- Jun 23, 2004
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Media Is Richly Rewarded for False News, Public Is Deceived
The False News
The Fear
The Hate
I encourage you all to read the article in full. To help you realize how once again (remember 2002?) the media is driving a big bad foreign boogieman narrative with blatantly false news. One hit piece after another to drive fear and hatred among our general population. Given the smears against Greenwald it would appear that campaign is most effective.
Can you honestly say you recognize the good stories from the bad? The corrections they follow up with are not nearly so loud or visible or effective as the original fear-mongering that is driving our people wild. All we can do is shine a light on and expose it for the farce that it is. Can truth and honest journalism prevail? Or is this yet another example of our post-truth society?
Starts to make you realize just how easily we've found it to get by on killing one another, if people were even less informed and even greater victims of lies and misinformation in the past. Today we have access to more information than ever... and we still struggle so much to tell the truth. Iraq is the best modern example of just how much damage can be done. We must do better.
The False News
In the past six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on how Russia is behind a massive explosion of “fake news,” the other on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a humiliating editor’s note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the story were fiction...
The Fear
That tweet from Griffin — convincing people that Putin was endangering the health and safety of Vermonters — was re-tweeted more than 1,000 times. His other similar tweets — such as this one featuring Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy’s warning that Putin was trying to “shut down [the grid] in the middle of winter” — were also widely spread.
...
In contrast to Griffin’s original inflammatory tweets about the Russian menace, which were widely and enthusiastically spread, this after-the-fact correction has a paltry 289 re-tweets. Thus, a small fraction of those who were exposed to Griffin’s sensationalistic hyping of this story ended up learning that all of it was false.
...
In contrast to Griffin’s original inflammatory tweets about the Russian menace, which were widely and enthusiastically spread, this after-the-fact correction has a paltry 289 re-tweets. Thus, a small fraction of those who were exposed to Griffin’s sensationalistic hyping of this story ended up learning that all of it was false.
The Hate
Indeed, in my 10-plus years of writing about politics on an endless number of polarizing issues — including the Snowden reporting — nothing remotely compares to the smear campaign that has been launched as a result of the work I’ve done questioning and challenging claims...
...
I’ve been transformed, overnight, into an early adherent of alt-right ideology, an avid fan of Breitbart, an enthusiastic Trump supporter, and — needless to say — a Kremlin operative. That’s literally the explicit script they’re now using, often with outright fabrications of what I say...
...
I’ve been transformed, overnight, into an early adherent of alt-right ideology, an avid fan of Breitbart, an enthusiastic Trump supporter, and — needless to say — a Kremlin operative. That’s literally the explicit script they’re now using, often with outright fabrications of what I say...
I encourage you all to read the article in full. To help you realize how once again (remember 2002?) the media is driving a big bad foreign boogieman narrative with blatantly false news. One hit piece after another to drive fear and hatred among our general population. Given the smears against Greenwald it would appear that campaign is most effective.
Can you honestly say you recognize the good stories from the bad? The corrections they follow up with are not nearly so loud or visible or effective as the original fear-mongering that is driving our people wild. All we can do is shine a light on and expose it for the farce that it is. Can truth and honest journalism prevail? Or is this yet another example of our post-truth society?
Starts to make you realize just how easily we've found it to get by on killing one another, if people were even less informed and even greater victims of lies and misinformation in the past. Today we have access to more information than ever... and we still struggle so much to tell the truth. Iraq is the best modern example of just how much damage can be done. We must do better.