Tag: fake news

Fordham professor makes up statistic about AR-15s to peddle gun control

A Fordham University history professor recently was caught fabricating a statistic about the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

In a May 19 Slate article, gun control advocate Saul Cornell claimed the AR-15 is “200 times more deadly” than the rifles used in the American Revolution.

“Recent events in New York have brought the grim realities of America’s gun violence problem into sharp relief,” Cornell wrote. “In both instances, the perpetrators took advantage of the nation’s lax gun laws and legally purchased firearms whose lethality would have been unimaginable to the authors of the Second Amendment.”

Cornell also chided conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices for clinging to “originalist fantasy” and being “happy to parrot the propaganda” put forth by the National Rifle Association.

But National Review’s Kevin Williamson asked Cornell about the “200 times” statistic and discovered the professor had used World War II-era machine guns as a “stand-in” for AR-15s.

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Ukrainian Official Behind Western Media Reports Of Russian Atrocities Fired By Ukrainian Parliament

A Ukrainian government official frequently cited as a source by western news media for her allegations of atrocities committed by Russian troops has been fired by the Ukrainian parliament, in part because of the unevidenced nature of those claims.

Newsweek reports:

A Ukrainian official has been relieved of her duties over her handling of reports detailing sexual assault allegations made against Russians in Ukraine.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, removed Lyudmila Denisova, the parliament’s commissioner for human rights, from her post, according to Ukrainska Pravda. No new appointment has been made to fill the role.

The move to dismiss Denisova came after outrage about the wording used in public reports about alleged sexual assaults committed by Russians, as well as the alleged dissemination in those reports of unverified information. Despite accusations from Ukraine, the Kremlin has repeatedly denied that Russian soldiers have committed war crimes or sexual assaults during the invasion.

As it happens, Newsweek is one of the many western outlets who have uncritically cited Denisova’s unevidenced claims in their reporting of events in Ukraine. She was the “Ukraine official” in Newsweek’s incendiary April headline “Russians Raped 11-Year-Old Boy, Forced Mom to Watch: Ukraine Official,” an article whose entire first half featured unevidenced claims by Denisova.

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‘They believe nearly anything’: Satirical news site keeps duping Kyle Rittenhouse fans with updates about his ‘lawsuit’ against ‘The View’

Rumors are flying across the internet that Kyle Rittenhouse settled a lawsuit against The View for $22 million and a formal apology. His fans are ecstatic.

It would indeed be huge news if The View agreed to pay $22 million to settle Rittenhouse’s supposed defamation suit. But it’s not true in the slightest. Rittenhouse has never sued The View.

In fact, the rumor came from a satirical website. This is the third time the site has fooled people about Rittenhouse and The View.

Snopes reported on Thursday that claims of a settlement between Rittenhouse and the daytime talk show originated from an article published the day before by USA Taters, part of a network of websites run by the satirical America’s Last Line of Defense. Among the many clues that the story is fake is that it’s bookmarked “weird hero fetish satire.”

“According to our records, the bulk of the attacks against The View come from sites pretending to be right-wing propaganda when actually they’re leftist trolls making fun of Trump supporters,” the piece states.

“None of the lawsuits have been true so far, but this one definitely is. We promise.”

Rittenhouse’s conservative fans apparently missed such clues.

They’ve made Rittenhouse a cult icon for killing two and wounding a third during unrest over the police killing of a Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse was found not guilty of charges associated with the shooting.

They swiftly spread the false claim about Rittenhouse settling with The View all over the internet.

Some of the posts racked up thousands of interactions.

“The view settles with Rittenhouse for 22 million,” @MarkDelao7 tweeted on Wednesday. “What a beautiful thing.”

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‘Biggest fake news story in Canada’: Kamloops mass grave debunked by academics

One year ago today, the leaders of the British Columbia First Nation Band Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc announced the discovery of a mass grave of more than 200 Indigenous children detected at a residential school in British Columbia.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” Rosanne Casimir, chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, said in a statement on May 27, 2021.

The band called the discovery, “Le Estcwicwéy̓” — or “the missing.”

What’s still missing, however, according to a number of Canadian academics, is proof of the remains in the ground.

Since last year’s announcement, there have been no excavations at Kamloops nor any dates set for any such work to commence. Nothing has been taken out of the ground so far, according to a Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc spokesman.

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Reuters Uses Image of Men with Paintball Guns for Ukraine Story

Reuters made a questionable cover photo selection in an article about the conflict in Ukraine. For a recent news story on a reported Ukrainian assault in the Sumy region, the outlet went with a picture of soldiers armed with paintball guns.

The photo shows several military gear-clad men crouched in a defensive position with weapons. A close examination of the photo reveals that the men are armed with paintball guns. As would be expected, many Twitter users found the notion of insurgents fighting off a hostile foreign invasion with paintball guns to be absurd. A barrage of ridicule ensued.

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MSNBC ‘military analyst’ posts video game clip claiming it’s Ukraine war footage

On Monday, retired four-star general and MSNBC “military analyst” Barry R. McCaffrey posted a clip of video game footage to Twitter. Alongside it he claimed it was a display of strength from Ukraine’s air defense. It’s actually footage from a video game.

The clip in question came from YouTube’s “shorts” section, and is titled “Russian MiG-29’s Get Shot Down By Air Defense System | Arma 3 #Shorts #Airdefense #Arma3.”

ARMA 3 is an open world military tactical shooter game for PC published in September 2013.

What’s captured on video is two in-game jets being shot down by an air defense system set up on the ground. McCaffrey’s tweet was deleted at some point after Benny Johnson pointed out the glaring mistake.

“Why is Left-Wing corporate media allowed to spread “misinformation” about a war, while they advocate for Censorship of Conservatives and Fact Checking of Memes?” he added.

“Russian aircraft getting nailed by UKR missile defense. Russians are losing large numbers of attack aircraft. UKR air defense becoming formidable,” McCaffrey had originally tweeted.

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Fake News: Rolling Stone Labels ‘Leftist Authoritarian Eco-Fascist’ Buffalo Shooter A ‘Mainstream Republican’

In Rolling Stone‘s article “The Buffalo Shooter Isn’t a ‘Lone Wolf.’ He’s a Mainstream Republican“, the magazine attempts to frame the 18-year old Buffalo shooter as a right-wing white supremacist influenced by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former President Donald Trump.

“The gnawing fear of a minority-white America has utterly consumed conservative politics for the past half-decade, creating a Republican party whose dual obsessions with nativism and white fertility have engendered a suite of policies engineered to change the nature of the body politic. What unites murderers like Gendron, and the long list of white supremacist attackers he cited with admiration, with the mainstream of the Republican party is the dream of a white nation,” wrote Talia Lavin.

Lavin goes on to argue that Trump’s populist politics and Fox News‘ coverage of white replacement in America set the stage for racist violence perpetrated by the likes of the Buffalo shooter.

“Donald Trump’s ascendance was a key marker of the force of white racial panic; from the moment he launched his candidacy, his overt racism set the party’s agenda, and from the very first, his rhetoric directly provoked racist violence,” Lavin wrote.

“The Republican Party’s embrace of nativism has been more of a full-on dash than a slow slide, and it has been catalyzed by the vast constellation of right-wing media. Chief among these is the juggernaut that is Fox News. As a New York Times analysis revealed, the network’s flagship prime-time show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, has an obsession with replacement theory: In more than 400 shows the newspaper analyzed, Carlson evoked the idea of forced demographic change through immigration and other methods.”

But Rolling Stone glosses over two very important facts.

First, the Buffalo shooter not only rejected conservative politics and media like Fox News, but described himself in a 180-page manifesto censored online as a “leftist authoritarian” and a “green nationalist” who subscribed to communism.

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BBC climate editor whose sister is an Insulate Britain fanatic made false claims on global warming including worldwide deaths are rising and Madagascar is on the verge of famine, inquiry finds

A BBC Panorama documentary about global warming made a number of false claims, an internal investigation by the broadcaster has found.

The programme Wild Weather, presented by climate editor Justin Rowlatt, said deaths worldwide were rising due to extreme weather caused by climate change – whereas the opposite is true.

It also claimed Madagascar was on the verge of the first famine caused by climate change – despite other factors being involved.

The programme, broadcast last November to coincide with the COP26 climate conference, sparked two complaints investigated by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU).

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DHS Secretary Claims He Was ‘Not Aware’ of Disinformation Board Chair’s Troubling History of Pushing Leftist Falsehoods

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday said he was not aware that the woman picked to lead the department’s Disinformation Governance Board had publicly taken stands later proved utterly wrong.

Mayorkas announced last week that the board would be headed by Nina Jankowicz, who in 2020 suggested that reports about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop were Russian disinformation. The laptop’s contents have since been authenticated.

During a Wednesday hearing, Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana tried to learn what the Department of Homeland Security knew when it put Jankowicz in charge of the new disinformation board.

“I am in awe of Ms. Jankowicz. I have watched her with slack-jawed astonishment,” Kennedy said. “Who picked her?”

Mayorkas replied that “the Department of Homeland Security selected Ms. Jankowicz.”

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