It was a ploy to force radios to give liberal commentators shows that no one would listen to and they would lose money on.

Don’t forget that public trading of media companies means they are beholden to share holders, rather than accountable to the general public for the quality of their journalism.

hiding under the guise of the first amendment to publish stories like this is where it should be wrong, the first amendment shouldn’t protect news agencies from publishing false claims as the effect on public perception could be disastrous to the republic as we have seen this past year. It should be treated as yelling fire in a movie theater

It is absolutely amazing how deluded and ignorant the people over at r/politics can be.

This same video was posted there, and rather than be concerned about a CNN producer laughing at the idea of ‘ethics’ in their reporting, they instead claim that Okeefe only makes fake news. They are burying their heads so far in the sand that they will deny video and audio evidence, that couldn’t possibly be taken out of context, and merely attack the source. (not to mention that their favorite video against Trump, the Billy Bush grab-em-by-the-pussy video, is exactly the same type of video.)

Its the easiest way of dismissing evidence out of had without actually having to look at it.

Exactly why reddit is terrible, you can hide posts you don’t like and popular opinions go to the top.

I mean it’s good for sports and stuff, but terrible for anything opinion-formed.

They are burying their heads so far in the sand

Oh, they’re burying their heads all right, just not in sand.

Why all of the jump cuts? Veritas just opens themselves to all of this criticism. Show us the unedited video from beginning to end if it’s so damning. I will never trust a veritas video that’s not one unedited stream of content. They’ve burned bridges too many times before this to demand any less.

Have you ever watched a single investagative report in your life? All are jump cut because because there can be hours of filler between points. Do you really want to waste your time watching them order hot wings and excusing themselves for a shit?

They could make 2 versions available…

Tell you what. I’ll take 5 minute clips. Not 15-20 seconds. That make you happy?

O’Keefe released hours of raw footage for the Planned Parenthood release; and the useful idiots still ignored them. Essentially reddit was full of leftist saying “Well I read Salon; and they watched the full video and they said the clips were deceptively edited. So clearly they were doctored.”

Hopefully O’Keefe releases the raw video

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PP does actually sell fetal organs though… totaling on avg. $2-3k for all the organs sold in 1 fetus. This is not some conspiracy theory either. There are published receipts and invoices from organ/tissue repository companies ordering these fetal organs directly from PP to then sell to biotech or academic centers.

Shipping tissues is expensive, they aren’t dumping a fetus’s liver into a leftover Amazon Prime box and sending it on 1-week USPS. It involves very expensive refrigeration packages, fast shipping, and so on.

It’s so morally despicable that they’re giving the tissues to science. We should be cremating and burying the 5-gram clump of cells instead.

So because there were “jump cuts” AKA getting to the point because people don’t have time to watch hours long videos, the entire video is fake?

Shouldn’t stop them from releasing the unedited video on the side, just to verify

They did the same thing with the planned parenthood stuff but people still dismissed it because of “dishonest editing” even though the full version showed the same. People just want to ignore whatever goes against their narrative.

Pretty sure all people do this.

The unedited video is likely 100s of hours long and wouldn’t be able to be uploaded as anything other than a .torrent efficiently.

No, but it certainly raises questions about the veracity of the reporting. Isn’t that what people are demanding these days? If something looks sketchy, call it out. Or is that only trotted out when the news goes against one’s own narrative?

the jump cuts are because this is a secretly taped conversation only loosely connected to the topic it is being presented as connected to. You have to remove context in order to present this in a way that gets the message out that the messenger wanted.

They admitted to clickbait and we’re saying it means conclusively there’s nothing real with Russia. It’s understandable since that’s a giant leap.

The same applies to Fox News as well. 24 hour cable news stations are all in it for the ratings and appealing to their base.

Two-sides of the same coin.

Cognitive dissonance

They said the same thing about the abortion videos that they were actually a setup, or maybe factually, a couple of scenes were taken out of context. Even if they were, that doesn’t dismiss the entirety of the content

You mean like how planned parenthood sells baby parts and the DNC was literally ripping up ballots? Sure seems legit.

Wait, are you actually denying that PP sells fetal organs to tissue repository companies? Bc there are actual invoices and receipts showing that these companies purchase fetal organs from PP to then resell to biotech and academic centers. The Congressional report is pretty black and white.

For profit? Yes. Which is what the video was trying to prove.

It wasn’t attempting to prove. It was showings there was probable cause for a criminal investigation. At worse they violated U.S. law, at best they were unethical ass clowns talking callously about a very sensitive subject. Either way it showed a deeply troubling culture at the heart of Planned Parenthood; and the left couldn’t allow that to be viewed by many.

You mean like how the representive from the medical research firm flat out said they were buying body parts? Is that what you’re talking about? Did you watch the unedited film that showed the exact same thing or are you falling for the ‘deceptive edit’ bs.

How about the several investigations afterwards that found no such thing is happening, and a grand jury actually indicting the people who made the video? https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/2-abortion-foes-behind-planned-parenthood-videos-are-indicted.html

Charges were dropped. Update your links.

indicting the people who made the video?

The charges on them keep getting dropped and chamged

Those indictments have all been thrown out. The state AG has been shown to collude with PP to bring those charges

Liberal judges, obviously, government conspiracy to get in on that sweet sweet fetal organ market.

Based on this sub, I have to assume you aren’t being sarcastic, in which case I’m sorry you actually think that way.

I am. People taking Project Veritas as a serious source while condemning CNN is hilarious – CNN’s pretty shit, but not literally-charged-with-a-crime unethical.

Thank God for the sarcasm. And of course, the subs this is exploding on are r/conservative, r/uncensorednews, and r/conspiracy (Would assume T_D but have them filtered out. I’m fine seeing the occasional post from these subs to know their take, but that floods the feed a bit much).

[removed]

Ad Hominem attacks are the only way liberals know how to discuss things.

They are burying their heads so far in the sand that they will deny video and audio evidence

Exactly why the Dems will permanently push undecided voters to the right and continue to lose elections.

The media is not the enemy of the American people!

-The Media

r/politics moderators are removing these videos.

Here is r/politics labeling this as an “Unacceptable Source”.

Here is a working mirror to the video.

R/politics cant stand the truth

They’re awfully militant.

Reddit moderators on r/politics and r/news are typical leftists. They try to control free speech. They give an insight into what this country would be like if the left ever got control.

I take it this won’t be on r/news

Very fake news.

This is Wikileaks style, and it’s only part one

Someone make more popcorn

Well I just finished a bowl, but I can make some more if you’d like. Pop Secret Extra Butter, sprinkled with garlic salt and black/cayenne pepper ok with you?

Drowned in liberal tears I hope?

Where do you think the garlic salt comes from? Sometimes there’s even a hint of patchouli (from the hippies).

Trump is considering escalating our presence in Syria. The Senate is considering huge changes to health care. The Supreme Court just issued a bunch of interesting opinions, including one where Justice Kagan broke with the liberal justices to support a church.

CNN: lol, let’s just continue reporting the witch hunt.

This actually made me laugh. So many other legit angles they could’ve gone with vs Trump but nope. RUSSIA.

I think the REAL scandal here for the left is that a CNN producer was filmed enjoying some Chick-fil-A.

I’m not a conservative, but I’m glad this is coming out. When the media tries to whip people into a frenzy against each other, everyone loses.

Edit: Video source has a history of manipulation for conservative agenda, add grain of salt, remain skeptical of media corporations. Based on post history, /u/MiyegomboBayartsogt may be Russian propaganda shill.

Not everyone loses. Trump wins. Americans willing to work win. The people whipped into hysterical frenzy are losing it, but those indolent bed pressing citizens aren’t doing anything productive anyhow. Getting those types out in the street to pout and protest is probably the first exercise any of them have had in a long while.

You think hard-working people aren’t negatively impacted by shitty media?

So long as deep pockets and corrupt politicians can use the media with impunity to manipulate the electorate, the country is fucked. Sure, you and I might have jobs, but I’d rather strive for the quality of life under a less-corrupt regime than what exists today. Politicians actively use the media to divide the population, which distracts from actually governing the country and solving the problems millions of people have. It’s all about winning, not governing, which means American democracy is just a fucking sham…at least third-world dictators are honest about what they want.

in a normal just world, this would be in /r/all by now. Sadly, those that manages the algorithm is going to keep this from going to /r/all to reduce the red pilling as much as possible.

Two instances of it are right now, including this one. You probably won’t like the top comments on the one much higher up, though.

Wow I forgot about project Veritas. It’s oddly relieving to see them doing their thing without the stresses of the election season. It feels like I can sit back and relax and watch the dumpster fire that is the left.

Between the Russia narrative finally cracking, the democrats starting to eat each other, the Supreme Court ruling and now this, I am chuckling to myself at how right trump was. I really can’t handle this much winning in such a short amount of time. I need time to digest this much positive news. Can’t imagine how die hard liberals must feel.

Trump gambled absolutely everything – all his credibility, his political capital, his entire presidency – in a show down with the media.

Conservatives have been too chicken shit to do this for years, despite the fact we all know the media is mostly leftist propaganda. Trump came along and said, “Yeah, I’ll prove it,” and it’s working. It’s bloody well working. I am shocked how well he has flipped what looked like a hopeless narrative.

The media has lost its credibility. The deep state has been exposed to the disinfecting sun light. The Democrats have been so focused on chasing laser pointers like cats that they haven’t taken a moment to reflect on why they lost.

The Clintons are getting exposed as the snakes they are, and the whole Obama administration is taking a hit retroactively.

This is incredible. And we still might get another 2 Supremes.

tl;dr: Trump decided not to be the classic, well-trained house pet for the left. Is kicking ass. Who woulda thought?

Except the left still won’t see it that way. Still work to be done

The core of the left will never see it that way. We can only hope that a solid majority of the people will see how deluded the left is.

At least 25% of the population is irredeemable, it’s just a fact

deplorables?

No, just delusional leftists who would riot before accepting the rule of law.

Because you asked… I feel very little. There wasn’t anything in the video I didn’t already sort of know. It’s painfully obvious CNN has been hyping the hell out of this story with little to no new useful information. BUT, It doesn’t indicate at all however, that the Russia story is fake, just that CNN, like ALL cable news, is about selling a narrative their audience wants to hear, because ratings are king. I’d prefer CNN devote their time to reporting on the Nepotism, Cronyism, and incompetence of this administration, and shut the hell up about Russia until there is something to report.

CNN devote their time to reporting on the Nepotism, Cronyism, and incompetence of this administration

So stop the hysteria of a made up narrative to pick it up on a different made up narrative? Come on..

Appointing your untrained son in law to bring peace to the Middle East doesn’t smell a little like nepotism to you? You think there is no one more qualified in foreign diplomacy to tackle this task?

He should respond soon. Probably had to look up what nepotism means and is now digging through breitbart articles for an argument to regurgitate.

I feel like a lot of the things he said can be applied not only to CNN but Fox News and all cable news. Just with different agenda.

And BOOM! Just like that, CNN credibility destroyed.

To be fair, they didnt have any to begin with.

[removed]

Did you not hear “mostly bullshit” and “do it just for ratings”? This is called lying when you print false stories. The lies that were printed out a few days ago by CNN got 3 people fired.

CNN is a partisan hack of an organization that acts like it’s the Pravda arm of the DNC.

This concern trolling would not be happening if say, Fox News were caught in this kind of scheming.

Can you quote where the reporter said the leaks are bullshit?

The dude said the Trump –> Russia headlines are bullshit, not that the Trump’s Team –> Russia headline are bullshit. He also justified Russia trying to swing our election, which isn’t exactly a denial of them doing it.

Without fake news and unfounded conspiracies, Rachel Maddow will be selling oranges on the highway

This is going to be spun as out-of-context quotes that are intentionally edited to sound as a bad as possible and there really isn’t any scandal here.

The man just straight up laughed at the notion of journalistic ethics. It looks pretty bad.

He was taken out of context!!! Maybe he was reading from a play script about a jaded and corrupt Fox News journalist. /s

I think you just scored a job at CNN.

I’m just going to go by the fact I’m seeing literally dozens of newish accounts and accounts that’ve never posted in many of the subreddits this story is being posted in trying to deflect and dispute the entire video as a sign that it’s a pretty big deal for CNN right now. Seriously, I’ve never seen this much damage control on all of Reddit. Even this thread is at 58% upvoted since it hit r/all. They are panicking trying to bury this one.

I’ve noticed for months now. They like to infect subs like r/uncensorednews and other alternative subreddits that were created to get away from the shills and astroturfing.

The #1 tactic of these people is to derail conversations and change the topic.

And yet the hardcore Reddit Lefties are still pushing the Russia story. Love it and hate it at the same time. Makes them look incredibly foolish, but in the end hurts America with their ignorance.

Number 1 Trending Video on YouTube right now and it hasn’t even been a day. Of course r/politics is silent. Here’s a comment from there.

Once again, this story is already debunked & confirmed as fake. This was a low-level associate intern who decided to spew bullshit about something he has no idea about. He’s not even working directly on the Russia team. CNN has been absolutely stellar as of late and this retraction just cements that they are an elite organization that goes the extra mile to fact check and verify their sources. Couldn’t be more pleased with the stellar work CNN has been putting out lately

It’s amazing to think that these people believe the media has any reason to have any sort of journalistic integrity. Its a business. I remember during Bernie’s campaign there was a post at the top of r/all about how Clinton was funded by CNN. But now that CNN aligns with their agenda they trust them. Unbelievable.

59% upvoted, LMAOOOO

mirror

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE

1) CNN, Fox News, etc. are all stupid ratings-chasing bullshit. Anyone who doesn’t see that by now isn’t paying attention. It’s been getting worse and worse throughout my life – haven’t really watched any MSM in years, but I’m guessing it’s all pretty abhorrent by now.

2) I don’t really care if news outlets secretly think a story is bullshit or not – but I do care what the FBI thinks. They thought there was enough to warrant an investigation. And now the story has become more about impeding that investigation.

As soon as I saw this video I knew the thread would be brigaded

Damning quotes aside, the most interesting takeaway is how much day to day control Jeff Zucker has over the narrative.

The video was removed

I’m a pretty leftist dude but I think we all have known CNN lost credibility during the election cycle with how they put Clinton on a pedestal.

I mean we all knew it, but this is still one of the most sickening things I have ever seen and still shocking even when you know news is all staged and money driven for agendas. The worst part for me was when he only laughs at the idea of journalistic ethics…

Wow that guy’s gonna get suicided by 4 bullets to the back of the head

Damn this is exciting

R/news is in some hard denial.

CNN isn’t just fake news. They are very fake news. And apparently proud of it. I wonder how the kiddies in r/politics will try and spin this. I mean, he literally says they don’t care about ethics in journalism. It’s kinda hard to spin that.

Edit- oh. They won’t spin it. They will just ignore it apparently. Neato

Edit again- Hi shareblue! Thanks for stopping by to downvote us.

While I must admit I am generally liberal, even I have to say all the Trump-Russia collusion stories are getting old to see. Do I think some of the things that are reported, and some of Trump’s own actions and statements seem a little sketchy? Sure. But ultimately, that’s why there is currently some sort of investigation going on. I don’t need to hear about it every day because at this point there really isn’t too much more to report, and to be honest it just takes away from actually debating the policies that are being put out, especially health care currently. If something comes up in the future from this investigation or otherwise, sure let’s bring it up again and discuss it, but unless/until something like that occurs I would rather see more talk about policies.

While I must admit I am generally liberal, even I have to say all the Trump-Russia collusion stories are getting old to see.

This is the statement that should have the Democrats scared shitless.

It’s also why they’ve been trying to pivot away from the Russian witch hunt but they’re having trouble getting their people to stop. The base is convinced Trump is a traitor and won’t let up.

because they convinced them, what a vicious web we weave….

All of our intelligence says that Russia interfered and Trump says he fired Comey to slow/stop the Russia investigation, it’s not exactly all CNNs fault.

The country should be scared shitless, not just dems.

He fired comey because comey wouldnt hold a presser saying trump wasnt under investigation. Which is true and what comey told him on three diffrent occasions.

Was it dumb? Sure.

Was it interference with the russia investigation? Not even a little bit.

Share exact sentiment.

The worst part to me is how much a lot of the media alienates people, and how much I feel that extends into the everyday political discussion. You see it on all sides. I see it all the time when people call people on the left “libtards” or “snowflakes” and people on the left respond calling people on the right “Nazis” and “bigots” and “racists” and all it does it take away from substantive conversation and instead ignore any possible points that the other side may have because they are from the other side so let’s just call them names instead of actually refute arguments or points they have made.

you are a great, great great person

Concern trolls out in full force tonight.

What really blows me away is how divided along political lines so many people are. If you are 100 percent Democrat or 100 percent Republican on issues as far as the party line goes, you are also 100 percent moron. Every issue deserves discussion. There is nuance in politics which is why most congressmen go to law school.

If anything, this should be a wakeup call to everyone about their favorite news channels.

BREAKING NEWS::::: they’re all this way. They need money to make money. Fox, CNN, Breitbart, Inforwars, all of it is for-profit. They create sensationalized headlines that their viewers care about for some reason, and that’s how you keep eyes on the tube. It’s all despicable, but not surprising.

This is huge. Can’t wait to hear the official ShareBlue narrative on this one.

No mention of this on /r/politics. Head, meet sand.

I CAN’T HANDLE ALL THIS WINNING!!

Link broken???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE

(Why?)

Published at Tue, 27 Jun 2017 04:13:51 +0000

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from Aw Jeez Not This Liberal Crap Again http://strikingtherightbalance.com/must-watch-cnn-producer-caught-on-hidden-camera-basically-admits-cnn-is-an-awful-journalism-outlet-that-is-not-to-be-trusted-2/

[strikingtherightbalance]

MUST WATCH: CNN Producer caught on hidden camera, basically admits CNN is an awful journalism outlet that is not to be trusted.

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MUST WATCH: CNN Producer caught on hidden camera, basically admits CNN is an awful journalism outlet that is not to be trusted.

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Mirror

Is this legit? How is this not exploding right now?

It will. It’s 3 am on a Monday night, this will go ham tomorrow morn.

Just about midnight here in California (but this story won’t see the light of day here). Looking forward to seeing this get huge

the world is better because of people like you. think i’ve seen your username before too

I appreciate that, you as well. Keep on the righteous path

He’s a bot

wow, a feel good bot and you can’t even see “his” post history. Really strange shit.

Except here on Reddit. The liberal circle jerk will keep it out of the main subs.

It’s O’Keefe so media will ignore it “cause he’s a criminal and propagandist”.

OANN will be playing this at 11a.m. Eastern

One America News Network said they are going to show the tapes at 11a.m. eastern!

7 hours later and it’s been taken down

Maybe that’s how.

This guy has been popped before for editing videos in ways that change the message and it was really early in the morning. The other thing is that his guy works for CNN Health, but w.e.

in ways that change the message

Any examples? I hear this said but in context his videos have always seemed equally damning. Taking down ACORN put a target on his back during an adminstration known for prosecuting joirnalists and political enemies so saying “zomg community service” doesn’t cut it for me.

Any examples? I hear this said but in context his videos have always seemed equally damning. Taking down ACORN put a target on his back during an adminstration known for prosecuting joirnalists and political enemies so saying “zomg community service” doesn’t cut it for me.

Any examples? How about the one you named yourself. O’Keefe had to pay out $100,000 to one of the former ACORN employees after he handed over the entire unedited videos which the California AG reviewed and found, “no evidence of criminal conduct on the part of ACORN employees nor any evidence that any employee intended to aid or abet criminal conduct.”

He even admitted in that case that he was just trying to damage ACORN and wasn’t acting with any sort of journalistic objectivity.

His entire career is like that. He releases “damning” video evidence which when compared to the raw video prove to be heavily edited segments which misrepresent the stated views of the people he films by removing context or chronologically shifting the video to make it appear bad.

By comparison, O’Keefe makes media outlets like CNN and Fox with their horribly biased and non-journalistic practices look like absolute angels.

You’re acting like the one good employee ACORN had absolves the other horrible employees who willingly helped a supposed pimp who was prostituting out underage girls and never sought help from a child advocacy group let alone the police after the meeting. You’re doing some subterfuge yourself. If O’Keefe’s undercover vids on ACORN encouraged a reform and improved protocol on how employees react to pimps and who they should contact after, then it was worth it bc, apparently, most of the employees don’t have an idea of what is right or wrong, including when it involves pedophilia.

No wrongdoing was found to have occurred by ACORN when the full video came out. That was the findings of the California AG office and the federal Government Accountability Office.

Well, half true. The case in California was a terrible case and Okeefe should be ashamed for not following through on what the workers did after he left. But the Brooklyn DA reviewed the tapes that affected their region and found that although they were heavily edited, the most damning words were still very much in context.

There was 100% wrong doing found at ACORN. You’re a liar. There was no criminal wrong doing. As being an unethical asshole is not against the law. One of the employees caught on tape had gone to the police and had been leading on O’Keefe. There was no way for O’Keefe to know that; the rest of the employees did not. That employee sued him as they lost their job and were doing the right thing.

Which means the rest of them were actively giving advice for criminal conduct and had no intention of reporting it to the police.

Not really, the msm just do to okeefe what they did to center of medical progress. Throw around ‘deceptive edit’ and dont back it up when the full tapes are released.

What part is fake?

It’s a project veritas release. The people who keep getting busted for releasing edited and out of context videos. The odds of this being legit are approaching zero. Basically, nothing this guy releases is true. He literally generates the fake for fake news.

Can you back that up?

Please provide citations.

Mirror

https://youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE

Thank you, good sir.

I’m sure I’m the minority opinion here but project veritas has a history of editing video. I don’t think we should look too much into what they do until they release raw footage. When it cuts to the background images for the “because it’s ratings” part it sounds very different than the preceding lines. CNN does suck 99% of the time but that doesn’t mean any attack against it is credible.

All videos are edited. Every single one. This ‘deceptive edit’ crap falls apart when the full vidoes are released showing it in the same context.

Ok then let’s wait until the full video is released before making concrete judgments.

We do; and they are vindicated every time by those of us who bothered to watch them. Meanwhile useful idiots read an article from Salon that claims they watched the full videos and that the clips were deceptively edited. Releasing the full videos does not get the Democrats to shut up about “doctored” videos; as that is their only deflection of the deep seated corruption within their party and their political allies.

[removed]

Can you provide a context in which his comments would be seen as ok?

It’s a business, people are like “The media has like an ethical…” psssshhhhh…

But all the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked about in journalism school, you’re just like, that’s adorable. That’s adorable. This is a business

You honestly couldn’t make up a worse quote if you tried to. Holy shit.

The saddest part is his words wouldn’t be so damning if they weren’t so honest.

Probably the first time he does something honest, and it is going to backfire on him.

But muh context!

I’m sure they must have edited out a part at the beginning where the Project Veritas guy said “let’s play a game where I ask you questions and you make up fake answers that make CNN look as horrible as possible.” Or a part at the end where the CNN guy said “lol jk I really had you going there didn’t I?” Right guys??

HOW DARE HE ATTACK THE STELLAR REPORTERS OF CNN

DON LEMON IS ETHICS INCARNATE

ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE IS A RACIST

So, politics aside. People stopped paying for real reporting and news. Combine the lack of interest in actual reporting, and the media mergers and newspaper buyouts, etc and you get this media environment. It rewards shock headlines and ‘fake news,’ because no one wanted to purchase journalism and even if they did, public trading of news companies means cost cutting and share holder profits are more important than news…. so what?

we have only one model that doesn’t get fucked by this and it is NPR. And NPR ain’t great, because government funding for it got cut years ago and the replacement ‘funding from ‘charitable foundations for agenda reporting,’ and listener donations sucks. So decent reporters bounce out of NPR ASAP and American suffers.

So the market is rewarding sensationalism, and firms are producing sensationalism?

Yes.

But this isn’t anything new. Sensationalist news has been a part of the human experience for centuries.

Media mongrel Hearst from the early 20th century made his fortune off of fake news. It was common in the 19th and early 20th century. Some what died down in the mid 20th century; and became dominant again at the end of the 20th century.

we have only one model that doesn’t get fucked by this and it is NPR.

NPR has a horrible liberal bias. They’ll pick a topic like ‘The benefits of abortion’ and then discuss the topic in a somewhat fair manner. But the bias was built into the topic and no amount of honest discussion can overcome that, especially when 90% of the people talking are liberals.

I really like this response, because I agree, but not exactly in the same way. Your response illustrates a particular problem: You think NPR has a liberal bias, because you are to the right of it. I think NPR has a centrist bias, because I’m to the left of it. Either way, we both think NPR doesn’t represent our views fairly and doesn’t ask questions in an objective way.

NPR leans left; though not as much as CNN. If you were going to give it a scale of -10 to 10 (positive 10 being extreme conservative):

MSNBC: -8

CNN: -4

NPR: -2/-3

Fox: 4

National Review: 8

So if you’re a typical reader of Salon or viewer of MSNBC and you have been duped into thinking you’re somewhat moderate; than you may think NPR is “towards” the center. But there is no doubt that it leans left.

Business Insider did a piece of news source bias a few years back. NPR is, as per their research, not close to centrist but leftist .

This is cool link, however it does not say what you say it does, it says the ‘Audience of NPR is more liberal.’ It makes no conclusions about the content.

As a regular NPR listener, I can assure you that they spend a wildly disproportionate amount of time pushing issues that are only important to a tiny minority of the population (surprise: that would be a varied number of far-left activist groups that send them press releases on the topic). In the particular example I’m thinking of, the cause represents something like 10% of a 5-10% minority in the U.S. I hear the same “news” and “personal interest” stories promoting that issue literally every day. The only things that ever change are the names of the people involved (and maybe one or two minor details). It’s the exact same political narrative, hammered over and over and over again. It is literally no longer newsworthy, yet I still hear it in their “news” coverage every day.

The thing is, I’m sure that NPR doesn’t even realize how disproportionately they’re covering the topic. It’s of particular interest to them and most of their audience because it reinforces their preexisting worldview biases…and the issue has been weaponized and is now being used to attack anyone on the “other” side of that issue.

The thing is that they make no bones about it being liberal, and they are at least good at disclosure. You hear how liberal they are every 15 minutes when the call out supporters.

They also have conservative guests on all the time. Congressmen, PR staff from think-tanks, candidates and staff. They come off as smart, engaged people just looking to make things better. Sure, most of the audience and all the staff think they’re wrong. But it’s opposition, not smears

If you just want to know what’s going on in the world, you could do a whole lot worse.

I stopped listening to NPR during the 2012 election. They would have a “panel” about a political topic. The Moderator would be a hard core democrat. Then he would have 3 panelists on. One who was extremely far left (socialist), one who was a hard core Democrat, and one who was moderate (who they called a Republican). The “Republican” threw Romney and Republicans under the bus on every topic and talked about how Republicans were extreme (the guy supposedly representing Right).

That panel would have been horrible enough had they had a real conservative on there who actually believed in Republican policies (as he would be out numbered 3:1); but the fact that they put up a strawman of a Republican on just so he could provide legitimacy to the program was down right infuriating. Fuck that network.

Thank you for being a voice of reason. The real shock of this video should be the realization that all our media is like this, not just CNN.

Thank you for not going directly to the T_D “fuck MSM, CNN, they’re out to get us”…

I may not agree with most of y’all on a lot of issues, but I do agree that there are loads of issues plagueing(sp?) this country. Media and journalism being pretty damn high up there. Especially the fact that it is a driving force if the polarization and partisanship of politics we have today.

I am a big fan of government funded stuff like NPR/PBS/etc, but the thing I am worried about just as you are is how can this be funded by the [insert political party] without them having undue influence over content and context that is out out…it’s a tough question with a probably even tougher solution.

Every group will deny and try to fight news and reporting that makes them look bad. It’s PR, I get it, but when that party is directly responsible for the funding of said programming, how can one prevent retaliation when they report on the actions (good or bad) of that party.

If liberals can post salon and mother jones articles 24/7 on r/politics, they’ll probably believe whatever CNN told them anyway.

My new favorite is holding the independent up as some holy bastion of new reporting. Its little more than a tabloid

And the Guardian

US liberals like to pretend that UK news outlets are never biased

I would argue that UK news outlets are more biased.

But they’re European. Theyre much smarter than us hillbilly Americans /s

I’m in complete agreement. There is a very scummy element is These English news outlets. Have a read about the phone hack scandals if you want a good laugh

just goes to show how morally bankrupt CNN and the rest of the MSM is.

Cable news, in general, is wet, hot garbage.

Print and other forms of news are just as bad though.

It’s literally all dogshit.

This project verita video is amazing though. Puts it all out right in display.

We have the best undercover journalists, don’t we folks?

Amazing? I thought it was over produced and repetitive. They showed the same lines six times in a row.

That’s project veritas for ya

Still good that this is out there but the editing is crap lol

If everything is bad, where do you get your information?

Consensus and time.

Most of the time, most of the news from all these different “partisan” outlets is actually identical. There’s not much difference in the handling of facts, only the angle or the narrative. So when you’re looking up a story that actually matters, read the same story from 8 different, competing, clashing outlets so that forming a narrative is impossible.

News outlets are dishonest, but they don’t usually fabricate. Their spin is more like a reality TV show being edited, inserting context, or removing relevant facts. Reading all the different edits at the same time quickly reveals what is craft, and what is real. Once you do that, you have the facts.

The news brings you the facts because that’s what you ask for. But that’s not really what people want. Their business model is about offering clarity, interpreting the facts into understandable storylines. They take a complicated, crowded, confusing world, and make it nice and neat. Demand is created for a product that has nothing to do with facts. If the news industry was a gas station, facts would be the gasoline, and narrative would be the snacks and drinks.

“The news” is an entertainment product. News junkies are not informed people, they are just entertainment addicts. If you want to be informed, you have to think like a journalist, not an addict.

e: TV news is especially bad because of the medium. TV is slow, information-light, and non-interactive. Good for interviews and speeches, little else.

At the end of the day, this is what happens if you leave journalism to the free market. State sponsored news would be infinitely worse, of course, but this video is a perfect example of what happens when you try and make informing people a business.

I only trust news that doesn’t use click bait titles, doesn’t use dramatic language, and moves on to something else once the segment is over. That pretty much leaves pbs.

The current media situation is a direct result of the elimination of the fairness doctrine by Reagan, and especially the Telecommunications act of 1996 courtesy of Clinton. It’s astoundingly difficult to get a straight true version of almost any news event these days.

I know what you are trying to say, but I would actually argue it is easier.

With the internet and the democratization of information, it is not that difficult to get actual hard facts and even read spin from all sides and form your own opinion.

I think most people are just either lazy, don’t care, or want to read something from their perspective. With your take, it seems the only logical solution would be some state intervention or some new law, which would not be good.

That is a lot of trust in people. Most people just use the internet to find the “facts” to back their pre-conceived belief and stop there.

Its how we’ve ended up in/with huge echo chambers as the divide in the country grows and grows.

While I don’t necessarily disagree with your statement, and don’t trust people, I just think the vast majority don’t care.

Actually most people don’t give a shit about politics like us, and they shouldn’t. It is difficult to see that when you are passionate about it and caught up in discussion and the news everyday.

I don’t really give a shit about politics either. I just like being well-informed. That means being informed about the shell game that is modern American politics.

I sort of disagree about the internet part. I think the internet contributes to the problem because it allows people with zero critical thinking skills access to reams of truly fake news that they aren’t equipped to deal with. I recall a few months ago my Facebook feed lit up with stories posted by my more conservative friends and relatives about how Clinton was under indictment, and had fled the country in a private jet with the FBI hot on her heels. Then there was the whole pizzagate thing that ended with a guy barging into a pizza restaurant with a gun looking for a nonexistent basement full of pedophilia victims. I don’t know what the solution to all this is because regulating the internet in any way that would alleviate the problem would have massive negative consequences, and would most likely be unconstitutional to boot.

I understand your point, and it is made by many, if not most.

I just completely disagree, and believe you, and others, are blowing it out of proportion. One, I understand many people get their “news” from facebook, but it is not a news source. Rarely are people actually reading the articles posted, just the headlines and others’ opinions and then arguing in the comment section. It is more of an activity than just getting the news.

And ok people are dumb and lazy, but still, the majority of Americans, as they should be, are politically apathetic and actually don’t care about any of this shit. They just want their cute cat videos and memes, go to their jobs pay for their shit and pursue their own happiness. It is tough to see that when you are passionate about politics and see the craziness going on, as am I, but it is true.

And pizzagate was a fringe conspiracy, not believed by many, and I understand that more were open to it being true, but only a very small amount actually actively believed in it. And, overtime, the community who did actively believed in it shrunk, and I believe that is a direct result of continuous research and discussion on the open internet. That guy who went to the pizza parlor clearly was crazy and has some other issues, and was he motivated or spurred by this small fringe conspiracy community? Yes, probably, but again, it was very, very small. I am more concerned about main stream news outlets and the left openly saying the GOP is going to kill people and all republicans are Nazis, which is all accepted and mainstream, and if true, I mean somewhat justifies violence, if they are all Nazis and going to kill people?

So, you speak of trying to find a solution to something that is not really a problem. That is just what scares me, the left and right do that all the time. Err on the side of not making laws or regulations or “solutions”, freedom and the market takes care of it. The internet is much more of solution than contributing to a small problem. That form of thinking, even from a conservative point of view, only leads down the road to regulation and control, and less freedom.

I’d agree with you if I didn’t see people I regarded as reasonable and intelligent falling for this crap on a daily basis. I’ll also reiterate that I’m in no way advocating for more internet regulation, but I don’t buy the free market will fix things argument either. The free market follows profits, and telling people what they want to hear will always be more profitable, than telling simple truth.

Yes, the internet gives critical-thinkers the power to consume a ton of reports and form their own opinions, but most people aren’t doing this. Most people don’t use the internet for investigative or comparative journalism. Most people get their “news” from their television or radio broadcast of choice.

We don’t need new laws to regulate what can and cannot be reported. We don’t need a government agency picking winners and losers by controlling funding or airtime. We need some goddamn leadership. We need a president or other high-visibility leader who can be trusted, who has proven integrity, and who communicates with “both sides” to speak to the importance of holding journalists and media networks accountable.

We need the press to keep the government in check, but we need to keep the press in check. “We”, on average, don’t give a shit, so it’s hard to see this starting with us. The corporate click-bait press isn’t likely to usher a true leader into the White House, and the people there now sure as hell aren’t going to change their tune to their own detriment, so I don’t know how we get here. Sad.

“fairness doctrine” has nothing to do with this. It was a ploy to force radios to give liberal commentators shows that no one would listen to and they would lose money on.

Don’t forget that public trading of media companies means they are beholden to share holders, rather than accountable to the general public for the quality of their journalism.

hiding under the guise of the first amendment to publish stories like this is where it should be wrong, the first amendment shouldn’t protect news agencies from publishing false claims as the effect on public perception could be disastrous to the republic as we have seen this past year. It should be treated as yelling fire in a movie theater

It is absolutely amazing how deluded and ignorant the people over at r/politics can be.

This same video was posted there, and rather than be concerned about a CNN producer laughing at the idea of ‘ethics’ in their reporting, they instead claim that Okeefe only makes fake news. They are burying their heads so far in the sand that they will deny video and audio evidence, that couldn’t possibly be taken out of context, and merely attack the source. (not to mention that their favorite video against Trump, the Billy Bush grab-em-by-the-pussy video, is exactly the same type of video.)

Its the easiest way of dismissing evidence out of had without actually having to look at it.

Exactly why reddit is terrible, you can hide posts you don’t like and popular opinions go to the top.

I mean it’s good for sports and stuff, but terrible for anything opinion-formed.

They are burying their heads so far in the sand

Oh, they’re burying their heads all right, just not in sand.

Why all of the jump cuts? Veritas just opens themselves to all of this criticism. Show us the unedited video from beginning to end if it’s so damning. I will never trust a veritas video that’s not one unedited stream of content. They’ve burned bridges too many times before this to demand any less.

Have you ever watched a single investagative report in your life? All are jump cut because because there can be hours of filler between points. Do you really want to waste your time watching them order hot wings and excusing themselves for a shit?

They could make 2 versions available…

Tell you what. I’ll take 5 minute clips. Not 15-20 seconds. That make you happy?

O’Keefe released hours of raw footage for the Planned Parenthood release; and the useful idiots still ignored them. Essentially reddit was full of leftist saying “Well I read Salon; and they watched the full video and they said the clips were deceptively edited. So clearly they were doctored.”

Hopefully O’Keefe releases the raw video

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PP does actually sell fetal organs though… totaling on avg. $2-3k for all the organs sold in 1 fetus. This is not some conspiracy theory either. There are published receipts and invoices from organ/tissue repository companies ordering these fetal organs directly from PP to then sell to biotech or academic centers.

Shipping tissues is expensive, they aren’t dumping a fetus’s liver into a leftover Amazon Prime box and sending it on 1-week USPS. It involves very expensive refrigeration packages, fast shipping, and so on.

It’s so morally despicable that they’re giving the tissues to science. We should be cremating and burying the 5-gram clump of cells instead.

So because there were “jump cuts” AKA getting to the point because people don’t have time to watch hours long videos, the entire video is fake?

Shouldn’t stop them from releasing the unedited video on the side, just to verify

They did the same thing with the planned parenthood stuff but people still dismissed it because of “dishonest editing” even though the full version showed the same. People just want to ignore whatever goes against their narrative.

Pretty sure all people do this.

The unedited video is likely 100s of hours long and wouldn’t be able to be uploaded as anything other than a .torrent efficiently.

No, but it certainly raises questions about the veracity of the reporting. Isn’t that what people are demanding these days? If something looks sketchy, call it out. Or is that only trotted out when the news goes against one’s own narrative?

the jump cuts are because this is a secretly taped conversation only loosely connected to the topic it is being presented as connected to. You have to remove context in order to present this in a way that gets the message out that the messenger wanted.

They admitted to clickbait and we’re saying it means conclusively there’s nothing real with Russia. It’s understandable since that’s a giant leap.

The same applies to Fox News as well. 24 hour cable news stations are all in it for the ratings and appealing to their base.

Two-sides of the same coin.

Cognitive dissonance

They said the same thing about the abortion videos that they were actually a setup, or maybe factually, a couple of scenes were taken out of context. Even if they were, that doesn’t dismiss the entirety of the content

You mean like how planned parenthood sells baby parts and the DNC was literally ripping up ballots? Sure seems legit.

Wait, are you actually denying that PP sells fetal organs to tissue repository companies? Bc there are actual invoices and receipts showing that these companies purchase fetal organs from PP to then resell to biotech and academic centers. The Congressional report is pretty black and white.

For profit? Yes. Which is what the video was trying to prove.

It wasn’t attempting to prove. It was showings there was probable cause for a criminal investigation. At worse they violated U.S. law, at best they were unethical ass clowns talking callously about a very sensitive subject. Either way it showed a deeply troubling culture at the heart of Planned Parenthood; and the left couldn’t allow that to be viewed by many.

You mean like how the representive from the medical research firm flat out said they were buying body parts? Is that what you’re talking about? Did you watch the unedited film that showed the exact same thing or are you falling for the ‘deceptive edit’ bs.

How about the several investigations afterwards that found no such thing is happening, and a grand jury actually indicting the people who made the video? https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/2-abortion-foes-behind-planned-parenthood-videos-are-indicted.html

Charges were dropped. Update your links.

indicting the people who made the video?

The charges on them keep getting dropped and chamged

Those indictments have all been thrown out. The state AG has been shown to collude with PP to bring those charges

Liberal judges, obviously, government conspiracy to get in on that sweet sweet fetal organ market.

Based on this sub, I have to assume you aren’t being sarcastic, in which case I’m sorry you actually think that way.

I am. People taking Project Veritas as a serious source while condemning CNN is hilarious – CNN’s pretty shit, but not literally-charged-with-a-crime unethical.

Thank God for the sarcasm. And of course, the subs this is exploding on are r/conservative, r/uncensorednews, and r/conspiracy (Would assume T_D but have them filtered out. I’m fine seeing the occasional post from these subs to know their take, but that floods the feed a bit much).

[removed]

Ad Hominem attacks are the only way liberals know how to discuss things.

They are burying their heads so far in the sand that they will deny video and audio evidence

Exactly why the Dems will permanently push undecided voters to the right and continue to lose elections.

The media is not the enemy of the American people!

-The Media

r/politics moderators are removing these videos.

Here is r/politics labeling this as an “Unacceptable Source”.

Here is a working mirror to the video.

R/politics cant stand the truth

They’re awfully militant.

Reddit moderators on r/politics and r/news are typical leftists. They try to control free speech. They give an insight into what this country would be like if the left ever got control.

I take it this won’t be on r/news

Very fake news.

This is Wikileaks style, and it’s only part one

Someone make more popcorn

Well I just finished a bowl, but I can make some more if you’d like. Pop Secret Extra Butter, sprinkled with garlic salt and black/cayenne pepper ok with you?

Drowned in liberal tears I hope?

Where do you think the garlic salt comes from? Sometimes there’s even a hint of patchouli (from the hippies).

Trump is considering escalating our presence in Syria. The Senate is considering huge changes to health care. The Supreme Court just issued a bunch of interesting opinions, including one where Justice Kagan broke with the liberal justices to support a church.

CNN: lol, let’s just continue reporting the witch hunt.

This actually made me laugh. So many other legit angles they could’ve gone with vs Trump but nope. RUSSIA.

I think the REAL scandal here for the left is that a CNN producer was filmed enjoying some Chick-fil-A.

I’m not a conservative, but I’m glad this is coming out. When the media tries to whip people into a frenzy against each other, everyone loses.

Edit: Video source has a history of manipulation for conservative agenda, add grain of salt, remain skeptical of media corporations. Based on post history, /u/MiyegomboBayartsogt may be Russian propaganda shill.

Not everyone loses. Trump wins. Americans willing to work win. The people whipped into hysterical frenzy are losing it, but those indolent bed pressing citizens aren’t doing anything productive anyhow. Getting those types out in the street to pout and protest is probably the first exercise any of them have had in a long while.

You think hard-working people aren’t negatively impacted by shitty media?

So long as deep pockets and corrupt politicians can use the media with impunity to manipulate the electorate, the country is fucked. Sure, you and I might have jobs, but I’d rather strive for the quality of life under a less-corrupt regime than what exists today. Politicians actively use the media to divide the population, which distracts from actually governing the country and solving the problems millions of people have. It’s all about winning, not governing, which means American democracy is just a fucking sham…at least third-world dictators are honest about what they want.

in a normal just world, this would be in /r/all by now. Sadly, those that manages the algorithm is going to keep this from going to /r/all to reduce the red pilling as much as possible.

Two instances of it are right now, including this one. You probably won’t like the top comments on the one much higher up, though.

Wow I forgot about project Veritas. It’s oddly relieving to see them doing their thing without the stresses of the election season. It feels like I can sit back and relax and watch the dumpster fire that is the left.

Between the Russia narrative finally cracking, the democrats starting to eat each other, the Supreme Court ruling and now this, I am chuckling to myself at how right trump was. I really can’t handle this much winning in such a short amount of time. I need time to digest this much positive news. Can’t imagine how die hard liberals must feel.

Trump gambled absolutely everything – all his credibility, his political capital, his entire presidency – in a show down with the media.

Conservatives have been too chicken shit to do this for years, despite the fact we all know the media is mostly leftist propaganda. Trump came along and said, “Yeah, I’ll prove it,” and it’s working. It’s bloody well working. I am shocked how well he has flipped what looked like a hopeless narrative.

The media has lost its credibility. The deep state has been exposed to the disinfecting sun light. The Democrats have been so focused on chasing laser pointers like cats that they haven’t taken a moment to reflect on why they lost.

The Clintons are getting exposed as the snakes they are, and the whole Obama administration is taking a hit retroactively.

This is incredible. And we still might get another 2 Supremes.

tl;dr: Trump decided not to be the classic, well-trained house pet for the left. Is kicking ass. Who woulda thought?

Except the left still won’t see it that way. Still work to be done

The core of the left will never see it that way. We can only hope that a solid majority of the people will see how deluded the left is.

At least 25% of the population is irredeemable, it’s just a fact

deplorables?

No, just delusional leftists who would riot before accepting the rule of law.

Because you asked… I feel very little. There wasn’t anything in the video I didn’t already sort of know. It’s painfully obvious CNN has been hyping the hell out of this story with little to no new useful information. BUT, It doesn’t indicate at all however, that the Russia story is fake, just that CNN, like ALL cable news, is about selling a narrative their audience wants to hear, because ratings are king. I’d prefer CNN devote their time to reporting on the Nepotism, Cronyism, and incompetence of this administration, and shut the hell up about Russia until there is something to report.

CNN devote their time to reporting on the Nepotism, Cronyism, and incompetence of this administration

So stop the hysteria of a made up narrative to pick it up on a different made up narrative? Come on..

Appointing your untrained son in law to bring peace to the Middle East doesn’t smell a little like nepotism to you? You think there is no one more qualified in foreign diplomacy to tackle this task?

He should respond soon. Probably had to look up what nepotism means and is now digging through breitbart articles for an argument to regurgitate.

I feel like a lot of the things he said can be applied not only to CNN but Fox News and all cable news. Just with different agenda.

And BOOM! Just like that, CNN credibility destroyed.

To be fair, they didnt have any to begin with.

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Did you not hear “mostly bullshit” and “do it just for ratings”? This is called lying when you print false stories. The lies that were printed out a few days ago by CNN got 3 people fired.

CNN is a partisan hack of an organization that acts like it’s the Pravda arm of the DNC.

This concern trolling would not be happening if say, Fox News were caught in this kind of scheming.

Can you quote where the reporter said the leaks are bullshit?

The dude said the Trump –> Russia headlines are bullshit, not that the Trump’s Team –> Russia headline are bullshit. He also justified Russia trying to swing our election, which isn’t exactly a denial of them doing it.

Without fake news and unfounded conspiracies, Rachel Maddow will be selling oranges on the highway

This is going to be spun as out-of-context quotes that are intentionally edited to sound as a bad as possible and there really isn’t any scandal here.

The man just straight up laughed at the notion of journalistic ethics. It looks pretty bad.

He was taken out of context!!! Maybe he was reading from a play script about a jaded and corrupt Fox News journalist. /s

I think you just scored a job at CNN.

I’m just going to go by the fact I’m seeing literally dozens of newish accounts and accounts that’ve never posted in many of the subreddits this story is being posted in trying to deflect and dispute the entire video as a sign that it’s a pretty big deal for CNN right now. Seriously, I’ve never seen this much damage control on all of Reddit. Even this thread is at 58% upvoted since it hit r/all. They are panicking trying to bury this one.

I’ve noticed for months now. They like to infect subs like r/uncensorednews and other alternative subreddits that were created to get away from the shills and astroturfing.

The #1 tactic of these people is to derail conversations and change the topic.

And yet the hardcore Reddit Lefties are still pushing the Russia story. Love it and hate it at the same time. Makes them look incredibly foolish, but in the end hurts America with their ignorance.

Number 1 Trending Video on YouTube right now and it hasn’t even been a day. Of course r/politics is silent. Here’s a comment from there.

Once again, this story is already debunked & confirmed as fake. This was a low-level associate intern who decided to spew bullshit about something he has no idea about. He’s not even working directly on the Russia team. CNN has been absolutely stellar as of late and this retraction just cements that they are an elite organization that goes the extra mile to fact check and verify their sources. Couldn’t be more pleased with the stellar work CNN has been putting out lately

It’s amazing to think that these people believe the media has any reason to have any sort of journalistic integrity. Its a business. I remember during Bernie’s campaign there was a post at the top of r/all about how Clinton was funded by CNN. But now that CNN aligns with their agenda they trust them. Unbelievable.

59% upvoted, LMAOOOO

mirror

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE

1) CNN, Fox News, etc. are all stupid ratings-chasing bullshit. Anyone who doesn’t see that by now isn’t paying attention. It’s been getting worse and worse throughout my life – haven’t really watched any MSM in years, but I’m guessing it’s all pretty abhorrent by now.

2) I don’t really care if news outlets secretly think a story is bullshit or not – but I do care what the FBI thinks. They thought there was enough to warrant an investigation. And now the story has become more about impeding that investigation.

As soon as I saw this video I knew the thread would be brigaded

Damning quotes aside, the most interesting takeaway is how much day to day control Jeff Zucker has over the narrative.

The video was removed

I’m a pretty leftist dude but I think we all have known CNN lost credibility during the election cycle with how they put Clinton on a pedestal.

I mean we all knew it, but this is still one of the most sickening things I have ever seen and still shocking even when you know news is all staged and money driven for agendas. The worst part for me was when he only laughs at the idea of journalistic ethics…

Wow that guy’s gonna get suicided by 4 bullets to the back of the head

Damn this is exciting

R/news is in some hard denial.

CNN isn’t just fake news. They are very fake news. And apparently proud of it. I wonder how the kiddies in r/politics will try and spin this. I mean, he literally says they don’t care about ethics in journalism. It’s kinda hard to spin that.

Edit- oh. They won’t spin it. They will just ignore it apparently. Neato

Edit again- Hi shareblue! Thanks for stopping by to downvote us.

While I must admit I am generally liberal, even I have to say all the Trump-Russia collusion stories are getting old to see. Do I think some of the things that are reported, and some of Trump’s own actions and statements seem a little sketchy? Sure. But ultimately, that’s why there is currently some sort of investigation going on. I don’t need to hear about it every day because at this point there really isn’t too much more to report, and to be honest it just takes away from actually debating the policies that are being put out, especially health care currently. If something comes up in the future from this investigation or otherwise, sure let’s bring it up again and discuss it, but unless/until something like that occurs I would rather see more talk about policies.

While I must admit I am generally liberal, even I have to say all the Trump-Russia collusion stories are getting old to see.

This is the statement that should have the Democrats scared shitless.

It’s also why they’ve been trying to pivot away from the Russian witch hunt but they’re having trouble getting their people to stop. The base is convinced Trump is a traitor and won’t let up.

because they convinced them, what a vicious web we weave….

All of our intelligence says that Russia interfered and Trump says he fired Comey to slow/stop the Russia investigation, it’s not exactly all CNNs fault.

The country should be scared shitless, not just dems.

He fired comey because comey wouldnt hold a presser saying trump wasnt under investigation. Which is true and what comey told him on three diffrent occasions.

Was it dumb? Sure.

Was it interference with the russia investigation? Not even a little bit.

Share exact sentiment.

The worst part to me is how much a lot of the media alienates people, and how much I feel that extends into the everyday political discussion. You see it on all sides. I see it all the time when people call people on the left “libtards” or “snowflakes” and people on the left respond calling people on the right “Nazis” and “bigots” and “racists” and all it does it take away from substantive conversation and instead ignore any possible points that the other side may have because they are from the other side so let’s just call them names instead of actually refute arguments or points they have made.

you are a great, great great person

Concern trolls out in full force tonight.

What really blows me away is how divided along political lines so many people are. If you are 100 percent Democrat or 100 percent Republican on issues as far as the party line goes, you are also 100 percent moron. Every issue deserves discussion. There is nuance in politics which is why most congressmen go to law school.

If anything, this should be a wakeup call to everyone about their favorite news channels.

BREAKING NEWS::::: they’re all this way. They need money to make money. Fox, CNN, Breitbart, Inforwars, all of it is for-profit. They create sensationalized headlines that their viewers care about for some reason, and that’s how you keep eyes on the tube. It’s all despicable, but not surprising.

This is huge. Can’t wait to hear the official ShareBlue narrative on this one.

No mention of this on /r/politics. Head, meet sand.

I CAN’T HANDLE ALL THIS WINNING!!

Link broken???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE

(Why?)

Published at Tue, 27 Jun 2017 04:13:51 +0000

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from Aw Jeez Not This Liberal Crap Again http://strikingtherightbalance.com/must-watch-cnn-producer-caught-on-hidden-camera-basically-admits-cnn-is-an-awful-journalism-outlet-that-is-not-to-be-trusted/