Misinformed or lying?
Tag: misinfomation
Seattle Police Faked Reports of Armed Proud Boys to Spook George Floyd Protesters
Seattle police staged sightings of Proud Boys in conversations on public police radio frequencies during last year’s protests over George Floyd’s murder, just after protesters had taken control of a police precinct and the police had left the “autonomous zone,” according to a scathing report released Wednesday by Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability (OPA).
The “misinformation effort,” as the report dubbed it, “improperly added fuel to the fire” of the already tense protests, wrote OPA Director Andrew Myerberg.
“The use of the Proud Boys when it was known that the transmissions would be monitored took a volatile situation and made it even more so,” he wrote.
For more than two hours on the night of June 8, officers made remarks like “It looks like a few of them might be open carrying” and “Hearing from the Proud Boys group… They may be looking for somewhere else for confrontation.” In their radio transmissions on an open channel, cops fabricated reports of a brewing fight between the Proud Boys and protesters in Pioneer Square and a police response to it.
The precinct captain who ordered the ruse, Bryan Grenon, told OPA that he was looking for “an innocent way to just throw out some distraction” at a time when the police department was short-handed and under pressure.
According to the report, an unnamed journalist who was with protesters that night told OPA “that, in his perspective, things were going fine in CHAZ/CHOP until people in the crowd heard reports that the Proud Boys were coming. The journalist stated that, when this occurred, it seemed like everyone in the crowd who owned guns went to get theirs and the event went from being peaceful to something entirely different.” CHOP stands for “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest,” the site of last summer’s racial justice protests.
Captain Grenon told investigators the purpose of the faked conversations was to “get [protesters] into other areas” because “we were overrun with, you know, forces or protesters.” Grenon said, “It was never my intent to cause alarm,” adding that “Hindsight is 20/20.”
Then-Chief Carmen Best told investigators that she had not been informed about the tactic.
Inside the hypocrisy of media manipulators, censors who claim to fight misinformation
There is a new scourge befouling the media landscape, one that our self-appointed mandarins have declared themselves eager to combat: misinformation.
The Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder recently released a report that blamed misinformation for a range of social problems: “Information disorder is a crisis that exacerbates all other crises … Information disorder makes any health crisis more deadly. It slows down our response time on climate change. It undermines democracy. It creates a culture in which racist, ethnic, and gender attacks are seen as solutions, not problems. Today, mis- and disinformation have become a force multiplier for exacerbating our worst problems as a society. Hundreds of millions of people pay the price, every single day, for a world disordered by lies.”
With $65 million in backing from investors such as George Soros and Reid Hoffman, the newly organized Project for Good Information also vows to fight fake news wherever it roams. As Recode reported, the group’s marketing materials claim, “Traditional media is failing. Disinformation is flourishing. It’s time for a new kind of media.” The project is run by Democratic operative Tara Hoffman, whose company ACRONYM created the app that spectacularly bungled the Iowa Democratic caucus vote in 2020.
And as Ben Smith reported in the New York Times, the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University has been hosting a series of meetings with major media executives to “help newsroom leaders fight misinformation and media manipulation.” Even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologized for his platform’s role in spreading misinformation.
Mainstream media moves against “misinformation” in email
The boundary corporate media want to establish for what they think should be policed and censored as political “misinformation” keeps expanding.
The new “frontier” that seems to be shaping up, if narratives pushed by the likes of the New York Times are to be taken into account, are people’s email communications.
Unlike the politicians’ speech on public platforms like social media and TV broadcasters, that is tightly controlled and often censored by various fact-checkers hired by Big Tech, the medium of email remains elusive, the newspaper laments, even though it is a powerful way to reach constituents.
Mentioning several examples of fund-raising emails that the NYT said contained false information regarding benefits enjoyed by illegal migrants, and Medicare, abortion, etc., the article’s author goes on to qualify email as a tool “teeming” with misinformation.
New York Times Complains That Cat Videos Are Being Used to Spread “Misinformation”
The New York Times has identified the latest culprit that’s to blame for the egregious spread of online “misinformation.”
Yes, really, cat videos – and GIFs.
In an article titled ‘Those Cute Cats Online? They Help Spread Misinformation’, reporter Davey Alba claimed “videos and GIFs of cute animals — usually cats” were being used by “people and organizations peddling false information online.”
The article complains that news outlets like the Western Journal and the Epoch Times have weaponized cute kitties to bait traffic, which then filters through to their website and the dreaded “misinformation,” which at this point means anything that the mainstream media doesn’t like.
Jan. 6 Panel Admits Subpoena Contained Misinformation, but Hasn’t Updated Public
An investigator with the House of Representatives’ select committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach has admitted privately that the panel erroneously asserted a former New York City police commissioner was in Washington on Jan. 5, but the assertion remains on the committee’s website.
Bernard Kerik, the former commissioner, was subpoenaed earlier this month by the panel, formally known as the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
In announcing the subpoena, the panel, which is primarily comprised of Democrats after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rejected several Republican picks, claimed that Kerik “reportedly participated” in a Jan. 5 meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington.
In the subpoena itself (pdf), the panel cited three sources for its claim: the book “Peril,” penned by two Washington Post reporters, and two articles published by the paper.
The problem? None of the sources actually say Kerik was at the reported meeting.
The Corrupt Media Did Not Fall For The Russia Collusion Hoax. They Were Part Of It
Soon after Special Counsel John Durham indicted Igor Danchenko, the “Primary Sub-Source” of the Steele dossier, on five counts of lying to the FBI, the press paused to feign a moment of public introspection. The corrupt media’s attempt to frame their failings as mere confirmation bias, however, holds no truer than the Russia-collusion hoax they peddled for five years.
The proof of this reality is seen in the prostitute sex tapes: the non-existent “golden showers” one and the verifiable, but ignored, Hunter Biden videos.
The first step of what appeared, at least momentarily, to be the kick-off of a mea culpa parade came earlier this month when the Washington Post amended large segments of two articles covering the Russia-collusion storyline, one from March 2017 and the second from February 2019.
Both articles had named Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman, as the individual identified as “Source D” in the Steele dossier. While Millian had long denied speaking with Danchenko or having any role in the dossier, it was only after Durham charged the Russian-born Danchenko and former Brookings Institute employee with lying about receiving a telephone call from Millian that the Post and other media outlets removed the claims.
Then, last week, The New York Times ran a “guest essay” by professor of journalism and former Columbia Journalism School dean Bill Grueskin, headlined, “How Did So Much of the Media Get the Steele Dossier So Wrong?”
Misinformation About Kyle Rittenhouse Case Floods Social Media, TV Networks
Kyle Rittenhouse shot three black men. Kyle Rittenhouse traveled across state lines with a gun. Kyle Rittenhouse had an AK-47.
These are three examples of false information being spread about Rittenhouse, whose trial ended last week with his acquittal.
Prominent influencers, including lawmakers and reporters, are sources of some of the misinformation—possibly disinformation—leaving experts troubled.
On CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, reporter Mark Strassman falsely said Rittenhouse “drove in from Illinois armed for battle.” On CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” on Friday, Harvard University professor Cornell William Brooks falsely said Rittenhouse was carrying an AK-47. The Independent falsely reported late last week that Rittenhouse shot three black men.
Rittenhouse, 17 years old at the time, shot three men, two fatally, with an AR-15 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 25, 2020. All were white, as is Rittenhouse. The gun was bought by a friend and was picked up by the teenager, who resided in Illinois, from a home in Kenosha.
Rittenhouse claimed self-defense and the jury agreed, clearing him of all charges after video footage and witness testimony during the trial showed he was attacked by all of the men he shot.
Multi-faceted…
Lies and misinformation…
Hellbound and Down 
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