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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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Opinion: Living in the world of pants-on-fire lies From exhaustive fact checks to contentious briefing-room clashes over the administration’s “alternative facts,” debunking the whirl of lies became a full-time process and started derailing pressing long-term conversations. But as the past few weeks have shown, the mendacity that once seemed like a feature of politics in the age of Trump has outlived the former president’s Twitter feed. The past week alone has featured increasingly ridiculous false claims issuing from the right. There’s the one about the Biden administration taking away Americans’ hamburgers. And the one about the White House giving gift bags with the vice president’s book to migrant children — that one was effectively retracted by the New York Post and the reporter resigned, saying she was forced to write a false story. As those pseudo-stories suggest, while we may have dispensed with some problems unique to living in a country run by an inveterate liar, questions remain about how to deal with a continuing torrent of politically useful falsehoods. And they remain because the problem both predates Trump and was exacerbated by him; indeed, it goes to the heart of how journalists think about what they do. A key tenet of professional journalism from its earliest days has been exposure, particularly the mandate to thrust bad deeds into the spotlight that the doers had tried feverishly to conceal. Exposure also meant airing a range of ideas, more or less evenhandedly, so readers could sort through them independently to decide what they thought. That last instinct intensified in the late 1960s as politics grew more sharply ideological. Increasingly, media outlets sought to feature a voice from the right and a voice for the left in order to strike a pose of balance and objectivity. But what happens when the incentives change, along with the meaning of “exposure,” and the goal is no longer to persuade people of the merits of an idea but simply to expose as many people as possible to a false story? According to that huckster-like rationale, exposing the idea — even while debunking it or pointing out its ethical and logical flaws — plays into the hands of the people circulating conspiracies. That dynamic predates Trump’s rise. Since the 1990s, conservative media has developed a symbiotic (or parasitic) relationship with mainstream news. For all the talk of silos and bubbles and echo chambers, the real power of right-wing media outlets has been their ability to influence the coverage of non-conservative outlets. Conspiracies about then-President Bill Clinton regularly crept into the national news. In 1995, “60 Minutes” devoted a segment to the death of Vince Foster, a Clinton staffer who had died by suicide two years earlier. In right-wing circles, though, Foster’s death was treated as a conspiracy: a murder covered up by the administration. There, true believers could pick up any number of books and videos and articles all devoted to the Foster conspiracy, which had so much staying power that one of the most-watched national news shows spent time once again debunking it — not, as host Mike Wallace explained, because the facts were in question, but because the conspiracies circulated so widely. Fox News was founded the following year and would go on to expand its political influence largely thanks to the coverage its stories received on other networks. Over the years, the relentless and inaccurate flogging of pet issues like “Fast & Furious,” Benghazi and of course, Hillary Clinton’s email server, seeped from Fox News into other outlets. Matt Yglesias, writing for Vox in 2018, dubbed this the “hack gap“: the more outrage one is willing to perform, the more headlines one gets. And the right has been much better than their opposition at performing outrage. This prowess holds even, it turns out, when the outrage is powered by something simply conjured from thin air. That was the case with birtherism, an easily disproven claim about President Barack Obama’s birthplace. While mainstream journalism had no truck with birtherism, it thrived in the right-wing media marketplace, where politics, conspiracy and entertainment grew indistinguishable. Fact checks by mainstream media — including Obama’s decision to release a second version of his birth certificate in 2011 — had no lasting effect on belief in the conspiracy, which actually grew in popularity during Obama’s second term in office. The case of birtherism shows that debunking a lie, unless handled very carefully, doesn’t work. Exposing a lie for the falsehood it is can actually spread misinformation further by repeating the false claims. So the more journalists try to do their work — the work of exposure — the worse the situation gets. That dynamic has been amplified by two major media developments of the past few decades: the rise of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which enable the rapid spread of misinformation, and the economic restructuring of journalism, which rewards vast amounts of content delivered at a rapid pace and encourages outlets to cover the outrage of the day. The remaking of the information environment means that journalists are not the only ones who have to adapt — the rest of us do as well. During the Trump era, things got trickier. Journalists felt they couldn’t turn away: after all, the primary source of misinformation was the president of the United States, and they had to cover him. But in a post-Trump era, it is clear that the problem is not an adversarial or polarized relationship between the press corps and the president. The problem is deeper and more structural: it’s the way non-conservative outlets get used to further circulate conspiracies. There’s not much that can be done about the proliferation of right-wing outlets. A new Fairness Doctrine won’t do it, and as long as there’s an audience hungry for the kind of content provided by right-wing talk radio and broadcasters like Fox News, boycotts and the other economic activism will have limited effects. So when it comes to misinformation, the approach should focus more on containment. For journalists, part of the solution has to be cutting the cord with Fox News and its fringier cousins. That doesn’t mean ignoring it all together — I’ve recently argued that we have to pay attention to people like Tucker Carlson, who uses his show to spread hate — but scaling back the overall coverage of right-wing stories. When outlets do tackle something like Carlson’s use of “great replacement theory,” they should do so in deeply contextualized ways, so the story is less about what Carlson said last night, and more about the ways unfounded xenophobic and racist talking points get woven into his prime-time show. For the rest of us, one of the most important things people can do is to resist the temptation of social-media dunking. I know: sharing outrageous clips to call them out comes with a surge of adrenaline and righteousness — as though with enough retweets, people will finally understand how poisonous and fraudulent the material is. But that’s not what happens. Instead, the misinformation winds up before millions more eyeballs, often without any real context or explanation. The problem of misinformation is a thorny one. It is particularly difficult to fix because it plays on the virtues of journalism, its commitment to exposure and fairness. But in an information environment in which exposure aids misinformation, the best approach is a deeply unsexy one: to ignore the shiniest, least reality-based objects — no stories or tweets on illusory beef bans, for instance — and to deeply contextualize the rest, to help people understand the incentives behind the spread of misinformation, and why it’s suddenly everywhere. That is slow, hard work that likely won’t be rewarded with prizes or film treatments or Twitter virality, but it can start the process of defanging misinformation in a post-Trump era. Source link Orbem News #Lies #Living #opinion #Opinion:Livingintheworldofpants-on-firelies-CNN #opinions #pantsonfire #World

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orendrasingh · 4 years ago

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Editors and executives at Newsweek, a formerly prestigious and popular magazine that in recent years has suffered from self-inflicted wounds and even a criminal investigation of its business practices, are once again digging themselves out of a public relations hole.Newsweek Editor-in-Chief Nancy Cooper and the magazine’s recently hired opinion editor, Trump-backing conservative activist and attorney Josh Hammer, apologized on Friday after nearly a week of defending a right-wing law professor’s op-ed questioning Sen. Kamala Harris’ U.S. citizenship and her eligibility to be Joe Biden’s running mate.“This op-ed is being used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia. We apologize,” read the editor’s note that replaced their earlier detailed defense of the op-ed. “[T]o many readers, the essay inevitably conveyed the ugly message that Senator Kamala Harris, a woman of color and the child of immigrants, was somehow not truly American.”Cooper didn’t respond to email and text messages from The Daily Beast, with which Newsweek was partnered from 2010 to 2013 when IAC, The Daily Beast’s parent company, sold the money-losing magazine to IBT Media’s owners, Etienne Uzac and Johnathan Davis. The two entrepreneurs have a close and controversial financial connection to a charismatic South Korean evangelical minister named David Jang, touted by some of his followers as the messiah.Hammer—a former Ted Cruz aide and member of the Federalist Society and the right-leaning Claremont Institute, who joined Newsweek in May after writing for Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire—declined to comment, telling The Daily Beast in a brief phone conversation, “I’m not interested in speaking. Thank you.”And then hung up the phone.Several of Newsweek’s journalists were alarmed by Hammer’s arrival because of his hyper-partisan leanings—and especially because former Trump adviser and Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon, perceived as a Hammer ally, apparently continues to hope that he will one day buy the magazine.The Newsweek Media Group’s CEO Dev Pragad and its chief content officer Dayan Candappa—who joined the magazine in 2016 after he was fired from Reuters amid sexual harassment allegations—could not be reached.“The updated editor’s note that tops the op-ed attached here is our response to your query,” Newsweek spokesman Ken Frydman texted The Daily Beast. “Please note that both editor’s notes were written by Nancy Cooper and signed by Josh Hammer. Not the other way around, as you suggested. Also, Josh Hammer denies having Steve Bannon’s contact information.”The essay—by Chapman University law professor John C. Eastman, also a Claremont Institute denizen, and headlined “Some Questions for Kamala Harris About Eligibility”—prompted widespread disgust both inside and outside Newsweek, as well as letters demanding a retraction from members of the magazine’s staff for its whiff of birtherism and racism; it was predictably weaponized by Donald Trump and his supporters.During a Thursday press conference/campaign rally in the White House briefing room, a reporter asked Trump about social media rumors—apparently stoked by Newsweek—that Harris was “an anchor baby” and thus ineligible to run.“I heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” Trump answered. “I have no idea if that’s right. I would have thought, I would have assumed, that the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president.”Cooper and Hammer’s apology—which acknowledged that “we should have recognized the potential, even the probability, that this could happen”—nevertheless fell far short of staffers’ demands that the magazine retract and remove Eastman’s supposedly erudite exploration of 19th century Supreme Court rulings.Those ancient high court decisions, Eastman claimed, raised “a significant challenge” to Harris’ American citizenship and eligibility to run as the Democratic vice presidential nominee, even though she was born in Oakland, California, to a Jamaican father and Indian mother.“To see this piece run on Newsweek’s website was beyond devastating,” London-based Newsweek correspondent Chantal Da Silva tweeted on Thursday, as members of the magazine’s London bureau sent an anguished and angry letter to top editor Cooper demanding that the essay be taken down. “It is inaccurate and it is dangerous. Journalism should be about informing, not inflaming and certainly not about spreading baseless claims that can only fuel the flames of racism and hatred.”Christina Zhao, a New York-based senior breaking news editor, tweeted: “This is an inflammatory and racist op-ed that should never have been published. That is my opinion.”In their note of apology, Cooper and Hammer persisted in disagreeing.“Many readers have demanded that we retract the essay,” they wrote, “but we believe in being transparent and are therefore allowing it to remain online, with this note attached.”Senior Newsweek reporter Jason Lemon tweeted: “I’m glad to see my employer Newsweek issue this apology over the op-ed questioning Harris’ eligibility to be VP. But deeply disappointed it was published in the first place.”However, a prominent former Newsweek staffer, who asked not to be further identified, quipped that the magazine’s owners and upper management “are probably loving the clicks and the fact that it’s an editorial controversy unrelated to Jesus and Seoul.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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worldnews-blog · 4 years ago

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d2kvirus · 6 years ago

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Dickheads of the Month: November 2018

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of November 2018 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

Just when you think the current Tory government can’t get any scummier they find new depths to sink to, this time as it emerged that their use of gagging orders wasn’t just last month’s story of how Esther McVey silenced over twenty groups who oppose Universal Credit, oh no, the latest one to emerge was how engineering firm WSP had to sign a non-disclosure agreement expressly forbidding their report into the Grenfell Tower fire from criticising Theresa May or her government - which came to light just weeks after Theresa May claimed she was going to get tough on gagging clauses

Of course Theresa May herself wasn’t above scumminess, not when her address to the Confederation of British Industry featured her claiming how EU nationals “jump the queue” in terms of immigrations, and initially attempted to deny that she had said it - a claim that was somewhat difficult considering that comment had been broadcast by numerous television stations by that point

Bastions of journalistic integrity and not knowing what Photoshop is Newsnight hosted a panel of six members of the public to discuss the merits of Theresa may’s Britait deal, and one of the panel claimed to be a lifelong Tory supporter named Lynn who was wholly behind the deal - but what she neglected to mention was that she was an actress named Marina Lynn Hayter who had previously appeared in several BBC programmes ranging other political programming to working as an extra in EastEnders who also happens to post Islamophobic tweets. When this came to light the initial response was for Newsnight host Emily Maitlis to tweet patronising comments to anyone who dared think the BBC’s word couldn't not be trusted while editor Esme Wren responded by doubling down on claims that “Lynn” was a legitimate pastor - claims which were rapidly torn to shreds as Hayter’s Twitter feed proves she is a pastor of the Seeds For Wealth Ministries (who definitely aren’t a pyramid scheme...) whose ceremonial garb looks nothing like the Anglican garb she wore on Newsnight, which only begs the question whether she chose to wear that garb and nobody checked if she was genuine or whether Newsnight dressed her up that way

In a desperate attempt to gain sympathy and/or relevance David Cameron said he was “bored shitless” after two years being away from politics and spending most of his time in his shed and he was considering a return to frontline politics, possibly as Foreign Secretary - apparently failing to understand that the reason that he’s been away from frontline politics for the past two years is because his gamble of an advisory referendum on EU membership backfired horribly due to his incompetent handling of the Remain campaign, especially since he also promised to activate Article 50 if a Leave vote came in, which is the reason he ran for the hills the second his fuckup was readily apparent

Feckless cunt Ivanka Trump scored a spectacular own goal against Team Trump when it emerged she had sent several hundred government emails from her personal e-mail account before initially trying to claim she didn’t realise she had done anything wrong - as if she forgot about her father saying “But her emails!!!!!!” several thousand times during the Presidential campaign whenever any question he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer came up

The past two years of acting like a cockney gangster who thinks he’s gotten away with it to the point he’s rubbing it in the faces of everyone else meant that Arron Banks really looked foolish where, after months of saying he doesn't care what the Electoral Commission says about him, the Electoral Commission referred the investigation into his business dealings to the National Crime Office

...or course, within 24 hours of this, the geniuses at the BBC announced that Banks would be appearing on The Sunday Politics Show, which sails dangerously close to interfering with a criminal investigation, and as expected the whole thing was a farce as it degenerated into Banks using the opportunity to smear Carole Cadwalladr for the umpteenth time as Julia Hartley-Brewer agreed with him the whole time

It seemed the Banksification of the BBC continued apace when Andrew Neil posted a particularly nasty tweet about Carole Cadwalladr that sounded remarkably similar to the tweets Banks has posted about her for the past year or so - and the BBC did not help themselves when their response was to say that, as Neil had deleted the tweet, there was no reason to complain

And the BBC’s dereliction of duty continued apace on Question Time when David Dimbleby made no effort to demand a retraction from Claire Perry when she called Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite

...and finally Andrew Marr decided he wanted part of the action when adopting a needlessly aggressive and downright nasty tone when interviewing Shami Chakrabarti

Compulsive liar Esther McVey had the gall to claim in her resignation letter that she could not be true to herself or the public in accepting Theresa May’s Britait proposal - a week after she told the House of Commons that mental health charity MIND had recognised and welcomed her suggested changes to Universal Credit, which was news to MIND, who had repeatedly criticised Universal Credit due to it having conditions that could stop those with mental health problems receiving benefits, as not only had they not welcomed her changes but she had not even informed them of these changes in the first place.

It appears that Paul Joseph Watson is quite happy on Manor Farm without his master telling him which lies to disseminate, considering he not only happily re-edited the footage of Jim Acosta having the microphone snatched out of his hands by a White House intern so it looked like he was assaulting her (and I’ll get to that in a moment...) but just 24 hours later falsely claimed (as did Laura Loomer and Pamela Geller) the perpetrator of the Thousand Oaks shooting was a Middle Eastern man and not an ex-marine who happened to be white

Doing her bit to unite the people of Mississippi was Cindy Hyde-Smith and her pledge to stand in the front row of a public lynching, which definitely didn’t have any connotations whatsoever considering her opponent Mike Espy happens to be of the ethnic background of people who tended to get lynched in Mississippi

Not only did Laura Loomer think that posting Islamophobic tweets about newly-elected Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar wouldn’t come back to bite her on the backside, but when Twitter blocked her account for spreading hate speech she responded in the most insane way - by pinning a gold “Jude” star to herself and handcuffing herself to Twitter’s offices in New York, livestreaming the whole thing...which only turned into a humiliation conga line starting with Twitter employees simply walking in and out of the office ignoring her, soon followed by Twitter stating they wouldn’t press charges so she could stay there as long as she liked, the NYPD walking up with a set of bolt cutters and telling her to bugger off, and the bizarre moment where somebody watching ordered pizzas for Loomer and her cameraman only for Loomer to send them away as getting her Twitter back was more important than eating. And, no, Twitter did not give her account back.

Professional contrarian Piers Moron Morgan obviously needed attention that day when tweeting some utter gibberish on International Men’s Day about radicalised feminists and how men should be manly men at the height of their manliness, all interspersed with him getting increasingly triggered by Little Mix because...nope, no idea whatsoever, but he certainly seemed angry about the whole thing

We got another round of “REEEEEEEEEEEdom of speech” wailing after a group of middle-aged edgelords who burned an effigy of Grenfell Tower because apparently if you can’t post a video of you and several of your friends burning an effigy of a real-life tragedy and using it as an excuse to make Islamophobic comments online without breaking some race-hate laws, what can you do in this country? Other than what the South Norwood Conservative Club did, which was decide that deleting photos of the individuals from their Facebook page wasn’t enough, and instead they should just delete the whole page

NRA TV’s lead hate preacher Dana Loesch decided to revive a decade-old tweet saying teenagers piss her off to advertise she would be reading out her hate mail, sounding uncannily like the school shooters who benefit from sociopaths such as her and her NRA buddies making it so easy to get hold of an AR-15

Vile mass of blood and organs with a deep-seeded need to be despised Lindsey Graham took it upon himself to patronise Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and say he could educate her about the Holocaust - a comment which saw him slapped down by someone with a far greater understanding of the Holocaust than him, namely the Auschwitz Memorial

It apparently only just dawned on Dominic Raab that the UK is an island that imports the vast majority of its food by sea, primarily from the European Union. This is somebody who is in charge of the UK’s negotiations to leave the European Union...

Seemingly on a mission to prove that the people most vocal about leaving the EU don’t have a clue Nadine Dorries stated she wouldn’t support Theresa May’s Britait deal as it would mean that the UK wouldn’t have a single MEP...something that’s a bit of a given considering that, by leaving the EU, the UK wouldn;t have a single MEP as they would also be voluntarily leaving the European Parliament

Doing their bit to demonstrate the failings of the American education system were the students of Baraboo school district who celebrated graduation by performing the Nazi salute en masse in their graduation photo

In the wake of a White House intern trying to grab a microphone from the hands of CNN’s Jim Acosta for his free exercise of the press, which I believe is something mentioned in the First Amendment, in their attempts to control the story Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed Acosta assaulted the intern - and had an obviously doctobered piece of footage from the Squealer to Alex Jones’ Napoleon as quote-unquote proof

It’s hard to feel sorry for Scott Walker being unable to demand a recount for the Wisconsin gubernatorial election in spite losing the vote by just 1.2% to Democrat candidate Tony Evers - mainly because Walker passed a law stating that, if the candidate who finished second lost by more than 1% of the vote, they couldn’t demand a recount

Upon arriving at Luton Airport and learning that the airline he had flown on had lost his self-propelling wheelchair and being offered the use of one of the airport’s standard wheelchairs in order to help him through the airport, instead it occurred to Justin Levine that the best course of action would be to drag himself through the airport on his backside and, once he had left, threatened legal action against the airport - even though those who were responsible for the entire situation were the airline for losing Levine’s chair, and Levine for refusing any attempt at assistance from the airport just so he could make a show of his “struggle” for the person who quite conveniently filmed the entire thing

While it may be his schtick to make asinine arguments that he tries to tie to Trump getting elected, it should have occurred to Bill Maher that posting a blog just days after Stan Lee’s death laying into adults for reading comics and blaming them for Trump’s victory made him sound like a complete prick

Arbiter of what is or isn’t a consensual penis Enzo Amore demonstrated just how well he had gotten over being fired by WWE by buying a ticket for their Survivor Series pay per view, sneaking into the building in a disguise, and during the show jumping on his chair to make a spectacle of himself - for the few seconds before security dragged his sorry ass out of the arena

For the 2018 edition of using Remembrance Sunday as an excuse to bash Jeremy Corbyn the Daily Mail was up in arms that he attended the Cenotaph wearing an anorak - but then again, given MailOnline users were saying Meghan Markle was being “disrespectful” because...something about her face and not knowing her place, sentiments which definitely don’t sound like the dogwhistling of some indignant racists, it’s as if our soldiers died for these idiots to seethe in their sleep

Just an FYI: when Cressida Dick states that a Metropolitan Police investigation into a leaked dossier is not investigating the Labour party, neither the BBC or the Evening Standard should run headlines saying there’s an investigation into the Labour party - especially since the text of their own reports states that’s not the case

Putting the “amateur” in “amateur football team” was the bizarre story that unfolded when Ballybrack FC announced the death of their player Fernando Nuno La Fuente in a traffic accident...which was certainly news to La Fuente

With his position of Most Inexplicably Popular Youtuber under threat by the rise of T-Series, all that PewDipShit PewDiePie accepted the challenge by spouting all manner of insane conspiracy theories about the legitimacy of their subscriber count and going so far as to pay for billboards to try and raise his visibility, which looked like her was throwing the sort of tantrum not seen since Veruca Salt was told she couldn't have an Oompa Loompa because his precious record was about to fall - which, of course, his brainless followers swallowed whole

Somehow it never occurred to an estimated twenty members of Direct Action Everywhere who marched into a steakhouse to play audio of cattle being slaughtered to the diners while yelling their various slogans that they’re not getting their message across - you're pissing people off and being dickheads while you’re doing it

Oh-so-edge high schooler/Youtuber NathanTheHicc managed the impossible: he managed to give Bethesda some good PR from the trainwreck that is Fallout 76 after he decided the best way to play the game would be to round up a posse who would grief players while yelling homophobic insults at them through voice chat, or engage in “playful immaturity” as he tried to claim it was when slapped with a ban

None of which exonerates Bethesda from the utter shitshow that is Fallout 76, where not only was the game a bug-riddled mess by Bethesda standards to the point a bug in the game’s beta deleted the whole thing from people’s hard drives the second they installed it, but they couldn’t even fulfill expectations for the tat bundled in with a pre-order special edition - and thought the equivalent of a $5 giftcard was sufficient compensation

It should have occurred to Gary Neville that his being widely misquoted with his summary of Tottenham Hotspur (which was mainly to shut up the clueless Jamie Carragher, who doesn’t appear to understand how finance works) that the best course of action would be to let the whole thing blow over. Instead he got wound up by his failures as manager of Valencia being brought up by Harry Redknapp and fired back with a spreadsheet...which only drew more attention to his failures at Valencia

And finally, hiding behind an intern as he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, there’s Donald Trump blaming Californians for fires caused by his budget cuts, which shows it’s not just the midterm results he doesn’t have a clue about

#dickheads of the month

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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After years of conspiracy theories in right-leaning media, the brother of Seth Rich — a Democratic National Committee staffer who was murdered in July 2016 — is getting a retraction and an apology from a DC-based conservative newspaper.

The Washington Times, the newspaper that spread rumors not only about Set Rich’s death but also accused his brother, Aaron, of being involved, issued a formal retraction Monday on its website, and apologized to Aaron Rich and his family.

Seth Rich was murdered in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, DC, in July 2016 in what appeared to be a botched robbery. Seth worked at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as the director of voter expansion data, and amid the leaked DNC emails during the 2016 election, his death became a source of conspiracy theories across right-wing media, including Fox News but also dozens of smaller (and more fringe) websites and outlets.

The retraction is the first big legal win for the Rich family as it continues to fight back against false allegations that Rich was the source of the DNC emails WikiLeaks shared widely in July of 2016 (he wasn’t) and that he was killed because of his involvement.

The Seth Rich conspiracy theory in short, alleged that Seth Rich was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential candidacy and that he released the DNC emails after Sanders lost the Democratic nomination. The theory gained a massive following among many on the Right, including Fox News’s Sean Hannity, even after Rich’s parents wrote a Washington Post opinion piece sharing their ordeal and asking for the rumormongering to stop.

The Washington Times is a right-leaning publication founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon with a circulation of about 60,000, known for both producing conservative journalists and publishing articles that promoted white nationalist conferences and rumormongering about President Barack Obama. It took part in spreading falsehoods about the Rich family.

But unlike other outlets, it was forced to retract them. On Monday, the Washington Times issued a retraction of a March 2 article titled “More cover-up questions: The curious murder of Seth Rich poses questions that just won’t stay under the official rug.”

The deleted Washington Times story, “More cover-up questions: The curious murder of Seth Rich poses questions that just won’t stay under the official rug.” The Washington Times screenshot

The story argued that Seth’s death had “the earmarks of a targeted hit job” and falsely stated that Seth and Aaron Rich were paid by WikiLeaks for the DNC emails that WikiLeaks published 12 days after Seth’s death. It has since been deleted. In its place on the Washington Times website is a retraction, including statements from the piece that the editors of the Times state they “now believe to be false.”

The Washington Times retraction.

The retraction is the result of a lawsuit filed by Aaron Rich back in March against not just the Washington Times, but also frequent Fox News guest Edward Butowsky; far-right activist Matthew Couch; and Couch’s company, America First Media. In a statement, Aaron Rich said, “the last two years have brought unimaginable pain and grief to my family and me,” adding that he accepted the Washington Times’ apology and retraction.

New: Aaron Rich releases statement after The Washington Times’ retraction: “I accept the Washington Times’ retraction and apology, and I am grateful that the Washington Times has acknowledged the indisputable truth that these allegations are…false.” https://t.co/IWtcMyj2n5 pic.twitter.com/4RJVUbJIk6

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 1, 2018

As I explained earlier this year, Butowsky, a conservative pundit and a past Fox News commentator, approached the Rich family after Seth’s death claiming he was connected with other people the Richs knew in the Jewish community in their hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, and offered to pay for a private investigator, retired DC detective Rod Wheeler, to investigate their son’s murder.

But according to court filings, Butowsky never told the Riches that Wheeler’s job wasn’t to find Seth’s killer. Instead, he was:

…planning a story that would blame Seth Rich’s murder on the WikiLeaks DNC emails. Wheeler and Butowsky even met with then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer to keep the White House in the loop on the sham story, which supporters of President Trump believed would help end the Russia investigation and protect Trump. (Spicer has since admitted to the meeting.) And the Riches had no idea — until May 15, 2017.

That’s when Fox News ran a story, “Slain DNC Staffer Had Contact with WikiLeaks, Say Multiple Sources.” A second story, also published May 15, said that Wheeler was the source. But none of this was true — in fact, the only people who had told Wheeler about WikiLeaks contacts or an FBI investigation (also a part of the original, and false, story) were Butowsky and Fox News investigative reporter Malia Zimmerman.

According to a lawsuit filed by Aaron Rich and a complaint filed by Seth’s parents, Joel and Mary, against Fox News, the plan was clear from the beginning: use Seth Rich as a scapegoat for the DNC email leak in order to absolve the Trump administration. (A court dismissed the suit against Fox News in August.)

Wheeler stated later that he received text messages that day from Butowsky telling him what to say in media interviews:

“If you can, try to highlight this puts the Russian hacking story to rest”

“We need to emphasize the FBI has a report that has been suppressed that shows that Seth rich [sic] did this…”

In the retracted Washington Times story, Butowsky is also mentioned: “According to Ed Butowsky, an acquaintance of the family, in his discussions with Joel and Mary Rich, they confirmed that their son transmitted the DNC emails to Wikileaks.” But this was a lie.

And for Aaron, it would only get worse. Butowsky and Matthew Couch, who began working together on the Seth Rich story in the summer of 2017, would go on to defame Aaron Rich’s character and argue that he was partially responsible for his only brother’s murder, even after Fox News distanced itself from its own false reporting on the Rich family.

Couch’s website, America First Media, became Butowsky’s favorite platform to discuss not only Seth Rich’s murder, but Aaron Rich’s alleged involvement, even using what they alleged to be Aaron’s Amazon wishlist as “proof” that Aaron Rich was somehow involved in stealing the DNC emails and received money from WikiLeaks from doing so.

They also claimed that Aaron had refused to talk to law enforcement and stated that Aaron had known Seth would be murdered and had done nothing to stop it, aside from warning Seth’s girlfriend to break up with Seth for her own safety. (To be crystal clear, none of this happened.)

From America First Media, August 16, 2017.

As CNN reported on Aaron Rich’s lawsuit against Butowsky, Couch, Couch’s company, and the Washington Times:

Among the body of evidence cited in the lawsuit is an August 15, 2017, Periscope video hosted by Couch. Butowsky, according to the lawsuit, joined the Periscope video as a participant in the chatroom and wrote that “Aaron Rich needs to come out and admit money in his account.” Couch, the lawsuit says, replied, “Ed just put it out there—Aaron Rich accepted money. Aaron Rich had money from WikiLeaks go into his personal account. Think about that. Aaron Rich had WikiLeaks money go into his personal account. Ok?”

Couch and Butowsky’s reasoning for doing so was clear: defend the Trump administration and use Seth Rich so that “the Russian narrative dies.”

From Aaron Rich’s original complaint. March 26, 2018.

According to Aaron Rich’s complaint, he wrote letters to Butowsky and Couch in December 2017 and January 2018, begging them to stop spreading false stories about him and his family, even asking them how they would feel if someone argued they were somehow responsible for the murders of their siblings. But nothing changed — the Washington Times story came out on March 1, 2018, and used Butowsky as a source months after Aaron asked Butowsky to stop smearing his name. Butowsky hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

Legal action against Butowsky, Couch, and America First Media is still continuing. In a statement by the attorney representing Aaron Rich, Meryl Governski, part of the team at Boies Schiller Flexner, Governski said, “The Washington Times’ decision to take responsibility and apologize for its role in propagating lies about our client is a milestone in our case, as well as in the broader effort to shine a light on conspiracy theorists who spread malicious lies for personal and political gain.”

She added: “We will continue our efforts against the remaining defendants, who to this day continue to spread unconscionable lies about Aaron in order to advance their false political narratives.”

Original Source -> A right-leaning newspaper is finally retracting the conspiracy theories it published about Seth Rich

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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fraggie-doodles19 · 7 years ago

Link

Did Fox News collude with the Trump administration to spread a malicious lie?

That is the explosive allegation behind a lawsuit filed by Rod Wheeler, a former Fox contributor and police investigator.

The story is complicated.

Seth Rich was an ambitious 27-year-old who worked for the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Last summer he was murdered in Washington in what police think was a botched robbery attempt.

Surfing the tide of social media in the most febrile atmosphere Washington has known for decades, Sean Hannity of Fox News promoted a conspiracy theory about the death.

He claimed Rich was assassinated because he had shared classified information from Hillary Clinton's campaign with the website WikiLeaks.

This theory was taken up by Alex Jones of InfoWars, and former House speaker for the Republicans, Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich went on Fox News to say: "It wasn't the Russians [who hacked the DNC's emails]. It was this young guy who was disgusted by the corruption of the DNC".

Why would Hannity and Gingrich advance this view? To hurt the reputation of Hillary Clinton and distract attention from claims that the Trump White House was in cahoots with Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.

Fox News later retracted the story with the admission that the story was not "subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting".

Hannity only abandoned his pursuit of the conspiracy when Rich's parents asked that their son's name not be continuously dishonoured.

A presidential link

All this would be shocking enough, frankly, but things are so far gone in Trump's Washington that this story has inevitably developed further still.

Wheeler's lawsuit alleges that Sean Spicer, former spokesman to the president, not only knew about Fox's story, but shared it with the president - who encouraged Fox to run with it.

This despite the fact that on the day of publication - 16 May - Spicer told journalists he was "not aware" of it.

Ed Butowsky, a Republican donor and Fox contributor, sent Rod Wheeler a text message saying: "Not to add any more pressure but the President just read the article. He wants the article out immediately. It's now all up to you."

Butowsky says this text message was a joke.

All the defendants in this case vehemently deny Wheeler's allegations. They are: 21st Century Fox; Fox News Channel, Fox News reporter Malia Zimmerman; and Ed Butowsky.

Whether funny or not, and whatever the veracity of the allegations, we can already conclude the following.

First, Spicer appears to have been confused or economical with the truth. The first rule of working in communications is - don't lie. Spicer may have had the toughest job of any press officer in history; but he has now admitted to meeting Butowsky and Wheeler on 20 April, when he was informed of the story, so his plea of ignorance on 16 May is demonstrably false.

Second, by any professional or moral standards, the exploitation by Fox News of a 27-year-old's death to seed a now widely-shared conspiracy theory, on the basis of zero evidence, is a disgrace.

Third, we have re-confirmed how modern media works. Fox News is an enabler of alternative news media.

The way broadcasting works is, you need pictures and sound to tell stories. With Fox devoting resources and so much airtime to the theories surrounding the murder of Seth Rich, the likes of Jones's InfoWars had plenty of material to work with.

Playing together

But there is one respect in which I don't share the shock of other journalists at this story - the fact that Spicer was informed of it.

Obviously if he was economical with the truth that is a different matter.

However, it is in the nature of political journalism that government apparatchiks develop close links, and spend time with, friendly journalists and media outlets.

This happens all the time in Britain too, of course. Political journalists will patronise the pubs of Westminster with special advisers and ministers. They develop a certain intimate reciprocity. It's a form of clientism - gossip, tidbits and genuine revelations are shared on the understanding that favourable coverage may be received in return.

And yes, prime ministers have been known to encourage advisers to encourage journalists to take a particular line.

Put like that, it sounds seedy, doesn't it? Of course, many of the greatest political journalists are those who have nothing whatsoever to do with this kind of clientism.

Yet in the normal course of events, it is unsurprising that Trump's press spokesman would have been told of various stories that Fox was cooking up.

After all, as Republican David Frum once put it: "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we're discovering we work for Fox."

Perhaps, if he were a man of immense moral standing, Spicer would have said at that 20 April meeting with Butowsky that it's not the business of journalists to spread pernicious falsehoods. Who knows, maybe he did.

Is this collusion, as pundits everywhere are suggesting? As so often, the etymology is instructive.

"Collusion" comes from the Latin for "col", meaning "together" and "ludere", meaning "to play".

Republicans and Fox News play and work together all the time.

If you want an example of collusion as in playing together, rather than alight on Spicer being kept informed about various Fox conspiracies, look at the comically sycophantic chat Hannity conducted with Donald Trump Junior about his meeting with a Russian lawyer.

Granted the chance to interrogate the president's son about contacts with foreign individuals seeking to influence the election of the most powerful person in the world, Hannity forfeited the chance to do a proper interrogation, playing the role of the supportive activist instead.

Fox News may boast of the "high degree of editorial scrutiny" they apply, but this conversation - let's not call it an interview - was wholly devoid of journalistic rigour, and designed to get the president's son out of a hole.

That's closer to my understanding of "collusion".

Hannity starts the interview with: "I will ask him every single question I can think of."

On the basis of what followed, and his insult to the memory of Seth Rich, Hannity isn't much of a thinker.

#us #fox news #hannity #sean spicer #trump #seth rich #rod wheeler #Fox News is Fake News #fox news is the epitome of american propaganda #same with alex jones and infowars #they only deal with alternative facts

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delicatelychoppedkoala-blog · 8 years ago

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“Alternative Facts”

Could mean Alternative life.

Trump once said in an interview on Fox News; “I don’t Lie, I’m so truthful that it gets me in trouble.” Although, this could be added to his list of ‘Alternative Facts.’

Despite this quote, Trump has lied a lot over the recent months in the election process and in his presidency. There are plenty of examples that can be found on his public twitter account. In one series of tweets Trump claims that Obama wiretapped his phones during the election process. Called it a “Nixon/Watergate level scandal”, during a “very sacred election process.”

Of course this claim has no basis of evidence, and even republicans have asked him to retract the statement. He refuses, and Sean Spicer, in a press statement, defended him by saying “He stands by his word.” which seems legitimate.

He also called Obama the founder of ISIS, and said he would give the most valuable player award of ISIS, first to Obama, and then second to Hillary Clinton. You may ask for an explanation, but there isn’t one. It shows that Trump has an alternative grip on reality.

In an interview with the NSA and FBI, both agencies stated they didn’t have any information on the influence of Russia in the election process. Immediately, Trump tweeted to the world “The NSA and FBI tell congress that Russia did not influence the electoral process.” Even though that wasn’t what they said. They clearly announced they did not know, since they don’t have any information on it. Either Trump does not understand basic English, or he’s lying to the nation as our president.

Global warming, our waste, and pollution has become one of the biggest problems for our planet. As nations around the world unite and are converting to completely renewable energy sources, Trump has yet to believe in science, and continues to invest in coal and oil. Here are some of Trump’s stances on global warming which can be found on his twitter. In the first tweet, he claims the concept was created by China to make our manufacturing non-competitive. In his second tweet, it is really cold in New York, so it has to be fake. Or even, since it snowed in Texas and Louisiana it has to be hoax!

However, Trump’s alternative facts get serious when you see what they can do to our nation statistically.

Trump threw out a completely false statistic from a very right wing source, saying that the murder rate was the highest it has been in 47 years. According to The Economist, in 2015 that rate stood at 4.9 murders per 100,000 people. That it is lower than the rate for any other year since 1964.

Yet, the general public does not know this, which can be seen on this graph, even though homicides are decreasing, 70% of respondents believe that it is increasing. This is just one statistical example of how, lies or alternative facts, influence our nation.

Donald Trump discrediting the media, and the creation of alternative facts or fake news has put the United States in a vulnerable position that threatens the state of our democratic society.

The term “alternative facts” was first used by Counselor to the President of the United States, Kellyanne Conway, in an interview on live television, defending Sean Spicer’s statement that said Trump had the biggest inaugural crowd of all time.

“Alternative facts” or “Fake news” have been used to deflect news, avoid questions, or distract readers from what is actually going on. It’s been used by political administrations and media outlets to gain publicity, persuade readers, and possibly advance hidden agendas.

It seems that we have entered a “post-truth” era. In a press conference at the White House, President Trump talked about mainstream media, saying they speak “not for the people but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very obviously broken system.” He accused the media of “dishonesty” and creating “fake news” and said that he was “making this presentation directly to the American people” and that the media were merely “present.”

In this statement, Trump is discrediting media outlets. This is concerning because it places distrust in the public’s mind. They no longer know what to trust, or who is telling the truth.

A “fake news” era can have large unexpected consequences. The general public becomes uninformed, misguided, and makes it hard for them to form their own opinions. This is detrimental to our overall society and future progression.

Facts are like glue that hold our society together. We invented the scientific process which allows us to collectively agree on certain facts. From this, we have been able to fly around the world, go to space, revive people from the dead, and grow body parts in lab. However, once we cannot distinguish between facts and fake news our progress forward will stop. Adam Frank, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, and an author stated “In a functioning democratic, technological society, public facts act as a kind of glue ensuring we're all playing on the same ball field.” Right now, we aren’t all on same ball field, or ‘page’. The public is very divided, mostly due to the information we have been fed.

The current trend of the general public’s lack of trust in experts, government, leaders and the media, have caused feelings and emotions to override facts in opinion making. This leads to a clueless public who follow their feelings off of possible fake news. Which puts us in a vulnerable position since we can be easily manipulated or are unaware that we are being misinformed.

News and media outlets are vital to order and the democratic society in a Nation. One example in history, was when the Nazi’s took power in Germany. They completely shut down all forms of media and news outlets, forced journalists and writers to register with the government, and told them exactly what to write. This kept the public in the dark, and allowed the government to do whatever they wanted.

Comparing our times today to Nazi Germany is obviously a stretch, but it shows that truthful media and news are crucial to our society.

Although, Donald Trump through Latin American eyes may be more familiar. "Post-truth" politics and "alternative facts" have long been deployed in Latin America. An analysis, from The Economist; London, discusses Mr Fujimori's use of newspapers to besmirch opponents, to Chavez's imaginary coups, and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's fake inflation statistics in Argentina. Guillermo Moreno, the former official trusted by Ms Fernández with producing Argentina’s statistics, has identified “a Peronist” in Mr Trump, “who is trying to do what we did”. What they did was use power and the media, to manipulate the general public, and achieve a personal agenda.

“Fake news” is so prevalent at this time in our society because the American people are eating it up, but also because true journalism is dying. We refuse to pay for information, therefore newspapers are failing, and we refer to Facebook or other free sources. These free sources are usually in it for the money, which correlates to the amount of views they get or how many advertisements they have. These sources do not care about facts or true journalism, they care about the spin that will get the most people to read their stuff, aka “click-bait”.

The comparison of fake news to reliable information on Facebook was tested by Indiana University and was used by The Economist. Shockingly, the majority of news that is shared is misinformation. The majority of people are spreading fake news to all of their friends and family. One can only imagine how detrimental this is for people’s opinions and decision making.

Ken Paulson, president of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center and dean of the College of Media and Entertainment at Middle Tennessee State University considered this issue in USA TODAY. He explained that the most effective weapon against fake news is real journalism. Professionals living in your community who are passionate about journalism. Although, it’s an old school idea, he continued “Unless we invest in journalism – at the national or local level, in print or online – fake news is all we’ll have. Democracy can’t survive on memes alone.” Essentially he’s saying, stop referring to Facebook for news and invest in a prescription somewhere credible.

The Trump administration has been telling the American People that they cannot trust anything in the ‘media’. This has happened before in history and is something we should be careful with. Ken Paulson warned us, “They suggest that the nation’s 1,300 daily newspapers, thousands of weekly and alternative papers, 1,700 TV stations, 14,000 radio stations, thousands of magazines and online news sites can all be condensed into the singular “media,” united by a shared political agenda and a disdain for the American people. And that’s the most dangerous fake news of all.” What Paulson is trying to say is if a political administration is successful in convincing the public that the media is lying, and have a grudge against the public, this hands the power to the administration.

In order to resolve this, public trust in our institutions and leaders needs to be re-established. There must be evidence of transparency, personal accountability, honesty, respect and righting wrongs. The media has a significant role to play in combating fake news and false claims. The search for objective truth and facts has never been more critical. Lastly, its on us, as citizens we will have to take more responsibility for understanding, investigation, and reaching decisions based on factual evidence.

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topinforma · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Mortgage News

New Post has been published on http://bit.ly/2jqJPds

trump-opens-first-day-on-job-at-church

LANGLEY, Va. — On his first full day in office, President Donald Trump on Saturday berated the media over its coverage of his inauguration, and turned a bridge-building first visit to CIA headquarters into an airing of grievances about “dishonest” journalists. But it was Trump who spread inaccuracies about the size of the crowds at his swearing in.

Standing in front of a memorial for fallen CIA agents, Trump assured intelligence officials, “I am so behind you.” He made no mention of his repeated criticism of the intelligence agencies following the election, including his public challenges of their high-confidence assessment that Russia meddled in the White House race to help him win.

“There is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and CIA than Donald Trump,” he said, blaming any suggestion of a “feud” on the media.

Trump’s decision to travel to CIA headquarters so quickly after taking office was seen as an attempt at a fresh start with the intelligence agencies he will now rely on for guidance as he makes weighty national security decisions. Following his private meeting with top CIA leaders, Trump said the U.S. had been “restrained” in its efforts to combat terrorism, calling the threat “a level of evil we haven’t seen.”

But in unscripted, stream-of-consciousness remarks, Trump appeared more focused on settling scores with the media.

He defensively touted the crowd size for his swearing-in ceremony, wrongly claiming that the throngs on the National Mall stretched “all the way back to the Washington Monument.” Photos and video clearly showed the crowd stopping well short of the landmark.

Trump’s visit took place as throngs of women, many of them wearing bright pink, pointy-eared hats, descended on the nation’s capital and other cities around the world for marches organized to push back against the new president. Hundreds of protesters lined the motorcade route as Trump sped back to the White House, many screaming and chanting at the president.

The Washington rally alone attracted more than 500,000 people by the unofficial estimate of city officials. It appeared to be more people than attended Trump’s inauguration on Friday, but there were no comparable numbers. The city did not release an estimate for the inauguration. The National Park Service does not provide crowd counts.

During his remarks at the CIA, the president claimed the inaugural crowds topped 1 million people, offering no evidence.

Suggestions that weak enthusiasm accompanied his inauguration clearly irked the new president. Shortly after his remarks, he dispatched his press secretary, Sean Spicer, to the White House briefing room to aggressively reinforce the message.

“There’s been a lot of talk in the media about holding Donald Trump accountable. And I’m here to tell you that it goes two ways. We’re going to hold the press accountable as well,” Spicer said in his first on-camera appearance at the White House.

Trump, and later Spicer, also slammed a Time magazine reporter for incorrectly reporting Friday that Trump had moved a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. out of the Oval Office. But Trump followed with a misstatement of his own, saying the reporter had not corrected the mistake. In fact, the item was quickly retracted.

High-level CIA brass stood largely silent during Trump’s remarks, though some of the roughly 400 other officers in attendance cheered on the president during his remarks.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, slammed Trump for using his CIA visit to squabble over media coverage.

“He will need to do more than use the agency memorial as a backdrop if he wants to earn the respect of the men and women who provide the best intelligence in the world,’ Schiff said.

The inaugural celebrations have been shadowed by reports that the CIA and other federal agencies are investigating Russian interference in the presidential election on behalf of Trump. McClatchy reported that the investigation included whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided Trump. The New York Times said agencies were examining intercepted communications and financial transactions between Russian officials and Trump’s associates.

FBI Director James Comey has declined to confirm or describe the nature of the government’s investigation, both during a congressional hearing and in closed-door meetings with members of Congress.

Saturday marked the end of three days of inaugural celebrations, with Trump and his family attending a national prayer service traditionally held for the new president. The president and his wife, Melania, and Vice-President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, sat in a front pew at Washington National Cathedral for the morning service.

The interfaith service is a tradition for new presidents and is hosted by the Episcopal parish. But the decision to hold a prayer session for Trump sparked debate among Episcopalians opposed to his policies.

Bishop Mariann Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington wrote in a blog post that while she shared “a sense of outrage at some of the president-elect’s words and actions,” she felt an obligation to welcome all people without qualification, especially those who disagree and need to find a way to work together.

Trump arrived at the cathedral mid-morning. The service included readings and prayers from Protestant, Jewish, Sikh, Mormon, Buddhist, Roman Catholic, Baha’i, Episcopal, Hindu and Native American leaders. But the program was remarkable for the large number of evangelicals participating, including two former presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest evangelical denomination. Several speakers had served as Trump advisers and supporters who spoke at the Republican National Convention.

———

AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll in New York and Associated Press writers Jonathan Lemire and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

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