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Ethereal
01-04-2017, 11:01 AM
WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived (https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/washpost-is-richly-rewarded-for-false-news-about-russia-threat-while-public-is-deceived/)

Glenn Greenwald
January 4 2017, 8:28 a.m.

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 first Note of which was posted a full two weeks later to the top of the original article, the other of which was buried the following day at the bottom.

The second story on the electric grid turned out to be far worse than I realized when I wrote about it on Saturday, when it became clear that there was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid” as the Post had claimed. In addition to the Editor’s Note, the Russia-hacked-our-electric-grid story now has a full-scale retraction in the form of a separate article admitting that “the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility” and that there may not have even been malware at all on this laptop.

But while these debacles are embarrassing for the paper, they are also richly rewarding. That’s because journalists – including those at the Post – aggressively hype and promote the original, sensationalistic false stories, ensuring that they go viral, generating massive traffic for the Post (the paper’s Executive Editor, Marty Baron, recently boasted about how profitable the paper has become).

After spreading the falsehoods far and wide, raising fear levels and manipulating U.S. political discourse in the process (both Russia stories were widely hyped on cable news), journalists who spread the false claims subsequently note the retraction or corrections only in the most muted way possible, and often not at all. As a result, only a tiny fraction of people who were exposed to the original false story end up learning of the retractions.

...

The Washington Post has published two major stories about Russia only to issue amendments and retractions after the fact. Yet the original, flawed versions of the stories gained far more exposure than edited versions. The damage has been done with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people being made to believe things that are either misleading or false. Indeed, we've seen ample evidence of this here on tPF. So as we can plainly see, the biggest purveyors of "fake news" are actually the mainstream media themselves. The only reason why their readers do not treat them the same way they treat other purveyors of fake news is simple: The Washington Post has the right agenda, so if they bend the truth or outright misstate it, then so be it. As long as they're promoting the right narratives, then that's all that matters to some. And in that way, they are no different than the internet "conspiracy theorists" they self-righteously and smugly decry.

AeonPax
01-04-2017, 11:08 AM
The Washington Post has published two major stories about Russia only to issue amendments and retractions after the fact. Yet the original, flawed versions of the stories gained far more exposure than edited versions. The damage has been done with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people being made to believe things that are either misleading or false. Indeed, we've seen ample evidence of this here on tPF. So as we can plainly see, the biggest purveyors of "fake news" are actually the mainstream media themselves. The only reason why their readers do not treat them the same way they treat other purveyors of fake news is simple: The Washington Post has the right agenda, so if they bend the truth or outright misstate it, then so be it. As long as they're promoting the right narratives, then that's all that matters to some. And in that way, they are no different than the internet "conspiracy theorists" they self-righteously and smugly decry.
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That sounds suspiciously like the same MO used by Fox news.

Ethereal
01-04-2017, 11:50 AM
`
That sounds suspiciously like the same MO used by Fox news.
It's what ALL mainstream media outlets are guilty of, including Fox News. The big difference is that Democrats pretend like their preferred sources are not actually guilty of this kind of behavior when they are arguably some of the worst offenders.

Beevee
01-04-2017, 11:56 AM
Isn't it similar to Trump tweets before they are clarified by the Trump transitional team?
Could the difference be that the WaPo has made only two amendments?

Ethereal
01-04-2017, 12:05 PM
Isn't it similar to Trump tweets before they are clarified by the Trump transitional team?
Could the difference be that the WaPo has made only two amendments?
These are just two examples within recent times. The art of practiced deception and disinformation within the corporate media goes back many decades. As a primer on the subject, I would recommend reading The CIA and the Media (http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php) by Carl Bernstein.

Beevee
01-04-2017, 12:09 PM
These are just two examples within recent times. The art of practiced deception and disinformation within the corporate media goes back many decades. As a primer on the subject, I would recommend reading The CIA and the Media (http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php) by Carl Bernstein.

I don't doubt your remarks.
Just as long as Republicans acknowledge that a Trump tweet cannot be taken at face value for a day, giving the Trump transition team time to take their high blood pressure tablets before concocting a clarification.

The Xl
01-04-2017, 12:23 PM
This whole fake news thing would be hilarious if it wasn't so dangerous. The vast majority of MSM news outlets all spout toxic levels of fake or misleading news. Washington post is among the worst.

Common
01-04-2017, 12:37 PM
Its all about helping democrats

AeonPax
01-04-2017, 02:27 PM
It's what ALL mainstream media outlets are guilty of, including Fox News. The big difference is that Democrats pretend like their preferred sources are not actually guilty of this kind of behavior when they are arguably some of the worst offenders.
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Both parties have become ideologically pedestrian, with their party swill. The corporate owned media is just an extension of the monied interests that own both parties, and by default; congress and the president. I disliked the republicans, years before I started disliking the democrats. We all mature at different rates I daresay.

Ethereal
01-06-2017, 02:14 PM
Glenn Greenwald takes the MSM and US intelligence agencies to the woodshed. Video at link:


Glenn Greenwald on "Dearth of Evidence" Linking Russia to WikiLeaks Release of DNC Emails (https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/5/glenn_greenwald_on_dearth_of_evidence)

GLENN GREENWALD: What’s most remarkable, given how much discussion there has been, how many media reports have been devoted to this topic, what we actually know about any of this is very little. Of course, it’s possible that the Russian government was actually behind these hacks. Nobody has ever said that Russia didn’t do it. Nobody has ever said that this is the sort of thing Putin wouldn’t do. This is the kind of stuff that the U.S. and Russia have both done to one another and to multiple countries around the world for many decades, not just things like this, but far, far worse, in terms of interfering in other countries’ democracies and in their internal affairs.

The real issue, though, is that there has been a very extreme dearth of evidence to actually support the claims that have come from the U.S. government, largely, though not exclusively, through anonymous sources laundered through newspapers. People were very skeptical, rightly so, when Julian Assange came out and declared that his source was not the Russian government or any state actor. There’s good reasons for skepticism about whether Julian even knows that and, if he does know that, whether he’s accurately describing who his source is, when he has a duty to protect his source. Unfortunately, there is very little skepticism being applied to the agencies that have repeatedly misled and deceived and lied to the American public, which is the CIA and other intelligence agencies, who, when they’re not lying, are often simply wrong, particularly when it comes to things like attribution of a hack, which is a very difficult thing to pin down.

And so, you have a really consequential and dangerous issue, which is ratcheting up tensions between two nuclear-armed powers, who have decades of tensions, who have almost come to nuclear war on multiple occasions simply through misperception and miscommunication. And all of this is happening in a media environment that has proven over and over that they’ll print anything, no matter how false and dubious, if it feeds the hysteria about Vladimir Putin and the Russians. And so, this is a really toxic environment, and I think that journalists ought to be trying to rein it in and to demand some skepticism and restraint, and, most of all, insist on seeing evidence, conclusive evidence, publicly presented, that what the CIA and the other intelligence agencies are claiming about the Russian government and what they did here is actually correct.

...

Ethereal
01-21-2017, 04:45 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7XMmYPef0I