Tag: fake news

New Law Sought by Brazil’s Lula to Ban and Punish “Fake News and Disinformation” Threatens the Free Internet Everywhere

A major escalation in official online censorship regimes is progressing rapidly in Brazil, with implications for everyone in the democratic world. Under Brazil’s new government headed by President Lula da Silva, the country is poised to become the first in the democratic world to implement a law censoring and banning, and punishing not only “fake news” and “disinformation” online, but also punishing those deemed guilty of spreading it. Such laws already exist throughout the non-democratic world, adopted years ago by the planet’s most tyrannical regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. 

If one wishes to be generous with the phrase “the democratic world” and include Malaysia and Singapore – at best hybrid “democracies” – then one could argue that a couple other “democratic” governments have already seized the power to decree Absolute Truth and then ban any deviation from it. But absent unexpected opposition, Brazil will soon become the first country unambiguously included in the democratic world to outlaw “fake news” and vest government officials with the power to banish it and punish its authors. 

Last May, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was forced to retreat from its attempt to appoint a “disinformation czar” to oversee what would effectively be its Ministry of Truth. That new DHS agency, at least nominally, was to be only advisory: it would declare truth and falsity and then pressure online platforms to comply by banning that which was deemed false. The backlash was so great that DHS finally claimed to cancel it, though secret documents emerged in October describing the agency’s plans to continue to shape online censorship decisions of Big Tech. 

Brazil’s law would be anything but advisory. Though the details are still yet to be released, it would empower law enforcement officials to take action against citizens deemed to be publishing statements that the government classifies as “false,” and to solicit courts to impose punishment on those who do so.

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Left-wing think tank responsible for thousands of fake Russia stories: new Twitter Files

A left-wing think tank erroneously claiming to track Russian online activity was responsible for thousands of bogus stories asserting the nation’s influence in US politics, according to the latest batch of Twitter Files.

The Hamilton 68 “dashboard” was the brainchild of former FBI special agent and MSNBC contributor Clint Watts and operated under the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a think tank founded in 2017 — shortly after former President Trump took office.  

The ASD Advisory Council included such figures as top Clinton ally John Podesta, Obama-era acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, and former conservative activist Bill Kristol.

The latest Twitter Files disclosure, the 15th so far, revealed how Hamilton 68’s Russian bot dashboard repeatedly insisted there was widespread and deep Russian penetration of social media and unveiled that Twitter executives frequently challenged those claims internally.

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Associated Press Issues Correction After Publishing False Report that Could’ve Started WW3

The Associated Press has issued an official correction for its not-so-inconsequential bit of reporting Tuesday that could have easily set off a chain of events leading to a WWIII scenario.

“The Associated Press reported erroneously, based on information from a senior American intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity” …and we the know rest which unleashed a day of incessant warmongering based on the allegation that Russia attacked a NATO member. The incredibly embarrassing correction further states, “Subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.”

And the next time this happens will it be too late for a “correction”?

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Journalistic Responsibility Vanishes When Reporting On US-Targeted Nations

Two false news reports have gone viral in recent hours due to sloppy sourcing and journalistic malpractice. As usual they both featured bogus claims about US-targeted nations, in this case Russia and Iran.

An article in Responsible Statecraft titled “How a lightly-sourced AP story almost set off World War III” details how the propaganda multiplier news agency published a one-source, one-sentence report claiming that Russia had launched a deadly missile strike at NATO member Poland, despite evidence having already come to light by that point that the missile had probably come from Ukraine. This set off calls for the implementation of a NATO Article 5 response, meaning hot warfare between NATO and Russia in retaliation for a Russian attack on one of the alliance members.

Mainstream news reports circulated the narrative that Poland had been struck by a “Russian-made” missile, which is at best a highly misleading framing of the fact that the inadvertent strike came from a Soviet-era surface-to-air missile system still used by Ukraine, a former Soviet state. Headlines from the largest and most influential US news outlets like The New York Times, CNN and NBC all repeated the misleading “Russian-made” framing, as did AP’s own correction to its false report that Poland was struck by Russia.

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Elon Musk DELETES tweet to Hillary Clinton suggesting Paul Pelosi’s attacker was gay prostitute: News site behind story once claimed Hillary died and was replaced by body double in 2016

Musk had posted the theory in response to a tweet by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in which she claimed that the attack on the 82-year-old was the fault of Republican ‘mouthpieces’ spreading ‘hate and deranged conspiracy theories.’

‘There’s a tiny possibility there may be more to this story than meets the eye,’ the 51-year-old billionaire responded, sharing a link to a story published by an obscure outlet called the Santa Monica Observer.

It seemed to have crashed since the story was first highlighted by Musk, with would-be readers receiving an error page reading that the site’s webserver, Cloudflare, was ‘returning an unknown error’ according to Axios.

According to the LA Times, the same outlet previously reported that Hillary Clinton died before the 2016 election, and that a body double had been sent to debate Donald Trump. It also claimed that sunlight could treat COVID, and that Kanye West had been appointed to the Trump administration.

The latest story, which can still be accessed in an online archive, was headlined: ‘The Awful Truth: Paul Pelosi Was Drunk Again, And In a Dispute With a Male Prostitute Early Friday Morning.’

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We have The List and Links to Democrat David Brock’s “Swing” State Fake News Sites

Thanks to the persistence of a Grok reader (crowdsourcing is great!), we have the list of Progressive “fake’ news sites paid for with Dark Money linked back to Democrat operative David Brock.

If you missed the original report:

A network of at least 51 locally branded news sites has popped up since last year under names like the Milwaukee Metro Times, the Mecklenburg Herald, and the Tri-City Record. The sites are focused on key swing states with elections in 2021 and 2022: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. …

Each follows a similar template: aggregated local news content and short write-ups about local sports teams and attractions — interspersed with heavily slanted political news aimed at boosting Democratic midterm candidates and attacking Republican opponents.

We could not originally locate any of these slimy outlets alleged to be operating in New Hampshire, so I asked readers if they could poke around, and they did.  We’ve got not just ours but all of them (we think) – at least those being fed by The American Independent.

Brock’s Dem-Money laundromat powers them with content generated by the American Independent, a progressive news source that bills itself a number one resource, though it has very little actual traffic. That might be because the news is written to end up on local sites in swing states.

It’s not local, but it is peddled as that, surrounded by local sports or special interest stories.

Your more well-known local media can pick these up and run with them as if they are legitimate unbiased news as if they’d ever published something that wasn’t biased against the Left. It’s standard echo-chamber stuff, and it looks like NH has four of these.

The Amoskeag Times, Everett Times, Rockingham Journal, and Seacoast Standard. Sports, local interest, and the occasional story-spinning things to make Democrats look moderate or the product of their policies more positive.

That means we’ve got more homework, people. Check these out and see what sort of BS they’ve hidden between the local interest and sports stories.

As for the rest of you, here is the list with links in alphabetical order by state. Ten states have two or more of these operating so check them out and then make fun of their reporting.

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Democrats are operating a series of 51 ‘fake news’ websites pushing left-wing stories in toss-up states in a bid to turn the midterms in their favor, shocking investigation finds

A liberal political media operation being run out of Washington, D.C., and Florida is pushing left-wing stories in 51 different fake news outlets in order to influence the outcome of the November midterm elections, it is claimed. 

The allegations came in a shocking new investigation from Axios that was published on Thursday. 

The report alleges that in the past 12 months, multiple new ‘news’ website have appeared across the country, all run by a company named Local Report Inc. 

They do report a wide variety of stories – but sprinkled throughout are news items pushing Democrat lawmakers and policies.  

Online records show that the Local Report was founded in Tallahassee, Fla. 

Content is provided for the sites from writers who are employed by another left-wing group, the American Independent. The Independent was founded by David Brock, known for other liberal endeavors such as Fox News watchdog, Media Matters for America. 

Other employees at the American Independent include Matt Fuehrmeyer, who previously worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and for disgraced Sen. Al Franken, according to his LinkedIn page.

Franken’s son is also employed by the organization, as is former Sen. Harry Reid’s son, the Daily Caller reported.

Prior to working as the executive editor of the American Independent, Jessica McCreight was part of President Barack Obama’s communications team, according to her LinkedIn page. 

When asked about the connection between the American Independent and the Local Report, McCreight told Axios that the pair had a ‘co-publishing agreement,’ adding that their content is ‘open source’ and they were a ‘partner’ of Local Report’s.

She also said: ‘It’s been widely reported that where local news outlets shut down, dis- and misinformation grows.

‘To combat this challenge, the American Independent has expanded to bring readers local, fact-based news and information on topics and issues that impact their communities,’ McCreight continued.

The Axios report says that the outlets are all based in states that are generally considered swing states in the November elections including Wisconsin, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Michigan, Georgia, Colorado and Arizona. 

Among the titles that are packed with content from American Independent staff are the Milwaukee Metro Times, the Tri-City Record, the Bucks County Standard, the Mecklenburg Herald and the Northern Clark County Herald.

The investigation said the websites come equipped with a certain amount of aggregated local news and sports reporting, accompanied by political commentary and biased news. 

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Oops! Teachers’ union chief admits sharing fake list of ‘banned’ books

A teachers’ union chief who worked aggressively to keep public schools closed during the COVID pandemic now has admitted to sharing a list of “banned” books that was a fake.

The response from Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, to her mistake? “My bad”

Fox News explained Weingarten had posted on social media the list of so-called “banned” books.

The but list, originally posted online by “Freesus Patriot,” said Florida has banned classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and “A Wrinkle in Time,” which it hasn’t.

Weingarten explained, “I should have double checked before I retweeted this list. My bad. Looks like some of the books weren’t banned. Book bans are very real & dangerous.”

The issue of banned books has been triggered by the extreme leftist agenda being adopted by some public school districts, promoting transgenderism for children while concealing that ideology from parents, Critical Race Theory which teaches America is racist and to get rid of that racism more racism is needed, and more. Those theories often are promoted by books that leftist districts install in their libraries and are handed out to children.

Many parents with traditional moral and educational values would prefer that their tax-funded public schools not teach extremes like those. So the issue of what books are available – and promoted – to children becomes significant

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