Tag: fake news

What? AP Claims ‘White Colonists’ Known For ‘Scalping’ Native Americans

In a bizarre article claiming American conservatives are weaponizing plagiarism against colleges, The Associated Press also randomly re-wrote history by falsely claiming white colonists took up the practice of scalping Native Americans.

First, the Community Notes feature of 𝕏 pointed out Harvard President Claudine Gay was ousted from her position because she DID commit plagiarism and that doing so violated the university’s rules.

After the entire premise of the article was essentially exposed as fraudulent by Community Notes, many social media users also pointed out the strange remark about scalping.

Discussing conservative activist Christopher Rufo celebrated the ousting of Gay online by writing “scalped,” which is commonly used to express a victory over a political opponent, AP claimed he invoked violence.

The outlet then alleged scalping was “a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans,” before later adding that “some tribes” also scalped their enemies.

AP wrote, “Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped orchestrate the effort against Gay, celebrated her departure as a win in his campaign against elite institutions of higher education. On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote ‘SCALPED,’ as if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans and also used by some tribes against their enemies.”

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BBC Editor Speaks Out After False Gaza Hospital Reporting, Says He ‘Doesn’t Regret One Thing’

BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen was pressed on his initial reporting of an explosion at a hospital in Gaza on Saturday and said he didn’t regret his mistakes during an interview on the network on Saturday.

Several media outlets initially reported that Israel was responsibile for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. Bowen claimed during his initial reports that the Al-Ahli hospital was flattened.

“The missile hit the hospital not long after dark. You can hear the impact. The explosion destroyed Al-Ahli Hospital. It was already damaged from a smaller attack at the weekend. The building was flattened,” Bowen said.

Bowen, during an appearance on BBC News channel’s “Behind The Stories,” said he didn’t regret his reporting and that he “didn’t race to judgment.”

“So it broke in, I suppose, mid-evening. And to answer your question, no, I don’t regret one thing in my reporting, because I think I was measured throughout. I didn’t race to judgment,” he said.

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Trump Lawyer Alina Habba Did NOT Make Jury Request Mistake, Admits Judge.

Donald Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, did not fail to tick a box to request a jury trial in the New York civil fraud case despite widely circulated claims. Judge Arthur Engoron amended his comments of “nobody asked for” a jury trial on Wednesday following the false reports, arguing the claim “keeps coming up”. He explained that New York Attorney General Letitia James “clearly checked off non-jury” before the proceedings began.

“It would not have helped to make a motion, nobody forgot to check off a box,” Engoron explained, adding the punishment sought by the state of New York is an “equitable” remedy rather than a “legal” remedy.

Habba, who was forced to defend herself and the former President’s legal team amidst the false accusations, said in court following clarification, “Thank you, your honor. Press, did you hear that? I didn’t ‘forget to check the box’.”

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Hilarious: NBC News Instantly Exposed As Liars After Claiming They “Gained Access” To X Community Notes System

When NBC News published a hit piece claiming that Twitter/X’s Community Notes fact checking system rarely corrects posts and asserting that they “gained access” to the system, both claims were instantly revealed to be untrue… by Community Notes itself.

“Elon Musk has touted Community Notes as a way to fight false and misleading information on X,” NBC News tweeted.

The outlet then declared”@NBCNews gained access to the system, and found that on posts containing known misinformation, few posts were ever corrected. Many fact-checks were delayed.”

The claims were quickly revealed to be complete BS, hilariously by Community Notes.

One note reads, “NBC did not ‘gain access’ to any special Twitter system they merely had one of the many thousands of community notes contributors show them that some misleading posts had yet to have any notes added.”

It adds that “Any 6 month old account with a verified phone number can join the program.”

Another points out that it is completely erroneous to suggest some back room employee is approving notes, as implied by NBC.

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A Dozen Media Outlets that Fell for Fake News on Mar-a-Lago

Several media outlets, both mainstream and left-wing, fell for the fake news Friday that former President Donald Trump had sold or transferred ownership of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to his son, Donald Trump Jr.

The story originated in a mistaken report on the Zillow real estate website. But it was “to good to check” for many websites:

Breitbart News reported exclusively that the story was fake before Zillow confirmed the information was wrong.

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DeSantis Doubles Down On Opposition To Marijuana Legalization, Claiming Colorado’s Illicit Market Is ‘Bigger And More Lucrative’ After Reform

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, has reaffirmed that he would not legalize marijuana if elected to the White House—arguing contrary to evidence that the reform has actually increased the size of the illicit market in Colorado.

During a campaign event in Iowa on Saturday, an attendee told DeSantis that she knows people whose children developed “cannabis-induced psychosis” and asked about whether he would move to legalize or reschedule cannabis under federal law if he became president. In response, the GOP contender made clear that he “would not legalize,” echoing anti-marijuana arguments he previously made in June.

“I think what’s happened is this stuff is very potent now. I think when young people get it, I think it’s a real, real problem, and I think it’s a lot different than stuff that people were using 30, 40 years ago,” DeSantis said. “I think when kids get on that, I think it causes a lot of problems and then, of course, you know, they can throw fentanyl in any of this stuff now.”

The candidate then pivoted to a broader discussion about the harms of substance misuse, stating that there’s an “open air market” for illicit drugs in San Francisco, and that society has “totally decayed” under policies that “really help these folks use drugs.”

DeSantis did acknowledge that Floridians have access to medical cannabis under a constitutional amendment that voters approved, saying that “we abide by that” but noting that “states have handled cannabis differently” and he would not “take action now to make it even more available.”

Florida voters may have the choice to expand access regardless of the governor’s position, as the state Supreme Court is currently considering whether a marijuana legalization initiative will appear on the state’s 2024 ballot.

“I would not do that,” DeSantis said on Saturday. “And the places that legalized it like Colorado and California, you know, the argument was—and honestly it wasn’t a crazy argument—’Look, we know people are going to use marijuana. It is a drug. If you legalize it, then you can tax it, regulate it, and it’s going to end up being safer for people.’”

“But what’s happened in Colorado, the black market for marijuana is bigger and more lucrative than it was before they did the legalization,” the governor said. “So the legalization I don’t think has worked.”

DeSantis didn’t provide data or cite any sourcing to support that argument. But private and government analyses have suggested that Colorado has in fact significantly reduced the influence of the illicit market in the decade since enacting legalization.

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No, a WEF official did not call for ‘eliminating’ conspiracy theorists

A July 25 article in The People’s Voice included a headline declaring “Top WEF Official: ‘Dangerous Conspiracy Theorists Must Be Eliminated.’”

“A top World Economic Forum (WEF) official has called for so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’ to be banned from accessing the internet due to their ‘dangerous’ belief that a global cabal of elites control the world,” the article began.

It’s a reference to the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims among other things there is a satanic cabal of global elites taking part in an international child sex trafficking ring. 

The article was shared more than 300 times on Facebook in five days according to CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool.

There is no evidence, in the article or elsewhere, that Yuval Noah Harari made any such comments. The article also incorrectly identifies Harari as a World Economic Forum official, when he has no role with the organization. The People’s Voice routinely publishes baseless claims.

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How To Create a Fake News Cycle

Despite the best efforts of the mainstream media to pillory him as an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is having a moment. A recent poll from CNN of all places showed him earning 20% of Democratic primary voters – and that was before his Joe Rogan interview and shirtless push-up video went viral. Kennedy’s support only confirms the titanic loss of trust between voters and mainstream media.

Except for those in the business, few people understand the inner workings of the media world. As a doctor and lifelong Democratic voter who pulled the lever for Biden in 2020, I had no clue. Prior to COVID-19, I trusted that what I was reading represented the truth. My experience running the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) quickly disabused me of that idea.

The first wave hit in December 2020, when I testified in the Senate that corticosteroids were saving my COVID patients’ lives. My recommendations weren’t just ignored – they were attacked, and I was personally ridiculed as a fraud and Trump puppet. My life and career were upended. I felt forced to resign my faculty position. It was cold comfort when a few months later, a large study confirmed my testimony and government agencies added steroids to the standard of care for COVID patients.

I struggled to make sense of it through much of 2021. The Biden administration and the mainstream media single-mindedly pushed untested vaccines even as the FLCCC accumulated more and more evidence that cheap, generic medicines could stop COVID. As I detailed in my new book, “The War on Ivermectin,” simply presenting evidence that doctors were using the medicine to treat and prevent COVID around the world was a dog whistle for the mob.

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Eric Adams’s Fallen Cop Photo Is a Fake

Democratic New York City mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly shown off a picture of a murdered police officer, saying he has kept the picture in his wallet for decades. In reality, the picture was a Google printout that Adams aides altered last year to make it look like “the mayor had been carrying it for some time,” the New York Times reported Thursday.

Adams has used the picture to tout his image as tough on crime, saying last year that the killings of two police officers “reminded him of the 1987 line-of-duty death of a friend, Officer Robert Venable,” according to the Times report. “I keep a picture of Robert in my wallet,” Adams said. One week later, the mayor posed for a picture in which he held up the photo of Venable. He has “repeated the moving anecdote”—and held up the Venable photo—multiple times since.

But the photo “had not actually spent decades in the mayor’s wallet,” the Times reported. Adams had, in fact, instructed City Hall employees to print out a Google image of the fallen officer and make it look older, “including by splashing some coffee on it.” Two former City Hall aides confirmed that “they were informed about the manipulated photo last year, not long after it was created.”

This is far from the first time Adams has faced accusations of manipulating the truth. The mayor, who claims to be a vegan, was caught ordering fish only days after he ordered New York City schools to serve only vegan food on Fridays, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

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“You just lied” – Elon Musk dismantles BBC reporter over “hate speech” claims, accuses BBC of spreading “misinformation”

In an interview with the BBC at Twitter headquarters on Tuesday night, owner Elon Musk called out the BBC reporter for lying about an increase in hateful content since he took over.

BBC reporter James Clayton asked Musk why there is “so much more hate speech on Twitter” since his takeover. Musk responded by challenging the reporter to provide one instance.

After Clayton hesitated, Musk said, “You said you’ve seen more hateful content but you can’t name a single example. Not even one.”

Clayton responded, “I’m not sure I’ve used that feed for the last three or four weeks, and I…”

“Then how could you see the hateful content?… I’m asking for one example. You can’t give a single one.” Musk interjected. “Then I say sir that you don’t know what you’re talking about … because you can’t give a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet. And yet, you claimed that the hateful content was high. That’s false. You just lied!”

Clayton then said there are “many organizations that say that kind of information is on the rise.”

“Give me one example,” Musk insisted.

Musk also referred to a thread by Twitter user @KaneokaTheGreat, which included a video of venture capitalist David Sacks explaining that the left “uses hate speech as a red herring to mask their true intention of exerting political censorship and controlling the narrative.”

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