Facebook censuur gestuurd door het westers militair-industrieel complex en de NAVO in het bijzonder..........

Derrick Broze betoogt in het artikel dat hieronder is opgenomen, dat Facebooks censuur wordt 
gestuurd door het westers militair-industrieel complex. Zo is de zogenaamd wetenschappelijke site 'PropOr Not', dat zich in de praktijk bezighoudt met het brengen van anti-Russische propaganda, onderdeel van The Interpreter en dat is op haar beurt onderdeel van Broadcasting Board of Governors, een organisatie die VS propaganda over de wereld verspreid met een stuk of zes mediaorganen zoals 'Voice of America' (VOA).

Ook de Atlantic Council is een lobbyorgaan van het militair-industrieel complex, waar de NAVO een dikke vinger in de smerige pap heeft.......

Het artikel van Broze komt van zijn website The Conscious Resistance, ik nam het over van Anti-Media:

The Facebook Purge of Independent Media: What You’re Not Being Told




October 15, 2018 at 11:26 am

Written by Derrick Broze

Victims of Facebook’s most recent purge should not forget the connections between the social media giant and the Western Military-Industrial Complex.

(CR) — On Thursday, Facebook announced they were unpublishing, or purging, over 500 pages and 200 accounts who are accused of spreading political spam. Several of these pages and writers were also removed from Twitter on the same day.

“Today, we’re removing 559 Pages and 251 accounts that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior,” Facebook stated in a blog post. Facebook states that the people behind this alleged spam “create networks of Pages using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names” and “post the same clickbait posts in dozens of Facebook Groups”.

Essentially, Facebook is accusing these pages of writing articles related to politics and then using the social media platform to…. post the articles in as many places as possible to reach as many people as possible. Hardly dangerous or scary stuff. However, these actions are in violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service. Facebook also accused the pages and accounts of using their fake accounts to generate fake likes and shares which may artificially inflate their reach and mislead people about their popularity. According to Facebook, “This activity goes against what people expect on Facebook, and it violates our policies against spam.”

Facebook also stated that “sensational political content” from across the political spectrum is being used to “build an audience and drive traffic to their websites, earning money for every visitor to the site”. Again, this does not qualify as dangerous or threatening activity. This is a standard practice for most media outlets who are trying to earn revenue to pay writers, editors, social media managers, etc. It is true that some of the pages on this list (see below for a current list) have indeed used clickbait headlines or even posts that are likely untrue. However, the list also includes legitimate independent news outlets such as The Anti Media, The Free Thought Project, Cop Block, and Police the Police, which focused on countering mainstream and establishment narratives related to politics and police.

Facebook’s statement that the pages and accounts were “often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate” begs the question – which pages and accounts are “legitimate political debate”? And by which metric does Facebook decide what counts as legitimate? These questions are yet to be answered. Perhaps with time Facebook will come clean about their process, but in the meantime it’s important to reflect on Facebook’s recent partnership with the Atlantic Council and attempts to stifle the flow of information in the name of fighting “fake news”.

The fight against Fake News started immediately following the election of Donald Trump. In November 2016, Merrimack College associate professor Melissa Zimdars posted a public Google document titled, “False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical ‘News’ Sources” which went viral after being reported on by most corporate mainstream outlets. This list lumped in some of the same outlets which fell victim to Facebook’s most recent purge with actual fake news websites which are well known among the indie and alt media industry. Within a matter of weeks, a new list appeared online from an organization calling itself PropOrNot, an allegedly independent group of researchers trying to find the truth about the dissemination of Russian propaganda and fake news. This list also contained names of prominent independent media outlets like Anti-Media, The Corbett Report, MintPress News, and many others.

It was this combination of the Zimdars list and the PropOrNot list which had the immediate effect of placing a target on the vast majority of independent journalists and outlets who were now being accused of directly or indirectly conspiring with the Russians. Websites and social media pages for these outlets began suffering a drastic reduction in reach and interaction with their audiences and many websites lost access to Google advertising money due to these false associations.

The problem is that the majority of the mainstream media unquestionably reported on and repeated the claims made by these two lists without any attempt at investigative work. For example, PropOrNot claims they are “completely independent” and “nonpartisan” because they are not funded by anyone and have no formal institutional affiliations or political connections.

They say the must remain anonymous for now because they are a “are civilian Davids taking on a state-backed adversary Goliath”. However, a report by Russian news outlet Sputnik (yes, I am aware many readers will automatically scream, “Fake news!”, but I encourage you to read on.) challenges the alleged unbiased nature of PropOrNot.

Sputnik reports that George Eliason, a Ukraine-based investigative journalist, authored an expose of PropOrNot in which he argued the organization was a “deep-state hitjob on alternative news outlets”.

“So when you’re looking at PropOrNot, it’s just basic investigative techniques. Who are they — that’s the first thing you need to know,” Eliason told Sputnik. “So you look them up on the web and you find nothing. I went to their website and did a basic scan, and the funny thing about PropOrNot is that to get into their website, you need to be logged into the dashboard of The Interpreter magazine.”

So who runs The Interpreter?

Eliason states that “The Interpreter is also overseen by the the Broadcasting Board of Governors, who run Voice of America and half a dozen other US propaganda projects across the globe”.

In addition, “The Interpreter is a product of the Atlantic Council committee, who is basically setting our foreign policy right now in Eastern Europe and Russia,” Eliason stated. “They’re an NGO, they work outside the government, and they work with the Ukrainian diaspora. They actually have a signed contract with the diaspora — you can view them signing it.”

The important takeaway from this report is that only 4 months later, in May 2018, Facebook announced a new partnership with the Atlantic Council – the same think tank tied to PropOrNot – which officially claims to provide a forum for international political, business, and intellectual leaders. Facebook said the partnership is aimed at preventing  the social media tool from “being abused during elections.” The press release promoted Facebook’s efforts to fight fake news by using artificial intelligence, as well as working with outside experts and governments.

The Atlantic Council of the United States was established in 1961 to bolster support for international relations. Although not officially connected to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Atlantic Council has spent decades promoting causes and issues which are beneficial to NATO member states. In addition, The Atlantic Council is a member of the Atlantic Treaty Organization, an umbrella organization which “acts as a network facilitator in the Euro-Atlantic and beyond.” The ATA* works similarly to the Atlantic Council, bringing together political leaders, academics, military officials, journalists and diplomats to promote values that are favorable to the NATO member states. Officially, ATA is independent of NATO, but the line between the two is razor thin.

Essentially, the Atlantic Council is a think tank which can offer companies or nation states access to military officials, politicians, journalists, diplomats, etc. to help them develop a plan to implement their strategy or vision. These strategies often involve getting NATO governments or industry insiders to make decisions they might not have made without a visit from the Atlantic Council team. This allows individuals or nations to push forth their ideas under the cover of hiring what appears to be a public relations agency but is actually selling access to high-profile individuals with power to affect public policy. Indeed, everyone from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton to the family of international agent of disorder Zbigniew Brzezinski have spoken at or attended council events.

The list of financial supporters reads like a who’s-who of think tanks and Non-Governmental Organizations. The Atlantic Council receives funding from the Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment, Cato Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Rand Corporation, to name a few. In addition, various members of the Military-Industrial Complex are benefactors of the Atlantic Council, including Huntington Ingalls, the United States’ sole maker of aircraft carriers; Airbus, the plane manufacturer; Lockheed Martin, the shipbuilder and aviation company; and Raytheon, which makes missile systems. All of the companies have contracts with the U.S.

Department of Defense and offer financial support to the Atlantic Council. The Council also receives support from Chevron and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Finally, the Atlantic Council receives direct financial support from the U.S. Departments of the Air Force, Army, Navy and Energy and from the U.S. Mission to NATO.

Is it possible Facebook is acting under the direction of their partners at the Atlantic Council to suppress anti-war, anti-establishment voices three weeks before the U.S. midterm elections? It is absolutely possible and likely.

We should also remember this is not the first time Facebook has deleted accounts which operate outside the mainstream corporate media. In August, Facebook deleted accounts containing “fringe or holistic medicine”, including Just Natural Medicine (1 million followers), Natural Cures Not Medicine (2.3 million followers), and People’s Awakening (3.6 million followers). The same month Facebook and Twitter deleted pages they claimed were connected to Iran and Russia.

This entire ongoing attack of independent media and free thought stemmed from the establishment media’s nonstop coverage of what has become known as fake news. Anyone and everyone who has countered the establishment narrative of endless war, a growing surveillance and police state, and an allegedly growing divide in American politics, has been labeled a Russian bot, accomplice, or useful idiot. One way or another, the message is clear: stand against the establishment and you will be labeled an enemy of the state.

By spreading the fake news meme the elitists behind the American power centers are able to attack  growing independent media icons by painting them as propagators of false Russian propaganda. The media is also using this fake news meme and Russian prop to accuse Trump of being an illegitimate president, further playing into the “Trump is an outsider” narrative. All of this is being done with the goal of keeping the domestic front as divided as possible while selling the brainwashed masses into another war. Coincidentally, all of this non-sense is taking place while the corporate media spreads lies about Syria and Russia.

It’s more important than ever to remain level headed and use critical thinking. It’s never been more important to follow the pages that were purged directly from their websites. See the full list below and decide which outlets you want to continue to support in the information war.

List of pages taken down on Thursday October 11, 2018:

The Free Thought Project – 3.1 million fans
The Anti-Media – 2.1 million fans
Police the Police – 1.9 million fans
Cop Block – 1.7 million fans
Filming Cops – 1.4 million fans
Rachel Blevins – 69,000 fans
V is For Voluntary – 160,000 fans
End the War on Drugs – 460,000 fans
Mass Report – 500,000 fans
Get Involved, You Live Here – 360,000 fans
Press for Truth – 350,000 fans
Political Junkie News Media – 300,000 fans
Murica Today – 180,000 fans
Choice & Truth – 2.9 million fans
You won’t see this on TV – 172,000 fans
Modern Slavery Hilarious Vines – 129,000 fans
Fuck the Government – 168,000 fans
Punk Rock Libertarians – 190,000 fans
Reverb Press – 700,000 fans
Nation In Distress – 3.2 million fans
Free Your Mind Conference – 75,000 fans
Right Wing News – 3.6 million fans
Reasonable People United
Psychologic Anarchist
Policing the Police
Cop Logic
Legalizing Cannabis
Hemp
End the Drug War
Anonymous News

By Derrick Broze / Republished with permission / Conscious Resistance / Report a typo

* ATA zou in dit geval moeten staan voor Atlantic Treaty Association, vrees dat hier een spelfout werd gemaakt, ATA werkt vanuit Roemenië en is een organisatie die VS propaganda steunt, echter gezien niet één verdere verwijzing, vraag ik me af of deze organisatie wordt bedoeld.

Zie ook:
'Robert Epstein: Google en Facebook corrumperen de politiek en manipuleren de presidentsverkiezingen' 

'Facebook staat valse informatie toe tijdens de (voor-) verkiezingen van het presidentschap in de VS'

'Facebook gebruikte 'fake news' beschuldiging om de aandacht voor schandalen af te leiden'

'New York Times: eerste Israëlische inval in Gazastrook sinds 2014 >> fake news!'

'Noord-Koreaans 'bedrog met nucleaire deal' is fake news o.a. gebracht door de New York Times'

''Fake News' misbruikt door dictaturen en de reguliere (massa-) media'

'Russiagate sprookje ondermijnt VS democratie en de midterm verkiezingen'

'Bolsonaro, de fascistische nieuwe president van Brazilië, werd volgens Avaaz en fake news brengers als de NYT gekozen door manipulatie via WhatsApp'

'Twitter weert waarheid: Paul Craig Roberts in de ban, Roberts >> de grote criticus van de illegale oorlogen die de VS voert'

'Facebooks zuivering van de alternatieve (nieuws) media staat nog in de kinderschoenen'

'Politico rapport bevestigt: Russiagate is een hoax'

'The US military’s vision for state censorship'

'Israël en VS werken samen in tegenwerken van critici op beleid t.a.v. Palestijnen'

'Facebook censureert de waarheid over Columbus en de verovering van de Amerika's.......'

'Why the Coordinated Alternative Media Purge Should Terrify Everyone' (Tyler Durden op Zero Hedge)

'First They Came for Alex Jones — We Told You We Were Next — We Were' (Matt Agorist op The Free Thought Project)

'Facebook en Twitter verwijderen nu volledige accounts.........'

'9/11 forum geblokkeerd, de waarheid mag niet gezegd worden........'

'CNN, de grote brenger van 'fake news!!!''

'Facebook (en Twitter) onderdrukt meningsvorming door het verwijderen van (echt) onafhankelijke media'

'Wie het nieuws controleert, controleert de wereld......'

'Facebook en Twitter verwijderen de eerlijke journalistiek en oprechte opinie >> censuur.....'

Facebook verlaat 'tranding news' voor 'brekend nieuws' van 80 reguliere mediaorganen, ofwel nog meer 'fake news.....''

'Facebook komt met nieuwsshows van betrouwbare media als CNN en Fox News.... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Censuur op het internet met vliegende start in de VS, 'het land van het vrije woord....''

'Facebook en NAVO werken samen in censuur op niet welgevallig nieuws......'

'Facebook helpt Saoedi-Arabië: doodstraf door onthoofding van vrouw die het waagde kritiek te uiten.....'

'Aanval op alternatieve media 'succesvol': meer en meer sites worden van het net geweerd.........'

'ThinkProgress eiste censuur van Facebook en werd inderdaad gecensureerd.... ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'VS staatscensuur op Facebook (ook in de EU)'

'Facebook stelt perstituee van New York Times aan als censuur-agent...... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Het echte Facebook schandaal: manipulatie van de gebruikers en gratis diensten voor eertijds presidentskandidaat Obama.......'

'Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook doneerde aan de politici die hem in de VS aan de tand voelden >> in het EU parlement maakte hij gebruik van megalomane EU politici.....'

'Facebook wil samen met door Saoedi-Arabië gesubsidieerde denktank censureren.... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Media Too Busy Defending John McCain to Report the News That Actually Affects You' Onder andere aandacht voor PRISM.

'Westerse massa misleiding in aanloop naar WOIII......'

'VS gebruikt sociale media om 'fake comment' te verspreiden en de bevolking te hersenspoelen met leugens, ofwel 'fake news....''

'Eis een nee tegen censuur op het internet!' 

'Facebook e.a. hebben lak aan AVG (GDPR), misbruik persoonsgegevens gaat gewoon door.......'

'Jeremy Corbyn wordt gedemoniseerd als antisemiet.......'

'VS gebruikt sociale media om 'fake comment' te verspreiden en de bevolking te hersenspoelen met leugens, ofwel 'fake news....''

'Facebook: verrijking van oliemaatschappijen en andere grote bedrijven, plus wereldwijde corruptie.......'

'Rusland krijgt alweer de schuld van hacken, nu van oplichters Symantec en Facebook....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

Facebook Purges Independent Media for “Political Disinformation”

Facebook Blocks Links to Free Speech Competitor ‘Minds’

'Fake News' hysterie willens en wetens gelanceerd om sociale media tot zwijgen te brengen, Rusland te demoniseren en daarmee de waarheid te verbergen........

'Wat je niet verteld wordt over fake news en Russische propaganda', zo luidt de titel boven een artikel van Clive Murphy op de 'The Mind Unleashed'.

In dit artikel o.a. aandacht voor journalist Sharyl Attkisson, die zich afvroeg of 'fake news' (nepnieuws in de labels direct onder dit bericht) echt is, of zelf een gefabriceerde term is. Ofwel of 'fake news' een vehikel is waarmee men terechte kritiek op de berichtgeving van de reguliere (massa-) media en het brengen van artikelen 'met een iets andere kijk op de waarheid' (ofwel veelal waarachtig nieuws), als niet ter zake doend en als onzin afschildert......

Zoals de regelmatige lezer van dit blog weet, ben ik overtuigd van het laatste: de term 'fake news' is verzonnen om sociale media, die de waarheid blootleggen, de mond te snoeren......

Lees en oordeel zelf:

What You’re Not Being Told About Fake News and Russian Propaganda

February 19, 2018 at 7:03 am

Written by The Mind Unleashed

(TMU) — “Is ‘fake news’ real?” asked investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson during a Tedx talk this month — posing the paradoxical question in the context of its explosion in popularity during the 2016 presidential election — or is the term, fake news, itself, a fabrication?

In its absurd extreme, identifiably fake news appears on supermarket shelves as tabloid magazines, in ‘reports’ on human births of alien hybrid babies and other blatant fabrications; while its more pernicious iteration, issued by traditional pillars of journalism — such as the New York Times and Washington Post, among many others — manifests in reports citing unsubstantiated sources and unnamed ‘officials,’ and often favors corporate sponsors as well as the political establishment.

Fake news isn’t new to the media landscape, in other words, but the catchphrase, as a descriptor, is.

Thus, what if fake news — peddled to the public as a pressing problem in need of solution — is itself a deception, intentionally constructed to silence legitimate critique, opposing viewpoints, and dissent?

Attkisson, who surmised the abrupt entrée of an artificial problem must have had assistance, investigated the origins of the phrase, ‘fake news,’ and its employment as accusation and insinuation, whether or not accompanied by substantiating evidence. And she was frighteningly on point.

“What if the whole anti-fake news campaign was an effort on somebody’s part to keep us from seeing or believing certain websites and stories by controversializing them or labeling them as fake news?” the seasoned journalist and winner of the Edward R. Murrow award for investigative reporting asks.

Weighing the evidence, timeline, and money trail Attkisson discovered — coupled with the resulting heavy-handed crackdown on social media and video-sharing platforms, as well as by search engines and advertisers, on the fictitious false information crisis — not only does it seem likely the term was premeditated and unleashed as a propaganda device, but as a loaded weapon inherently threatening to the future of the free press as protectively enshrined in the First Amendment.

With decades of experience, Attkisson’s hunch — that the specific term ‘fake news’ did not spread like acrid wildfire of its own volition — found factual corroboration.

In mid-September 2016, the nonprofit group, First Draft — funded in part, according to an archive of the site, by grants from the “John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation” — announced its mission “to tackle malicious hoaxes and fake news reports.”

“First Draft — a project of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government — uses research-based methods to fight mis- and disinformation online. Additionally, it provides practical and ethical guidance in how to find, verify and publish content sourced from the social web,” the site’s About section states.

“The goal was supposedly to separate wheat from chaff,” Attkisson explains, “to prevent unproven conspiracy talk from figuring prominently in internet searches. To relegate today’s version of the alien baby story to a special internet oblivion.”

However innocuous-sounding that agenda, just one month passed before First Draft’s battle against fake news found a megaphone in the president, as Obama abruptly “insisted in a speech that he too thought somebody needed to step in and curate information of this wild, wild west media environment,” she notes.

But there hadn’t been a ruckus, much less a few lone voices, griping about fake news as an issue of any import — or even complaining, at all.

“Nobody in the public had been clamoring for any such thing,” Attkisson continues, “yet, suddenly, the topic of fake news dominates headlines on a daily basis. It’s as if the media had been given its marching orders.

“Fake news, they insisted, was an imminent threat to American Democracy.”

Aware “few themes arise” in the mass media environment “organically,” the seasoned investigator followed the money to First Draft’s funders — to discern which interested parties might be backing the rally against fake news. Google, in fact, financed the group “around the start of the election cycle” — Google, whose parent company Alphabet’s CEO Eric Schmidt both acted as adviser and multi-million-dollar donor to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Mirroring Obama’s lament, Clinton soon championed quashing fake news as a priority — and her “surrogate, David Brock of Media Matters, privately told donors he was the one who convinced Facebook to join the effort,” she adds.

“I’m not the only one who thought that the whole thing smacked of the roll-out of a propaganda campaign.”

Indeed, the nascent fake news allegation almost exclusively centered around conservative-leaning outlets, journalists, and articles perceived as favoring then-candidate Trump — and repeatedly alongside allegations those media entities were acting directly, indirectly, or haplessly at the behest of the Russian government — while the majority of the mud-slinging was levied without proof or the flimsiest of supporting evidence.

To wit, a succession of pieces published by mass media dispensed with the indispensable journalistic protocols of source- and fact-checking — then shied away from accepting responsibility for the incendiary and damaging claims once a furious backlash ensued.

Although Attkisson did not mention them specifically in the roughly ten-minute Tedx talk at the University of Nevada, two lists published at the height of the Fake News Scare — both of which were either republished or alluded and linked to by multiple corporate outlets — came into public purview under highly suspect circumstances, each lending albeit indirect credence to the hypothesis a propaganda crusade was underway.

On November 13, 2016, Merrimack College associate professor Melissa Zimdars out of the blue made public a Google document entitled, “False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical ‘News’ Sources,” she later described as essentially a worksheet intended for colleagues and students to offer one another tips for avoiding disseminating fake news.

“So … I posted it to Facebook to my friends, you know, ‘Hey, media and communication people, if you think of other examples you come across,’” she explained of the list’s creation to USA Today College in an interview, “and so many of them sent me Facebook messages or comments and emails and I looked through them or through some of the people sent me blogs or other sources.”

Admittedly, without vetting whether or not each (or even a few) of the sites conjured from that Facebook post deserved a place on the inflammatory list, Zimdars committed the precise journalistic fraud putatively motivating its formation in the first place — as did the Los Angeles Times, whose piece,

“Want to keep fake news out of your newsfeed? College professor creates list of sites to avoid,” let loose the unverified, unchecked, and unauthenticated aggregation, with its purely subjective guidelines, onto a populace stirred to frenzy over fake news, to expectedly viral results.

Critics and listees — many of which cogently included established if smaller conservative and pro-Trump outlets, as well as those covering the deluge of corruption allegations spawned from a series of leaks against then-candidate Clinton, John Podesta, and the Democratic National Committee — lambasted Zimdars, the Times, and other propagators for failing the integrity litmus test. Slapped with requests for removal and a firestorm of fury, Zimdars temporarily revoked public access to the contentious list with vows to edit and update information as appropriate, and authored an editorial defense, appearing in the Post on November 18, titled, “My ‘fake news list’ went viral. But made-up stories are only part of the problem.”

Despite the mayhem and arguable damage it caused to myriad legitimate sources listed among the obvious disinformation outlets, Zimdars’ list is once again open to the public — on Google Docs.

After having established itself as a defender of the associate professor’s worksheet, the Washington Post took the L.A. Times’ lead, issuing an article on November 24 almost wholly pertaining to a list it failed to embed or even link — only the name of the problematic organization, PropOrNot, provided clues for readers dedicated enough to search on their own. And they did in droves.

But the Post’s reckless foray into tabloidesque journalism — perhaps wary of negative perception beginning to foment against the anti-fake news brigade — crossed several lines demarcating standards of journalism; and weaved another narrative of equally dubious stature into the already unraveling anti-disinformation war: Russia.

“Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,” the outlet proclaimed in the title for the article — whose un-accompanying blacklist pegged hundreds of independent, conservative, pro-Bernie Sanders, pro-Trump, and even left-leaning and award-winning sites as suddenly verboten due to direct or indirect Russian influence, or for acting as Russia’s “useful idiots” — all while vocally preserving the anonymity of the “four sets of researchers” responsible. Among them, PropOrNot.

“The flood of ‘fake news’ this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation,” the piece’s lede contends.

But, devoid named sources to question, transparency of methodologies, nor any other potentially mitigating factors which would have allowed independent verification contained in the original article, outrage this time included the Post’s competition.

In fact, several organizations listed as ‘allies’ by PropOrNot immediately disavowed the claim. Eliot Higgins of research-focused Bellingcat, one of several entities named as such, tweeted that prior to the Post’s article, he had never heard of PropOrNot — incidentally indicating a lack of contact by reporters from the media organization — and, further, he “never gave permission to them to call Bellingcat ‘allies.’”

Fortune’s Mathew Ingram penned an incredulous response, entitled, “No, Russian Agents Are Not

Behind Every Piece of Fake News You See.” Effectively destroying every facet of the Post’s anathema piece, Ingram points out there is “also little data available on the PropOrNot report, which describes a network of 200 sites who it says are ‘routine peddlers of Russian propaganda,’ which have what it calls a ‘combined audience of 15 million Americans.’ How is that audience measured? We don’t know. Stories promoted by this network were shared 213 million times, it says. How do we know this? That’s unclear.”

Ultimately forced into addressing the resulting chaos, the Washington Post article eventually bore a note from the editor — not a retraction — asserting [with emphasis added],

“The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.”

To reiterate, the Post did not retract the article abruptly conflating fake news with Russian propaganda — regardless the brazen if planned distancing of itself from the content therein — and has never divulged its justification for publishing such threadbare work, nor for allowing the empty allegations to remain available for the world to read online in perpetuity.

On January 8, 2017, amid continued outrage over specious and vapid fake news and Russian propaganda accusations, Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan declared the entirety of the outlet’s relentless anti-fake news jihad null, titling an article, “It’s time to retire the tainted term ‘fake news,’” positing the term’s mere monthslong duration may have served a purpose at its advent, but “its meaning already is lost.”

Attkisson notably emphasizes, however, the term never imparted a steel definition nor universally agreed-upon guidelines delineating precisely what it constitutes. That ambiguity disputably explains placing the term front and center in a propaganda campaign — as it is sharply suggested by Attkisson’s funding investigation of First Draft with bulk of the aforementioned body of evidence — for doubt before persuasion wields power.

For its irresponsible reporting of the unsubstantiated blacklist, false claims Russia had hacked into Vermont’s power grid, and all-out push to — for all intents and purposes — vilify or discredit opposing but legitimate viewpoints, the Washington Post and its controversial owner Jeff Bezos, also CEO of Amazon, garnered praise from failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who professed without a hint of irony to an audience May 31, 2017, at the annual Code Conference, as quoted by CNBC,

“I think Jeff Bezos saved The Washington Post. But newspapers, like the Post, the Journal, the Times, others — still drive news. … It was a very good use of his financial resources. Because now we have a very good newspaper again operating in Washington, and driving news elsewhere.”

All bold tit-for-tat back-patting aside, Clinton’s adoration for an ostensive news organization, which  displayed an egregious lack of journalistic standards on several occasions might be only telling, were the audacious effort to mute dissenting and critical voices — who had reported factually on damning evidence of layers of corruption plaguing the former secretary of state’s campaign, officials, and party as divulged by Wikileaks — not also tandemly gaining momentum.

It has been theorized the work of journalists not employed by traditional, corporate mass media organizations had — in wading through the vitriol of election season to report the avalanche of information dumped in leaks and pivotal to outcome, yet ignored by mass media — assisted in stoking rage against the establishment and was responsible for the concurrent astronomical success of the Sanders campaign, to the detriment and consternation of Clinton.

Whether or not that hypothesis holds weight, that responsible reporting picked up mainstream’s slack, as the big-name outlets instead trained their audiences’ attentions on questioning Wikileaks, whistleblowers, and similar diversions. In short, the widely-varied body of independent media became essential for the dissemination of accurate information. But that vitality, under the vacuous premise of combating fake news, is being strangled by oppressive social media algorithms, yanked advertising and sponsor dollars, and other tactics perhaps comprising the truer imminent threat to vestiges of democracy: censorship, through suppression and omission, of a free press.

This debilitating loss — the neutering of media still upholding its duty to question government and report facts for their own sake — to a concerted effort to solve the manufactured fake news problem would be irrevocable tragedy.

Attkisson — a noted dissenting voice, critical of lapdog media, herself — stopped short of a definitive conclusion regarding a coordinated propaganda campaign, warning,

“What you need to remember is that when interests are working this hard to shape your opinion, their true goal might just be to add another layer between you and the truth.”

By Clive Murphy / Republished with permission / The Mind Unleashed / Report a typo

=================================

Zie ook: 'VS begint 'troll farm', alsof Hollywood en de massamedia al niet genoeg VS propaganda maken..........'

       en: 'Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump' (artikel in Nederlands)

        en: 'BBC World Service en BNR met 'fake news' over Ghouta........'

        en: 'Syrische nonnen spreken zich uit tegen de oorlogspropaganda van westerse mogendheden en de reguliere westerse (massa-) media'

        en: 'Massamedia VS vergeven van CIA 'veteranen', alsof die media nog niet genoeg 'fake news' ofwel leugens brengen........'

       en: 'Russiagate, of: hoe de media u belazeren met verhalen over Russische bemoeienis met de VS presidentsverkiezingen........' 

       en: 'Volkskrant en Nieuwsuur Fake News over 'Russische hacks.....''

       en: 'Fake News van CNN: 'American Sniper gedood in Syrie....' ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

      en: 'BBC publieksmanipulatie via het nieuws: Rusland steunt de slechteriken......' (met daaronder meerdere links naar BBC propaganda berichten, dan wel berichten over die propaganda)

       en: 'FBI, de spin in het Russiagate web........'

       en: 'Anti-Russische-Putin propaganda op Radio1, ofwel Godfroid uit de bocht met 10 km/u........'

       en: 'BBC gaat met stafleden scholen af in de strijd tegen 'fake news...' ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

       en: 'Trump administratie manipuleert de bevolking middels 'fake news' richting oorlog met Iran.................'

       en: 'RT America één van de eerste slachtoffers in een heksenjacht op westerse alternatieve media en nadenkend links......'

       en: 'Ollongren gesteund door Thomas Boesgaard (AD), 'Rusland verpakt het nepnieuws gekoppeld aan echt nieuws.....' Oei!!' (ja ook deze D66 plork gaat plat op de bek!)

       en: 'Syrië: Vlaamse pater roept op niet langer de westerse anti-Syrië propaganda te geloven!'

       en: 'Kajsa Ollongren (D66 vicepremier): Nederland staat in het vizier van Russische inlichtingendiensten....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

       en: 'Ollongren (D66 minister) schiet een levensgrote bok met fake news show'

       en: ''Russiagate' een verhaal van a t/m z westers 'fake news.....''

       en: 'Russiagate, of: hoe de media u belazeren met verhalen over Russische bemoeienis met de VS presidentsverkiezingen........' 

       en: ''Russiagate' een complot van CIA, FBI, Hillary Clinton en het DNC...........'

       en: 'Russische 'hacks' door deskundigen nogmaals als fake news doorgeprikt >> Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence'

       en: 'Publicly Available Evidence Doesn’t Support Russian Gov Hacking of 2016 Election'

       en: 'MSM Create #Fakenews Storm As Rebel Aleppo Vanishes'

       en: ''BBC Propaganda' 'Ken Loach just proved beyond doubt that the BBC is brainwashing the British public'' [VIDEO] 

      en: 'Fallujah en Aleppo, twee belegerde steden, een opvallend verschil in berichtgeving door de reguliere media.........'

       en: 'Extracting Aleppo from the Propaganda: Interviewwith Eva Bartlett, an independent western journalists covering the horrific conflict in Syria'. (van Information Clearing House, inclusief mogelijkheid tot vertaling)

      en: 'CIA Chief Admits the Agency’s Role in the Syrian War' (de bloedige rol wel te verstaan.....) (een artikel met mogelijkheid tot vertaling)

        en: 'Former UK Ambassador to Syria Debunks Aleppo Propaganda' (met mogelijkheid tot vertaling

       en: 'Aleppo, de propagandaslag o.a. middels grove leugens in de reguliere westerse media en politiek...........'

    en: 'Iraakse strijdmacht gaf grif toe dat tot hun orders voor West-Mosul ook het vermoorden van vrouwen en kinderen behoorde........'

       en: 'Raqqa >> BBC World Service en 'onafhankelijke journalistiek': 'Er zijn veel burgers omgekomen bij de strijd in de straten in Raqqa........''

      en: 'Massamedium CBS (VS) tegen reality check. Logisch wel, gezien de hoeveelheid fake news op die zender.....'

    en: 'SOHR, het orgaan dat door de reguliere media wordt aangehaald i.z. Syrië, is gevestigd in Coventry'

     en: 'De Russiagate samenzweringstheorie dient de machthebbers.........' 

Mijn excuus voor de belabberde weergave.