Tag Archives: propaganda

Donald Trump supporters get their news from a strange media universe – and it’s frequently fact-free

Donald Trump supporters get their news from a strange media universe – and it’s frequently fact-free

Concern over the presence of fake news websites has grown during the election

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The Independent Online

francis-fake.pngOne of the many fake stories to be shared by millions claimed Pope Francis was backing Mr Trump WTOE5 News

On a street in Grundy, Virginia, a declining mining community that would vote 78 per cent in favour of Donald Trump, a man had an update on a trending news story.

A report about two police officers being shot in Des Moines, Iowa, was false, said the man. It had been invented, apparently to try and benefit one or other political competing in the area. He had read about it being false on the internet. (Later, it was announced the police had found and charged a suspect with the shootings.)

One of the defining features of the 2016 US presidential election was the parallel words from which opposing supporters obtained their information. The continuing fragmentation of the media and the growth of non-mainstream sources has meant that voters have never had so many options when it came to seeking out information. 

bacon-fake.jpg

There is increasing concern about the proliferation of fake news websites (Buzzfeed)

Yet, another distinctive feature was the number of stories that turned out to the utterly false. This was particularly true – though not exclusively so – for supporters of Mr Trump, who were frequently drawn to news site such Breitbart, InfoWars and Freedom Daily.

“Because of social media you have access to a larger variety of information in the past, Kathleen Stansberry an assistant professor of public relations and social media at Cleveland State University, told The Independent.

Yet she said while there were many of articles published online that were well-researched and accurate, there were usually fewer “gate-keepers” than in traditional media with its fact-checking, accuracy and fairness.

InsideGov | Graphiq

“We need to take more responsibility as media consumers and media publishers,” she said.

Facebook has found itself in the crosshairs of criticism after it was accused that the social media giant had unfairly helped Mr Trump by the spread and dissemination of articles about Ms Clinton that were false. These included stories about an alleged secret son belonging to Bill Clinton that had been covered up for decades, claims that she was seriously ill and that Pope Francis had endorsed Mr Trump.

Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly demised the criticism, saying that it did not impact the election, because the fake news his social media site spread to hundreds of millions of people were not biased in favour of just one candidate.

View image on Twitter

View image on Twitter

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Alex Jones

@RealAlexJones

This photo of Hillary captures her soul like nothing I’ve ever seen. This is the demon. #SpiritCooking #Trump #AltRight

6:42 AM – 6 Nov 2016

“The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics,” he wrote in a public post. “Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.” 

Earlier this year, an investigation by BuzzFeed found that that of the Facebook posts it examined from three major right-wing websites, 38 per cent were either false or a mixture of truth and falsehood. It said readers were often likely to share such false stories and were therefore profitable for Facebook to post. 

Mr Zuckerberg said more than 99 per cent of news shared on Facebook was verifiable, but acknowledged more could be done to flag fake stories which had been debunked.

13 Nov

DrunkReactionaryBond @DrunkRxnryBond

@RichardBSpencer Establishment go-along-to-get-along types are fine. The NeverTrumpers are dangerous, but have frozen themselves out already

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Richard Spencer

@RichardBSpencer

The question is: Which way is the arrow pointing? It’s pointing towards the #AltRight!@DrunkRxnryBond

10:23 PM – 13 Nov 2016

“We don’t want any hoaxes on Facebook. Our goal is to show people the content they will find most meaningful, and people want accurate news,” he wrote.

“We have already launched work enabling our community to flag hoaxes and fake news, and there is more we can do here. We have made progress, and we will continue to work on this to improve further.”

Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart who took a leave of absence to lead Mr Trump’s campaign, is now set to take up a position within the new administration as political counsellor. His appointment has delighted many on the alt-right and white extremists. 

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Richard Spencer, who heads the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist “think tank” based in Arlington, Virginia, welcomed Mr Bannon’s move into the White House.

He said on Twitter: “Bannon is not a chief of staff, which requires a “golden retriever” personality. He’ll be freed up to chart Trump’s macro-trajectory.”

Koch Network Launches New PR Firm

Koch

Koch Network Launches New PR Firm

By LEIGH ANN CALDWELL

 

The network of organizations running under the direction of billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch is adding a new entity to its already sprawling political and policy network of organizations. In Pursuit Of is the name of the new public relations firm that will work to expand the message of a free markets and small government.

The new firm is for-profit, and will represent other parts of the Koch network, including Concerned Veterans of America, LIBRE Initiative and Americans for Prosperity. It could also take on a variety of clients that meet their ideological values, including political candidates, companies, non-profits or trade organizations.

The model will be similar to the Koch-run i360, a political data operation that works closely with network organizations but is hired by outside political clients.

Their political focus will be on corporate tax reform, reducing regulations and replacing the Affordable Care Act.

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Trump takes ‘thank you’ tour to North Carolina 5:43

The network spent about $250 million on politics and policy to help elect Republicans to office in 2016, though none of it went to Trump.

Despite pressure from donors throughout the campaign, the brothers never supported Trump and instead focused on electing down ballot Republicans. They point to winning seven of the eight Senate seats they contested, the Missouri gubernatorial race and a number of House races. They also say they saved taxpayers $200 billion in federal and state policy wins as well.

The group could be odds at times Trump even after he enters the White House. Trump has indicated that he’s supportive of large government spending to boost specific programs or the economy.

James Davis, a current vice president of Freedom Partners, the Koch network’s political arm, will run the new agency as president.

“These changes that we’re making help position us for success to make an impact and more broadly across these various issues,” Davis said in an interview Wednesday.

They are already researching the political landscape for 2017, which includes two gubernatorial races, and the Senate map in 2018. They could get involved in as many as ten Senate races.

Earlier this year the three grassroots groups, AFP, LIBRE and CVA, began working more closely in a strategic realigning of the vast network. Davis said this is a continuation of that effort to better align to the political and policy needs of the future.

Leigh Ann Caldwell

              LEIGH ANN CALDWELL

Van Jones and 911 truther, you decide.

There are claims circulating that Van Jones believes that high level US government officials were implicit in the 911 attacks.  Here is an unbiased take on the background for these allegations.

 

Controversial Obama Administration Official Denies Being Part of 9/11 “Truther” Movement, Apologizes for Past Comments*

September 4, 2009

By ABCNEWS.COM

A top environmental official of the Obama administration issued a statement Thursday apologizing for past incendiary statement and denying that he ever agreed with a 2004 petitionon which his name appears, a petition calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into “evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.”

Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called “Truther” movement which suggests that people in the administration of President George W. Bush “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of “the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.”

He did not explain how his name came to be on the petition. An administration source said Jones says he did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.*

“My work at the Council on Environmental Quality is entirely focused on one goal: building clean energy incentives which create 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and use renewable resources,” Jones said in his statement tonight.

Jones also said in his statement that “In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the administration – some of which were made years ago. If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize.”

With a history of incendiary and provocative remarks, many of them dealing with his view of how whites exploit minorities, Jones has emerged as the subject of much conservative scrutiny in recent days, particularly from Fox News’ Glenn Beck. (Jones defenders point out that most of Beck’s criticism came after a group Jones helped found, Color of Change, began pushing advertisers to boycott Beck after he accused President Obama of being a racist.)

Jones is the best-selling author of The Green Collar Economy and a leader in the “green jobs” movement — the idea that clean energy jobs can create jobs, especially in poor communities. He has been praised from leaders ranging from Al Gore to former eBay CEO (and Republican) Meg Whitman, who in May said that Jones is doing “a marvelous job… I’m a huge fan of his. He is very bright, very articulate, very passionate. I think he is exactly right.”

Earlier this year a profile of Jones in the New Yorker, author Elizabeth Kolbert wrote that “the basic premise of Jones’s appeal—that combating global warming is a good way to lift people out of poverty—is very much open to debate. … it’s not at all clear that the number of jobs created by, say, an expanding solar industry would be greater than the number lost through, say, a shrinking coal-mining industry. Nor is it clear that a green economy would be any better at providing work for the chronically unemployed than our present, ‘gray’ economy has been.”

But those theories aren’t the ones that have made Jones a lightning rod in the past few weeks.

In 2005 Jones told the East Bay Express that the acquittal of Rodney King’s assailants in 1992 in that infamous police brutality case changed him significantly. “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,” he said. “By August, I was a communist.”

Jones and other young activists in 1994 formed a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, rooted in Marxism and Leninsm. Two years later, Jones launched the Ella Baker Center, an Oakland, Calif., based “strategy and action center” which states that it tries to “promote positive alternatives to violence and incarceration.”

In February during a discussion on energy at Berkeley, Calif., (and prior to his joining the Obama administration) Jones referred to Republicans using an epithet for a proctological orifice, which he called “a technical, political science term.”

Asked why Republicans asserted more control of the Senate when they had a smaller majority before 2006, Jones said “the answer to that is, they’re a–holes.” He added that President Obama is not an a–hole, but, “I will say this. I can be an a–hole, and some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are going to have to start getting a little bit uppity.”

“I apologize for the offensive words I chose to use during that speech,” Jones said in a different written statement to Politico on Wednesday. “They do not reflect the views of this administration, which has made every effort to work in a bipartisan fashion, and they do not reflect the experience I have had since I joined the administration.”

– jpt

UPDATE: It’s worth pointing out that Ben Smith at Politico has spoken to two signatories of that petition, Rabbi Michael Lerner and historian Howard Zinn, who say they were misled about what they were signing. And the conservative website Little Green Footballs points out that Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of “Funding Evil; How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It” has posted on her website, the American Center for Democracy: “PLEASE NOTE: Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is not a signatory of the 911Truth.org. She has asked several times to have her named removed from the list, but the organization failed to comply.”

Faux News Part 2.

 

Conspiracy Theorist Arrested for Death Threats Against Sandy Hook Parent

by DANIELLA SILVA

A Florida woman who said the Sandy Hook massacre of 26 people was a hoax has been indicted for making death threats to one of the shooting victim’s parents, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

Lucy Richards, 57, was indicted on four counts of transmitting threats in interstate commerce, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday. Each count carries a maximum of five years in prison.

Richards, of Tampa, Florida, was arrested Monday, the DOJ said.

Lucy Richard Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office

Richards is accused of making a series of death threats to a parent of one of the children killed in the mass shooting on or around Jan. 10 of this year, according to the DOJ statement.

Richards’ arrest came just one week before the fourth anniversary of the Dec. 14, 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were killed.

Authorities allege Richards sent the individual messages saying “you gonna die, death is coming to you real soon” and “LOOK BEHIND YOU IT IS DEATH,” according to the indictment.

The DOJ did not release the name of the parent, but said the individual lives in South Florida.

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Columbine, Newtown, Orlando: The names seared on Americans’ minds 2:41

Richards’ belief that the school shooting never occurred was the motivation behind the death threats, the DOJ said.

In the years since the shooting, various online conspiracy website have falsely claimed the shooting was a massive hoax concocted to erode Second Amendment gun rights.

Richards is scheduled for initial court appearance on Dec. 19.

Conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter Alex Jones has repeatedly and falsely claimed the shooting never happened on his website Infowars.

Image: One week anniversary of shooting at elementary school in Newtown, Connecticiut

A woman kneels in front of a fence with the names of the 20 children killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in Dec. 2012. JUSTIN LANE / EPA file

Last month, the daughter of a victim of the shooting called on Trump to disavow the radio host. Jones has said that the president elect called him to thank him for his support.

Richards’ case is similar to an incident over the weekend, where an armed North Carolina man traveled to a Washington D.C. pizzeria while trying to investigate an unfounded conspiracy theory that the restaurant was involved in a child sex trafficking tied to the Clintons, according to court documents