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.
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.