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Worthless Media
WELCOME TO WORTHLESS MEDIA WHERE THE FAILURE OF REAL JOURNALISM IS
EXPOSED
august 20, 2018
“The media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them. The representatives of these interests have important agendas and principles that they want to advance, and they are well positioned to shape and constrain media policy.”
–Chomsky
Media lo-lites
(source: politicus usa, raw story, alternet, newshounds)
*Fox News hosts are doubling down on this nutty conspiracy theory in the hopes of saving Trump
The Trump-supporting hosts of Fox News’ opinion shows seem to have coalesced around one specific conspiracy theory.
*video: Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt: America is great because ‘we defeated communist Japan’
*TUCKER CARLSON SAYS WITH A STRAIGHT FACE THAT WHITE SUPREMACY IS ‘INCREDIBLY RARE’ IN AMERICA
*Fox News’ unglued Sean Hannity curses out CNN’s Jim Acosta
Fox News host Sean Hannity went on a cursing Twitter rant at Jim Acosta, after the CNN reporter blamed Fox News for “whipping” Trump supporters “into a frenzy” at the media.
*Fox News hosts praise Trump for wanting to meet with Iran — after years of attacking Obama for doing the same
*Fox’s Jeanine Pirro whines Whoopi Goldberg treated her ‘like a dog’ in F-bomb attack after she was kicked off ‘The View’
"She told me ‘get the F out of this building’ and she was screaming at me and I’m walking out of the building like a dog who was just kicked off."
*Fox News gloats about Trump’s refusal to answer questions from CNN
State media.
*Fox News claims entire US defense budget goes to NATO minutes before Trump lies and says US funds 90 percent of NATO
aliens threw rejected her!!!
Miami Herald throws support behind Republican who says she was abducted by aliens
Sarah K. Burris - raw story
19 AUG 2018 AT 19:46 ET
Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera (Screen cap).
The Miami Herald has endorsed a Republican candidate running for Congress in Florida’s 27th District that says she was abducted by aliens when she was 7-years-old.
According to The Herald, the editorial board was put in an awkward position by the front-runners in the GOP primary, who refused to sit down with the paper. Another candidate said that he wasn’t interested in the endorsement. It left few options for the paper to consider for their political endorsements. However, they said that they were impressed by business consultant Bettina Rodriguez-Aguilera.
They touted her “working class agenda” with detailed reforms to make to housing, credit scores, student loan payments and other issues. She’s the daughter of Cuban political prisoner, Rodriguez Aguilera.
However, The Herald acknowledged that she’s an unusual candidate.
“Last year, she told the Miami Herald — and several Spanish-language media outlets — that she believes in extra-terrestrials,” the endorsement stated. “She says when she was 7, she was taken aboard a spaceship and, throughout her life, she has communicated telepathically with the beings, which remind her of the concrete Christ in Brazil.”
They were quick to explain that her secret telepathic conversations with aliens were “non-issues” because as a former official and businesswoman she is a professional.
The race is to fill a seat left vacant by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). In the Democratic Primary, The Herald endorsed Democrat David Richardson, who spent 10 years at The Herald and as program director for the Knight Foundation.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-FL) served as a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia. He has not revealed whether or not he saw aliens while in space.
According to The Herald, the editorial board was put in an awkward position by the front-runners in the GOP primary, who refused to sit down with the paper. Another candidate said that he wasn’t interested in the endorsement. It left few options for the paper to consider for their political endorsements. However, they said that they were impressed by business consultant Bettina Rodriguez-Aguilera.
They touted her “working class agenda” with detailed reforms to make to housing, credit scores, student loan payments and other issues. She’s the daughter of Cuban political prisoner, Rodriguez Aguilera.
However, The Herald acknowledged that she’s an unusual candidate.
“Last year, she told the Miami Herald — and several Spanish-language media outlets — that she believes in extra-terrestrials,” the endorsement stated. “She says when she was 7, she was taken aboard a spaceship and, throughout her life, she has communicated telepathically with the beings, which remind her of the concrete Christ in Brazil.”
They were quick to explain that her secret telepathic conversations with aliens were “non-issues” because as a former official and businesswoman she is a professional.
The race is to fill a seat left vacant by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). In the Democratic Primary, The Herald endorsed Democrat David Richardson, who spent 10 years at The Herald and as program director for the Knight Foundation.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-FL) served as a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia. He has not revealed whether or not he saw aliens while in space.
‘Fox & Friends’ dehumanizes trans candidate, treats her victory as a joke
"That transgender."
AARON RUPAR - thinkprogress
AUG 15, 2018, 9:52 AM
On Tuesday night, Christine Hallquist won her Democratic primary election in Vermont, thereby becoming the first openly transgender gubernatorial candidate from a major political party in the United States.
The following morning, Fox & Friends‘ Ainsley Earhardt responded to Hallquist’s historic win by dehumanizing her as “that transgender.”
According to the GLAAD, NLGJA, and AP media guides, using “transgender” as a noun, as Earhardt did, is offensive.
Hallquisttold the Associated Press that while she’s proud to be the first major transgender gubernatorial candidate in the country, in Vermont she wants to be known primarily for her progressive platform.
For Fox & Friends, however, Hallquist’s victory amounted to little more than a punchline. The only detail that hosts mentioned about the Vermont race was that Hallquist beat a 14-year-old candidate — the implication being that a major victory for the trans community amounted to little more than a joke.
The following morning, Fox & Friends‘ Ainsley Earhardt responded to Hallquist’s historic win by dehumanizing her as “that transgender.”
According to the GLAAD, NLGJA, and AP media guides, using “transgender” as a noun, as Earhardt did, is offensive.
Hallquist
For Fox & Friends, however, Hallquist’s victory amounted to little more than a punchline. The only detail that hosts mentioned about the Vermont race was that Hallquist beat a 14-year-old candidate — the implication being that a major victory for the trans community amounted to little more than a joke.
Trump ally Scaramucci delivers a surprisingly harsh takedown of Laura Ingraham’s ‘ignorant’ racist rant
Tom Boggioni - raw story
09 AUG 2018 AT 14:40 ET
Former White House communications shop head Anthony Scaramucci delivered a harsh appraisal of Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s Wednesday night attack on immigrants, calling her editorial comments “un-American.”
Appearing on CNN with host Wolf Blitzer, the New York businessman who spent a brief 11 days working for President Donald Trump in the White House before leaving after an expletive-filled interview with a writer, was blunt in his assessment of Ingraham’s rant.
According to the way Ingraham sees a changing U.S. population, “The America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like.”
To get her nativist point across, she added, “This is related to both illegal and, in some cases, legal immigration that, of course, progressives love.”
Asked about the Fox News personality’s comments, Scaramucci hearkened back to another famous radio bigot from the 1930’s and 40’s: Father Charles Coughlin.
“I’m super not happy with that,” Scaramucci began. “I like her as a person, but if you remember Father Coughlin in the 1930’s — my grandparents certainly remember him.”
“It’s the same rhetoric, it’s the same sentence structure it’s the same level of xenophobia that, frankly, my immigrant grandparents faced as Italian-Americans,” he explained. “I’m not in love with it. I love the concept of America, the ideas of America, the great American experiment.”
“I wish she wouldn’t talk like that because it sounds ignorant, ” he said of Ingraham. “And it is unfortunate, particularly when you know your grandparent’s generation story. I hope she walks it back, I hope she realizes what she said is not — it’s against the American values that she is supposedly touting.”
“It may get a lot of media attention, Wolf, but I really think it is un-American and, by and large, most Americans are great people and they don’t like that nonsense,” he concluded.
RELATED: Historian dismantles Laura Ingraham’s shocking racist tirade
fox News host Laura Ingraham went on a shocking racist tirade during the Wednesday night broadcast of her show.
“The America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like,” she said. “This is related to both illegal and, in some cases, legal immigration that, of course, progressives love.”
Historian Kevin Kruse delivered a massive and scholarly Twitter response that traced Ingraham’s comments to the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan in the 20th century.
“This bears strong echoes of the racist screeds of the 1910s and 1920s that paved the way for the rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan and immigration restriction at home, and much worse abroad,” he wrote.
“The Ku Klux Klan used this popular panic over immigration to revive itself as a national organization in the 1920s,” Kruse continued.
He discussed a Grand Dragon meeting in 1923 that “focused a great deal on the supposed demographic threat that new immigration posed to old-stock Americans and the need to crack down on it.
Kruse then explained how America helped the Nazis form their ideology through racist legislation.
“The popular panic over immigration, and the pseudo-scientific justifications for nativism and racism, came together in the push for the National Origins Act of 1924, a measure that drastically reduced immigration from SE Europe and banned Asians from immigrating entirely,” Kruse explains.
This law “served as a model for the racial citizenship laws that took root in Nazi Germany a decade later.”
Kruse concludes with a warning: “We need to remember that, a century ago, unhinged fear-mongering about “demographic changes” in the American population led not just to drastic immigration restrictions at home, but to disastrous horrors abroad.”
Appearing on CNN with host Wolf Blitzer, the New York businessman who spent a brief 11 days working for President Donald Trump in the White House before leaving after an expletive-filled interview with a writer, was blunt in his assessment of Ingraham’s rant.
According to the way Ingraham sees a changing U.S. population, “The America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like.”
To get her nativist point across, she added, “This is related to both illegal and, in some cases, legal immigration that, of course, progressives love.”
Asked about the Fox News personality’s comments, Scaramucci hearkened back to another famous radio bigot from the 1930’s and 40’s: Father Charles Coughlin.
“I’m super not happy with that,” Scaramucci began. “I like her as a person, but if you remember Father Coughlin in the 1930’s — my grandparents certainly remember him.”
“It’s the same rhetoric, it’s the same sentence structure it’s the same level of xenophobia that, frankly, my immigrant grandparents faced as Italian-Americans,” he explained. “I’m not in love with it. I love the concept of America, the ideas of America, the great American experiment.”
“I wish she wouldn’t talk like that because it sounds ignorant, ” he said of Ingraham. “And it is unfortunate, particularly when you know your grandparent’s generation story. I hope she walks it back, I hope she realizes what she said is not — it’s against the American values that she is supposedly touting.”
“It may get a lot of media attention, Wolf, but I really think it is un-American and, by and large, most Americans are great people and they don’t like that nonsense,” he concluded.
RELATED: Historian dismantles Laura Ingraham’s shocking racist tirade
fox News host Laura Ingraham went on a shocking racist tirade during the Wednesday night broadcast of her show.
“The America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like,” she said. “This is related to both illegal and, in some cases, legal immigration that, of course, progressives love.”
Historian Kevin Kruse delivered a massive and scholarly Twitter response that traced Ingraham’s comments to the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan in the 20th century.
“This bears strong echoes of the racist screeds of the 1910s and 1920s that paved the way for the rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan and immigration restriction at home, and much worse abroad,” he wrote.
“The Ku Klux Klan used this popular panic over immigration to revive itself as a national organization in the 1920s,” Kruse continued.
He discussed a Grand Dragon meeting in 1923 that “focused a great deal on the supposed demographic threat that new immigration posed to old-stock Americans and the need to crack down on it.
Kruse then explained how America helped the Nazis form their ideology through racist legislation.
“The popular panic over immigration, and the pseudo-scientific justifications for nativism and racism, came together in the push for the National Origins Act of 1924, a measure that drastically reduced immigration from SE Europe and banned Asians from immigrating entirely,” Kruse explains.
This law “served as a model for the racial citizenship laws that took root in Nazi Germany a decade later.”
Kruse concludes with a warning: “We need to remember that, a century ago, unhinged fear-mongering about “demographic changes” in the American population led not just to drastic immigration restrictions at home, but to disastrous horrors abroad.”
JARED KUSHNER PERSONALLY ASKED FOR STORIES ABOUT HIS FRIENDS TO BE DELETED AT HIS NEWSPAPER: REPORT
BY HARRIET SINCLAIR - newsweek
ON 8/7/18 AT 3:56 AM
Jared Kushner has been accused of ordering the deletion of negative stories about his friends during his time as owner of the New York Observer.
Pr*sident Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who stepped down from the Observer in order to take a role in the administration, told a software developer to scrap articles about his real estate connections and friends in 2012, Buzzfeed News reported.
Among the stories Kushner asked to be deleted were two printed in 2010 about real estate firm vantage properties, and a story printed in 2012 about NBA Commissioner Adam Silver (a friend of Kushner) buying an expensive property, according to software developer Austin Smith, who said he carried out Kushner’s requests.
“After Jared Kushner originally bought the New York Observer, I was hired to lead the tech team, which I did for a year and a half in house then for three more as a vendor. He asked me, out of band, to blackhole articles critical of his commercial real estate colleagues and I complied,” he wrote on a Hacker News forum.
And speaking to Buzzfeed News, Smith added: “That Kushner, a newspaper owner of all people, would participate in an administration that labels news media the enemy of the people, is an affront to the very notion of the freedom of the press and an utter betrayal of those who worked hard and in good faith for him at the Observer.”
The two 2010 stores that were deleted appear to have cast a negative light on Vantage Properties; one story covered a settlement between the company and then New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo after it was alleged Vantage forced tenants out of their homes to raise rents, while another cited Vantage executive Neil Rubler as being on a list of 10 “worst landlords.”
The newspaper’s former editor, Elizabeth Spiers, who worked under Kushner and has previously criticized him, blasted the White House adviser over the claims, commenting: "If I had known about it, Jared and I would have had a big problem. Jared's such a coward. Went directly to Austin because he knew I wouldn't do it."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pr*sident Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who stepped down from the Observer in order to take a role in the administration, told a software developer to scrap articles about his real estate connections and friends in 2012, Buzzfeed News reported.
Among the stories Kushner asked to be deleted were two printed in 2010 about real estate firm vantage properties, and a story printed in 2012 about NBA Commissioner Adam Silver (a friend of Kushner) buying an expensive property, according to software developer Austin Smith, who said he carried out Kushner’s requests.
“After Jared Kushner originally bought the New York Observer, I was hired to lead the tech team, which I did for a year and a half in house then for three more as a vendor. He asked me, out of band, to blackhole articles critical of his commercial real estate colleagues and I complied,” he wrote on a Hacker News forum.
And speaking to Buzzfeed News, Smith added: “That Kushner, a newspaper owner of all people, would participate in an administration that labels news media the enemy of the people, is an affront to the very notion of the freedom of the press and an utter betrayal of those who worked hard and in good faith for him at the Observer.”
The two 2010 stores that were deleted appear to have cast a negative light on Vantage Properties; one story covered a settlement between the company and then New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo after it was alleged Vantage forced tenants out of their homes to raise rents, while another cited Vantage executive Neil Rubler as being on a list of 10 “worst landlords.”
The newspaper’s former editor, Elizabeth Spiers, who worked under Kushner and has previously criticized him, blasted the White House adviser over the claims, commenting: "If I had known about it, Jared and I would have had a big problem. Jared's such a coward. Went directly to Austin because he knew I wouldn't do it."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fox News host says Trump’s border wall is needed to help preserve America’s ‘demographic makeup’
Geraldo Rivera says the wall will keep out "the Juan and Maria, the fruit-picker, the babysitter, the lawnmower, the dishwasher."
DANIELLE MCLEAN - thinkprogress
AUG 3, 2018, 3:13 PM
Fox News analyst Geraldo Rivera said Friday that President Trump’s proposed wall on the Mexican border is needed to keep out “Juan and Maria,” immigrants including babysitters, agricultural workers and manual laborers and keep its current “demographic makeup.”
During a Fox and Friends segment Friday, Rivera conceded that the border wall would not keep out transnational “dopers” or drug traffickers. But he said it would help keep out immigrant laborers who cross the border.
“The wall, I think, will cut down on the ‘Juan and Maria,’ the fruit-picker, the you know, the babysitter, the lawnmower, the dishwasher — those immigrants will be, I think, kept out by the wall,” Rivera said during the segment, according to Media Matters for America.
“Psychologically, we need the wall on the southern border because we are scared that the demographic makeup of the country is changing,” he continued. “There are so many people coming in. We need some enforcement.”
Since launching his presidential campaign in 2015, Trump repeatedly has vowed to build the southern wall and make Mexico pay for it. His supporters eat it up, often chanting “build that wall!” at his campaign events.
And while Trump claims the wall is needed to keep drugs and “bad hombres” out, according to Rivera, people are mostly afraid of changing demographics, as Latino immigrants continue to settle in the United States.
Immigration from Latin America has been greeted with hostility by the Trump administration. In May, the government launched a “Zero Tolerance” policy, prosecuting anyone crossing the border outside an official port of entry, and in the process separating thousands of children from their parents.
After a public outcry, Trump issued an executive order requiring immigration officers to detain families together. However more than 2,000 kids were separated from their parents and despite a court order, many still have not been reunited.
Trump repeatedly has said that construction for his border wall has begun — a claim that has no relationship to the truth, since he has no funding for it. Congress has not appropriated funds for the wall, and former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his successor President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have both insisted that Mexico will not pay for it either.
During a Fox and Friends segment Friday, Rivera conceded that the border wall would not keep out transnational “dopers” or drug traffickers. But he said it would help keep out immigrant laborers who cross the border.
“The wall, I think, will cut down on the ‘Juan and Maria,’ the fruit-picker, the you know, the babysitter, the lawnmower, the dishwasher — those immigrants will be, I think, kept out by the wall,” Rivera said during the segment, according to Media Matters for America.
“Psychologically, we need the wall on the southern border because we are scared that the demographic makeup of the country is changing,” he continued. “There are so many people coming in. We need some enforcement.”
Since launching his presidential campaign in 2015, Trump repeatedly has vowed to build the southern wall and make Mexico pay for it. His supporters eat it up, often chanting “build that wall!” at his campaign events.
And while Trump claims the wall is needed to keep drugs and “bad hombres” out, according to Rivera, people are mostly afraid of changing demographics, as Latino immigrants continue to settle in the United States.
Immigration from Latin America has been greeted with hostility by the Trump administration. In May, the government launched a “Zero Tolerance” policy, prosecuting anyone crossing the border outside an official port of entry, and in the process separating thousands of children from their parents.
After a public outcry, Trump issued an executive order requiring immigration officers to detain families together. However more than 2,000 kids were separated from their parents and despite a court order, many still have not been reunited.
Trump repeatedly has said that construction for his border wall has begun — a claim that has no relationship to the truth, since he has no funding for it. Congress has not appropriated funds for the wall, and former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his successor President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have both insisted that Mexico will not pay for it either.
Networks Ignore Trump Florida Rally As He Brags About The Number of Cameras Present
TUE, JUL 31ST, 2018
BY JASON EASLEY - politicus usa
Every network but Fox News refused to cover his Florida rally, but Trump is so detached from reality that he thinks that the TV networks can’t get enough of him.
Trump said, “Fake news. Fake news. They are fake. Do you believe — look at this, every night it’s the same thing. Wouldn’t you think they would get tired of the speeches? Wouldn’t you think? And here’s one thing I will tell you. If they don’t get ratings, those speeches don’t go on, doesn’t matter. Look how many they have back there. They just can’t get enough. They can’t get enough. They cannot get enough.”
It is important to point out that the television networks have had more than enough of Trump’s rallies. Every network with the exception of Fox News, no longer covers his rallies live. The percentage of live coverage that Trump’s rallies have been getting has been steadily decreasing, as there has been a growing consensus among journalists and newsrooms that the president’s rallies aren’t newsworthy.
Trump said it best himself. It is the same thing every night, which is why the networks outside of state-run TV Fox News have stopped broadcasting them. Trump’s rallies are the same greatest hits package of fake news, build the wall, lies about Democrats, immigrant bashing, and attacks related to the Russia investigation that everyone has heard one hundred times or more.
Donald Trump has nothing new to say. His rallies are extended ranting sessions that are never newsworthy in their entirety. Networks monitor Trump’s rallies in case he says something worth reporting, but Trump’s claim that the television networks can’t enough is another delusion from the mind of a man who has never really left the 2016 election behind.
Trump said, “Fake news. Fake news. They are fake. Do you believe — look at this, every night it’s the same thing. Wouldn’t you think they would get tired of the speeches? Wouldn’t you think? And here’s one thing I will tell you. If they don’t get ratings, those speeches don’t go on, doesn’t matter. Look how many they have back there. They just can’t get enough. They can’t get enough. They cannot get enough.”
It is important to point out that the television networks have had more than enough of Trump’s rallies. Every network with the exception of Fox News, no longer covers his rallies live. The percentage of live coverage that Trump’s rallies have been getting has been steadily decreasing, as there has been a growing consensus among journalists and newsrooms that the president’s rallies aren’t newsworthy.
Trump said it best himself. It is the same thing every night, which is why the networks outside of state-run TV Fox News have stopped broadcasting them. Trump’s rallies are the same greatest hits package of fake news, build the wall, lies about Democrats, immigrant bashing, and attacks related to the Russia investigation that everyone has heard one hundred times or more.
Donald Trump has nothing new to say. His rallies are extended ranting sessions that are never newsworthy in their entirety. Networks monitor Trump’s rallies in case he says something worth reporting, but Trump’s claim that the television networks can’t enough is another delusion from the mind of a man who has never really left the 2016 election behind.
Facebook busts dozens of fake accounts attempting to influence the mid-term elections
Brad Reed - raw story
31 JUL 2018 AT 12:34 ET
Facebook is set to reveal that it has identified multiple bogus user accounts that have been tied to what it says is a political influence campaign leading up to the 2018 midterm elections.
The New York Times reports that Facebook has “discovered coordinated activity around issues like a sequel to last year’s deadly ‘Unite the Right’ white supremacist rally,” as well as “around #AbolishICE, a left-wing campaign on social media that seeks to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.”
The Times’ sources say that Facebook will publicly reveal more information about the alleged influence campaign on Tuesday afternoon, and the publication reports that it briefed Congress last week on its investigation into the accounts.
According to CNN, Facebook has already removed this network of accounts — one of which promoted a counter-demonstration to this summer’s planned “United the Right” white nationalist rally in Washington, D.C.
Although Facebook isn’t saying for certain that Russia is behind these bogus accounts, it does claim that it has “found evidence of some connections between these accounts” and similar accounts used by Russian trolls during the 2016 presidential election.
“We know that Russians and other bad actors are going to continue to try to abuse our platform — before the midterms, probably during the midterms, after the midterms, and around other events and elections,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said on a conference call with reporters earlier this month. “We are continually looking for that type of activity, and as and when we find things, which we think is inevitable, we’ll notify law enforcement, and where we can, the public.”
Earlier this month, security experts claimed that Russian bots were pushing the #WalkAway hashtag on social media, which was created as a response to Democrats’ protests against the Trump administration’s treatment of undocumented immigrant families. The hashtag was meant to allegedly show longtime Democrats “walking away” from their party because they were supposedly disgusted by the party’s embrace of undocumented immigrants.
The New York Times reports that Facebook has “discovered coordinated activity around issues like a sequel to last year’s deadly ‘Unite the Right’ white supremacist rally,” as well as “around #AbolishICE, a left-wing campaign on social media that seeks to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.”
The Times’ sources say that Facebook will publicly reveal more information about the alleged influence campaign on Tuesday afternoon, and the publication reports that it briefed Congress last week on its investigation into the accounts.
According to CNN, Facebook has already removed this network of accounts — one of which promoted a counter-demonstration to this summer’s planned “United the Right” white nationalist rally in Washington, D.C.
Although Facebook isn’t saying for certain that Russia is behind these bogus accounts, it does claim that it has “found evidence of some connections between these accounts” and similar accounts used by Russian trolls during the 2016 presidential election.
“We know that Russians and other bad actors are going to continue to try to abuse our platform — before the midterms, probably during the midterms, after the midterms, and around other events and elections,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said on a conference call with reporters earlier this month. “We are continually looking for that type of activity, and as and when we find things, which we think is inevitable, we’ll notify law enforcement, and where we can, the public.”
Earlier this month, security experts claimed that Russian bots were pushing the #WalkAway hashtag on social media, which was created as a response to Democrats’ protests against the Trump administration’s treatment of undocumented immigrant families. The hashtag was meant to allegedly show longtime Democrats “walking away” from their party because they were supposedly disgusted by the party’s embrace of undocumented immigrants.
Trump defenders downplay evidence of Russian collusion: “So what?”
Tucker Carlson and friends insist that colluding with a foreign adversary to win an election is not a big deal
TAYLOR LINK - salon
JULY 28, 2018 2:25PM (UTC)
More and more evidence is mounting in the case against President Donald Trump and Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. The latest information from Trump's own attorney, Michael Cohen, indicates that the president knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between his son and Kremlin-connected Russians. It is the most persuasive proof yet that the president had knowledge of Russia's intentions to influence the election.
Some Americans don't seem to care. Many right-wing pundits and politicos have tried to wave off the significance of this evidence. National Review editor Andrew McCarthy, for example, told Fox News viewers on Thursday that it would be acceptable for the Trump campaign to "turn to foreign governments for dirt."
Federalist editor Mollie Hemmingway, meanwhile, told her Twitter followers she didn't "have a problem" with presidential candidates "getting dirt on election opponents from foreigners."
Mollie✔
@MZHemingway
I don't have a problem w/ getting dirt on election opponents from foreigners. But if you do, why was it OK for Hillary Clinton to secretly hire a foreign spy to get dirt on her opponent from Kremlin officials, and seed that info into the media and weaponize it in the US gov't?
9:39 AM - Jul 27, 2018
On Friday night, Tucker Carlson was the latest Trump sycophant to endorse lite treason.
"It's hard to see the point of all of this hysteria," he said on his show.
"What exactly would the crime here be? It's not illegal to talk to foreigners," he continued. "Nobody's claiming that any information changed hands. And even it did, so what?"
Like Hemmingway, Carlson attempted to equate what the Trump campaign allegedly did to the Hillary Clinton campaign's attempt to dig up information on Russia's election interference, which came in the form of the Christopher Steele dossier.
Carlson said the dossier was "based on misinformation," despite the fact that much of the content in the dossier has been verified by U.S. officials.
No one is exactly surprised that Carlson and other right-wing commentators are trying to normalize collusion with a foreign adversary. Trump's defenders have continuously moved the goalposts when it comes to the Russia-election story. First, they insisted the Trump Tower meeting never happened. Then they conceded the meeting did happen, but it was not about the presidential election. Now that there is concrete evidence that the Trump campaign was aware of Russian meddling, the state of play is to ask: "So what?"[...]
Some Americans don't seem to care. Many right-wing pundits and politicos have tried to wave off the significance of this evidence. National Review editor Andrew McCarthy, for example, told Fox News viewers on Thursday that it would be acceptable for the Trump campaign to "turn to foreign governments for dirt."
Federalist editor Mollie Hemmingway, meanwhile, told her Twitter followers she didn't "have a problem" with presidential candidates "getting dirt on election opponents from foreigners."
Mollie✔
@MZHemingway
I don't have a problem w/ getting dirt on election opponents from foreigners. But if you do, why was it OK for Hillary Clinton to secretly hire a foreign spy to get dirt on her opponent from Kremlin officials, and seed that info into the media and weaponize it in the US gov't?
9:39 AM - Jul 27, 2018
On Friday night, Tucker Carlson was the latest Trump sycophant to endorse lite treason.
"It's hard to see the point of all of this hysteria," he said on his show.
"What exactly would the crime here be? It's not illegal to talk to foreigners," he continued. "Nobody's claiming that any information changed hands. And even it did, so what?"
Like Hemmingway, Carlson attempted to equate what the Trump campaign allegedly did to the Hillary Clinton campaign's attempt to dig up information on Russia's election interference, which came in the form of the Christopher Steele dossier.
Carlson said the dossier was "based on misinformation," despite the fact that much of the content in the dossier has been verified by U.S. officials.
No one is exactly surprised that Carlson and other right-wing commentators are trying to normalize collusion with a foreign adversary. Trump's defenders have continuously moved the goalposts when it comes to the Russia-election story. First, they insisted the Trump Tower meeting never happened. Then they conceded the meeting did happen, but it was not about the presidential election. Now that there is concrete evidence that the Trump campaign was aware of Russian meddling, the state of play is to ask: "So what?"[...]
Baltimore Ravens reporter for USA Today used N-word to bash players — also mocked Asians and gays
MARTIN CIZMAR - raw story
23 JUL 2018 AT 18:34 ET
Lindsay Ok and one of her offensive tweets/Screenshot
A reporter covering the Baltimore Ravens has a history of racist and homophobic statements, reports Black Sports online.
Lindsey Ok covers the Baltimore NFL team for Ravens Wire, part of the USA Todaynetwork.
But tweets collected by BSO show her referring to the NFL as “Niggers For Life” and mocking Asians, the homeless and gays.
OK has so many racist and homophobic tweets that they have not all been deleted as of press time.
Help me there's Asians everywhere
— lindsey ok (@lindseyyok) September 22, 2011
We have a gay flight attendant in first class who told us he only likes his vodka on the rocks and he might shake us around a bit. Great
— lindsey ok (@lindseyyok) May 14, 2010
Lindsey Ok covers the Baltimore NFL team for Ravens Wire, part of the USA Todaynetwork.
But tweets collected by BSO show her referring to the NFL as “Niggers For Life” and mocking Asians, the homeless and gays.
OK has so many racist and homophobic tweets that they have not all been deleted as of press time.
Help me there's Asians everywhere
— lindsey ok (@lindseyyok) September 22, 2011
We have a gay flight attendant in first class who told us he only likes his vodka on the rocks and he might shake us around a bit. Great
— lindsey ok (@lindseyyok) May 14, 2010
will do anything for money!!!
Zuckerberg at center of Holocaust denial controversy
Agence France-Presse - raw story
19 JUL 2018 AT 12:36 ET
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has found himself at the center of a fresh row after saying the social network should not prohibit posts which deny the Holocaust.
In a podcast interview with tech website Recode on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said that while Facebook was dedicated to stopping the spread of fake news, certain beliefs that were sincerely held would not be taken down.
After the remarks caused a backlash on social media, he was forced to backtrack, saying if any post advocated violence or hate against a group, it would be removed.
The controversy began when Zuckerberg provided an unprompted example of Holocaust deniers to Recode host Kara Swisher to make a point about allowing hoaxes to be published on the site.
He said that messages accusing victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting of being liars would be taken down for harassment, but added that not all factually incorrect posts would receive the same treatment.
“I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened,” he said.
“I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong.”
After Swisher interjected that Holocaust deniers may indeed be motivated by malign intent, Zuckerberg continued:
“It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent. I just think, as abhorrent as some of those examples are, I think the reality is also that I get things wrong when I speak publicly. I’m sure you do. I’m sure a lot of leaders and public figures we respect do too.”
The comments caused a stir, with many seeing Zuckerberg’s foray into the contentious debate as problematic.
Zuckerberg later emailed Recode to clarify, stating that if something is spreading and rated as false by the site’s fact checkers, “it would lose the vast majority of its distribution in News Feed.
“And of course if a post crossed (the) line into advocating for violence or hate against a particular group, it would be removed.”
The episode was an unwelcome distraction for Facebook after it held a briefing on the company’s new policy to remove bogus posts likely to spark violence.
The new tactic being rolled out across the global social network was tested in Sri Lanka, which was recently rocked by inter-religious violence over false information posted on the platform.
A spokesman announced Facebook may remove inaccurate or misleading content, such as doctored photos, created or shared to stir up or ignite volatile situations in the real world.
Hate speech and threats deemed credible are violations of Facebook rules, and are removed.
The new policy advances another step, by eliminating content that may not be explicitly violent but which seems likely to encourage such behavior.
In a podcast interview with tech website Recode on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said that while Facebook was dedicated to stopping the spread of fake news, certain beliefs that were sincerely held would not be taken down.
After the remarks caused a backlash on social media, he was forced to backtrack, saying if any post advocated violence or hate against a group, it would be removed.
The controversy began when Zuckerberg provided an unprompted example of Holocaust deniers to Recode host Kara Swisher to make a point about allowing hoaxes to be published on the site.
He said that messages accusing victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting of being liars would be taken down for harassment, but added that not all factually incorrect posts would receive the same treatment.
“I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened,” he said.
“I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong.”
After Swisher interjected that Holocaust deniers may indeed be motivated by malign intent, Zuckerberg continued:
“It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent. I just think, as abhorrent as some of those examples are, I think the reality is also that I get things wrong when I speak publicly. I’m sure you do. I’m sure a lot of leaders and public figures we respect do too.”
The comments caused a stir, with many seeing Zuckerberg’s foray into the contentious debate as problematic.
Zuckerberg later emailed Recode to clarify, stating that if something is spreading and rated as false by the site’s fact checkers, “it would lose the vast majority of its distribution in News Feed.
“And of course if a post crossed (the) line into advocating for violence or hate against a particular group, it would be removed.”
The episode was an unwelcome distraction for Facebook after it held a briefing on the company’s new policy to remove bogus posts likely to spark violence.
The new tactic being rolled out across the global social network was tested in Sri Lanka, which was recently rocked by inter-religious violence over false information posted on the platform.
A spokesman announced Facebook may remove inaccurate or misleading content, such as doctored photos, created or shared to stir up or ignite volatile situations in the real world.
Hate speech and threats deemed credible are violations of Facebook rules, and are removed.
The new policy advances another step, by eliminating content that may not be explicitly violent but which seems likely to encourage such behavior.
CNN host demands Dem representative ‘concede’ on Russia: Trump is ‘actually tougher than Obama’
David Edwards - raw story
18 JUL 2018 AT 11:46 ET
Poppy Harlow speaks to Ted Deutch (CNN/screen grab)
CNN host Poppy Harlow argued on Wednesday that President Donald Trump is “actually tougher” on Russian President Vladimir Putin than former President Barack Obama had been.
During an interview with Harlow, Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida criticized Trump for kowtowing to Putin at a recent joint press conference.
Harlow noted that Trump had tried to walk back his remarks following the press conference by claiming that he had not meant to say that Russia most likely did not interfere in the 2016 election.
“You say you don’t get do-overs on the world stage,” Harlow told Deutch. “Are you at least glad that you did try to clean this part up instead of just leaving it out there?”
“It is not a question of cleaning up one word,” Deutch replied. “It looked like he was forced to read that statement about one word. That’s not what this is about. It’s about the president’s alarming performance, the horrifying performance in front of the world stage with Vladimir Putin next to him that leaves open the question, who is the president working for? Is he working for our own national security or is he working with Vladimir Putin and for him?”
“Yes or no — having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing?” Harlow asked.
“Yes, having a good, open relationship with anyone is a good thing,” Deutch agreed.
“Yes or no — let me follow up with you,” Harlow interrupted. “Because I get the rhetoric. We all hear how the president sort of appeases Vladimir Putin. We don’t hear him criticize Vladimir Putin.”
The CNN host continued: “But would you concede that his administration’s actions against Russia, be it the sanctions, be it the selling of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, are actually tougher than the Obama Administration?”
“But it’s not in our interest to go on the world stage and to suggest that we’re rolling over for a country that hacked our election,” Deutch insisted, “that commits cyber warfare, that interferes in governments all throughout the world, and to do so next to a murderous dictator like Vladimir Putin, no, that is absolutely not in our interest at all.”
During an interview with Harlow, Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida criticized Trump for kowtowing to Putin at a recent joint press conference.
Harlow noted that Trump had tried to walk back his remarks following the press conference by claiming that he had not meant to say that Russia most likely did not interfere in the 2016 election.
“You say you don’t get do-overs on the world stage,” Harlow told Deutch. “Are you at least glad that you did try to clean this part up instead of just leaving it out there?”
“It is not a question of cleaning up one word,” Deutch replied. “It looked like he was forced to read that statement about one word. That’s not what this is about. It’s about the president’s alarming performance, the horrifying performance in front of the world stage with Vladimir Putin next to him that leaves open the question, who is the president working for? Is he working for our own national security or is he working with Vladimir Putin and for him?”
“Yes or no — having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing?” Harlow asked.
“Yes, having a good, open relationship with anyone is a good thing,” Deutch agreed.
“Yes or no — let me follow up with you,” Harlow interrupted. “Because I get the rhetoric. We all hear how the president sort of appeases Vladimir Putin. We don’t hear him criticize Vladimir Putin.”
The CNN host continued: “But would you concede that his administration’s actions against Russia, be it the sanctions, be it the selling of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, are actually tougher than the Obama Administration?”
“But it’s not in our interest to go on the world stage and to suggest that we’re rolling over for a country that hacked our election,” Deutch insisted, “that commits cyber warfare, that interferes in governments all throughout the world, and to do so next to a murderous dictator like Vladimir Putin, no, that is absolutely not in our interest at all.”
Stunned Anderson Cooper Rips Trump's 'Embarrassing' Presser: 'One of the Most Disgraceful Performances by an American President'
The anchor decimated the president's disgraceful performance.
By Chris Sosa / AlterNet
July 16, 2018, 7:02 AM GMT
During an unbelievable joint press conference between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump openly attacked the FBI.
At the close of the press conference, Putin denied having compromising material on Trump from his days as a private citizen.
"I don't even remember the last names of each an every [important U.S. citizen who visited]," Putin said. "Do you think that we try to collect compromising material on each and every single one of them? Well, it's difficult to imagine on a bigger scale of this. Please disregard these issues and don't think about this anymore again."
"And I have to say if they had it, it would have been out long ago. And if anybody watched Peter Strzok testify over the last couple of days, and I was in Brussels watching it, it was a disgrace to the FBI," Trump added. "It was a disgrace to our country. And you would say that was a total witch hunt. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you."
Breaking away from the Helsinki summit, CNN's Anderson Cooper summed up the incredible exchange.
"You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit in front of a Russian leader certainly that I've ever seen," Cooper said. "An extraordinary press conference."
"It's embarrassing," Cooper later concluded.
At the close of the press conference, Putin denied having compromising material on Trump from his days as a private citizen.
"I don't even remember the last names of each an every [important U.S. citizen who visited]," Putin said. "Do you think that we try to collect compromising material on each and every single one of them? Well, it's difficult to imagine on a bigger scale of this. Please disregard these issues and don't think about this anymore again."
"And I have to say if they had it, it would have been out long ago. And if anybody watched Peter Strzok testify over the last couple of days, and I was in Brussels watching it, it was a disgrace to the FBI," Trump added. "It was a disgrace to our country. And you would say that was a total witch hunt. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you."
Breaking away from the Helsinki summit, CNN's Anderson Cooper summed up the incredible exchange.
"You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit in front of a Russian leader certainly that I've ever seen," Cooper said. "An extraordinary press conference."
"It's embarrassing," Cooper later concluded.
Facebook won’t remove truther Alex Jones’ Infowars despite new pledge to fight fake news: report
Nicole Karlis, Salon - raw story
13 JUL 2018 AT 07:10 ET
On Wednesday, Facebook hosted a “Fighting Fake News on Facebook” session where reporters were able to ask questions — and they didn’t hold back.
According to CNN, after the presentation, John Hegeman, the head of Facebook’s News Feed, and Sara Su, a Facebook product specialist for News Feed, “struggled” to explain why the tech company continues to allow Alex Jones’ media outlet, Infowars. to have a page on the platform. Facebook claims to be focused on curbing the distribution of false information, and Infowars has been implicated in the spread of blatantly false or wildly improbable conspiracy theories on many occasions.
The exchange reportedly went like this:
When asked by this reporter how the company could claim it was serious about tackling the problem of misinformation online while simultaneously allowing InfoWars to maintain a page with nearly one million followers on its website, Hegeman said that the company does not “take down false news.”
“I guess just for being false that doesn’t violate the community standards,” Hegeman said, explaining that InfoWars has “not violated something that would result in them being taken down.”
Hegeman added, “I think part of the fundamental thing here is that we created Facebook to be a place where different people can have a voice. And different publishers have very different points of view.”…
Pressed for more answers on its position on InfoWars, Su said at the event that Facebook has thus far chosen to focus on tackling posts on its platform that can be proven beyond a doubt to be demonstrably false.
“There’s a ton of stuff — conspiracy theories, misleading claims, cherry picking — that we know can be really problematic and it bugs me too,” Su said. “But we need to figure out a way to really define that in a clear way, and then figure out what our policy and our product positions are about that.”
As many Salon readers will already know, Infowars is not your average right-wing publication. It is known for disseminating outlandish conspiracy theories — for example, the false narrative that no children were actually killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and that their parents were “crisis actors.” Those parents have since filed defamation lawsuits against Jones in Austin, Texas, where Infowars is based.
Following the New York event, Facebook spokeswoman Lauren Svensson told CNN the questions about InfoWars hit “on a very real tension.”
“We work hard to find the right balance between encouraging free expression and promoting a safe and authentic community, and we believe that down-ranking inauthentic content strikes that balance,” she told CNN. “In other words, we allow people to post it as a form of expression, but we’re not going to show it at the top of News Feed.”
Svensson added: “That said: while sharing fake news doesn’t violate our Community Standards set of policies, we do have strategies in place to deal with actors who repeatedly share false news. If content from a Page or domain is repeatedly given a ‘false’ rating from our third-party fact-checkers … we remove their monetization and advertising privileges to cut off financial incentives, and dramatically reduce the distribution of all of their Page-level or domain-level content on Facebook.”
David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, explained to Salon by email that this situation “perfectly encapsulates the tricky spot Facebook finds itself in right now.”
“On one hand, it does not want to be seen to be arbitrary or partisan about removing content or banning accounts,” Snyder said. “On the other, it faces enormous political and market pressure to do something about the spread of so-called fake news, which most everyone now recognizes poses a threat to the very fabric of our democracy.
“In order to thread that needle, they have to try to formulate clear and objective guidelines — and to be transparent about doing so — that maximize free expression while also policing expression deemed to be unacceptable,” Snyder added. “In other words, they are in a position of having to make calls about what is ‘acceptable’ and what is not, and as the courts and newspapers have known for centuries now, those kinds of decisions rarely please everyone, and often anger more people than they please.”
According to CNN, after the presentation, John Hegeman, the head of Facebook’s News Feed, and Sara Su, a Facebook product specialist for News Feed, “struggled” to explain why the tech company continues to allow Alex Jones’ media outlet, Infowars. to have a page on the platform. Facebook claims to be focused on curbing the distribution of false information, and Infowars has been implicated in the spread of blatantly false or wildly improbable conspiracy theories on many occasions.
The exchange reportedly went like this:
When asked by this reporter how the company could claim it was serious about tackling the problem of misinformation online while simultaneously allowing InfoWars to maintain a page with nearly one million followers on its website, Hegeman said that the company does not “take down false news.”
“I guess just for being false that doesn’t violate the community standards,” Hegeman said, explaining that InfoWars has “not violated something that would result in them being taken down.”
Hegeman added, “I think part of the fundamental thing here is that we created Facebook to be a place where different people can have a voice. And different publishers have very different points of view.”…
Pressed for more answers on its position on InfoWars, Su said at the event that Facebook has thus far chosen to focus on tackling posts on its platform that can be proven beyond a doubt to be demonstrably false.
“There’s a ton of stuff — conspiracy theories, misleading claims, cherry picking — that we know can be really problematic and it bugs me too,” Su said. “But we need to figure out a way to really define that in a clear way, and then figure out what our policy and our product positions are about that.”
As many Salon readers will already know, Infowars is not your average right-wing publication. It is known for disseminating outlandish conspiracy theories — for example, the false narrative that no children were actually killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and that their parents were “crisis actors.” Those parents have since filed defamation lawsuits against Jones in Austin, Texas, where Infowars is based.
Following the New York event, Facebook spokeswoman Lauren Svensson told CNN the questions about InfoWars hit “on a very real tension.”
“We work hard to find the right balance between encouraging free expression and promoting a safe and authentic community, and we believe that down-ranking inauthentic content strikes that balance,” she told CNN. “In other words, we allow people to post it as a form of expression, but we’re not going to show it at the top of News Feed.”
Svensson added: “That said: while sharing fake news doesn’t violate our Community Standards set of policies, we do have strategies in place to deal with actors who repeatedly share false news. If content from a Page or domain is repeatedly given a ‘false’ rating from our third-party fact-checkers … we remove their monetization and advertising privileges to cut off financial incentives, and dramatically reduce the distribution of all of their Page-level or domain-level content on Facebook.”
David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, explained to Salon by email that this situation “perfectly encapsulates the tricky spot Facebook finds itself in right now.”
“On one hand, it does not want to be seen to be arbitrary or partisan about removing content or banning accounts,” Snyder said. “On the other, it faces enormous political and market pressure to do something about the spread of so-called fake news, which most everyone now recognizes poses a threat to the very fabric of our democracy.
“In order to thread that needle, they have to try to formulate clear and objective guidelines — and to be transparent about doing so — that maximize free expression while also policing expression deemed to be unacceptable,” Snyder added. “In other words, they are in a position of having to make calls about what is ‘acceptable’ and what is not, and as the courts and newspapers have known for centuries now, those kinds of decisions rarely please everyone, and often anger more people than they please.”
Here’s how Russia is trying to divide the Democratic Party — and what that means for November
Travis Gettys - raw story
05 JUL 2018 AT 11:59 ET
Conservative and Russian media outlets — amplified by sketchy Twitter accounts — are pushing a social media campaign intended to drive Democratic voters away from the party.
A surge of tweets with the hashtag #WalkAway began June 23 after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant the night before, and the campaign took off after Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) called for the public shaming of Trump administration officials, reported the blogger Caroline O. for Medium.
The remarkable similar tweets claimed to be from former Democrats who got fed up with the “hate” and “intolerance” of “the left,” and piggybacked off the “civility” debate going on at the time on opinion pages and cable news shows.
Brandon Straka officially started the “#WalkAway Campaign” in May to encourage Democrats to abandon their party, but the hashtag got an artificial boost into the public sphere by automated Twitter accounts identified as linked to Russian influence operations.
“Once upon a time, I was a liberal,” says Straka, a nearly broke New York hairstylist, in his first video.
The video was initially promoted by Fox News host Charles Payne, Trump superfan Bill Mitchell, Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk and conservative activist Candace Owens, who helped introduce Kanye West to right-wing politics.
Then, after the civility debate kicked off, something weird happened.
The hashtag became one of the most popular topics among suspected Russian bots, which skewed algorithms to push the campaign into suggested search terms on Google products and other social media, and gained popularity among actual Twitter users.
The Russian media outlets Sputnik and RT featured segments and videos on the campaign starting last week, and Straka did an interview with RT this week.
Straka also appeared Tuesday on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program, and the campaign got coverage on conservative websites such as Breitbart, The Patriot Post, Epoch Times and Legal Insurrection.
Hashtag clouds also revealed #WalkAway was frequently associated with the bizarre #QAnon conspiracy theory to push the narrative that the Democratic Party was “sick” and corrupt.
The campaign targeted racial division and so-called “identity politics,” and Trump himself amplified the movement’s claims that Democrats wanted to abolish ICE and open U.S. borders to criminals.
The Medium blogger said she’d seen similar overlap between Russian influence campaigns and conservative U.S. media, and she warned that more would be coming as November’s midterm elections approached.
“There is reason to believe that this psychological operation — and to be clear, that’s what this is — represents a trial run for future social media manipulation efforts,” Caroline O. wrote.
She suspects the #WalkAway movement could be intended to map out social networks, test messaging and conduct surveillance to study patterns of behavior.
“If you want to cause chaos or just generally stir up trouble, figuring out how to provoke other users — and determining which users are most receptive to provocation — would be extremely helpful,” she wrote. “This is a great reason to heed the advice, ‘Don’t engage the trolls.'”
A surge of tweets with the hashtag #WalkAway began June 23 after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant the night before, and the campaign took off after Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) called for the public shaming of Trump administration officials, reported the blogger Caroline O. for Medium.
The remarkable similar tweets claimed to be from former Democrats who got fed up with the “hate” and “intolerance” of “the left,” and piggybacked off the “civility” debate going on at the time on opinion pages and cable news shows.
Brandon Straka officially started the “#WalkAway Campaign” in May to encourage Democrats to abandon their party, but the hashtag got an artificial boost into the public sphere by automated Twitter accounts identified as linked to Russian influence operations.
“Once upon a time, I was a liberal,” says Straka, a nearly broke New York hairstylist, in his first video.
The video was initially promoted by Fox News host Charles Payne, Trump superfan Bill Mitchell, Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk and conservative activist Candace Owens, who helped introduce Kanye West to right-wing politics.
Then, after the civility debate kicked off, something weird happened.
The hashtag became one of the most popular topics among suspected Russian bots, which skewed algorithms to push the campaign into suggested search terms on Google products and other social media, and gained popularity among actual Twitter users.
The Russian media outlets Sputnik and RT featured segments and videos on the campaign starting last week, and Straka did an interview with RT this week.
Straka also appeared Tuesday on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program, and the campaign got coverage on conservative websites such as Breitbart, The Patriot Post, Epoch Times and Legal Insurrection.
Hashtag clouds also revealed #WalkAway was frequently associated with the bizarre #QAnon conspiracy theory to push the narrative that the Democratic Party was “sick” and corrupt.
The campaign targeted racial division and so-called “identity politics,” and Trump himself amplified the movement’s claims that Democrats wanted to abolish ICE and open U.S. borders to criminals.
The Medium blogger said she’d seen similar overlap between Russian influence campaigns and conservative U.S. media, and she warned that more would be coming as November’s midterm elections approached.
“There is reason to believe that this psychological operation — and to be clear, that’s what this is — represents a trial run for future social media manipulation efforts,” Caroline O. wrote.
She suspects the #WalkAway movement could be intended to map out social networks, test messaging and conduct surveillance to study patterns of behavior.
“If you want to cause chaos or just generally stir up trouble, figuring out how to provoke other users — and determining which users are most receptive to provocation — would be extremely helpful,” she wrote. “This is a great reason to heed the advice, ‘Don’t engage the trolls.'”
As A College Student, Laura Ingraham Publicly Outed Gay Students
by Jake Thomas - the intellectualist
6/30/18
It wasn't until after Ingraham discovered her brother was gay that she began to rethink her position on homosexuality.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham's bully-like stance toward Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg and others who marched against gun violence last week seems to characterize how Ingraham engages those with whom she disagrees.
During her time at The Dartmouth Review, an off-campus conservative weekly, Ingraham was adamantly against homosexuals and made no attempt to hide her disdain.
Of particular note, as described in a May 1997 story in the publication, Ingraham used her position as the paper's editor to out her fellow students.
During her tenure at the Review, Ingraham was well-known for her opposition to homosexuality. At one point, she sent an undercover reporter to a meeting of the Gay Students Association and then printed, in the next issue of the Review, a transcript of the meeting with the names of the student officers.
Though Ingraham later acknowledged her stance toward the gay community was harmful, she rejected the idea that she had outed anyone present at the meeting, essentially saying she couldn't have because it was publicly advertised.
According to a 1997 piece Ingraham authored in The Washington Post, her stance toward homosexuals -- which she admits the Review referred to as "sodomites" on occasion -- was tempered largely by learning that her brother was gay, watching him care for his partner dying of AIDs, and seeing that her words and ideas translated to real-world suffering for others.
Some people don't learn this lesson or cultivate the ability to empathize with others until they are confronted in their personal lives.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham's bully-like stance toward Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg and others who marched against gun violence last week seems to characterize how Ingraham engages those with whom she disagrees.
During her time at The Dartmouth Review, an off-campus conservative weekly, Ingraham was adamantly against homosexuals and made no attempt to hide her disdain.
Of particular note, as described in a May 1997 story in the publication, Ingraham used her position as the paper's editor to out her fellow students.
During her tenure at the Review, Ingraham was well-known for her opposition to homosexuality. At one point, she sent an undercover reporter to a meeting of the Gay Students Association and then printed, in the next issue of the Review, a transcript of the meeting with the names of the student officers.
Though Ingraham later acknowledged her stance toward the gay community was harmful, she rejected the idea that she had outed anyone present at the meeting, essentially saying she couldn't have because it was publicly advertised.
According to a 1997 piece Ingraham authored in The Washington Post, her stance toward homosexuals -- which she admits the Review referred to as "sodomites" on occasion -- was tempered largely by learning that her brother was gay, watching him care for his partner dying of AIDs, and seeing that her words and ideas translated to real-world suffering for others.
Some people don't learn this lesson or cultivate the ability to empathize with others until they are confronted in their personal lives.
first, they sell your data to russian spies, now they spy on you!!!
Facebook patents system that can use your phone's mic to monitor TV habits
System would allow Facebook to identify what adults and children are watching based on ambient noise
Olivia Solon in San Francisco
the guardian
Thu 28 Jun 2018 19.01 EDT
Facebook has patented a system that can remotely activate the microphone on someone’s phone using inaudible signals broadcast via a television.
The patent application describes a system where an audio fingerprint embedded in TV shows or ads, inaudible to human ears, would trigger the phone, tablet or long-rumoured smart speaker to turn on the microphone and start recording “ambient audio of the content item”. The recording could then be matched to a database of content to allow Facebook to identify what the individual was watching – like Shazam for TV, but without the individual choosing to activate the system.
Diagrams accompanying the patent highlight how the technology would know which adult or child within a household was watching a particular broadcast.
The patent, first spotted by the New York Times, positions the technology as a way for broadcasters to know exactly who is watching their TV shows or ads and for how long. The same system could then be used to build viewing profiles of individual members of a household for better content recommendation and more targeted advertising.
Privacy experts are concerned about the intrusion into people’s homes, particularly as the ambient audio recording would likely catch snippets of people’s private conversations without their knowledge.
“It’s extremely disconcerting for privacy to have an inaudible beacon as it means they want to make it not obvious to the user that the device is listening,” said William Budington, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Such a system could also give Facebook a better understanding of people’s social connections as it would show the social network which people were meeting up in real life.
Facebook was quick to downplay the patent filing.
“It is common practice to file patents to prevent aggression from other companies. Because of this, patents tend to focus on future-looking technology that is often speculative in nature and could be commercialised by other companies,” said Facebook’s head of intellectual property, Allen Lo, in a statement.
“The technology in this patent has not been included in any of our products, and never will be.”
Facebook isn’t the first company to design a system that uses secretly broadcast audio signals to track people’s viewing habits. In 2015, a company called SilverPush developed ultrasonic audio “beacons” within TV commercials that could be identified by any device running apps that incorporated SilverPush’s software.
The system allows for far more accurate tracking of people’s viewing habits at an individual level.
In March 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued warning lettersto app developers who had installed the software encouraging them to notify people that their app could allow third parties to monitor their viewing habits.
“These apps were capable of listening in the background and collecting information about consumers without notifying them,” said Jessica Rich, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Companies should tell people what information is collected, how it is collected, and who it’s shared with.”
The idea that Facebook already listens to people’s conversations and uses that information to deliver targeted advertising has been a popular conspiracy theory for years. It appeared to originate in May 2014 when the company launched a feature called “Identify TV and Music”, which listened to ambient noise when a user was writing a status update – with their permission. At the time the company had to assuage people’s fears that the feature was always on, eavesdropping in the background.
Despite denials, the rumour persisted and in October 2017 the company’s head of advertising Rob Godman had to issue another denial in response to an investigation carried out by tech podcast Reply All.
“I run ads product at Facebook. We don’t – and have never – used your microphone for ads. Just not true,” Goldman tweeted.
The patent application describes a system where an audio fingerprint embedded in TV shows or ads, inaudible to human ears, would trigger the phone, tablet or long-rumoured smart speaker to turn on the microphone and start recording “ambient audio of the content item”. The recording could then be matched to a database of content to allow Facebook to identify what the individual was watching – like Shazam for TV, but without the individual choosing to activate the system.
Diagrams accompanying the patent highlight how the technology would know which adult or child within a household was watching a particular broadcast.
The patent, first spotted by the New York Times, positions the technology as a way for broadcasters to know exactly who is watching their TV shows or ads and for how long. The same system could then be used to build viewing profiles of individual members of a household for better content recommendation and more targeted advertising.
Privacy experts are concerned about the intrusion into people’s homes, particularly as the ambient audio recording would likely catch snippets of people’s private conversations without their knowledge.
“It’s extremely disconcerting for privacy to have an inaudible beacon as it means they want to make it not obvious to the user that the device is listening,” said William Budington, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Such a system could also give Facebook a better understanding of people’s social connections as it would show the social network which people were meeting up in real life.
Facebook was quick to downplay the patent filing.
“It is common practice to file patents to prevent aggression from other companies. Because of this, patents tend to focus on future-looking technology that is often speculative in nature and could be commercialised by other companies,” said Facebook’s head of intellectual property, Allen Lo, in a statement.
“The technology in this patent has not been included in any of our products, and never will be.”
Facebook isn’t the first company to design a system that uses secretly broadcast audio signals to track people’s viewing habits. In 2015, a company called SilverPush developed ultrasonic audio “beacons” within TV commercials that could be identified by any device running apps that incorporated SilverPush’s software.
The system allows for far more accurate tracking of people’s viewing habits at an individual level.
In March 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued warning lettersto app developers who had installed the software encouraging them to notify people that their app could allow third parties to monitor their viewing habits.
“These apps were capable of listening in the background and collecting information about consumers without notifying them,” said Jessica Rich, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Companies should tell people what information is collected, how it is collected, and who it’s shared with.”
The idea that Facebook already listens to people’s conversations and uses that information to deliver targeted advertising has been a popular conspiracy theory for years. It appeared to originate in May 2014 when the company launched a feature called “Identify TV and Music”, which listened to ambient noise when a user was writing a status update – with their permission. At the time the company had to assuage people’s fears that the feature was always on, eavesdropping in the background.
Despite denials, the rumour persisted and in October 2017 the company’s head of advertising Rob Godman had to issue another denial in response to an investigation carried out by tech podcast Reply All.
“I run ads product at Facebook. We don’t – and have never – used your microphone for ads. Just not true,” Goldman tweeted.
Washington Post Refuses to Acknowledge That This White Supremacist Senate Candidate Really Means It
The newspaper is refusing to tell the full truth.
By Janine Jackson / FAIR - alternet
June 25, 2018, 6:21 AM GMT
A few things about Virginia Republican Senate candidate Corey Stewart:
Corey Stewart just won the Virginia GOP Senate primary. And the Washington Post‘s response (6/15/18) was an editorial headlined, “Corey Stewart’s Win in Virginia Means Further Degradation of Civic Discourse.” Yeah, that’s the problem—discourse.
In an exemplar of elite media mealymouthing, the Post defines (and laments) Stewart’s embrace of white supremacist ideas, and the people who act on them, not as him being a white supremacist, but as “court[ing] white supremacists,” his racist comments not as him being a racist, but his “seeing…pandering to racism [as] a valuable tactic.”
Nowhere do the Post editorialists explain whence they derive the requisite insight into Stewart’s soul to distinguish between mere calculation and true beliefs. Much less do they advise the black, brown, Muslim, Jewish and other people at the sharp end of such “courting” and “pandering” as to how they might best appreciate the distinction.
- He described as “one of my personal heroes” Wisconsin congressional candidate and self-described “pro-White Christian” Paul Nehlen, who suggests deporting all Muslims, and whose overt and various hatreds have led Breitbart to break ties with him, along with a Twitterban.
- Stewart joined his endorser Jason Kessler at a rally for Kessler’s group, Unity and Security for America, last year. Kessler, of course, was the organizer of the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, with the Nazi salutes and the “blood and soil” chanting, and the murder of counter-protester Heather Heyer. After the Charlottesville rally, Stewart declared there was “no reason to apologize.”
- A self-described “proud Southerner” who was born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota, Stewart has declared that the Confederate flag is “what makes us Virginia, and if you take that away we lose our identity.”
- In recent tweets, he describes children crying for their parents at the border as “leftist terrorism props” and calls for no “amnesty of any sort.”
Corey Stewart just won the Virginia GOP Senate primary. And the Washington Post‘s response (6/15/18) was an editorial headlined, “Corey Stewart’s Win in Virginia Means Further Degradation of Civic Discourse.” Yeah, that’s the problem—discourse.
In an exemplar of elite media mealymouthing, the Post defines (and laments) Stewart’s embrace of white supremacist ideas, and the people who act on them, not as him being a white supremacist, but as “court[ing] white supremacists,” his racist comments not as him being a racist, but his “seeing…pandering to racism [as] a valuable tactic.”
Nowhere do the Post editorialists explain whence they derive the requisite insight into Stewart’s soul to distinguish between mere calculation and true beliefs. Much less do they advise the black, brown, Muslim, Jewish and other people at the sharp end of such “courting” and “pandering” as to how they might best appreciate the distinction.
Pete Hegseth Defends Trump's Child Camps: 'Kids Were Not Placed In Ovens And Baked'
By David - crooks & liars
6/24/18 7:14am
Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth on Sunday exploded at liberals who compare Donald Trump's child immigrant camps to "concentration camps."
"Hold on," Hegseth said. "You mean, the kids were not placed in ovens and baked? They were reunited with their families."
Fox co-host Ed Henry tried to interrupt but Hegseth continued.
"No, seriously. Rhetoric actually matters," Hegseth opined. "You call it a concentration camp? Call it what it is. You reunite these kids peacefully with their parents -- who broke the law, by the way, by going across the border -- and suddenly you're an evil person."
"How much will that story get covered when they are reunited?" Henry wondered.
"Exactly," Hegseth agreed. "Now that it's all fixed."
"Hold on," Hegseth said. "You mean, the kids were not placed in ovens and baked? They were reunited with their families."
Fox co-host Ed Henry tried to interrupt but Hegseth continued.
"No, seriously. Rhetoric actually matters," Hegseth opined. "You call it a concentration camp? Call it what it is. You reunite these kids peacefully with their parents -- who broke the law, by the way, by going across the border -- and suddenly you're an evil person."
"How much will that story get covered when they are reunited?" Henry wondered.
"Exactly," Hegseth agreed. "Now that it's all fixed."
Just Say It’s Racist
The American press is caught between describing Trumpism accurately and avoiding the wrath of the president and his supporters.
Leah Mills / Reuters
the atlantic
Adam Serwer 1:08 PM ET
It was a framing that might have worked with any other two presidents. On Friday, The New York Times published a comparison of how Donald Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama, approached controversies over racism. “Obama offered balm. Trump drops verbal bombs. But both were accused, in a polarized country, of making racial tensions worse,” the paper tweeted. That bland equivalence between the first black president and his white successor, who rode to the White House on a racist conspiracy theory denying Obama was born in the United States, provoked a firestorm of criticism on social media.
That fact alone shows how impossible it is to approach the Trump presidency the way the media might approach any other administration—indeed, bafflingly, the article briefly references birtherism without acknowledging Trump’s embrace of the conspiracy theory, and how it affected his political fortunes. The relationship between Trump and Obama is historically unique in that the former was elected by a racial backlash to the latter, another point the piece declines to acknowledge, whether to refute or affirm.
Instead, the piece is constructed around the juxtaposition of the criticism that Obama encountered for acknowledging the racism black Americans still face with the fact that Trump is often accused of racism. The piece notes that after Obama spoke at a funeral for nine black people murdered by a white supremacist, “some people, mostly white, accused him of dividing the country when he spoke empathetically about the racism faced by black Americans.” By contrast, in the Trump era, “People often debate whether what the president did or did not say was a sign that he was racist.”
The president’s overtly prejudiced remarks about religious and ethnic minorities, in a country where the accusation of racism is often regarded as morally equivalent to racial discrimination, poses a challenge for media outlets seeking to accurately represent the views of the president and his supporters without enraging either of them. That task is largely impossible, which is why the media have developed a ludicrous and expanding menu of complex euphemisms for describing racist behavior, and why a piece purporting to contrast two presidents’ approaches to racism dances so elaborately around the obvious.
The framing of the piece illustrates how the American discourse concerning racism remains largely about hurt feelings, rather than discriminatory policy: Some people said Obama acknowledging racism was racist, and also some people don’t like that Trump is called racist. This ostensibly neutral framing is centered around a white audience more concerned with being called racist than facing racial discrimination, and one that experiences racism as naughty words rather than as policies that affect whether and how people live their lives. This is why the cancellation of a sitcom about a Trump supporting white working-class family draws more press coverage than the fact that the aftermath of Hurricane Maria may have caused almost twice as many American casualties as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a national trauma so harrowing it continues to shape American politics almost two decades later.
There is no mention in the piece of the Trump administration’s handling of Maria at all, nor the the hundreds of thousands of Americans displaced by it. There’s no discussion of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the United States, largely from nonwhite countries, whose legal statuses have been revoked even though they have no criminal records and pose no public-safety threat. The recent controversy over a newly instituted policy of separating parents and children at the border makes no appearance. The president’s travel ban, instituted after a campaign in which he expressed the desire to ban Muslims from the country, goes unmentioned. The decision of Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to forgo all oversight of discriminatory policing by local law enforcement is undiscussed. Instead Trump’s successful attempt to force the NFL to suppress criticism of racist policing by black athletes is described as Trump having “ignored or rejected the racial tensions at the core of some high-profile, combustible public issues.” Describing a situation in which the president deliberately seized (according to the Times’ own reporting) on a controversy over unequal treatment of black Americans for political advantage as having “ignored” or “rejected” racial tensions is bizarre—but it’s also false.
One might think that in a piece contrasting two presidents’ approaches to racism, their actual policies might come into play. But they don’t—instead the piece only contrasts their rhetorical approaches, as if they could be separated, and as if the way Americans discuss racism is more important than how it affects people. This is a common editorial decision that, in aiming to grant equal moral and factual weight to two sides of an argument, takes a side without realizing it has done so.
An era in which Americans are supposedly exhausted with political correctness is thus defined by the acute political sensitivities and persecution complexes of white voters who object if things they do and say are described as racist, even as the bodies pile up in the background.
That fact alone shows how impossible it is to approach the Trump presidency the way the media might approach any other administration—indeed, bafflingly, the article briefly references birtherism without acknowledging Trump’s embrace of the conspiracy theory, and how it affected his political fortunes. The relationship between Trump and Obama is historically unique in that the former was elected by a racial backlash to the latter, another point the piece declines to acknowledge, whether to refute or affirm.
Instead, the piece is constructed around the juxtaposition of the criticism that Obama encountered for acknowledging the racism black Americans still face with the fact that Trump is often accused of racism. The piece notes that after Obama spoke at a funeral for nine black people murdered by a white supremacist, “some people, mostly white, accused him of dividing the country when he spoke empathetically about the racism faced by black Americans.” By contrast, in the Trump era, “People often debate whether what the president did or did not say was a sign that he was racist.”
The president’s overtly prejudiced remarks about religious and ethnic minorities, in a country where the accusation of racism is often regarded as morally equivalent to racial discrimination, poses a challenge for media outlets seeking to accurately represent the views of the president and his supporters without enraging either of them. That task is largely impossible, which is why the media have developed a ludicrous and expanding menu of complex euphemisms for describing racist behavior, and why a piece purporting to contrast two presidents’ approaches to racism dances so elaborately around the obvious.
The framing of the piece illustrates how the American discourse concerning racism remains largely about hurt feelings, rather than discriminatory policy: Some people said Obama acknowledging racism was racist, and also some people don’t like that Trump is called racist. This ostensibly neutral framing is centered around a white audience more concerned with being called racist than facing racial discrimination, and one that experiences racism as naughty words rather than as policies that affect whether and how people live their lives. This is why the cancellation of a sitcom about a Trump supporting white working-class family draws more press coverage than the fact that the aftermath of Hurricane Maria may have caused almost twice as many American casualties as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a national trauma so harrowing it continues to shape American politics almost two decades later.
There is no mention in the piece of the Trump administration’s handling of Maria at all, nor the the hundreds of thousands of Americans displaced by it. There’s no discussion of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the United States, largely from nonwhite countries, whose legal statuses have been revoked even though they have no criminal records and pose no public-safety threat. The recent controversy over a newly instituted policy of separating parents and children at the border makes no appearance. The president’s travel ban, instituted after a campaign in which he expressed the desire to ban Muslims from the country, goes unmentioned. The decision of Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to forgo all oversight of discriminatory policing by local law enforcement is undiscussed. Instead Trump’s successful attempt to force the NFL to suppress criticism of racist policing by black athletes is described as Trump having “ignored or rejected the racial tensions at the core of some high-profile, combustible public issues.” Describing a situation in which the president deliberately seized (according to the Times’ own reporting) on a controversy over unequal treatment of black Americans for political advantage as having “ignored” or “rejected” racial tensions is bizarre—but it’s also false.
One might think that in a piece contrasting two presidents’ approaches to racism, their actual policies might come into play. But they don’t—instead the piece only contrasts their rhetorical approaches, as if they could be separated, and as if the way Americans discuss racism is more important than how it affects people. This is a common editorial decision that, in aiming to grant equal moral and factual weight to two sides of an argument, takes a side without realizing it has done so.
An era in which Americans are supposedly exhausted with political correctness is thus defined by the acute political sensitivities and persecution complexes of white voters who object if things they do and say are described as racist, even as the bodies pile up in the background.
Fox News’ Kremlin Ties Go Much Deeper Than Just Sean Hannity
By John R. Schindler - observer
04/19/18 3:38pm
A few days ago, I addressed the troubling issue of Sean Hannity, the Fox News star, and his hidden ties to the Trump administration. With the revelation that Hannity shares an attorney with the president—namely the disgraced Michael Cohen, who’s now a key player in the Department of Justice’s investigation of the White House and its secret Kremlin links—it’s high time to ask exactly what sort of “journalism” Hannity is pushing at Fox News.
Moreover, when coupled with my previous revelations of Hannity’s “reporting” of rancid disinformation scripted by Russian intelligence as “news,” plus his clandestine relationship with WikiLeaks—said by President Donald Trump’s own CIA director to be a Kremlin front—Fox News is making itself a player not just in the Trump administration, but a target of any fair and balanced investigation of it. As I stated:
With the revelation that Cohen has been Hannity’s attorney, in some fashion that neither of them wished to disclose, it is even more imperative that Fox News explain why it keeps a Kremlin propagandist without any semblance of professional ethics on the air. If they fail to do so, that network is exposing itself to counterintelligence scrutiny as well.
To the surprise of nobody who has observed that network in action, Fox News quickly decided that Hannity’s ethical missteps regarding Cohen were no big deal. Per its statement on the case: “We have reviewed the matter and spoken to Sean and he continues to have our full support.” Nevertheless, the network’s own media analyst explained that Hannity was clearly in the wrong, ethically speaking, by commenting many times on-air about Cohen, invariably favorably, without divulging his relationship with him.
Other reports are even less favorable to the network and its ethical standards, rather lack thereof. Vanity Fair this week quoted anonymous staffers at the network about what it termed the Hannity-induced “crisis”: “This is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen,” stated one. Another added, “This is bad. It violates every rule of journalism.”
That said, it’s not difficult to divine why Hannity remains on the air. He’s a headliner, the network’s most prominent talker and nighttime draw for its pro-Trump viewers. Moreover, Hannity’s astonishingly close relationship with this White House, viewed negatively as almost a parody of “access journalism” by outsiders, seems to only bolster his position at Fox News. As The Washington Postreported this week, Hannity talks frequently with Trump, serving as a senior advisor to the Oval Office and playing a pivotal role in the administration’s media war against Trump’s enemies—above all Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation of the president’s Kremlin ties. The Fox News star “basically has a desk” in the White House, explained one presidential adviser to the Post.
Normal journalism, this is not. Since I’ve castigated the mainstream media for its fawning over President Barack Obama, allowing his staff to play them like an instrument, particularly regarding foreign policy, let me add that the Hannity case outstrips even those low-points in terms of journalistic integrity. Clearly Fox News is happy to let its leading on-air personality act as a propagandist for Trump. It’s high time for the network to remove “news” from its title if Hannity is its idea of journalism.
Worse, Fox News seems untroubled by the fact that Hannity isn’t just a Trump superfan-cum-consigliere; he also has disturbing ties to the Kremlin and its agents. Since Hannity’s pushing of Russian-scripted disinformation on Americans has been reported for nearly a year, the network can’t say it didn’t know. Fox News therefore is making the unsettling—not to mention potentially politically hazardous—choice to serve as a witting cut-out for the Kremlin’s lie machine.
Perhaps there are no surprises here at all, however. This week, Latvian Public Broadcasting reported an astonishing story about how Fox News operates in their country. As unmasked by a local investigation, Russian-language versions of the network’s programming that are broadcast in Latvia aren’t merely translated; they’re edited for content in a pro-Kremlin direction. Per the report, which cites internal Fox News regulations:
Translators have to follow Russian subtitling guidelines requiring glossing over or ‘softening content’ concerning accidents, homosexual relationships, ‘anti-Russian propaganda,’ narcotics, extremist activities and suicides. For instance, the translators are instructed to ‘soften’ all negative language about the Russian military and space program, policies of the Russian president and government, while positive texts about same-sex relationships have to be made more generalized so they could be attributed to relationships of any kind.
Let’s be perfectly clear here: Fox News is requiring its content being broadcast in a country that is a member of both NATO and the European Union to be edited to be more pleasing to the regime of Vladimir Putin. This is no small matter in Latvia, a country of only two million people, more than one-quarter of whom are ethnic Russians. That minority is habitually exploited by Moscow in its propaganda aimed at NATO’s eastern frontier. For years, the Kremlin has waged an aggressive, full-spectrum information war against Latvia, attempting to foment divisions in that country by making its Russian minority feel alienated and more loyal to Moscow than to Riga. In extremis, many Latvians worry, this noxious disinformation campaign could be a precursor to an actual Russian invasion—an event that has happened several times in the small country’s history.
Fox News is unambiguously on the side of the Kremlin in this information struggle against little Latvia—and the entire Western world. It’s not just what Fox News is beaming into the Baltic states that merits scrutiny. The network’s reports on Latvia for Western audiences—for instance one last month pushed blatant Russian propaganda and cited the Centre for Research on Globalization, a notorious Kremlin disinformation front—likewise deserve investigation.
Above all, Americans should ask what Fox News’ relationship with Putin’s regime actually is. It’s one thing to allow known disinformateurs like Sean Hannity to push Russian-made lies on air; it’s even worse to give Moscow editorial control over its “reporting.” If Fox News is skewing the news in a pro-Kremlin direction for political effect in a free and democratic society like Latvia, they can do it anywhere.
Moreover, when coupled with my previous revelations of Hannity’s “reporting” of rancid disinformation scripted by Russian intelligence as “news,” plus his clandestine relationship with WikiLeaks—said by President Donald Trump’s own CIA director to be a Kremlin front—Fox News is making itself a player not just in the Trump administration, but a target of any fair and balanced investigation of it. As I stated:
With the revelation that Cohen has been Hannity’s attorney, in some fashion that neither of them wished to disclose, it is even more imperative that Fox News explain why it keeps a Kremlin propagandist without any semblance of professional ethics on the air. If they fail to do so, that network is exposing itself to counterintelligence scrutiny as well.
To the surprise of nobody who has observed that network in action, Fox News quickly decided that Hannity’s ethical missteps regarding Cohen were no big deal. Per its statement on the case: “We have reviewed the matter and spoken to Sean and he continues to have our full support.” Nevertheless, the network’s own media analyst explained that Hannity was clearly in the wrong, ethically speaking, by commenting many times on-air about Cohen, invariably favorably, without divulging his relationship with him.
Other reports are even less favorable to the network and its ethical standards, rather lack thereof. Vanity Fair this week quoted anonymous staffers at the network about what it termed the Hannity-induced “crisis”: “This is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen,” stated one. Another added, “This is bad. It violates every rule of journalism.”
That said, it’s not difficult to divine why Hannity remains on the air. He’s a headliner, the network’s most prominent talker and nighttime draw for its pro-Trump viewers. Moreover, Hannity’s astonishingly close relationship with this White House, viewed negatively as almost a parody of “access journalism” by outsiders, seems to only bolster his position at Fox News. As The Washington Postreported this week, Hannity talks frequently with Trump, serving as a senior advisor to the Oval Office and playing a pivotal role in the administration’s media war against Trump’s enemies—above all Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation of the president’s Kremlin ties. The Fox News star “basically has a desk” in the White House, explained one presidential adviser to the Post.
Normal journalism, this is not. Since I’ve castigated the mainstream media for its fawning over President Barack Obama, allowing his staff to play them like an instrument, particularly regarding foreign policy, let me add that the Hannity case outstrips even those low-points in terms of journalistic integrity. Clearly Fox News is happy to let its leading on-air personality act as a propagandist for Trump. It’s high time for the network to remove “news” from its title if Hannity is its idea of journalism.
Worse, Fox News seems untroubled by the fact that Hannity isn’t just a Trump superfan-cum-consigliere; he also has disturbing ties to the Kremlin and its agents. Since Hannity’s pushing of Russian-scripted disinformation on Americans has been reported for nearly a year, the network can’t say it didn’t know. Fox News therefore is making the unsettling—not to mention potentially politically hazardous—choice to serve as a witting cut-out for the Kremlin’s lie machine.
Perhaps there are no surprises here at all, however. This week, Latvian Public Broadcasting reported an astonishing story about how Fox News operates in their country. As unmasked by a local investigation, Russian-language versions of the network’s programming that are broadcast in Latvia aren’t merely translated; they’re edited for content in a pro-Kremlin direction. Per the report, which cites internal Fox News regulations:
Translators have to follow Russian subtitling guidelines requiring glossing over or ‘softening content’ concerning accidents, homosexual relationships, ‘anti-Russian propaganda,’ narcotics, extremist activities and suicides. For instance, the translators are instructed to ‘soften’ all negative language about the Russian military and space program, policies of the Russian president and government, while positive texts about same-sex relationships have to be made more generalized so they could be attributed to relationships of any kind.
Let’s be perfectly clear here: Fox News is requiring its content being broadcast in a country that is a member of both NATO and the European Union to be edited to be more pleasing to the regime of Vladimir Putin. This is no small matter in Latvia, a country of only two million people, more than one-quarter of whom are ethnic Russians. That minority is habitually exploited by Moscow in its propaganda aimed at NATO’s eastern frontier. For years, the Kremlin has waged an aggressive, full-spectrum information war against Latvia, attempting to foment divisions in that country by making its Russian minority feel alienated and more loyal to Moscow than to Riga. In extremis, many Latvians worry, this noxious disinformation campaign could be a precursor to an actual Russian invasion—an event that has happened several times in the small country’s history.
Fox News is unambiguously on the side of the Kremlin in this information struggle against little Latvia—and the entire Western world. It’s not just what Fox News is beaming into the Baltic states that merits scrutiny. The network’s reports on Latvia for Western audiences—for instance one last month pushed blatant Russian propaganda and cited the Centre for Research on Globalization, a notorious Kremlin disinformation front—likewise deserve investigation.
Above all, Americans should ask what Fox News’ relationship with Putin’s regime actually is. It’s one thing to allow known disinformateurs like Sean Hannity to push Russian-made lies on air; it’s even worse to give Moscow editorial control over its “reporting.” If Fox News is skewing the news in a pro-Kremlin direction for political effect in a free and democratic society like Latvia, they can do it anywhere.
The Empty Piety of the American Press
Chris Hedges - truthdig
3/12/18
The press, giddy with its newfound sense of mission and purpose, is carrying out a moral crusade against Donald Trump. The airwaves and print have shed their traditional claims of “impartiality” and “objectivity.” They fulminate against Trump, charging—falsely—that he was elected because of Russian interference and calling him a liar, ignorant and incompetent. They give airtime to his bitterest critics and bizarre associates, such as Omarosa Manigault-Newman, a onetime star of “The Apprentice” and now a fired White House aide, and Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who says she had a sexual relationship with Trump. It is great entertainment. It is great for ratings. It is great for profits. But it is not moral, and it is not journalism.
The empty piety is a mask for self-interest. It is accompanied by the veneration of the establishment politicians, generals, intelligence chiefs, corporate heads and hired apologists who carried out the corporate coup d’état that created our system of “inverted totalitarianism.” The corporate structures that have a stranglehold on the country and have overseen deindustrialization and the evisceration of democratic institutions, plunging over half the country into chronic poverty and misery, are unassailable. They are portrayed as forces of progress. The criminals on Wall Street, including the heads of financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, are treated with reverence. Free trade is equated with freedom. Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama—who assaulted civil liberties, transferred trillions of dollars upward to reigning oligarchs, expanded the drone wars to include targeted assassinations of American citizens, and used the Espionage Act to silence investigative journalism—are hailed as champions of democracy. Deference is paid to democratic processes, liberties, electoral politics and rights enshrined in our Constitution, from due process to privacy, that no longer exist. It is a vast game of deception under the cover of a vacuous morality.
Those cast aside by corporate capitalism—Noam Chomsky calls them “unpeople”—are rendered invisible and reviled at the same time. The “experts” whose opinions are amplified on every issue, from economics to empire and politics, are drawn from corporate-funded think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, or are former military and intelligence officials or politicians who are responsible for the failure of our democracy and usually in the employ of corporations. Cable news also has the incestuous habit of interviewing its own news celebrities. Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of many former officials now on the airwaves, has morphed into a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC and MSNBC. Brennan was the architect of the disastrous attempt to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to arm “moderate” rebels in Syria, oversaw the huge expansion of our drone wars and instigated the canard that Russia stole the last U.S. presidential election. The most astute critics of empire, including Andrew Bacevich, are banished, as are critics of corporate power, including Ralph Nader and Chomsky. Those who decry the waste within the military, such as MIT Professor Emeritus Ted Postol, who has exposed the useless $13 billion anti-ballistic missile program, are unheard. Advocates of universal health care, such as Dr. Margaret Flowers, are locked out of national health care debates. There is a long list of the censored. The acceptable range of opinion is so narrow it is almost nonexistent.
Where is the flood of stories about families being evicted or losing their homes because of foreclosures and bank repossessions? Where are the stories about the banks and lending agencies that prey on recent college graduates burdened with crippling loans and unable to find work? Where are the stories about families going into bankruptcy because they cannot pay medical bills and the soaring premiums of for-profit health care? Where are the stories about the despair that drives middle-aged white men to suicide and millions of Americans into the deadly embrace of opioid addiction? Where are the stories on the cruelty of mass incarceration, the collapse of our court system and the reign of terror by police in marginal communities? Where are the investigative pieces on the fraud and the tax boycott that have been legalized for Wall Street, the poisoning of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries? Why is climate change a forbidden subject, even as extreme weather devastates the nation and much of the rest of the planet? Why are the atrocities we commit or abet in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen ignored? Why are the war crimes carried out by Israel against the Palestinians erased from news coverage?
The relentless pillorying of Trump is news-as-reality-television. Trump fills in for Richard Hatch of the old “Survivor” show. Trump’s imbecility, dishonesty, narcissism and incompetence are at once revolting and riveting. The press, ostensibly seeking a more polished brand to improve the public presentation of empire and corporate capitalism, is in fact further empowering the lunatics who will dominate the political landscape.
“America is ceasing to be a nation,” reporter and author Matt Taibbi writes in his book “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus,” “and turning into a giant television show.”
The stunts pulled during the last presidential election—Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul wearing goggles as he chain-sawed the tax code in half, Trump inviting women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault to a presidential debate and Ben Carson having to defend himself against allegations he lied when he wrote that as a child he attempted to stab another boy—will become staples of political campaigning. Voters, stripped of all meaningful power or control over their own destiny, used only as stage props in rallies and at party conventions, are permitted to vote only for a system they hate. And the winners are those who can give the best and most entertaining expression of that hatred. “Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star,” Taibbi writes. “It doesn’t know how to turn the cameras off, even when it’s filming its own demise.”
If the press sided with citizens and exposed the corporate systems of power that hold them captive, its advertising income would dwindle and it would be treated as an enemy of the state. Since corporations own the airwaves and declining city newspapers, this will not happen. Journalism will remain burlesque. The Public Broadcasting System, along with National Public Radio dependent on corporate money, including the Koch brothers, is as loath to take on the corporate establishment as its for-profit competitors. Dissenters and critics exist only on the margins of the internet, and the abolition of net neutrality will see them silenced.
CNN’s Jake Tapper, one of the high priests in the Trump Inquisition, was quite open about the narrowness of the assault. Being interviewed on “The Axe Files” podcast, hosted by former Obama White House aide David Axelrod, Tapper addressed charges that he opposes Trump’s policies by saying, “Whenever anybody says that to me, I say, you can’t find any evidence about what I think about his tax plan or repealing Obamacare or DACA or immigration or trade or any of these issues—terrorism or ISIS or Syria. I’m agnostic on that. I want to have full and interesting and provocative debates and call balls and strikes. But I’m not putting out there an immigration proposal.”
The corporate airwaves have a depressing habit of taking political hacks like Axelrod or the former Clinton strategist George Stephanopoulos and transforming them into journalists. Even Chelsea Clinton got a shot at journalism, being paid $600,000 a year to do fluff pieces for NBC. The fusion of news and celebrity, with figures like Tapper appearing on late night talk shows, fits with the reality-television presidency the corporate press empowers.
The press, like the Democratic Party, is playing a very dangerous game. It is banking, as Hillary Clinton did, on Trump being so repugnant he and those who support him will be replaced with Democrats. It relies on polls to guide its tactics and strategy, forgetting that every national poll offered assurance that Trump would lose in 2016. This gamble may work. But it may not. Policy issues accounted for only 10 percent of the media coverage during the 2016 presidential race. News reports concentrated on the latest polls, scandals, publicity stunts, campaign tactics and strategy as well as Trump’s bombastic remarks, according to a report issued by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. In short, there was little substance to the coverage. This will only get worse. The gossip, trivia and invective masquerading as news are not only irrelevant to most of the electorate but reinforce the image of liberal elites being out of touch with the pain and rage rippling across the nation.
Corporations that own the press look at news as a revenue stream. The news division competes against other revenue streams. If news does not produce comparable profits, its managers are replaced and its content is altered and distorted to draw in more viewers. Journalism is irrelevant. The disease of celebrity and greed, which warps and deforms the personality of Trump, warps and deforms celebrities in the media. They share Trump’s most distasteful characteristics. The consequences are ominous. An ignored, impoverished and frustrated underclass will turn to increasingly bizarre politicians and more outlandish con artists and purveyors of hate. Trump is only the beginning. The grotesque mutations to come, ones that will make Trump look reasonable, are being spawned in newsrooms across the country.
The empty piety is a mask for self-interest. It is accompanied by the veneration of the establishment politicians, generals, intelligence chiefs, corporate heads and hired apologists who carried out the corporate coup d’état that created our system of “inverted totalitarianism.” The corporate structures that have a stranglehold on the country and have overseen deindustrialization and the evisceration of democratic institutions, plunging over half the country into chronic poverty and misery, are unassailable. They are portrayed as forces of progress. The criminals on Wall Street, including the heads of financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, are treated with reverence. Free trade is equated with freedom. Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama—who assaulted civil liberties, transferred trillions of dollars upward to reigning oligarchs, expanded the drone wars to include targeted assassinations of American citizens, and used the Espionage Act to silence investigative journalism—are hailed as champions of democracy. Deference is paid to democratic processes, liberties, electoral politics and rights enshrined in our Constitution, from due process to privacy, that no longer exist. It is a vast game of deception under the cover of a vacuous morality.
Those cast aside by corporate capitalism—Noam Chomsky calls them “unpeople”—are rendered invisible and reviled at the same time. The “experts” whose opinions are amplified on every issue, from economics to empire and politics, are drawn from corporate-funded think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, or are former military and intelligence officials or politicians who are responsible for the failure of our democracy and usually in the employ of corporations. Cable news also has the incestuous habit of interviewing its own news celebrities. Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of many former officials now on the airwaves, has morphed into a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC and MSNBC. Brennan was the architect of the disastrous attempt to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to arm “moderate” rebels in Syria, oversaw the huge expansion of our drone wars and instigated the canard that Russia stole the last U.S. presidential election. The most astute critics of empire, including Andrew Bacevich, are banished, as are critics of corporate power, including Ralph Nader and Chomsky. Those who decry the waste within the military, such as MIT Professor Emeritus Ted Postol, who has exposed the useless $13 billion anti-ballistic missile program, are unheard. Advocates of universal health care, such as Dr. Margaret Flowers, are locked out of national health care debates. There is a long list of the censored. The acceptable range of opinion is so narrow it is almost nonexistent.
Where is the flood of stories about families being evicted or losing their homes because of foreclosures and bank repossessions? Where are the stories about the banks and lending agencies that prey on recent college graduates burdened with crippling loans and unable to find work? Where are the stories about families going into bankruptcy because they cannot pay medical bills and the soaring premiums of for-profit health care? Where are the stories about the despair that drives middle-aged white men to suicide and millions of Americans into the deadly embrace of opioid addiction? Where are the stories on the cruelty of mass incarceration, the collapse of our court system and the reign of terror by police in marginal communities? Where are the investigative pieces on the fraud and the tax boycott that have been legalized for Wall Street, the poisoning of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries? Why is climate change a forbidden subject, even as extreme weather devastates the nation and much of the rest of the planet? Why are the atrocities we commit or abet in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen ignored? Why are the war crimes carried out by Israel against the Palestinians erased from news coverage?
The relentless pillorying of Trump is news-as-reality-television. Trump fills in for Richard Hatch of the old “Survivor” show. Trump’s imbecility, dishonesty, narcissism and incompetence are at once revolting and riveting. The press, ostensibly seeking a more polished brand to improve the public presentation of empire and corporate capitalism, is in fact further empowering the lunatics who will dominate the political landscape.
“America is ceasing to be a nation,” reporter and author Matt Taibbi writes in his book “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus,” “and turning into a giant television show.”
The stunts pulled during the last presidential election—Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul wearing goggles as he chain-sawed the tax code in half, Trump inviting women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault to a presidential debate and Ben Carson having to defend himself against allegations he lied when he wrote that as a child he attempted to stab another boy—will become staples of political campaigning. Voters, stripped of all meaningful power or control over their own destiny, used only as stage props in rallies and at party conventions, are permitted to vote only for a system they hate. And the winners are those who can give the best and most entertaining expression of that hatred. “Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star,” Taibbi writes. “It doesn’t know how to turn the cameras off, even when it’s filming its own demise.”
If the press sided with citizens and exposed the corporate systems of power that hold them captive, its advertising income would dwindle and it would be treated as an enemy of the state. Since corporations own the airwaves and declining city newspapers, this will not happen. Journalism will remain burlesque. The Public Broadcasting System, along with National Public Radio dependent on corporate money, including the Koch brothers, is as loath to take on the corporate establishment as its for-profit competitors. Dissenters and critics exist only on the margins of the internet, and the abolition of net neutrality will see them silenced.
CNN’s Jake Tapper, one of the high priests in the Trump Inquisition, was quite open about the narrowness of the assault. Being interviewed on “The Axe Files” podcast, hosted by former Obama White House aide David Axelrod, Tapper addressed charges that he opposes Trump’s policies by saying, “Whenever anybody says that to me, I say, you can’t find any evidence about what I think about his tax plan or repealing Obamacare or DACA or immigration or trade or any of these issues—terrorism or ISIS or Syria. I’m agnostic on that. I want to have full and interesting and provocative debates and call balls and strikes. But I’m not putting out there an immigration proposal.”
The corporate airwaves have a depressing habit of taking political hacks like Axelrod or the former Clinton strategist George Stephanopoulos and transforming them into journalists. Even Chelsea Clinton got a shot at journalism, being paid $600,000 a year to do fluff pieces for NBC. The fusion of news and celebrity, with figures like Tapper appearing on late night talk shows, fits with the reality-television presidency the corporate press empowers.
The press, like the Democratic Party, is playing a very dangerous game. It is banking, as Hillary Clinton did, on Trump being so repugnant he and those who support him will be replaced with Democrats. It relies on polls to guide its tactics and strategy, forgetting that every national poll offered assurance that Trump would lose in 2016. This gamble may work. But it may not. Policy issues accounted for only 10 percent of the media coverage during the 2016 presidential race. News reports concentrated on the latest polls, scandals, publicity stunts, campaign tactics and strategy as well as Trump’s bombastic remarks, according to a report issued by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. In short, there was little substance to the coverage. This will only get worse. The gossip, trivia and invective masquerading as news are not only irrelevant to most of the electorate but reinforce the image of liberal elites being out of touch with the pain and rage rippling across the nation.
Corporations that own the press look at news as a revenue stream. The news division competes against other revenue streams. If news does not produce comparable profits, its managers are replaced and its content is altered and distorted to draw in more viewers. Journalism is irrelevant. The disease of celebrity and greed, which warps and deforms the personality of Trump, warps and deforms celebrities in the media. They share Trump’s most distasteful characteristics. The consequences are ominous. An ignored, impoverished and frustrated underclass will turn to increasingly bizarre politicians and more outlandish con artists and purveyors of hate. Trump is only the beginning. The grotesque mutations to come, ones that will make Trump look reasonable, are being spawned in newsrooms across the country.
worthless media funnies
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https://teespring.com/fox-news-toilet-2#pid=369&cid=6513&sid=front
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