#Distortion & Disinformation

[pandemic-info]

COVID-19 vaccine refusal is driven by deliberate ignorance and cognitive distortions | npj Vaccines

Abstract Vaccine hesitancy was a major challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. A common but sometimes ineffective intervention to reduce vaccine hesitancy involves providing information on vaccine effectiveness, side effects, and related probabilities. Could biased processing of this information contribute to vaccine refusal? We examined the information inspection of 1200 U.S. participants with anti-vaccination, neutral, or pro-vaccination attitudes before they stated their willingness to accept eight different COVID-19 vaccines. All participants—particularly those who were anti-vaccination—frequently ignored some of the information. This deliberate ignorance, especially toward probabilities of extreme side effects, was a stronger predictor of vaccine refusal than typically investigated demographic variables. Computational modeling suggested that vaccine refusals among anti-vaccination participants were driven by ignoring even inspected information. In the neutral and pro-vaccination groups, vaccine refusal was driven by distorted processing of side effects and their probabilities. Our findings highlight the necessity for interventions tailored to individual information-processing tendencies.

[tomorrowusa]

Trump supporters are trying to blur Trump's racism by posting fake AI images of him being the object of adoration by African Americans.

One of the disseminators of such images is a white MAGA talk show host in Florida.

Unlike in 2016, when there was evidence of foreign influence campaigns, the AI-generated images found by the BBC appear to have been made and shared by US voters themselves. One of them was Mark Kaye and his team at a conservative radio show in Florida. They created an image of Mr Trump smiling with his arms around a group of black women at a party and shared it on Facebook, where Mr Kaye has more than one million followers. At first it looks real, but on closer inspection everyone's skin is a little too shiny and there are missing fingers on people's hands - some tell-tale signs of AI-created images. "I'm not a photojournalist," Mr Kaye tells me from his radio studio. "I'm not out there taking pictures of what's really happening. I'm a storyteller." He had posted an article about black voters supporting Mr Trump and attached this image to it, giving the impression that these people all support the former president's run for the White House. In the comments on Facebook, several users appeared to believe the AI image was real. "I'm not claiming it is accurate. I'm not saying, 'Hey, look, Donald Trump was at this party with all of these African American voters. Look how much they love him!'" he said. "If anybody's voting one way or another because of one photo they see on a Facebook page, that's a problem with that person, not with the post itself."

Basically, Mark Kaye is telling the BBC that he has the right to deceive people.

Another spreader of fake images is a Christian fundamentalist known as "Shaggy" in Michigan.

We tracked down the person behind the account called Shaggy, who is a committed Trump supporter living in Michigan.

"[My posts] have attracted thousands of wonderful kind-hearted Christian followers," he said in messages sent to the BBC on social media. When I tried to question him on the AI-generated image he blocked me. His post has had over 1.3 million views, according to the social media site X. Some users called it out, but others seemed to have believed the image was real.

FYI: This is "Shaggy". Is anybody shocked that the people spreading these fake images of blacks are old white MAGA zombies?

Apparently there are still people using oligarch Elon Musk's Twitter X. Don't expect Odious Elon to do anything about obvious attempts to deceive users.

Cliff Albright, the co-founder of campaign group Black Voters Matter, said there appeared to be a resurgence of disinformation tactics targeting the black community, as in the 2020 election. "There have been documented attempts to target disinformation to black communities again, especially younger black voters," he said.

If Trump supporters think that they have the right to spread bogus images, we then have the right to have some fun with them. 😋

[tenth-sentence]

'Dismiss the opponent, distort the facts, distract from the central issue and dismay the audience.'

"Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists" - Julia Ebner

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Nasum  -  Distortion & Disinformation

[rtw4e]

“The third party could be a paying sponsor that desires to persuade a user to buy a product or service, or to believe a piece of propaganda, ideology, or misinformation.”

[immaculatasknight]

They haven't fooled anyone

[jcmarchi]

Who Will Protect Us from AI-Generated Disinformation?

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/who-will-protect-us-from-ai-generated-disinformation/

Who Will Protect Us from AI-Generated Disinformation?

Generative AI has gone from zero to a hundred in under a year. While early, it’s shown its potential to transform business. That we can all agree on. Where we diverge is on how to contain the dangers it poses. 

To be clear, I am pro innovation, and far from a fearmonger. But the recent uptick in misinformation—largely aimed at polarization around controversial issues of the moment—has made it clear that, if left unchecked, gen AI could wreak havoc on societies.

We’ve seen this movie before with social media, but it took years and hard lessons for us to wake up to its flaws. We’ve (presumably) learned something. The question today is who will help stem the tide of reality distortion from gen AI, and how? 

Predictably, governments are beginning to act. Europe is leading the charge, as they have increasingly demonstrated on regulating tech. The US is right behind, with President Biden issuing an executive order this past October.

But it’s going to take a global village acting together to “keep gen AI honest.” And before government can help, it needs to understand the limitations of available approaches.

The identity problem has gotten much worse

In this new world, truth becomes the needle in a haystack of opinions masquerading as facts. Knowing who the content comes from matters more than ever. 

And it’s not as easy as decreeing that every social media account must be identity-verified. There is fierce opposition to that, and in some cases anonymity is needed to justifiably protect account holders. Moreover, many consumers of the worst content don’t care if it is credible, nor where it came from. 

Despite those caveats, the potential role of identity in coping with gen AI is underappreciated. Skeptics, hear me out. 

Let’s imagine that regulation or social conscience cause platforms to give every account holder these choices: 

Verify their identity or not, and

Publicly reveal their verified identity, or just be labeled, “ID Verified”

Then the social media audience can better decide who is credible. Equally important if not more so, identity supports accountability. Platforms can decide on actions to take against serial “disinformers” and repeat abusers of AI-generated content, even if they pop up under different account names. 

With gen AI raising the stakes, I believe that identity—knowing exactly who posted what—is critical. Some will oppose it, and identity is not a comprehensive answer. In fact, no solution will satisfy all stakeholders. But if regulation compels the platforms to offer identity verification to all accounts, I’m convinced the impact will be a huge positive. 

The moderation conundrum

Content moderation—automated and human—is the last line of defense against undesirable content. Human moderation is a rough job, with risk of psychological harm from exposure to the worst humanity can offer. It’s also expensive and often accused of the biased censorship the platforms strive to cut back on.

Automated moderation scales beyond human capacity to cope with the torrents of new content, but it fails to understand context (memes being a common example) and cultural nuances. Both forms of moderation are crucial and necessary, but they are only part of the answer. 

The oft-heard, conventional prescription for controlling gen AI is: “Collaboration between tech leaders, government, and civil society is needed.” Sure, but what specifically?

Governments, for their part, can push social and media platforms to offer identity verification and prominently display it on all posts. Regulators can also pave the way to credibility metrics that actually help gauge whether a source is believable. Collaboration is necessary to develop universal standards that give specific guidance and direction so the private sector doesn’t have to guess.

Finally, should it be illegal to create malicious AI output? Legislation to prohibit content meant for illegal activity could reduce the volume of toxic content and lighten the load on moderators. I don’t see regulation and laws as capable of defeating disinformation, but they are essential in confronting the threat.

The sunny side of the street: innovation

The promise of innovation makes me an optimist here. We can’t expect politicians or platform owners to fully protect against AI-generated deception. They leave a big gap, and that is exactly what will inspire invention of new technology to authenticate content and detect fakery. 

Since we now know the downside of social media, we’ve been quick to realize generative AI could turn out to be a huge net-negative for humanity, with its ability to polarize and mislead. 

Optimistically, I see benefits to multi-pronged approaches where control methods work together, first at the source, limiting creation of content designed for illegal use. Then, prior to publication, verifying the identity of those who decline anonymity. Next, clear labeling to show credibility ratings and the poster’s identity or lack thereof. Finally, automated and human moderation can filter out some of the worst. I’d anticipate new authentication technology to come online soon. 

Add it all up, and we’ll have a much better, though never perfect, solution. Meanwhile, we should build up our skill set to figure out what’s real, who’s telling the truth, and who is trying to fool us. 

[littleguymart]

hello friends! I'm going to talk a bit about the current events in Gaza, Israel, and Palestine.

I'm doing this not because I'm the most informed (my us-american perspective is going to be distorted) or can speak for anyone else. I'm doing it because I have a lot of followers on here.

I hope that a blog people associate with kindness & comfort saying something can prompt people to reflect & take action.

I want to address this post to folks in the US who struggle with scrupulosity & who get stuck in dread. It's understandable if you're overwhelmed by the amount of information coming out about Israel, Palestine, and Gaza.

The US was established & is perpetuated through genocide, land theft, and continued oppression of indigenous people. This reality is not spoken about by the majority of settlers in the US and contradicts US national identity/myth.

As a result, a lot of Americans (myself included), have been taught not recognize this kind of violence for what it is. This means we are not necessarily skilled at recognizing good-faith reporting from dogwhistles & propaganda & disinformation campaigns.

Our country's myth-- that its genocidal creation was justified-- relies on that kind of ignorance. Even when we can tell the difference, it can feel hopeless to do anything about, or like we as individuals are responsible for its entirety.

I don't have a blanket solution to this. Unlearning this type of thinking is a long process, but it begins with recognizing that violent colonial governments are at work, and doing what we can to stop those processes.

Please call or write an email to your representatives to demand a ceasefire and an end to military aid to the Israeli government, if you're able. Turn out to protests if you're able. Refuse racism, orientalism, and anti-Semitism.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Musk, Zuckerberg and Trump all target Brazil in disinformation war

After Trump 2.0, these powerful men have eyes on Brazil next. Here’s what can be done to defend our democracy

“Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down.” Mark Zuckerberg’s mention of the region, in his announcement to end Meta’s fact-checking efforts in the US among other measures, was by no means a casualty. It’s a direct message to us and shows that the eyes of the most powerful men in the world are on our country – Brazil.

Last year, X was banned by the Brazilian Supreme Court for 40 days because of a law that Elon Musk refused to comply with: any international company operating here must have a legal representative in the country. When X felt the impact of losing one of the largest and most active user bases worldwide, Musk surrendered.

In addition to big tech moguls, Donald Trump also has his eyes on us. In the final days of 2024, he filed a request to the Supreme Court to pause a law that would ban TikTok in the US. Brazil once again emerged, this time to ground the president-elect's claim. Echoing Zuckerberg and Musk, Trump adopted the false censorship narrative spread by Brazilian far-right politicians linked to former president Jair Bolsonaro to distort the reasons that led to the temporary ban of X.

“Another major Western democracy – Brazil – shut down another entire social-media platform, X (formerly known as Twitter), for more than a month, apparently based on that government’s desire to suppress disfavored political speech,” says the petition issued in December 2024.

Continue reading.

[mariacallous]

The war unleashed by Russia almost three years ago in Ukraine is rightly recognized as one of the great crimes of the twenty-first century. Understandably, little attention has been paid so far to the impact the conflict is having on Ukraine’s international image. And yet amid the trauma and horror of Russia’s invasion, there are growing signs that the unprecedented media spotlight on Ukraine since 2022 is gradually helping to transform global perceptions of the country. As a result, Ukraine is now finally emerging from a prolonged period of international obscurity that has hindered the country’s progress for centuries.

International ignorance of Ukraine has been a feature since long before the country regained independence in 1991. Following the Soviet collapse, little was done to address this lack of outside awareness or strengthen Ukraine’s national brand in the global arena. This low profile helped set the stage for Russia’s disinformation efforts, with foreign audiences often prepared to believe all manner of outlandish lies about a country that was otherwise unknown to them. Thanks to the recent media focus on Ukraine, Kremlin propagandists are now finding that their distortions are not so readily accepted. This is an ongoing process, but it is already possible to identify a number of important facts about Ukraine that have taken root in the international consciousness since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

1. Ukraine is not Russia

The fact that Ukraine is not Russia may seem insultingly obvious when viewed from a Ukrainian perspective, but in reality this was the fundamental image problem facing the country in 2022. Indeed, it is no coincidence that on the eve of the full-scale invasion, Vladimir Putin published an entire essay denying the legitimacy of a separate Ukrainian state on the grounds that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people’).

Putin did not invent this narrative of Ukraine denial himself. His predecessors have been insisting that Ukraine is an inalienable part of Russia since at least the eighteenth century, and have ruthlessly manipulated the historical record to support their arguments. Throughout the Tsarist and Soviet eras, anyone attempting to counter this Great Russian narrative or highlight Ukraine’s long statehood struggle was treated as a dangerous heretic subject to the harshest of punishments.

For generations, Russia was able to impose its imperial propaganda on international audiences, with Ukrainians silenced and Ukraine misleadingly portrayed as an intrinsic part of Russia’s own historical heartlands. It was therefore understandable that when an independent Ukraine appeared on the map in 1991, many had trouble distinguishing it from Russia. This created much confusion and went some way to legitimizing subsequent Russian attempts to reassert its authority over Ukraine.

The full-scale invasion has changed all that. Since February 2022, international perceptions of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine have undergone a radical transformation as global audiences have witnessed the ferocity of the Russian attack and the determination of Ukraine’s national defense. The war unleashed by Vladimir Putin has killed hundreds of thousands and shattered millions of lives; it has also destroyed the myth of Russians and Ukrainians as “one people.” As the invasion approaches the three-year mark, it is now safe to say that anyone who continues to insist on the indivisibility of Russia and Ukraine is either acting in bad faith, or is so stunningly ignorant that their opinion can be disregarded.

2. Ukraine is huge

Prewar Ukraine’s low international profile encouraged many to imagine the country as an obscure and irrelevant statelet whose fate mattered little to the wider world. Meanwhile, very few people seemed to appreciate that Ukraine was in fact the largest country wholly in Europe. That is no longer the case. Throughout the past three years, the map of Ukraine has featured relentlessly in the international press. Even casual observers have grown familiar with the outline of the country, and cannot have failed to notice how large it looms over its European neighbors.

Media coverage of battlefield developments has also helped to underline the sheer size of Ukraine. Despite regular war reports of major offensives and record advances, the overall picture of the front lines has changed little since the first year of the war, underlining the comparative vastness of Ukraine. While Ukraine may still appear small when compared to Russia, it is a huge country by European standards. Growing awareness of this fact is helping to shape perceptions of Ukraine’s geopolitical significance.

3. Ukraine is an agricultural superpower

Prior to 2022, Ukraine was probably best known to many around the world as the site of the Chornobyl disaster. Associations with the world’s worst nuclear accident were particularly unfortunate as Ukraine is anything but a radioactive wasteland. In reality, the country’s real claim to fame is as the breadbasket of Europe. Ukraine’s fabled black soil is among the most fertile land in the entire world, making much of the country a giant garden of agrarian abundance.

Since 2022, Russia’s invasion has helped educate international audiences about Ukraine’s crucial role in global food security. Extensive media coverage of Russia’s Black Sea naval blockade has underlined the importance of Ukrainian agricultural exports, with disruption caused by Moscow’s interference leading to famine fears in Africa and price hikes on basic foodstuffs throughout the West. Growing awareness of Ukraine’s status as an agricultural superpower has undermined Kremlin efforts to portray the invasion as a strictly local affair, and has mobilized international opposition to the war.

4. Ukraine is an innovation hub

For decades, international perceptions of Ukraine were plagued by lazy cliches depicting the country as a terminally corrupt backwater on the vodka-soaked fringes of Eastern Europe. These deeply unflattering caricatures of Ukrainian stagnation were always misleading. They are now also hopelessly outdated. Since 2022, Ukraine has demonstrated that it is a sophisticated high tech nation capable of more than holding its own in the most technologically advanced war the world has ever seen. Ukraine’s ability to develop, deploy, and update its own domestically-produced weapons systems on an almost daily basis has done much to debunk the negative stereotypes of old and establish the country’s reputation as a leading innovation hub.

Ukrainian defense tech companies have been responsible for a string of particularly innovative battlefield solutions that have caught the eye of global defense industry giants and helped Ukraine even up the odds against the country’s far larger and wealthier enemy. For example, ground-breaking Ukrainian marine drones have turned the tide in the Battle of the Black Sea and forced Russia’s entire fleet to retreat from Crimea, while Ukrainian long-range drones routinely strike targets deep inside Russia. As a result, “Made in Ukraine” is now recognized as a stamp of quality throughout the international security sector. This image transformation is already attracting international investors and will shape Ukraine’s economic development for decades to come, with the country’s defense industry and broader tech sector set to be in high demand.

5. Ukraine is united

The full-scale invasion has seriously undermined longstanding Russian efforts to portray Ukraine as a country irrevocably split along geographical and ideological lines. The narrative of a divided Ukraine has been a mainstay of Kremlin propaganda since the Soviet era, and has been central to the disinformation that has accompanied the escalating Russian aggression of the past two decades. For many years, this crude oversimplification of Ukraine’s regional complexities proved superficially persuasive among international audiences, but it has been decisively debunked by Ukraine’s united response to Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Ukrainians across the country have overwhelmingly rallied in opposition to the invading Russians, with residents in supposedly “pro-Russian” cities such as Odesa and Kharkiv proving no less determined to defend themselves and their homes. This is not to say that regional diversity is no longer a feature in today’s Ukraine, of course. On the contrary, Ukraine remains just as subject to regional differences as any other large European nation. However, the Russian invasion has shattered the myth of a terminally divided Ukraine and proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the vast majority of Ukrainians bitterly oppose the idea of a Russian reunion.

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

Ever since October 7th, the amount of misinformation and disinformation about Jews, Israel, Judaism, and even just like, basic facts about reality have been so intense that it's really dredging up a lot of my gaslighting trauma.

(No, not in the memic sense that it's been distorted into, but the kind of gaslighting that leads you to detransition and think it was your choice despite drowning in dysphoria, the kind that warps and changes and erases memories, and makes it so that you dissociate for literal months at a time to escape the pain. That kind.)

And I recognized this because I keep finding myself arguing facts and trying to reason with people who say that they're part of the compassionate left and care about working on antisemitism but yet spew the kind of antisemitism that would be totally at home on Stormfront.

It's that first arguing stage of gaslighting, where the abuser keeps saying outrageous, untrue things and you're still fighting to try and get them to empathize with you and seek mutual understanding. This:

A gaslighter does not simply need to be right. He or she also needs for you to believe that they are right. In stage 1, you know that they are being ridiculous, but you argue anyways. You argue for hours, without resolution. You argue over things that shouldn’t be up for debate — your feelings, your opinions, your experience of the world. You argue because you need to be right, you need to be understood, or you need to get their approval. In stage 1, you still believe yourself, but you also unwittingly put that belief up for debate.

(bolding mine) (source)

This is a pattern I recognize in myself in personal relationships and even within communities, but what's happening right now is a lot bigger and more diffuse. It's not one abuser or even a shitty cohort of abusive people who are monopolizing a community space. This is being encouraged in a frighteningly large number of non-Jewish progressive spaces. In the same way that stochastic terrorism adds up very quickly, this type of cultural gaslighting and stochastic emotional abuse feels like a deluge.

But if you look at history, this is not new, for Jews. This is but the latest version of a very long game of Why Won't You Just Give Up and Assimilate or Die that Jews have thus far prevailed on at great cost to ourselves.

Anyway I'm done arguing with goyim about things that absolutely should not be up for debate: Jewish history, Jewish culture, what certain religious concepts in Judaism mean, Jewish lived experiences, what is and isn't antisemitism. If you aren't willing to engage in a genuine way that seeks mutual understanding, I'm not interested. I'm done.

You are engaging in violent behavior and lying to yourself about it and calling it activism. Well I am no longer going to participate. You can lie to yourself all you want, but you are a bad person and I don't forgive you, and you can do that alone.

You are acting from a mob mentality and a mob cannot be reasoned with. You are drunk on your tiny bit of power and social capital, and years down the line you'll lie to yourself and pretend that you cared about us.

You didn't. And deep down you know it, too.

Instead of arguing with people who refuse to see facts or reason and put our experiences up for debate, I am going to work on compiling a resource for people who want to actually learn.

Everyone else can fuck off.

[orbularborbular]

I've done a lot of thinking about the election loss over the past 24 hours, and read a bunch of think-pieces about what Democrats could've done differently, or which bits of messaging were to blame. A lot of the dialogue seems to be missing a fundamental point.

It doesn't matter what solutions you propose or enact, if the voting public cannot differentiate between facts and lies. Your policy platforms do not matter if people can't discern which things actually happened, and which didn't. You could pass a $35 minimum wage tomorrow and unless people are able to connect their pay increase to your legislative action, they will not reward you for it at the ballot box. We are caught up in a vast information war where conspiracy theories and propaganda have saturated the television screens and social media feeds of the voting public, leaving them confused, angry, and tapped out. Democracy doesn't work if people do not occupy a shared reality. Engagement-driven algorithms have distorted our collective perception of the world so drastically that people cannot determine what any given candidate has actually accomplished, or even what they stand for. For crying out loud, we've got voters who have abandoned the most basic, bedrock underpinnings of reality, like the fact that we live on a planet, or that germs cause disease. It's just absolute bugfucking chaos out there. Old-school "grassroots democracy" does not solve the problems of a post-truth society. If we cannot get a handle on disinformation, we cannot fix things. Ever.

[owenthetokencishet]

[porterdavis]

Whenever I start feeling there's no way Trump could possibly win I have to remind myself there is a large segment of the US electorate (like my sister) that only watches Fox News and has never heard this quote. Or has never heard about Trump's dissing of Medal of Honor recipients. Or heard that Fox itself had to pay $500MM+ to Dominion Voting for deliberately lying about it and the whole 'stop the steal' disinformation campaign.

But not hearing the burgeoning list of Trump's illegal and immoral behaviour is not as bad as repeatedly hearing the lies and distortions that Fox actively spews. My sister vehemently believes Joe Biden is an evil, corrupt man! Come on....Joe may have his shortcomings but if there is a more honest, empathetic man in Washington I'd like to meet him.

[tomorrowusa]

Trump doesn't want voters to be reminded of his disastrous responses to hurricanes. Trumpnesia may have caused many to forget how he threw paper towels at Puerto Rican victims of Hurricane Maria or how he used a Sharpie marker to try to change the path of Hurricane Dorian.

So to muddy the waters, Trump has been spewing a firehose of falsehoods about Hurricane Helene.

A few of Trump's lies fact checked.

Monday: Trump falsely claims Biden hasn’t answered calls from Georgia’s governor It was immediately clear that Trump’s claim was false. Kemp, a Republican, told reporters earlier Monday that he had spoken with Biden the day prior — and that it was Kemp who had initially missed a call from Biden, not the other way around.

Trump himself has a record of problematic phone calls with Georgia state officials.

Monday: Trump cites baseless ‘reports’ about anti-Republican bias in the North Carolina response Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said at a Tuesday press conference that federal assistance had “been superb,” noting that Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had both called and told him to let them know whatever the state needed. McMaster also said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell had called.

The lies only get bigger...

Thursday: Trump falsely claims Harris spent ‘all her FEMA money’ on housing illegal migrants First, there is zero basis for Trump’s suggestion that the Biden administration is running some sort of scheme to get undocumented immigrants to vote illegally in the 2024 election. Voting by noncitizens is a felony. Second, there is zero basis for claiming that FEMA disaster assistance money was stolen — by anyone, let alone Harris personally — for the housing of migrants.

^^^ That one ranks with the lies Trump and Vance are spreading about Haitian Americans eating pets in Ohio.

Friday: Trump falsely claims $1 billion was ‘stolen’ from FEMA for migrants and has gone ‘missing’ Though Trump’s Thursday claim about FEMA money and migrants had already been debunked by Friday, Trump repeated the claim to reporters at least twice on Friday — and then said it again at a Friday night town hall event in North Carolina.

It's never necessary for Trump to have proof of something. He just makes shit up to further his orgies of disinformation.

Saturday: Trump falsely claims the federal government is only giving $750 to people who lost their homes Trump’s claim is wrong. As FEMA explained earlier in the week on social media andon a web page it created to combat misinformation about the response, $750 is merely the immediate, upfront aid survivors can get to cover basic, pressing needs like food, water, baby formula and emergency supplies. Survivors are also eligible to apply for additional forms of assistance, such as to pay for temporary housing and home repairs, that can be worth thousands of dollars; the current maximum amount for home repair assistance, for example, is $42,500.

For people poor at math, the difference between $750 and $42,500 is $41,750. And I don't think the $750 is deducted from the eventual $42,500.

Saturday: Trump falsely claims there are ‘no helicopters, no rescue’ in North Carolina  This claim about North Carolina is false. There have been numerous government and private helicopters and other aircraft involved in rescue and aid efforts in North Carolina, though some residents died before they could be rescued and a significant number of residents have remained missing or stranded for days. The North Carolina National Guard announced Thursday that its own air assets had “completed 146 flight missions, resulting in the rescue of 538 people and 150 pets.”  The Washington Post reported Friday [ ... ] CNN reported Saturday that air traffic over western North Carolina had increased 300% over the past seven days due to hurricane relief efforts, according to Becca Gallas, director of North Carolina’s Division of Aviation. The state said in an official update Saturday: “A total of 53 search and rescue teams from North Carolina and beyond, consisting of more than 1,600 personnel have conducted search and rescue operations during this event. Search and rescue teams have interacted with over 5,400 people, including assists, evacuations and rescues.”

If Trump says something, it is almost certainly untrue. He is hoping to be heard by low information voters who get news from social media and other unreliable sources. It is up to you to step up your interaction with any such people who you may know personally. Send them articles and vids from reputable sources. Elections are won or lost one voter at a time.

A reminder you can give people: Trump made over 30,000 lies during his four years in office. He is not a reliable source of information.

Washington Post counts 30,573 false or misleading claims in four years by Trump

Would you buy a used car or a second-hand presidency from Weird Donald? 🤨

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dan Rather at Steady:

The morning after the election, I was talking with a friend who said something that made me pause: “The American people aren’t buying what the Dems are selling.” At the time I acknowledged the notion but filed it away for closer inspection, once the shock wore off.  Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party were selling hope and freedom, upholding the rule of law, saving democracy. What’s not to buy? With the benefit of lots of discussion, reading, watching, and thinking over the past 17 days, it became apparent that that analysis is incomplete.  It isn’t that the American people didn’t buy what Harris was selling; they didn’t know what she was selling. The increasingly powerful right-wing media championed her opponent’s message while distorting hers. And millions of Americans bought it. 

As The New Republic editor Michael Tomasky wrote, “It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t inflation, or anything else. It was how people perceive those things, which points to one overpowering answer.” The right-wing media now controls the agenda.   For those of us who grew up on a steady diet of truth-telling, it’s gut-wrenching to see this mega misinformation machine grow into a multi-headed monster.   Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shock. Gallup says trust in the media is at an all-time low. The most trusted news source according to YouGov is … The Weather Channel. Couple that with exit polls showing people who consume a lot of news from traditional sources voted overwhelmingly for Harris. 

If you only read The New York Times or watch CNN or so-called legacy networks such as CBS News, you might be surprised to learn there is a vast right-wing media ecosystem that goes well beyond Fox News. Founded in 1996, Fox is the granddaddy of the far-right media but has since been joined by Newsmax and One America News Network. This media universe also includes Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns hundreds of radio and TV stations — reaching 40% of the viewing public — and newspapers, including the recently purchased Baltimore Sun; iHeartMedia, which dominates right-wing talk radio and podcasting; Trinity and Bott Radio, two massive Christian broadcasting networks; social media platforms like Trump’s own Truth Social and X, owned by Trump bestie Elon Musk; and a multitude of hugely popular far-right podcasts.  Collectively, these various and varied media outlets have been feeding growing audiences a constant diet of disinformation for years. They have been fighting and winning an information war Democrats didn’t seem to know existed. The 2024 election may have been the inflection point when the right-wing media’s influence finally eclipsed the mainstream media. That is a major reason a convicted felon won with just under 50% of the popular vote.

The landscape is changing at light speed. Today, traditional media is not where most people get their news. Not so long ago you had to pick up a morning newspaper or turn on a television at a specific time to get news. Now “news” is available 24-7, from hundreds of sources, in tiny bite-sized portions, often without the benefit of context or even fact-checking. Right-wing outlets peddling half truths have learned how to navigate and thus dominate this new landscape. It is important to note that this battle is being waged between right-leaning media and mainstream media. The combatants are not two ideologues. One group is pushing a hard-right agenda, and the other is striving to report and expose the truth. The social media landscape mirrors this reality. On the right, you have Truth Social and X. On the left, not much. In reaction to the misinformation rampant on its sites during the 2020 election, Meta-owned platforms like Facebook and Instagram removed most political content.

An excellent read from longtime CBS News journalist Dan Rather on how right-wing media propaganda being fed to millions of Americans without any real fact-checking of lies is what led to Donald Trump become a Presidential candidate in the first place, let alone win twice.