Let's Talk About Fake News Shall We? updated
I'll start with the easy stuff first.
Partisan news
Well known partisan an hate "noise" sites reporting with "outrage" against their pet hate; take everything written or said with a truck load of salt. At the moment we have Russians! Muslims! Mexicans! White folks! Black Folks! etc etc, easy to spot and usually full of excessive quantities of panic, drool and drivel.
This is what everyone is talking about as being something new and dangerous to our collective health and must be punished! It must be suppressed at all costs!
Who will be the arbitrators in all of this?
- The Government? With already known political agendas?
- Some of the MSM/Oligarchs have declared that they will be the judges in all of this? Seriously?
- The NSA? The source of modern day newspeak? God help us all.
No doubt the courts will be submerged in nonsense for quite some times, it's a great time to be a lawyer [as usual].
Now the slightly harder stuff.
- Successive governments have lied about the reasons for going to war/roll back/regime change over a very long time, it is not something in anyway new.
- The MSM has more often than not gone along with them full heartedly and repeated the same lies as fact. They have failed more often than not to report the truth at the time.
- The security services have come up with piles of documented bullshit supporting these lies and never been held to account.
The upper courts loaded with political choices are to be the judges as to what is real and is not. If indeed they were independent why the partisan screams about SCOTUS every election cycle? We want our justice!
So many uphold fake news because of their partisan slant to that news. Many newspapers around the world select which party they like best right before an election, when is their "objectivity" held up for questioning as to its veracity? They are after all directly influencing the campaign in no uncertain manner.
Human beings have been surrounded by gossip and innuendo since the dawn of time, yet only now this is being questioned and determined to be harmful? It has been and the worst of it has been created by those actually in power, hell Joseph Goebbels developed a whole and successful strategy around deliberate propaganda. You don't think modern governments and oligarchs have both integrated and refined some of his techniques? Really?
The harder stuff
The whole point of George Orwell was making was that when the State determines what is the truth and then to protect itself creates "the truth" we are in deep shit. When I hear rallying cries to suppress "fake news" my question is "have you really thought this through?"
When whistle-blowers are hounded around the globe for exposing a small part of the can of worms do you listen to the details or heed the "outrage" of "how dare they" as respective agencies rush to cover their respective asses. Many support them based on party affiliation and if they dare point at their own party then they become instantly "the enemy" and are treated appallingly, or at best, left to rot.
When parties are brought down by their own words and policies do you listen more to parties screams of "unfair", do you expect their bullshit when trying to find a scapegoat for their own failings. Is your reasoning based upon some type of loyalty or fear? Do you support our agencies of misinformation just because they help to ease the pain of some "political" loss?
Many seemed to be prepared to willingly accept a "Ministry of Truth" just as long as it supports their world view, the evident misinformation of the past notwithstanding. After all some seem to have found it easy enough to pardon war crimes and torture when told by the "right" person to forget about it and move on. Bombing hospitals has become a mere oopsey, unless someone else does it.
Even when the "truth" is exposed it is quickly swept under the carpet if it is perceived to hurt those in power, look forward for fucks sake!
So to conclude
- What is the truth?
- Who determines what is the truth?
- Are you ready for a "Ministry of Truth", it has been around for quite awhile by the way it's called the NSA these days.
The strangest example of this bending of reality occurred when:
An illegal pre-emptive war based upon lies was launched with bipartisan and public opinion support.
- Reporters were embedded with the invading army and force feed the truths of the day
- A colossal quantity of "fake news"was disseminated, almost without question.
- When someone exposed part the reality they were thrown in prison and basically forgotten about.
- When the truth about torture was exposed, it was deemed to be too disgusting to talk about in front of the plebs, best to forget about it really
- Who was punished for this vast campaign of "fake news"?
Oh sorry, I'm off script.....again.
Russians!
Putin!
White folks!
Save Hillary!
Trump!
Note/disclaimer
This essay is not intended to be news, just a personal viewpoint of the evident bullshit being spread ever so deeply.
If you want another/someone else's viewpoint of my argument Robert Fisk in Counterpunch
We do not live in a “post-truth” world, neither in the Middle East nor in the West – nor in Russia, for that matter. We live in a world of lies. And we always have lived in a world of lies.
How can we complain about the lies of Trump and the Brexiteers when we journalists are chopping up the facts of the Middle East? Still, I notice in our newspapers and on television, Israel’s wall is a “security fence”, its colonies are “settlements” which are “disputed” rather than illegal.
Today, you can not only deny history – the Armenian and Jewish Holocausts, Anne Frank’s diary, the gas chambers of Auschwitz – you can also tell fibs, big or small, about almost anything which annoys you. The Middle East, with our journalistic help, is deep in the same false world. Every dictator is now fighting “terrorism” – along with the US, Nato, the EU, Russia, Hezbollah, Iran, the entire Arab Gulf (minus Yemen, for rather embarrassing reasons), China, Japan, Australia and – who knows? – Greenland as well.
Comments
Red faced, spittle flecked innuendoed sale-of-the-century
How am I doing? A 63 old orphan since yesterday, promises already broken or vowed to keep, already. It's 11.3F outside. My door seals leak. And I heat with propane! Electric baseboard backup. Sigh. Happy New Year. She would have been 97 on Monday.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
My condolences and as Happy a New Year as you can
Have you set your hair on fire yet? If not, you are not with the program!
Levity aside, take care, stay warm.
Having an SVT episode, woke me up.
All will be well, until fan hits shit. And My hair is pixie-cut over the ear and needs a trim. I would send a Prisma pic, but it's on my effing iPhone. Later.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
You will come to love Big Brother
in the end.
With their hearts they turned to each others heart for refuge
In troubled years that came before the deluge
*Jackson Browne, 1974, Before the Deluge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SX-HFcSIoU
Rather see him in prison
If you can figure a way to keep the rats from eating your face.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
*
Best response ever but YES.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Sez you.
The problem with many "alternative" news and opinion
sites is they're not really alternative, they're backed by the same people and companies/organizations who back and own the MSM. I noticed an article this morning about an article carried on Breitbart saying that 1000 muslims shouting Allah Akbar burned down the oldest church in Germany. The story was absolutely false but Breitbart ran it and it was carried many other places. I've noticed that Rense.com, another large conservative/republican site, has really turned up the heat on muslims and has become very pro-Trump. Every other article is demonizing muslims, claiming they're raping and pillaging their way through Europe on the way to conquer the world and install Sharia law everywhere they go.
That is dangerous stuff. I personally know a few people, including my brother, who are affected by that bullshit, who really believe the muslims are out to get them. It's very difficult to convince these people otherwise.
What to do about it? Obviously our government is not the answer, neither are the major corporations, they're the ones behind it.
The internet has made this a very tough situation. The only answer seems to be for people to think for themselves, but that usually doesn't work out so good either.
I saw that merry go round as well.
It is difficult to prevent, other by self regulation. The internet has made it easier by far, those that spread these falsehoods are actually risking more than they believe, a total clampdown by the real authoritarians in our midst. The really dangerous falsehoods have always been centralized and sanctioned, the hundreds of millions of dead around the world caused by these "untruths" sadly can no longer testify.
The German media have reacted and debunked that
piece of bs from Breitbart quite clearly. Everywhere.
Google.de search results
Faktencheck: US-Portal berichtet über Silvestermob in Dortmund
Some Syrians celebrated the cease-fire in Syria on New Years' Eve in Dortmund. That was written by the "Ruhr Nachrichten", whose reporter Peter Banderman twittered it. That is why a group of Syrians there shouted Allahu Akbar", which means "God is great".
Regarding the supposed fire that destroyed the oldest church in Germany. Well, it was not the church and for sure not the oldest church in Germany. A fire-cracker had caused a little fire at the iron fence surrounding the church that was extinguished immediately like a couple of other smaller fires caused by fire-crackers.
So, what you have here are reporter mobsters spreading the worst kind of manipulative fake news to incite xenophobic hate and, imo, that's specially "satisfying" for Breitbart, if he can do that in Germany. Sleazy guy.
I mean forgettaboutit. Media mob. Not worth a dime.
Well, we can't very well talk about what is "Fake",
without some understanding of what is "True". And it seems to me that "Truth" is something of a moving target. It's like a fluid that resists being confined or surrounded -- something more in the nature a variable atmosphere than a fixed state of affairs. Or maybe Truth is something that we swim within, like an ectoplasm... so that it defines and surrounds the Truth seeker rather than vice versa.
Whatever it might be, Truth has been defined and explained in so many, often contradictory ways, that some people question whether it even exists, in any objective or universal sense. Me, I think it's possible that Truth is as much a creation of the imagination, as it is a given condition of existence. It seems to appear as if by magic, at the precise moment when the rubber of desire meets the road of material fact.
native
The egregious manipulation of the domestic population
with regard to 'Russian hacking' really is quite something to behold... and live through.
In a dark, disturbing way.
(Edited)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Reminds me ...
of the run up to war, nurtured happily by the press, with phony evidence and with no rational examination of facts, that led to the Vietnam War.
And the Iraq War...
...and the invasion of Somalia, and Grenada, and the Spanish American War, and Bosnia, and Honduras, and...
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Amen.
Teddy Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst were prime fomenters of the Spanish-American War while today Lindsay Graham and Jeff Bezos are busily trying to foment the Russian-American War.
I'd call it
an attempted manipulation of the public, and I don't think it's working very well. It is entirely possible that the msm establishment is doing more harm to its own credibility, than to that of either Trump or Russia.
native
German public broadcaster ARD just filled the exposé slot
on its 5 p.m. news show with, instead of an exposé, a fluff piece about Obama and Michelle holding their last celebrity party in the White House and supposedly being fêted by the whole planet as a beloved, departing great Leader and "First Lady of the World."
The news was preceded by a documentary about families on the Mexican side of the border who are biding their time waiting for a chance to cross into the U.S., and their worries that the human traffickers they are depending on will have a more difficult job after Trump takes the helm.
The lead story in Germany this evening: U.S. intelligence agencies' accusations that Russian "cyberattacks" flanked by a "fake news" campaign—supposedly ordered by Putin personally—aimed to undermine the U.S. election and public confidence in democracy in general. German mainstream media, why are you taking every anti-Russian claim at face value? ARD editors, why the decision to specifically feature live footage of Leon Panetti of all people?
to answer your last question: ARD Tagesschau tonight talked
about what US security services, politicans, including Obama and Trump said about what THEY think about the alleged Russian hacking attacks, which THEY (US) claim to be an alleged medding in US elections and THEY claim it was supposedly ordered by Putin himself. Imo that was just a matter of factly report describing what was broadcasted in the US with original quotes and sources. They also covered the Russian reactions (or lack of it) quoting RT coverage of the US.
Why do you conclude that the ARD editors take or support the claims of US politicians and media at face value? Reporting what is said in the US, doesn't mean one believes what the US says or take their claims at face value or support them.
Who is Leon Panetti (or do you mean Leon Panetta?) and where did you see live footage of him? Can't find it in the ARD Tagesschau, nor in ARD Tagesthemen of today, also not mentioned in the radio coverage out of DC. Main stream news coverage by ARD describes strictly what has matter of factly been reported in US media, using original quotes and sources. These are no opinion pieces unless a video clip in the news coverage is clearly labelled as "commentary".
Radio
US-Geheimdienste werfen Russland Cyber-Kampagne vor
Reactions from Moscow
Audio: US-Reaktionen auf Geheimdienst-Bericht
I wished I would know what you watched. What did I miss?
Panetta was on the very abbreviated ARD Tagesschau at 5 p.m.,
which was also repeated at 5 or 10 minutes before 6 p.m.
When the full Tagesschau came on at 8 p.m. I missed it—I was out in the snow getting some last-minute grocery items for the weekend at Netto. Didn't catch Tagesthemen either—by that time I was watching the Japanese animated movie Spirited Away (German title: Chihiros Reise ins Zauberland) on "Super" (?) RTL.
Yesterday or the day before, Tagesschau featured Clapper on Russia. Of course they failed to mention that Clapper has lied to Congress before.
n-tv—is that channel now connected to the Rupert Murdoch media empire that owns National Geographic, both TV channel and magazine? I wonder because it runs a lot of National Geographic–branded documentaries.
N24 seems to be a military history and technology glorification channel.
A contrast just struck me earlier in the week. "Hey, for the masses ARD and ZDF just quoted the CIA as if it were this reliable source, while at the same time, for a much narrower critical audience, ARD-ZDF's specialized sister station Phoenix is showing a 3-part series on the CIA highlighting it as murderously effective but not to be trusted."
I wonder all the time how interconnected
some online newspaper sites in Germany are with American ones. I wasn't aware yet how this might be for the TV channels. Haven't watched them enough yet. I read some Spiegel online, die Zeit online and sometimes die Sueddeutsche online and then Focus, which I feel is the worst and seems to be copying "American style" sensationalized stuff from the US. I sometimes think that for example Die Zeit has changed a bit. I don't see much of an influence on ARD or WDR with their state's related divisions. They are paid by German tax payers and are public TV.
And they won't say that Clapper has lied to Congress as long as it is not proven. Also, if they would consider it a proven fact, there is always the question if they squeeze that into their two to three minutes clips. You would have to watch the longer pieces of 6 minutes. I think they would report what Clapper has said without offering their own opinion that he might have lied. That's on purpose. They are not supposed to bring in their own judgement. You will find hints, but not more. As soon as it is opinion and not fact they can't report it in a strictly news broadcast like Tagesschau or Tagesthemen. One could say they are "non-political" in their way of reporting, or at least try to be. I remember well the editor's discussions about how and what they would say in their broadcasts being very careful about any judgements about events that have happened. If you know what they personally talk about in their daily conferences and how much of that crosses over into their scripts, you would be amazed. They are careful and I think they should be.
I remember that sometimes their studios hire free-lance American reporters who worked before for American TV channels. Sometimes they don't realize what they hire in the first weeks. If they start or try to spread opinionated partisan view points, they will not be rehired. At least that is my limited understanding of what I have witnessed.
...and I have no clue what all those sister channels are
there are so many now and I don't know by whom they are financed and what is their "flair" and who they are affiliated to. There is a ZDF-neo and an ARD alpha. What are those? I am just overwhelmed of how many "TV crime stories series" there are for entertainment, how many movies from the past etc. In the US I sometimes craved for those, and here I am drowning in them. Times have changed. And I feel lost.
Basic cable TV in my Dresden "Plattenbau" apartment building
seems to include only 35 channels. None of the fancier ARD-ZDF sister stations, just KiKa (public children's channel), 3sat (German-Austrian-Swiss joint venture), arte (German-French joint venture), and Phoenix (detailed documentaries).
Of the regional public broadcasters, I only get MDR (Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thüringen) and RBB (Berlin and Brandenburg).
One thing I like about MDR is how it runs a lot of old East German movies, dramas, and stories for kids that I as a de facto "Wessi" had never seen or even heard of before.
Is the TV channel package included in the rent
or do you pay for it? The rental market amazes me here. I don't remember anymore how it was in the 1960ies. In my sister's house there are TVs, who have more channels, and old TVs who have only 35 channels. I don't understand why and she doesn't either...it's a bit difficult to get information from her about how it works and what she pays for. Her age and living in pre-internet times and simply the deterioration of memory capabilities are the reason for it.
It's amazing how many old US movies they show here. I wouldn't get those on TV in the US. Strange. I like the regional public broadcasts. It's funny how much they represent the different "ambiances and flairs" of each state. I get to know the Germany between the 1982 to 2016 right now. I was still living in the seventies.
Yes, it’s included. Some people have their own satellite dishes,
they get hundreds of channels, all the “free to air” (unencrypted) ones plus whatever package of encrypted channels they’ve gotten roped into paying for.
I've noticed that much
of the German on-line media doesn't seem to allow for comments, why is that? Is there a political forum or site that allows comments?
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
taz.de allows comments from registered commenters.
https://www.taz.de/
But everything’s in German. It very seldom provides English-language translations of articles.
Can you say which German on-line media outlets
(I assume you mean something like blogs) don't allow comments? I don't know something about it. Most online political news sites, basically the online versions of news papers, which were added to the printed newspaper or magazine productions, allow to comment on their opinion pieces, if you register to their sites.
Like you can see here for a rather prickly issue dealt with by "Der Spiegel" via their commentary column's pieces:
Vorurteile: Es ist schwer, kein Rassist zu sein (Prejudices: It is difficult not to be a racist).
I believe that all major newspapers in Germany do allow comments on their online sites for their commentary and analysis pieces. At least "Die Zeit", "Die Sueddeutsche", "Der Tagesspiegel", "Der Spiegel" and may be also "Die Frankfurter Allgemeine", "Das Handelsblatt" too. I haven't checked. But it would amaze me, if they would not allow comments on their essays, commentaries or analytical pieces. Can you point me to examples where they couldn't comment?
I remember that the ARD studio in Washington DC had (as an aside) a blog. It was not much cared for, and I don't remember it had substantial traffic. They had not enough employees to take care of those sites and it was more or less a neglected by-product, nobody wanted to work on. They had enough to do with the regular news productions. Usually the correspondents and the site as a whole have twitter and facebook accounts. Plenty of possibilities to comment, if you can't help yourself.
It has been proven that Clapper lied to Congress back in 2013
about whether the NSA was spying on Americans.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1621
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/mar/11/james-clappe...
I think it’s reasonable to expect ARD editorial staff who specialize in U.S. politics to know this and remind viewers of it.
lotlizard, you overestimate the editorial staff
The studios in NYC and DC have rotating correspondents and bureau chiefs and one feed producer and one senior producer. They have to produce and serve ALL news items from the US for the daily German news slots for the German audience. There were three correspondents and the buerauchief for DC and one correspondent and a bureau chief in NYC. There are six news broadcasts per day, MOMA, MIMI, 5 pm News, Tagesschau, Tagesthemen and NAMA, plus often also producing pieces for BRISANT and PANORAMA (this might be slightly different these days) So the correspondents, cutters, cameramen work under tremendous time pressure and can't afford to read the transcripts, which are often also not available as fast as the producer would need them to report on the hearings.
Most Germans don't know who is Clapper or Wyden. Our interns, coming from Germany for a couple of months, can't recognize their faces and they are often asked to do the "research". Videos about Congressional Hearings are piped in through the pool feed crews (ie a rotating camera crews from ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC) and recorded in the ARD studoo on tape. There is the "feed" producer trying to listen and take notes and then correpondents try from those notes to see if anything goes into their broadcast pieces. It's very hard to recognize the "most important sentences in such hearings and identify them as lies" live and on the spot. No transcripts. It takes years to get experience in that. We had one American feed producer, who could spot the sentences, which were "relevant' immediately. She had done that her whole life. It's harder for foreigners, who come in and out to be that good.
These people are not specialized in US politics and often don't know about hearings that have happened years before. Many of those who could remember those hearings, have left DC and the new rotating crew learns from scratch.
And don't even think these recorded videos are somehow professionally archived. For years there have been nothing more than "old ladies" or "young students", who were hired occasionally per hour to archive them. I know about those. People couldn't find anything. There is also the difficulty to decide what is important enough to be archived (they do all of it now digitally), because the material is overwhelming and who decides that?
TV news production is different from producing news videos for online websites, especially if you produce for publicly funded channels.
I understand that it would be reasonable to expect more thorough reporting, but then you would have to hire permanent staff which are not forced to rotate in and out every three years and producers who have a miracle memory while multitasking to listen into hearing, press briefings, stake-outs all at once and digest them within minutes. For fear of not finding what they need, correspondents keep their own "window sill" archives, hidden to all others. (Drove me nuts, btw), If you see a clip in Tagesschau from the US, you should consider that the whole things is produced within 3-5 hours, which included often a camera and producer and sound technician to go out to shoot the clips. Then that material gets cut by the video editors at the side of the correspondent, who is developing his narrative. In addition pool feed material need to be incorporated too by the video editor. It's a true teamwork effort. Not enough time to do more thorough reading or research, especially not, if two events are happening at once with locations somewhere in the US. It's hard work.
I would think that many people here have more time to do research and read.
I agree with you. But reality showed me that under the work conditions they produce, they can't do it the way you would want them to.
Just my 0.02 cents of being a witness to the production process. I was glad when I retired out of there, just having been a working class archival rescue worker.
PS. Now I have to ask JtC to give me a new nickname. I won't come back as mimi. Ich habe mich der Netzbeschmutzung schuldig gemacht. Sigh.
Oh, mimi, thanks very much for such a detailed reply.
My computer was broken and after days and weeks of doing without, I finally splashed out the money to get it fixed yesterday. So that’s why I’m only seeing and replying to this comment of yours today.
And here’s Michael Hayden lying about the Fourth Amendment
The fact is, one can’t rely on anything the “intelligence community” releases to the public because the leadership obviously believes it’s part of their job to lie, and to lie shamelessly.
In spite of your disclaimer,
This essay could theoretically change someone's opinion, which at some point may result in a change of their vote in a future election, therefore this essay is a clear example of "election hacking". Please turn yourself in at your earliest convenience. Thank you.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Come and get me copper!
The most damaging fake news award goes to!
The Associated Press! For telling America that Clinton had won California before the election was over!
I thought that API possessed some semblance of objectivity. I thought that they were proud enough of their reputation not to engage in such sophistry. Sadly, no. What they did is beyond merely irresponsible behavior. This was calculated manipulation intended to shape the election.
And this before fake news rose to the forefront of national conversation. Gonna blame that on the Russians too?
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage
Shhhh! You were not supposed to see that. Now go to sleep.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
one more time..... it ain't news .......
Highly competitive, Ratings based Infotainment (a bit more cumbersome, but more accurate)
Latest Neilson skirmish: The Ft. Lauderdale shooter: from the people who actually know him, i hear long suffering, short served PTSD Iraq vet. But CNN has Said, Scrolled & Flashed terrorism/terrorist 1000 times/segment (may have only been 999, got bored, lost count). Michael Moore has been the only voice for the obvious (got 10 seconds in on MSNBC's The Last Word last night).
21st Century America: The distracted, superficail perception of a virtual reality.
Why of course
it's terrorism. The only other conclusion is that we have way too many guns and "everyone" knows that's impossible.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"