Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

High-profile failures, errors threaten media’s credibility with already skeptical public

Major media outlets in recent weeks have been struggling under a flood of major reporting failures, scrambling to address significant lapses in reporting as nationwide trust in media reaches record lows.

The Washington Post this week revealed that it had significantly misreported a story in which then-President Donald Trump was alleged to have called one of Georgia’s top elections investigators and urged that official to “find the fraud” in the state’s election data. The Post, which had relied on anonymous sourcing to verify the claim, said that a review of an audio file of the call discovered this month revealed that Trump had never uttered those words. 

Those allegations were explosive at the time they were reported, even finding their way into the impeachment trial memorandum of Senate Democrats. The Post in its correction indicated that its reporter has not listened to the recording prior to reporting on it, instead relying on “information provided by a source” to bolster the allegations in the report. 

Other media outlets picked up on the allegation as well, including CNN, which after the discovery of the recording quietly updated its own report on the alleged scandal. But its 10.5-font-sized “Editor’s Note” did not specify the errors from the earlier report, instead linking readers to a report on the recently discovered recording that itself did not identify the error from the network’s original article. 

The New York Times has been involved in several corrections, some big like the elaborate hoax played on its Caliphate podcast and others small but still affecting reputations on Twitter. Last month, for instance, Times technology reporter Taylor Lorenz had to be corrected when she tweeted an allegation that tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen had used  “the r-slur” during a forum, only to have one of the forum’s moderators deny it happened. Lorenz then tweeted back: “Thanks for clarifying.” 

The Capitol riot on Jan. 6 resulted in more journalism malpractice, so much so that award-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote an entire essay about “false and exaggerated” media claims he had uncovered. “False reporting is never justified, especially to inflate threat and fear levels,” he declared.

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China’s Toxic Dog Food Threatens Our Four-Legged Friends

As a former commissioner on the congressionally chartered U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission, identifying toxic ingredients from China in American products has always been a grave concern for me. In its 2019 report to Congress, the commission noted China was the No. 1 global source of pharmaceutical ingredients, which includes dietary supplements for pet consumption.

As far back as 2007, we found rampant agricultural contamination by airborne pollutants as a result of China’s rapid growth, conflicting layers of oversight, oppressive control of state media, and China’s tacit refusal to enforce its own product safety laws.

The dog food safety problem is no small thing. It has never been more important, nor more human-centered.

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Facebook puts new restrictions on groups and individuals to curb spread of ‘harmful content’

Facebook announced Wednesday that it will restrict the popularity of groups and users that accrue violations and, in some cases, remove them altogether in order to reduce harmful content and misinformation.

“We’ve taken action to curb the spread of harmful content, like hate speech and misinformation, and made it harder for certain groups to operate or be discovered, whether they’re Public or Private. When a group repeatedly breaks our rules, we take it down entirely,” Facebook announced in a press release Wednesday.

Building upon its decision to stop recommending political groups to U.S. users in January after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Facebook will now reduce the privileges and popularity of groups that violate its content moderation rules.

This means users will be less likely to discover groups that have had Facebook community violations in the past and will see warnings when they try to join them.

Groups with a large number of members who have broken Facebook rules will be required to get administrator and moderator approval before posts can be published.

Individual users who have repeatedly violated Facebook policies within a group will be blocked altogether from posting in groups or inviting others to groups and creating new groups themselves.

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Democratic Wisconsin Judge Arrested With Seven Child Pornography Counts

A 38-year-old Democratic judge was arrested on Tuesday in Wisconsin for seven felony counts of possessing child pornography, according to the state’s Justice Department.

Brett Blomme, Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge, is facing class D felonies after a thorough investigation was performed by authorities in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. Blomme used the Kik messenger app to store the content, which authorities tracked between the months of October and November. The judge was apprehended in Dane County.

On Friday, a Division of Criminal Investigation unit filed a 44-page search warrant. Investigators learned that Blomme uploaded 27 total child pornographic videos and images to Kik, using the pseudonym “dommasterbb” to conceal his identity. Two of these files were being stored in a government building in Milwaukee County.

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