'Weaponized gossip': RT looks at MSM use of anonymous sources to spread false info

 

RT

The Washington Post has warned journalists to act responsibly when handling independent sources, offering them a quick crash course in Journalism 101 to avoid being caught publishing fake news that could swing the 2020 elections. 

“Don’t publish weaponized gossip. Verify relentlessly. Nail down, and emphasize, the source of the hack and its motivation. And be transparent with news consumers,” the Post's Margaret Sullivan wrote this week, warning that failure to comply with basic principles of the profession could lead them to being “'the de facto instrument'” of a foreign adversary’s fondest hopes.”

But as RT’s Caleb Maupin discovered, the mass media in the US are more than happy to be serving as instruments of the American government.

“Anonymous sources seem to be a big trend when it comes to inside scoops inside the White House,” Maupin says, noting that mainstream media are the very “definition of weaponized gossip.”

WATCH the full report.

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RAY McGOVERN: Unaccountable Media Faced with Dilemma in Next Phase of Deep State-gate

Ray McGovern
Consortium News

Now that the media has been exposed for wrongly siding with the intelligence agencies, how will it handle Devin Nunes’s criminal referrals in Deep State-gate?, asks Ray McGovern.

Readers of The Washington Post on Monday were treated to more of the same from editorial page chief Fred Hiatt. Hiatt, who won his spurs by promoting misleading “intelligence” about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and suffered no consequences, is at it again.

This time he is trying to adjust to the fading prospect of a Deus ex Mueller to lessen Hiatt’s disgrace for being among the most shameless in promoting the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. 

He is not giving up. When you are confident you will not lose your job so long as you adhere to the agenda of the growing Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT if you will), you need not worry about being a vanguard for the corporate media. It is almost as though Hiatt is a tenured professor in an endowed chair honoring Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who perhaps did most to bring us Iraqi WMD.

In his Monday column Hiatt warned: “Trump was elected with the assistance of Russian spies and trolls, which he openly sought and celebrated. But he did not (or so we are told) secretly conspire with them.” In effect, Hiatt is saying, soto voce: “Fie on former (now-de-canonized) Saint Robert of Mueller; we at the Post and our colleagues at The New York Times, CNN et al. know better, just because we’ve been saying so for more than two years.”

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‘Fake news’? Time to choose: Corporate media fakes us into supporting Israel’s Orwellian illegal War of Aggression on Gaza

Carl Herman

“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. And then you win.” ~ unsourced, and attributed to Gandhi’s analysis of British empire response to having their hypocrisy exposed: claiming to bring Christian love and progress while looting resources with forced local labor.
“When we now know that all claims for war with Iraq were known lies as they were told (and verbally explained here), and CNN provides similar innuendo for war by an unsourced alleged report with concerns of what might occur in the future allegedly stated by an unnamed US source reporting on an unnamed foreign source, this is propaganda and not news.” ~ My 2010 analysis of “fake news” reporting from CBS, ABC, CNN to lie Americans into illegal war on Iran.

The Washington Post added to President Obama’s rhetoric for Americans to be aware of “fake news”: easily refuted lies of omission and commission in media. This article series reveals the inversion of those claims: .01% “official” news by corporate media (six conglomerates) is easily documented as fake in our most important reporting.

‘Fake news’? Time to choose article series (links added as series progresses):

• Corporate media fakes us into wars that aren’t even close to lawful, are Orwellian illegal Wars of Aggression (1 of 15)
• Corporate media fakes us into Orwellian illegal Wars of Aggression with lies known to be lies as they were told (2 of 15)

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Establishment media goes nuts after Ben Swann airs segment investigating #PizzaGate - See the evidence for yourself

Brently Kopopolous
Sott.net

In this day and age the media itself has become a hot story. Back when reddit and 4chan investigators started digging into the leaked Podesta emails, they found something a little odd. Strange references to pizza, ping pong, and a little place in Northwest DC called Comet Ping Pong. Investigators then started browsing Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis's Instagram profile and found some rather disturbing images along with comments that seemed suggestive of a connection to pedophilia.

Shortly thereafter, the Washington Post broke a huge story with the headline: "Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say" and immediately, anything the establishment didn't want to discuss became fake news. The timing here is worth noting: it was only after PizzaGate was gaining traction on the internet, connecting high-ranking democratic officials to pedophilia with their own words and their own pictures that the media started screaming fake news.

In an ironic twist, mainstream media outlets themselves then became the greatest purveyors of factually inaccurate news (Russia hacked the elections, Russia hacked a Vermont Electric Grid and Russia has blackmail material on Trump for a few examples) and in a stunning reversal, people all over the world began applying the term to outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN - the enshrined media mega-mouths with decades of history bringing news to Americans.

Clearly, they didn't see that coming. The Washington Post then decided it was time to 'retire' the term fake news, because heck, if the weapon you invented is working against you, you should try to get rid of it, and fast! But that hasn't seemed to work either. Once Pandora's box is opened, there's no closing it back up.

This brings me to the latest analysis of Pizzagate. Ben Swann, known for his hard-hitting, fact-full Reality Check segments on CBS and online did a piece in which he examined the evidence and discussed it as openly as he could on TV.

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More Bullsh*t Fake News from Washington Post

Mike Mish Shedlock 

 

I was laughing the moment I saw the Washington Post headline story Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont. 

 

I did not touch the story because I thought it was BS. And it was. 

 

Glen Greenwald at the Intercept has the details in Russia Hysteria Infects WashPost Again: False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid. 

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Manufacturing Normality

C.J. Hopkins
Counterpunch

Sometime circa mid-November, in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s defeat (i.e., the beginning of the end of democracy), the self-appointed Guardians of Reality, better known as the corporate media, launched a worldwide marketing campaign against the evil and perfidious scourge of “fake news.” This campaign is now at a fever pitch. Media outlets throughout the empire are pumping out daily dire warnings of the imminent, existential threat to our freedom posed by the “fake news” menace. This isn’t the just the dissemination of disinformation, propaganda, and so on, that’s been going on for thousands of years … Truth itself is under attack. The very foundations of Reality are shaking.

Who’s behind this “fake news” menace? Well, Putin, naturally, but not just Putin. It appears to be the work of a vast conspiracy of virulent anti-establishment types, ultra-alt-rightists, ultra-leftists, libertarian retirees, armchair socialists, Sandernistas, Corbynistas, ontological terrorists, fascism normalizers, poorly educated anti-Globalism freaks, and just garden variety Clinton-haters.

Fortunately, for us, the corporate media is hot on the trail of this motley of scoundrels. As you’re probably aware, The Washington Post recently published a breathtaking piece of Pulitzer-quality investigative journalism shamelessly smearing hundreds of alternative publications (like the one you’re reading) as “peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The piece, a classic McCarthyite smear job perpetrated by the Post‘s Craig Timberg, was based on the groundless, paranoid claims of what Timberg unironically describes as “two teams of independent researchers,” The Foreign Policy Research Institute, a third-rate, former anti-Communist think tank, and an anonymous website, propornot.com, that no one had ever heard of prior to its sudden appearance on the Internet last August, and which, based on the tenor of its tweets and emails, appears to be run by Beavis and Butthead.

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Washington Post Apends "Russian Propaganda" Story, Admits It May Be Fake

Zero Hedge

In the latest example why the "mainstream media" is facing a historic crisis of confidence among its readership, facing unprecedented blowback following Craig Timberg November 24 Washington Post story "Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say", on Wednesday a lengthy editor's note appeared on top of the original article in which the editor not only distances the WaPo from the "experts" quoted in the original article whose "work" served as the basis for the entire article (and which became the most read WaPo story the day it was published) but also admits the Post could not "vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's finding regarding any individual media outlet", in effect admitting the entire story may have been, drumroll "fake news" and conceding the Bezos-owned publication may have engaged in defamation by smearing numerous websites - Zero Hedge included - with patently false and unsubstantiated allegations.

It was the closest the Washington Post would come to formally retracting the story, which has now been thoroughly discredited not only by outside commentators, but by its own editor.

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American Alternative Media Threatens Defamation Lawsuit Against Washington Post for Red Baiting

Washington's blog

 

Yves Smith – who runs the respected website Naked Capitalism – has retained a top gun lawyer to sue the Washington Post for defamation unless it retracts its smear piece calling alternative media sites “Russian propaganda.”

Smith has also launched PropOrNot.org … a satirical site complaining about the lack of first-rate propaganda by the powers-that-be.

We – American alternative media who are loyal to the U.S. and no other country – fully endorse both efforts.

Unlike the knuckleheads who are attempting to shut down alternative media by lumping us in with Russian state-sponsored media, and the twits who wrote and approved the Washington Post smear piece – who apparently embrace the values of tyrants  we fought the Revolutionary War to escape – we at Washington’s Blog actually believe in American values, such as freedom of the press and other liberties.

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House Quietly Passes Bill Targeting “Russian Propaganda” Websites

Anti-Media

On November 30, one week after the Washington Post launched its witch hunt against “Russian propaganda fake news“, with 390 votes for, the House quietly passed “H.R. 6393, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017“, sponsored by California Republican Devin Nunes (whose third largest donor in 2016 is Google parent Alphabet, Inc), a bill which deals with a number of intelligence-related issues, including Russian propaganda, or what the government calls propaganda, and hints at a potential crackdown on “offenders.”

A quick skim of the bill reveals “Title V—Matters relating to foreign countries”,  whose Section 501 calls for the government to “counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence … carried out in  coordination with, or at the behest of, political leaders or the security services of the Russian Federation and the role of the Russian Federation has been hidden or not acknowledged publicly.”

The section lists the following definitions of media manipulation:

• Establishment or funding of a front group.
• Covert broadcasting.
• Media manipulation.
• Disinformation and forgeries.
• Funding agents of influence.
• Incitement and offensive counterintelligence.
• Assassinations.
• Terrorist acts.

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Modern Operation Mockingbird: "Everyone Who Disagrees with Me Is a Russian Propagandist"

Harrison Koehli
Sott.net

SOTT.net recently had the honor of being smeared as a vehicle for Russian propaganda. The dubious, anonymous "PropOrNot" site listed us as one among 200 or so such websites - witting or unwitting dupes of the Kremlin's propagandists. Thankfully, we're in mostly good company. It's hard to know whether to take them seriously or not. The site gives the impression of perhaps being a too-clever hoax, which would be hilarious given that the Washington Post among others actually takes them seriously. I mean, come on, the first thing you see on their website is a fake interview, conducted by a comedian, with two actors pretending to be Russian propagandists!)

But leaving that aside, it's still rich. Pretty much every alternative news website you can think of is included on the list. PropOrNot's logic seems to run something like this:

1. Western governments and media say A. (A is true.)
2. Russian government and media says not-A. (Not-A is not true.)
3. Alternative media also says not-A.
4. Therefore, alternative media are either witting or unwitting peddlers of Russian lies.

First, this assumes that the western media and government are telling the truth. Second, it assumes that the Russian government always lies. So the alternative media is put in awkward and contrived position: anytime the Russian government tells the truth, and the alternative media makes the same claims, the latter can simply be written off as Russian propaganda. Which is total nonsense. The fact that the people behind PropOrNot, if they're sincere in their claims, think this is the case says a lot about what they think of their readers: they think they're idiots.

As Wayne Madsen (whose articles are carried by intrepidreport.com and strategic-culture.org, both on PropOrNot's list) put it recently:

The Post's article [regurgitating PropOrNot's claims] is worthy of the CIA-generated propaganda spun by the paper at the height of the Cold War-era MOCKINGBIRD.

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Here’s Why “Fake News” Sites Are Dangerous

Jon Rappoport
Activist Post 

Here is your daily mantra: “narrow the range of thought, narrow the range of thought.”

Exposing elites who run the world?

Exposing pedophile networks?

Documenting the lies and fabrications of major media?

Laying bare the manipulations of Globalists?

Revealing the crimes of both major political parties in America?

Uncovering the spread of pharmaceutical devastation?

Tracking the ruthless ops of major corporations?

Yes, many so-called “fake news” sites do all this and much more—but something else is also going on.
Many of these sites were launched and are spearheaded by ONE man or woman.

No person outside the mainstream is supposed to be so emboldened by his/her own point of view and passion.

“All points of view belong to a group.”

We’re not supposed to believe these “fake news” INDIVIDUALS created their news operations on their own. We’re not supposed to believe each individual had a vision of what the news is supposed to be and followed that vision forward with great energy.

An individual works for what he believes is true? He keeps his own counsel? He forges ahead, despite all opposition? He may even, when all is said and done, make a profit from his own labors? We’re supposed to oppose these “evils,” and by the grace of governments and their shadow operators, we will emerge from the darkness and find our salvation in a New Order of things.

***And never—if you happen to disagree with what some independent news site is saying—NEVER entertain the idea of starting YOUR OWN news operation and building it from the ground up to reflect YOUR OWN vision. NEVER. That is individual power, which is the horrible fate that would await you.

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More Absurdities by the Washington Post

 

 
Richard Dolan Press

I finally got around to writing a reply to a piece by the Washington Post on “The Fear that Drives Our Alien Belief."

This article is another shameful and absurd attempt by the Washington Post to debunk something that the publication has never, ever bothered to do the slightest bit of real investigation about. The Post, in fact, probably has the worst track record of dealing with UFOs in responsible manner of any of the major publications in the U.S. By turns taking the tone of dismissal and ridicule, it has demonstrated this. Belief in UFOs, this piece suggests, is suggestive of a psychological problem.

 

Never mind the documentary record left behind in the declassified documents that anyone can easily find on the Web. Documents that show a long history of concern by senior U.S. officials about airspace violations by objects that appeared — strongly — to defy conventional explanations, and which exhibited characteristics (disk-shape, silence, extreme maneuverability) that are simply not supposed to exist. Except that, within the military reports we have available to us, they do, or strongly appear to.Never mind the fact that a few senior officials have indeed gone on the record to discuss this reality. Never mind the fact that any researcher who has looked into this long enough finds even more senior officials who are willing to talk, but only off the record. They know full well this is a matter of national security and concern.What does one make of this discrepancy? When you have a phenomenon that, decade after decade, baffles national security professionals, and yet is dismissed by that paragon of Official Culture, the Post? Well, you can make of it what you will, but it surely points to a failure of true investigation.

 There are many topics on which such mainstream, plugged-in, national security/corporate publications like the Post fail to deliver the goods. But the UFO topic is a bell-weather. While this discrepancy exists, while the Post wastes everyone’s time with infantile explanations, it destroys its credibility among serious individuals who know better.

Richard Dolan