Liberals Morph from Peaceniks to Warhawks on Government Intelligence Agencies
By Stephen J. Sniegoski • Unz Review • January 28, 2017
During the latter decades of the Cold War with Soviet Russia, the charge of being “unpatriotic” or “anti-American” caused American liberals (excluding those who had to rely on the votes of regular Americans to hold political office) to burst into spasms of ridicule and howls of “Red-baiting,” “war-mongering,” “witch-hunting,” and “fascism.” Sophisticated folks, liberals implied, would never even deign to think of doing anything so gauche as to automatically support their country in its fight against what they sarcastically called the “Red Menace.” America’s very possession of nuclear weapons was considered a danger to all humanity and many liberals flirted with the idea of U.S. unilateral nuclear disarmament. And the slogan of the Democratic candidate for president in 1972, George McGovern, was “Come Home, America” — which meant U.S. military retrenchment that mainstream liberals now lambast as “isolationism.”
During this not-too-long-ago era (at least, it was not too long ago for me, who is too rapidly approaching the biblically allotted three-score and ten), the CIA and the FBI were considered the bête noire in this liberal Weltanschauung. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, with his penchant for spying on innocent people, was regarded as thoroughly vicious. The CIA was notorious for being involved in the overthrow of nice democratic governments (at least, that is how liberals viewed them) in such countries as Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, and spying on leftist critics in the United States. The villainous nature of the CIA and FBI was a theme in many Hollywood movies of the era.[1]
Now let’s return to the present and the liberal hysteria over purported Russian interference with the U.S. presidential election. The most bandied about charge involves “hacking” the DNC and Podesta emails and providing these to WikiLeaks to denigrate Hillary Clinton, thus preventing her from becoming president. The support for this claim, at least as it has been presented to the America public, rests only on assertions made by the U.S. Intelligence Community, and this dearth of proof was continued in the most recent report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” released to the public on January 6. The report represents the unclassified findings of the intelligence community’s investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. In the words of the report: “Thus, while the conclusions in the report are all reflected in the classified assessment, the declassified report does not and cannot include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence and sources and methods.”[2]
Even some believers, especially those who might know something about cyber technology and the capabilities of America’s intelligence agencies, evinced some concern about the report’s lack of substantiating evidence. For example, Wired, a high-tech webzine that usually follows the current progressive line, published an article titled “Feds’ Damning Report on Russian Election Hack Won’t Convince Skeptics,” in which Robert Graham, an analyst for the cybersecurity firm Erratasec, was quoted as saying: “But knowing what data they [U.S. intelligence agencies] probably have, they could have given us more details. And that really pisses me off.”[3] The thrust of the article is that the lack of substantial proof fails to convince skeptics, not that the intelligence report’s claims could be wrong. This position is rather understandable since skepticism about traditional beliefs such as Christianity is highly lauded by progressives, but skepticism is not allowed to cast doubt on the progressive narrative of the day.
President Obama went somewhat further in his attack on non-believers. In an interview on ABC News on January 6, Obama insinuated, and, in some cases, openly stated that people who express skepticism about the findings and conclusions drawn by the U.S. Intelligence Community are not on America’s “team” and are siding with Putin; in fact, he maintains that they “love” Putin. In short, Obama has come to assume that the American people must not question the sanctity of the U.S. “Intelligence Community.” To do otherwise signifies not merely a lack of patriotism but actual love for America’s alleged number one adversary—Vladimir Putin. “One of the things that I’ve urged the president-elect to do is to develop a strong working relationship with the intelligence community,” Obama stated. “We have to remind ourselves we’re on the same team. Vladimir Putin’s not on our team.” Obama warned that “If we get to a point where people in this country feel more affinity with a leader who is an adversary and view the United States and our way of life as a threat to him, then we’re gonna have bigger problems than just cyber hacking.” It appears to Obama that some politicians and reporters “seem to have more confidence in Vladimir Putin than fellow Americans because those fellow Americans are Democrats.” And he solemnly pontificated: “That cannot be.”[4]
Obama continued with this rather dystopian view: “[I]n this new information age, it is possible for misinformation, for cyber hacking and so forth to have an impact on our open societies, our open systems, to insinuate themselves into our democratic practices in ways that I think are accelerating.” Although “cyber hacking” existed even before Obama entered the White House and “misinformation,” according to the Bible, existed even when Adam and Eve resided in the Garden of Eden, Obama implies that he only now became aware of this possibility.[5]
Now the term “open society” was popularized (at least in intellectual circles) by the philosopher Karl Popper.”[6] and its most prominent proponent today is billionaire George Soros (a student of Popper’s). Soros’ Open Society Institute has as its goal spreading the “open society” world-wide. An open society, as Popper presented it, would be open to all types of ideas with people being free to make their own decisions. Soros, in contrast, expressed a view similar to that of Obama, contending that “Popper failed to recognize that in democratic politics, gathering public support takes precedence over the pursuit of truth. In other areas, such as science and industry, the impulse to impose one’s views on the world encounters the resistance of external reality. But in politics the electorate’s perception of reality can be easily manipulated. As a result, political discourse, even in democratic societies, does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of reality.”[7] The implication is that gatekeepers are needed to protect “truth.” As one critic puts it: “the Open Society Institute embodies Popper’s idea of an open society the way the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) embodied democracy.”[8]
Moving away from the focus on hacking, the recent ODNI report describes the Russian effort to affect the US election as “multifaceted” and devotes almost half of the report to propaganda (despite the negative connotation, propaganda can be true) spread by Russia, especially by its major government-sponsored television network for foreign countries, RT.
Moreover, the intelligence report interprets the alleged Russian effort to aid Trump in the election as only one part of a broader goal to combat the United States’ “liberal democratic order,” stating: “Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.”[9] Moreover, the report considers any type of criticism of the United States as a “desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order.” And the report deals with aspects of this broader goal that are entirely unrelated to any Russian effort to aid Trump. This is of the utmost importance since the media narrative focuses on the idea that Russia aided Trump in the 2016 election but, for proof, relies on a report that deals with a much broader subject. That Russian media provides a negative view of America does not mean that this propaganda played a role in making Trump president. And it is not only the mainstream media but even the leaders of the intelligence community who blur this distinction.
Illustrating the point made above about the report’s concern with Russia’s alleged broader goal is its devotion of considerable space to Russian news stories casting the United States government and economic system in a negative light, but having nothing to do with Trump or the 2016 election. For example, the report observed that “RT aired a documentary about the Occupy Wall Street movement on 1, 2, and 4 November [2016]. RT framed the movement as a fight against ‘the ruling class’ and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations. RT advertising for the documentary featured Occupy movement calls to ‘take back’ the government. The documentary claimed that the US system cannot be changed democratically, but only through ‘revolution.’”[10] Although this report disparages the existing economic system in the United States, it could hardly be interpreted as encouraging anyone to vote for billionaire Donald Trump with his proposed agenda that included lower tax rates—especially the corporate tax rate–and a reduction in economic regulation that liberals and Democrats claimed helped only the wealthy.
The study also points out that “RT runs anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health. This is likely reflective of the Russian Government’s concern about the impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom’s profitability.”[11] That Russia’s alleged favored candidate Trump was pro-fracking whereas Hillary straddled the issue would mean that the RT anti-fracking program could militate against supporting Trump.
The report also maintains that “RT’s reports often characterize the United States as a ‘surveillance state’ and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use.”[12] Again, this would not seem to generate support for Trump.
The report refers to articles written in 2012 that deal with the U.S. presidential election that year, which did not involve Trump, and reflects the fact the study covers, as the title states, recent U.S. elections, not just the 2016 election. For example, “In the runup to the 2012 US presidential election in November, English-language channel RT America . . . intensified its usually critical coverage of the United States. The channel portrayed the US electoral process as undemocratic and featured calls by US protesters for the public to rise up and ‘take this government back.’”[13]
Still dealing with the 2012 election, the intelligence report stated: “From August to November 2012, RT ran numerous reports on alleged US election fraud and voting machine vulnerabilities, contending that US election results cannot be trusted and do not reflect the popular will.”[14] Oddly, this is almost identical to what the mainstream media has been saying since Trump won the election.
But what about the “fake news” — fictitious articles deliberately fabricated to deceive–that the mainstream media claimed helped Trump, largely by harming Clinton? For example, a Washington Post article, dated November 24, 2016, was titled: “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.”[15] CNN, in its article, “The reality behind Russia’s fake news,” dated December 2, made similar claims, relying heavily on the aforementioned Washington Post article. [16]
(After extensive criticism including legal threats from the sites the Washington Post described as Russian propaganda outlets, the Post added its lengthy editor’s note distancing itself from the anonymous group that provided the key claims of Russian “fake news” saying that the Post would not vouch for its validity.) [17]
Even Director of National Intelligence James Clapper referred to the Russians making use of “fake news” during the election. In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on “Foreign Cyber Threats to the United States” on January 5. 2017, Senator Jack Reed (Democrat, Rhode Island) asked Clapper about media reports that held that Russia was engaged in the creation of “fake news.” Clapper responded: “This was a multifaceted campaign. So, the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news.”[18] When the January 6 ODNI report was released, NBC News even claimed that it mentioned “a series of fake news stories damaging to Clinton, many of which got their start with Russian-backed outlets.” [19]
Considering the many references to “fake news,” even by the Director of National Intelligence, it is astonishing that the January 6 report did not cite any examples of this alleged phenomenon—or even mention it. What stands out is the absence of the term “fake news.” Did “fake news” itself turn out to be “fake news”? Whatever the case, the mainstream media did not seem to notice the absence of “fake news” from the report.
While the Intelligence Community did not make any mention of “fake news” in its report, it did make general claims—assessments by the intelligence community — that held that Russia favored Trump over Hillary Clinton. For example: “We assess the influence campaign aspired to help President-elect Trump’s chances of victory when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to the President-elect.”[20] The report also states: “RT’s coverage of Secretary Clinton throughout the US presidential campaign was consistently negative and focused on her leaked e-mails and accused her of corruption, poor physical and mental health, and ties to Islamic extremism. Some Russian officials echoed Russian lines for the influence campaign that Secretary Clinton’s election could lead to a war between the United States and Russia.”[21] None of these political views differed from what the anti-Clinton media in the U.S. expressed, so it is not apparent how Russia would add any credibility to these claims. It might even have tended to detract from them, which seems to be the case after the election. And since Russian officials did make the aforementioned claim about war, the mention of it does not seem to reflect any type of bias.
In contrast to the Russian depiction of Clinton, the intelligence report stated that Russian government media outlets RT and Sputnik “consistently cast President-elect Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional US media outlets that they claimed were subservient to a corrupt political establishment.”[22] This view was also commonly expressed by the more conservative media in the U.S., even that media which was not supportive of Trump.
RT put forth an extensive refutation of the intelligence report’s claims in an article entitled, “All the ways RT ‘influenced’ American politics ‒ it’s not what the ODNI thinks,” dated January7.[23] In many cases, RT made an effort to show that it also presented news stories that were contrary to those that the report cited—in essence, that its reporting was balanced while the intelligence report “cherry picked” RT stories to fit its narrative. It should be noted that no supporter of the Intelligence Community’s findings, from either the U.S. Intelligence Community itself or the private media, made the effort to rebut RT’s detailed criticism of the report.
It would seem to be self-evident that Russian media would act to promote Russian interests—although information used to achieve this goal might be true–just as US government-sponsored international media is intended to promote the interests of the United States. However, while the intelligence report holds that the Russian media was biased in favor of Trump, it fails to prove that bias. The report, for example, did not come up with any obvious erroneous information, such as the U.S. media’s account of the alleged killing of the incubator babies during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990; the WMD story in the run-up to the 2003 war on Iraq; and the recent story about the Russians hacking the Vermont power grid.
The report could have relied upon a statistical analysis of the Russian media’s election reporting. Numerous efforts have been made in the United States to use statistics and computer analysis in assessing media bias. Analyses that stand out tend to conclude that the U.S. media have a liberal bias. They include: The News Twisters (1976) by Edith Efron; T he Media Elite (1986) by Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter; Press Bias and Politics: How the Media Frame Controversial Issues (2002) by Jim A. Kuypers; and Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, (2012) by Tim Groseclose. Many statisticians have found fault with these studies despite their often extensive use of statistical data and comparisons among various media outlets. If this extensive information can be rejected, how could one accept the intelligence report’s claims of Russian media bias where no statistical proof or even standards for determining bias exist? The intelligence report, indeed, not only eschews statistical analysis for its bias claims, but acknowledges that it does not even make a comparison between Russian media and U.S. media, stating that “it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.”[24]
Moreover, it is not apparent that the Russian media would affect how any significant number of Americans vote. And the report explicitly states: “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.”[25] With all the uproar about Russian meddling in the US election, and allegations by prominent figures that Trump is not a legitimate president, it would be expected that the report would try to determine if this alleged meddling had any effect on the election’s outcome.
The study does hint that Russian media might have had some effect on voting by using graphs that show it is competitive with leading international media—Al Jazeera English, BBC World, CNN/CNN International. The Economist, however, provides an effective statistical refutation of this claim: “In Twitter and Facebook, RT’s reach is narrower than that of other news networks . . . . Its biggest claim to dominance is on YouTube, where it bills itself as the ‘most watched news network’ on the platform. As the intelligence report fretfully notes, RT videos get 1m views a day, far surpassing other outlets. But this is mostly down to [due to] the network’s practice of buying the rights to sensational footage, for instance of Japan’s 2011 tsunami, and repackaging it with the company logo.”[26] A September 2015 article in The Daily Beast, “Putin’s Propaganda TV Lies about Its Popularity,” states: “As of 2015, RT is still largely absent from cable news rankings.”[27] Moreover, RT’s influence would seem to pale to insignificance compared to the totality of American media.
Considering all the information provided by the U.S. Intelligence Community, it would appear that the entire issue of the alleged Russian meddling in the election turns out to be, to quote the Bard, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
[1] Maria Lauino, “Hollywood Presents: Government as Villain,” New York Times, February 12, 1995, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/12/movies/film-hollywood-presents-government-as-villain.html?pagewanted=all
[2] “Background to ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections’: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution,” January 6, 2016, p. 1.
[3] Andy Greenberg, “Feds’ Damning Report on Russian Election Hack Won’t Convince Skeptics,” Wired, January 6, 2017, https://www.wired.com/2017/01/feds-damning-report-russian-election-hack-wont-convince-skeptics/
[4] Kevin Liptak, “Obama: ‘Vladimir Putin is not on our team,’” CNN, January 6, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/06/politics/obama-vladimir-putin-is-not-on-our-team/
[5] Liptak.
[6] Noted philosopher Henri Bergson actually introduced the term “open society.”
[7] George Soros, Project Syndicate, November 8, 2007, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/from-karl-popper-to-karl-rove—and-back?barrier=accessreg
[8] Jonathan David Carson, “The Left’s Theft of the Open Society and the Scientific Method,” American Thinker, April 24, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2008/04/the_lefts_theft_of_the_open_so.html
[9] Intelligence Community Assessment, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” p. ii.
[10] Assessing, p.7.
[11] Assessing, p.8.
[12] Assessing, p. 7.
[13] Assessing, p. 6.
[14] Assessing, p. 6.
[15] Craig Timberg, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,” Washington Post, November 24, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_term=.715bb
[16] Jill Dougherty, “The reality behind Russia’s fake news,” CNN, December 2, 2016,http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/02/politics/russia-fake-news-reality/
[17] Glenn Greenwald, “WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived,” The Intercept, January 4, 2017, https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/washpost-is-richly-rewarded-for-false-news-about-russia-threat-while-public-is-deceived/
[18] Alex Griswold, “James Clapper Confirms Russia Was Behind Fake News During 2016 Election,” Mediaite, January 5, 2017, http://www.mediaite.com/tv/james-clapper-confirms-russia-was-behind-fake-news-during-2016-election/
[19] Ken Dilanian, “Report: Putin, Russia Tried to Help Trump By ‘Discrediting’ Clinton,” NBC News, January 6, 2017, http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/report-putin-russia-tried-help-trump-discrediting-clinton-n703981
[20] Assessing, p.2.
[21] Assessing, p. 4.
[22] Assessing, p.4.
[23] RT, “All the ways RT ‘influenced’ American politics ‒ it’s not what the ODNI thinks,” January 7, 2017, https://www.rt.com/usa/372890-odni-rt-influenced-election/
[24] Assessing, p. i.
[25] Assessing, p. i.
[26] RT’s propaganda is far less influential than Westerners fear,” The Economist, January 19, 2017, http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21715031-kremlin-backed-network-inflates-its-viewership-youtube-disaster-videos-rts-propaganda
[27] Katie Zavadski, ‘Putin’s Propaganda TV Its Lies About Popularity,” The Daily Beast, September17, 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/17/putin-s-propaganda-tv-lies-about-ratings.html
US Fact-Checking Institute Sponsored by Soros on War Path Against ‘Fake News’
Sputnik – 26.01.2017
The fake news “hysteria” has recently resulted in a number of initiatives to fight against the so-called misleading information and false statements. The campaign has been launched by such Internet giants, as Facebook and Google.
For instance, Google has permanently blocked 200 publishers which are labelled by the search engine giants as fake news content sites. In its turn, German Facebook tasked the fact-checking Correctiv research center with filtering out fake news in its news feed.
In an interview with Sputnik Germany, experienced freelance journalist Paul Schreyer revealed some surprising facts about fact-checking teams.
According to Schreyer’s research, the fake news campaign was originally born in the US in a journalist school called the Poynter Institute in Florida. The school had been running a so-called International Fact Checking Network for over a year, consisting of journalists working for such major media outlets like AP or ABC.
“The Poynter Institute’s network is indirectly sponsored by the US government via a think tank, but also by the Bill Gates foundation, Google, George Soros and some other foundations. So you see in the background of the campaign against fake news there is a network of very financially strong elites and the government. You should keep in mind that there are not just journalists who are concerned about the reputation of the industry, but also very influential financiers in the background,” the journalist told Sputnik Germany.
In particular, Schreyer found out that the German Correctiv team also receives a lot of money from influential supporters.
“Correctiv has existed since 2014 and is, according to own data, an independent research center. It is funded by the Brost Foundation, a foundation of a well-known journalist, who built the WAZ media group in the post-war period. Correctiv receives about one million euros every year according to official figures, and there are also funds from private sponsors, from the Federal Center for Political Education and some media groups,” Schreyer stated.
The journalist also pointed out that the members of the team have not yet worked out certain criteria which they will use to fact-check the information and define false statements.
Although Correctiv consists of professional journalists, who worked for major German media outlets, like Der Stern und Der Spiegel, exactly this can be a problem during their work. In particular, it is not quite clear what kind of approach they will use to independently and unbiasedly check the content of large media groups with whom they have connections with. According to Schreyer, it is very difficult to define what fake news, actually, is.
“David Schraven [Correctiv team member] repeatedly said that they do not want to assess opinions, but rather check factual statements. This sounds quite reasonable, but when you think about it, you realize that you can’t separate opinions and factual statements so clearly at all. There can be statement in the middle of the two. For example, “Putin jeopardizes the security of Europe.” Is this now an opinion or a factual statement? Can this be checked? What criteria should be used to check it? There you have a grey zone which can very fast fall into the area of the censorship,” the journalist said.
Earlier, it was reported that German Facebook will trial a fake news filtering system for German users of the site, allowing individuals to fact-check and report stories they suspect to be untrue. The users will be able to flag any story that appears in their newsfeed they suspect is fake news.The story will then be dispatched to Correctiv and if the team determines the story to be fake, it will be marked as false and users seeing it in their feeds will be warned about its doubted authenticity. It will also be blocked from being promoted in users’ feeds.
Commenting on the new initiative, Schreyer stated that it sounds to him, like censorship and added that “the whole fake news topic has turned into an incredibly hysterical debate at the moment.”
Facebook representatives, in their turn, stated that by adding additional context to stories deemed fake, it gives people an opportunity to decide for themselves what to believe and what information they share.
See also:
Google Blacklists 200 Publisher Sites to Quell ‘Fake News’
UK University Scientists Consider ‘Vaccine’ Against Fake News
‘Neo-Liberals’ and ‘Fake News’: The West’s Campaign Against Free Speech
Imprisoned journalist threatened with administrative detention, his wife summoned to interrogation
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – January 26, 2017
Imprisoned Palestinian journalist and former long-term hunger striker Mohammed al-Qeeq will be brought before the Ofer military court today, 26 January, and may be ordered to administrative detention without charge or trial. Fayha Shalash, fellow journalist and al-Qeeq’s wife, said that the Israeli military court ordered his arrest extended for 72 hours on Monday, 23 January.
Shalash said to Wattan TV that occupation authorities have not garnered any confessions or charges against al-Qeeq since they seized him on 15 January as he returned from a protest in Bethlehem demanding the release of the detained bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. She emphasized that he will begin a hunger strike if he is ordered again to administrative detention.
Shalash herself was ordered to interrogation by Israeli intelligence on Wednesday, 25 January after al-Qeeq’s family home in al-Khalil and their apartment in Ramallah were raided by occupation forces in pre-dawn attacks ransacking the home and subjecting Shalash to a strip search. Al-Qeeq was transferred yesterday to the Petah Tikva interrogation center.
Al-Qeeq previously engaged in a 94-day hunger strike against his imprisonment without charge or trial, winning his release in May 2016 and drawing international attention to the persecution of Palestinian journalists and the imprisonment of Palestinians without charge or trial under administrative detention.
Google, Facebook purge ‘fake news’ sites
RT | January 25, 2017
Under increased scrutiny for supporting the spread of false and misleading news, Google and Facebook are taking steps to purge networks of several hundred fake news sites.
On Wednesday, Google announced it had reviewed some 550 sites since its policy changes, permanently banning nearly 200 published sites and temporarily cutting off another 140 sites from the company ad dollar source, according to Variety.
Among the typical culprits was a conspiracy blog that appeared as the first item found for the search “who won the popular vote,” which suggested Donald Trump had won the popular vote. Another was a made-up story about President Barack Obama supposedly seeking a third term.
Google regularly weeds out advertisers for false and misleading claims, but the search giant has now booted publishers off its ad network for fake news.
The company responded to criticism that it supported fake news by changing its Adsense policy, prohibiting sites that “misrepresent, misstate, on conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the primary purpose” of the site from using Google ads for monetization.
An annual report of ad violations shows that Google took down 1.7 billion ads for various policy violations in 2016, including 17 million ads for illegal gambling, 5 million payday loans and 80 million misleading or shocking ads.
The company declined to release a list of the banned sites.
Facebook also announced it is overhauling its “trending topics” box, as part of its effort to curb fake news.
Beginning on Wednesday, its software will track only topics that have been covered by a significant number of credible publishers.
“If just one story or post went viral, it wouldn’t make it into the trending as it might previously,” Will Cathcart, a Facebook vice president of product management told the Wall Street Journal. “It really takes a mass of publishers writing about the same topic to make the cut.”
Facebook will take into account how long a publisher has maintained a presence on the social network.
The trending feature appears in a box on the right side of the Facebook page.
The change, however, will do little to affect what is reflected in users’ newsfeeds. In December, Facebook had fact-checking groups flag stories if they were false, which would then be demoted in the news feed.
Another popular social media company, Snapchat, is embracing the fake news challenge. In a redesign rolled out Wednesday, the company will restrict publishers from using images or headlines in Discover that lack editorial value. The Discover channels, which were introduced last summer, are a grid of tiles that are scrollable by users.
Future plans will be an age-gating tool to prevent minors from seeing inappropriate content on the Discover feed.
RT Fending Off Attacks in Fight Without Rules
By Alex GORKA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 25.01.2017
The access of RT (Russia Today), a Russian state-funded media company, to its Facebook page was partially blocked by the social network. The ban would have coincided with President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. The pretext was a copyright complaint about an Associated Press (AP) video stream of Barack Obama’s press conference on RT’s Facebook page on January 18. The ban, initially set to last until January 21, was lifted on January 19. RT has a sizable Facebook presence, with 4.1 million likes.
This is the first time that Facebook has ever blocked the content of any media outlet from appearing on the service. No other news outlet has been punished by Facebook in a manner like this.
The event is part of a broader picture. A few hours after the Facebook ban, RT claimed that some users had complained about not being able to see news from the broadcaster on other social media platforms. It was corrected later. Dataminr, a news-alert service partly owned by Twitter, has terminated its contract with the broadcaster. RT has received a request from YouTube to show that its employees were not among the individuals sanctioned by the US over Ukraine.
RT appears to come under attacks coming from all sides. The journalists and university professors in the United States who have appeared on RT television have been blacklisted. Last October, the National Westminster Bank informed RT that it would no longer have the broadcaster among its clients. The bank provided no explanation for the decision. «They closed our accounts in Britain. All of them. ‘Decision not to be discussed’. Long live freedom of speech!» RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said on her Twitter account.
The US intelligence report on Russia’s alleged hacking issued this January says «RT — as well as Sputnik, another Russian government–funded English-language propaganda outlet — began aggressively producing pro-Trump and anti-Clinton content starting in March 2016. That just so happens to be the exact same time the Russian hacking campaign targeting Democrats began». The authors of the paper affirm that «During the 2016 campaign, RT aired a number of weird, conspiratorial segments — some starring WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange — that cast Clinton as corrupt and funded by ISIS and portrayed the US electoral system as rigged».
The idea to use soft power for political ends has been glorified in the West, becoming part of all foreign policy concepts. Freedom of speech has always been extolled, any attempts to curtail it have been slammed. Now the West is losing the battle to the Russian outlet offering its own opinions and it is ready to go to any length in an effort to reverse the trend, including outright pressure.
RT challenges the West’s hegemonic grip on shaping and controlling the global media agenda. The broadcaster is popular with Western audiences because it offers a refreshingly different perspective. The RT broadcasting is called «propaganda» simply because it says something different.
Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, believes that US media are a «disgrace» and the quality of published material is «embarrassingly low». According to him, «we have a system that’s owned and dominated by a handful of huge corporations».
RT has provided independent journalists and professors a chance to make detailed arguments often contradicting the views expounded by Western mainstream media. Remember how the US and UK «pro-establishment» outlets defended the idea of military intervention in Iraq? That’s life. Governments are prone to employ strategies of manipulation to shape public opinions.
Alternative sources of information are the only way to shape impartial views. One has the right to choose news sources. Useful insights and information may be gained from a variety of the media outlets and RT is the one.
Until now RT has fended off the attacks. It has mustered broad support, including in social networks. The AP has not openly accused RT of running a pirated live-stream of outgoing President Barack Obama’s final speech. Nothing was said openly. Facebook has not responded to RT to explain why the restrictions have been placed on its account. YouTube’s request on sanctioned RT employees was said to be not politically motivated. But it’s not the end. The pressure will grow stronger to threaten the very same values the West has sworn to protect.
For instance, the human rights situation in America evokes concern serious enough to be addressed by media independent from the US government. For instance, Paul Craig Roberts, former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, asked for Russian citizenship accused of being a Russian agent for speaking his mind fearlessly. In particular, in an appearance on RT Mr. Roberts dared to support Senator Bernie Sanders for president.
Many hold an opinion that an information war is being waged. But even wars have certain laws to abide by but RT appears to be engaged in a fight without rules.
David Icke and the meaning of Jewish power
By Gilad Atzmon | January 24, 2017
Jewish power is the power to suppress discussion on Jewish power.
Seemingly this power is waning these days.
Jewish media outlets have reported today that campaigners are calling for a Manchester venue to be fined after it hosted “notorious anti-Semite” David Icke in front of a sold-out crowd this weekend.
But what is it that makes Icke into a “notorious anti-Semite?” He reckons that Jews control the world and started WWI. Icke also believes that Jews dominated the Versailles Peace Conference and created the circumstances which made the Second World War inevitable.
It is rather obvious to every reasonable human being that in a free society, Icke is entitled to his thoughts and should be free to share them with the rest of us.
Apparently, Stephen Silverman, the director of Campaign against Anti-Semitism (CAA) doesn’t agree at all. Jewish history, he believes, can’t be discussed freely. But can you think of any other people who attempt to block the rest of us from looking into their past? Can Muslims, for instance, stop us from looking into their history? As things stand, even the British ruling class doesn’t attempt to prevent us from looking into the crimes of British imperialism.
In Britain, some Jewish organisations attempt to stifle the discussion of the Jewish past. They probably know that they have a lot to hide. The truth of the matter is that Jews are often ashamed of their history. Early Zionism was, in fact, a promise to wipe out the Jewish past and introduce a new Jewish beginning on someone’s else land….
I learned today that Stephen Silverman isn’t just concerned with Icke’s take on Jewish history, he is also disturbed by the fact that some gentiles have managed to profit from Icke’s popularity. “Not only did the O2 Apollo allow him to address their packed venue for twelve hours, they profited from it.”
Silverman knows that looking at the current international blunders (inflicted on us by the likes of Soros, Goldman Sachs, Israel, neocons and others) in historical perspectives can’t be ignored anymore.
David Icke’s is on the road at the moment. Israel and its Sayanim are desperately trying to stop him for a reason… he is, obviously, a truth teller.
German Government ‘Has a Problem With Critically-Minded Citizens’
Sputnik – 23.01.2017
Head of the German party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) Frauke Petry criticized what she views as a contradictory understanding of freedom of speech demonstrated by the German government.
Following the meeting of leaders of the European Parliament’s faction “Europe and Freedom Nations” (ENF) in Koblenz, Petry told journalists that the German government can’t deal with people who have an alternative opinion.
According to Petri, people whose opinion differs from that of the majority are “immediately labeled as anti-democratic.”
“We see that the government is clearly having a problem with freedom of speech and that it can hardly deal with critically-minded citizens,” Petri said.
Earlier, it was reported that German Facebook will trial a fake news filtering system for German users of the site, allowing individuals to fact-check and report stories they suspect to be untrue.
Such stories are expected to be dispatched to Correctiv, a German fact-checking organization. If Correctiv determines the story to be fake, it will be marked as false and users seeing it in their feeds will be warned about its doubted authenticity. It will also be blocked from being promoted in users’ feeds.
However, Petri believes that the new initiative is aimed not at fact-checking potentially fake stories, but at establishing a supervisory authority that will try to get rid of certain undesirable content.
The politician argued that it will be about a “new censorship authority which will impose fines on creators of the so-called fake web news in the Internet.”
See also:
Facebook ‘Fake News’ Plan ‘a Brutal Attack on Freedom of Speech’
Karl Rove’s Prophecy
Karl Rove. Credit: Jay Godwin/Wikimedia Commons
Karel van Wolferen • Unz Review • January 23, 2017
In a famous exchange between a high official at the court of George W. Bush and journalist Ron Suskind, the official – later acknowledged to have been Karl Rove – takes the journalist to task for working in “the reality-based community.” He defined that as believing “that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” Rove then asserted that this was no longer the way in which the world worked:
We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do. (Ron Suskind, NYTimes Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004).
This declaration became popular as an illustration of the hubris of the Bush-Cheney government. But we could also see it as fulfilled prophecy. Fulfilled in a manner that no journalist at that time would have deemed possible. Yes, the neoconservatives brought disrepute upon themselves because of the disaster in Iraq. Sure, opposition to the reality Rove had helped create in that devastated country became a first rung on the ladder that could lead to the presidency, as it did for Barack Obama. But the neocons stayed put in the State Department and other positions closely linked to the Obama White House, where they became allies with the liberal hawks in continuing ‘spreading democracy’ by overthrowing regimes. America’s mainstream news and opinion purveyors, without demurring, accommodated the architects of reality production overseen by Dick Cheney.
This did not end when Obama became president, but in fact with seemingly ever greater eagerness they gradually made the CIA/neocon-neoliberal created reality appear unshakably substantial in the minds of most newspaper readers and among TV audiences in the Atlantic basin. This was most obvious when attention moved to an imagined existential threat posed by Russia supposedly aimed at the political and ‘Enlightenment’ achievements of the West. Neoconservatives and liberal hawks bent America’s foreign-policy entirely to their ultimate purpose of eliminating a Vladimir Putin who had decided not to dance to Washington’s tune so that he might save the Russian state, which had been disintegrating under his predecessor and Wall Street’s robber barons.
With President Obama as a mere spectator, the neocon/liberals could – without being ridiculed – pass off as a popular revolution the coup d’état they fomented in the Ukraine. And because of an unquestioned Atlanticist faith, which holds that without the policies of the United States the world cannot be safe for people of the Atlantic basin, the European elites that determine policy or comment on it joined their American counterparts in endorsing that reality.
As blind vassals the Europeans have adopted Washington’s enemies as their own. Hence the ease with which the European Union member states could be roped into a system of baseless economic sanctions against Russia, much to the detriment of their own economic interests. Layers upon layers of anti-Russian propaganda have piled up to bamboozle a largely unsuspecting public on both sides of the Ocean.
In the Netherlands, from where I have been watching all this, Putin was held personally responsible in much of the media for the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner flying over the Ukraine, which killed 298 people. No serious investigation was undertaken. The presentation of ‘almost definitive’ findings by the joint investigation team under Dutch leadership has neither included clues supplied by jet fighter cannon holes in the wrecked fuselage nor eyewitness stories, which would make the government in Kiev the prime suspect. Moscow’s challenging the integrity of the investigation, whose agreed-upon rules included publication of findings only if Kiev agreed with them, were met with great indignation by the Dutch Foreign and Prime Ministers.
As the fighting in Syria reached a phase when contradictions in the official Washington/NATO story demanded a stepping back for a fresh look, editors were forced into contortions to make sure that the baddies stayed bad, and that no matter how cruel and murderously they went about their occupation in Aleppo and elsewhere, the jihadi groups fighting to overthrow the secular Assad government in Damascus remained strictly labeled as moderate dissidents worthy of Western support, and the Russians as violators of Western values. Architects of an official reality that diverges widely from the facts you thought you knew must rely on faits accompli they achieve through military or police violence and intimidation, in combination with a fitting interpretation or a news blackout delivered by mainstream media.
These conditions have been widely obtained in the Atlantic basin through a gradual loss of political accountability at top levels, and through government agencies protected by venerated secrecy that are allowed to live lives of their own. As a result American and European populations have been dropped into a fantasy world, one under constant threat from terrorists and an evil dictator in Moscow. For Americans the never ending war waged by their own government, which leaves them with no choice but to condone mass murder, is supposedly necessary to keep them safe. For Europeans, at least those in the northern half, the numerous NATO tanks rolling up to the border of the Russian Federation and the massing of troops in that area are an extra guarantee, on top of the missiles that were already there, that Vladimir Putin will restrain his urges to grab a European country or two. On a smaller scale, when every May 4th the 1940-45 war dead are remembered in the Netherlands, we must now include the fallen in Afghanistan as if they were a sacrifice to defend us against the Taliban threat from behind the Hindu Kush.
Ever since the start of this millennium there has been a chain of realities as prophesied by Karl Rove, enhanced by terrorist attacks, which may or may not have been the work of actual terrorists, but whose reality is not questioned without risking one’s reputation. The geopolitical picture that they have helped build in most minds appears fairly consistent if one can keep one’s curiosity on a leash and one’s sense of contradiction sufficiently blunt. After all, the details of the official reality are filled in and smoothed out all the time by crafty campaigns produced in the PR world, with assistance from think tanks and academia.
But the question does reappear in one’s thoughts: do the politically prominent and the well-positioned editors, especially those known for having once possessed skeptical minds, actually believe it all? Do those members of the cabinet or parliament, who can get hot under their collar as they decry the latest revelation about one or other outrage committed by Putin, take seriously what they’re saying? Not all of them are believers, I know that from off the record conversations. But there appears to be a marked difference between the elite in government, in the media, in prominent social positions, and ordinary people who in these recent times of anguish about populism are sometimes referred to as uneducated. Quite a few among the latter appear to think that something fishy is going on. This could be because in my experience the alert ones have educated themselves, something that is not generally understood by commentators who have made their way through the bureaucracy of standard higher education.
A disadvantage of being part of the elite is that you must stick to the accepted story. If you deviate from it, and have your thoughts run rather far away from it, which is quite inevitable once you begin with your deviation, you can no longer be trusted by those around you. If you are a journalist and depend for your income on a mainstream newspaper or are hired by a TV company, you run the risk of losing your job if you do not engage in self-censorship.
Consequently, publications that used to be rightly known as quality newspapers have turned into unreadable rags. The newspaper that was my employer for a couple of decades used to be edited on the premise that its correspondents rather than authorities were always correct in what they were saying. Today greater loyalty to the reality created in Washington and Langley cannot be imagined. For much of northern Europe the official story that originates in the United States is amplified by the BBC and other once reliable purveyors of news and opinion like the Guardian, the Financial Times and the (always less reliable) Economist.
Repetition lends an ever greater aura of truth to the nonsense that is relentlessly repeated on the pages of once serious publications. Detailed analyses of developments understood through strings of false clues give the fictions ever more weight in learned heads and debates in parliament. At the time of writing, the grave concern spread across the opinion pages on my side of the Atlantic is about how Putin’s meddling in upcoming European elections can be prevented.
The realities Rove predicted have infantilized parliamentary debates, current affairs discussion and lecture events, and anything of a supposedly serious nature on TV. These now conform to comic book simplicities of evil, heroes and baddies. They have produced a multitude of editorials with facts upside-down. They force even those who advise against provoking Moscow to include a remark or two about Putin being a murderer or tyrant, lest they could be mistaken for traitors to Enlightenment values or even as Russian puppets, as I have been. Layers of unreality have incapacitated learned and serious people to think clearly about the world and how it came to be that way.
How could Rove’s predictions so totally materialize? There’s a simple answer: ‘they’ got away with momentous lies at an early stage. The more authorities lie successfully the more they are likely to lie again in a big way to serve the purposes of earlier lies. The ‘they’ stands for those individuals and groups in the power system who operate beyond legal limits as a hydra-headed entity, whose coordination depends on the project, campaign, mission, or operation at hand. Those with much power got away with excessive extralegal use of it since the beginning of this century because systems of holding the powerful to account have crumbled on both sides of the Atlantic. Hence, potential opposition to what the reality architects were doing dwindled to almost nothing. At the same time, people whose job or personal inclination leads them to ferret out truth were made to feel guilty for pursuing it.
The best way, I think, to make sense of how this works is to study it as a type of intimidation. Sticking to the official story because you have to may not be quite as bad as forced religious conversion with a gun pointed at your head, but it belongs to the same category. It begins with the triggering of odd feelings of guilt. At least that is how I remember it. Living in Tokyo, I had just read Mark Lane’s Rush To Judgment, the first major demolishing in book form of the Warren Report on the murder of John F. Kennedy, when I became aware that I had begun to belong to an undesirable category of people who were taking the existence of conspiracies seriously. We all owe thanks to writers of Internet-based samizdat literature who’ve recently reminded us that the pejorative use of the conspiracy label stems from one of the greatest misinformation successes of the CIA begun in 1967.
So the campaign to make journalists feel guilty for their embarrassing questions dates from before Dick Cheney and Rove and Bush. But it has only reached a heavy duty phase after the moment that I see as having triggered the triumph of political untruth.
We have experienced massive systemic intimidation since 9/11. For the wider public we have the absurdities of airport security – initially evidenced by mountains of nail-clippers – reminding everyone of the arbitrary coercive potential that rests with the authorities. Every time people are made to take off their belts and shoes – to stick only to the least inane instances – they are reminded: yes, we can do this to you! Half of Boston or all of France can be placed under undeclared martial law to tell people: yes, we have you under full control! For journalists unexamined guilt feelings still play a major role. The serious ones feel guilty for wanting to ask disturbing questions, and so they reaffirm that they still belong to ‘sane’ humanity rather than the segment with extraterrestrials in flying saucers in its belief system. But there is a confused interaction with another guilty feeling of not having pursued unanswered questions. Its remedy appears to be a doubling down on the official story. Why throw in fairly common lines like “I have no time for truthers” unless you feel that this is where the shoe pinches?
You will have noticed a fairly common response when the 9/11 massacre enters a discussion. Smart people will say that they “will not go there”, which brings to mind the “here be dragons” warning on uncharted bits of medieval maps. That response is not stupid. It hints at an understanding that there is no way back once you enter that realm. There is simply no denying that if you accept the essential conclusions of the official 9/11 report you must also concede that laws of nature stopped working on that particular day. And, true enough, if you do go there and bear witness publicly to what you see, you may well be devoured; your career in many government positions, the media and even academia is likely to come to an end.
So, for the time being we are stuck with a considerable chunk of terra incognita relating to recognized political knowledge; which is an indispensable knowledge if you want to get current world affairs and the American role in it into proper perspective.
Mapping the motives of those who decide “not to go there” may be a way to begin breaking through this disastrous deadlock. Holding onto your job is an honorable motivation when you have a family to maintain. The career motivation is not something to scorn. There is also an entirely reasonable expectation that once you go there you lose your voice publicly to address very important social abuse and political misdeeds. I think it is not difficult to detect authors active on internet samizdat sites who have that foremost in mind. Another possible reason for not going there is the more familiar one, akin to the denial that one has a dreadful disease. Also possible is an honorable position of wishing to preserve social order in the face of a prospect of very dramatic political upheaval caused by revelations about a crime so huge that hardly anything in America’s history can be compared to it. Where could such a thing end – civil war? Martial law?
What I find more difficult to stomach is the position of someone who is worshiped by what used to be the left, and who has been guiding that class of politically interested Americans as to where they can and cannot go. Noam Chomsky does not merely keep quiet about it, but mocks students who raise logical questions prompted by their curiosity, thereby discouraging a whole generation studying at universities and active in civil rights causes. One can only hope that this overrated analyst of the establishment, who helps keep the most embarrassing questions out of the public sphere, trips over the contradictions and preposterousness of his own judgments and crumples in full view of his audience.
The triumph of political untruth has brought into being a vast system of political intimidation. Remember then that the intimidater does not really care what you believe or not, but impresses you with the fact that you have no choice. That is the essence of the exercise of brute power. With false flag events the circumstantial evidence sometimes appears quite transparently false and, indeed could be interpreted as having been purposeful. Consider the finding of passports or identity papers accidentally left by terrorists, or their almost always having been known to and suspected by the police? What of their death through police shooting before they can be interrogated? Could these be taunting signals of ultimate power to a doubting public: Now you! Dare contradict us! Are the persons killed by the police the same who committed the crime? Follow-up questions once considered perfectly normal and necessary by news media editors are conspicuous by their absence.
How can anyone quarrel with Rove’s prophecy. He told Suskind that we will forever be studying newly created realities. This is what the mainstream media continue to do. His words made it very clear: you have no choice!
A question that will be in the minds of perhaps many as they consider the newly sworn in president of the United States, who like John F. Kennedy appears to have understood that “Intelligence” leads a dangerously uncontrolled life of its own: At what point will he give in to the powers of an invisible government, as he is made to reckon that he also has no choice?
Karel van Wolferen is a Dutch journalist and retired professor at the University of Amsterdam. Since 1969, he has published over twenty books on public policy issues, which have been translated into eleven languages and sold over a million copies worldwide. As a foreign correspondent for NRC Handelsblad , one of Holland’s leading newspapers, he received the highest Dutch award for journalism, and over the years his articles have appeared in The New York Times , The Washington Post , The New Republic , The National Interest , Le Monde , and numerous other newspapers and magazines.
‘Facebook deals first blow in the fake war against fake news’
RT | January 19, 2017
Governments are using media organizations as proxies in an effort to control the information citizens can get from the Internet, says former MI5 officer Annie Machon. The fake war against fake news is predicated on a big lie, she added.
RT has been blocked from posting content to its Facebook page during the live broadcast of Barack Obama’s final news conference over an alleged copyright infringement.
The suspension was triggered by one of the social network’s algorithms, which is alerted according to what’s being submitted.
RT has a contract with the Associated Press and streamed a news feed. The agency has confirmed RT had the right to retransmit the video, so the problem must lie with Facebook.
The head of Russia’s telecoms watchdog is warning of “active response measures” if RT’s work is restricted by the American media or the social networks.
Facebook has not replied to inquiries, and the restrictions on posting remain.
RT: The news outlet was mentioned as triggering a Facebook alert and says it’s not them. So just how sensitive has Facebook’s media clampdown tool become?
Annie Machon: I think this is the first blow in Facebook’s self-proclaimed war against so-called fake news. Both Facebook and Google in the wake of the shadowy PropOrNot list of 200 news organizations around the world that are supposedly peddling fake news, but actually just offering an alternative to the corporate US media, and RT was included in that. Facebook and Google in the aftermath said that they would start to censor all these outlets. I think that is what we are seeing with Facebook now is that they are using the excuse of copyright to censor legitimate news channel and stop them from covering a world event that the rest of the world is going to watch without any problem on other channels.
RT: At the World Economic Forum in Davos the Facebook representative said that their organization is dedicated, as they put it, to tackling so-called fake news and the whole phenomenon that we’ve heard of lately. Do you think this is part of that?
AM: I think it is part of that. And it is not just Facebook and Google who said they are going to take on the so-called fake news. It is also the European Union who issued a diktat last November saying that they were going to set up a body to counter fake news. We see countries like France and Germany already peddling this idea that there is going to be hacking and counter-democratic activity in the run up to their elections this year. So, they are using this. But I think it is interesting to see that the copyright has been used as a pretext for this censorship. I’ve been saying for years that the media organizations are being used by the governments as proxy organizations in terms of trying to control the information we can ingest over the internet and the information we can actually access over the internet.
RT: The suspension is imposed ahead of Trump’s inauguration and won’t be lifted until the day after it. What do you make of that? Is it a coincidence?
AM: Absolutely not. It is a first blow in the so-called battle – fake battle against fake news. And let’s just remind ourselves how this so-called concept of fake started. Somehow information was leaked from the DNC last year and the people who received that information, WikiLeaks said very clearly it was not a hack, it was actually a leak. And yet the corporate media in America has said again, “No, this was Russia hacking the DNC.” And then somehow it became Russia hacking the American elections, Russia hacking voting computers, Russia hacking the energy grid in America. None of this has been proven. Some of it has been actively proven to be false. But when Obama expelled the 35 Russian diplomats from America back to Russia before Christmas, that sort of solidified as fact that the Russians had done something wrong. There is no proof whatsoever. So this fake war against fake news is predicated on a big lie.
I think there are strings have been pulled in the background, shall we say. Particularly, in America. And the big media and internet corporations in America have been proven year after year to be very much in bed with the US state and with the US secret state. We know this of course because of the revelations of Edward Snowden. You know, all the big social media giants signed up to allow access to their databases by the secret agencies in America, starting with Microsoft back in 2006. We know that they are complicit; we know that they have been compromised. So, who can tell where this is going to go. There is a sort of all-out fight between the president-elect anyways and his so-called intelligence agencies.
RT: The original source mentioned as alerting Facebook denies it raised a copyright flag. AP confirmed RT had the rights for transmission. Facebook is the only entity yet to answer. Why isn’t it being more pro-active to remedy this considering this being a pretty big media news?
Chris Bambery, political analyst: It is pretty big media news, and I am really puzzled. Donald Trump is about to become President, and he is painted by much of the world’s media and spy agencies as being President Putin’s chum. And yet there is this continuing escalation of the Cold War with Russia, even hours before Trump is elected. Facebook is a giant American transnational. It is not known for its own transparency over these things. It does lead one to suspect that there are sections of our US elite who really do not like Donald Trump and want to create difficulties between the incoming presidency and Russia.
RT: RT’s troubles with Facebook come a day after the online news alert service Dataminr refused to renew our contract with them. That stems back to the CIA also being denied access and saying the same should apply to RT claiming we’re tied to Russian intelligence. Is that the real reason, do you think?
CB: On that basis, if you are being blocked because you receive state funding, the BBC World service is funded by the British Foreign Office, so why would that not be blocked? And I am sure Radio Free Europe and various other outlets have received funding from the American state. So, if that is to be criteria than a lot of leading news agencies would be off social media, and off air. This is going to feed into the conspiracy theories because it is so bizarre and strange.
Well, the biggest fake news story I’ve seen was the so-called dossier about Donald Trump, and they didn’t seem to be blocking that, which was all over Facebook. Again, I find it rather strange.
Read more:
Facebook blocks RT from posting until after Trump inauguration
Dataminr terminates RT access to Twitter news discovery tool, gives no official reason
Outgoing CIA Chief Warns Trump to “Watch His Words”
Al-Manar – January 16, 2017
Outgoing CIA chief John Brennan on Sunday launched a scathing attack on Donald Trump, warning him to watch what he says and suggesting the president-elect doesn’t understand the challenges posed by Russia.
Brennan’s stern words — which sparked a quick Twitter retort from Trump — were the latest salvo in the ongoing feud between the incoming Republican leader and US intelligence agencies, who have concluded Moscow meddled in the November election.
The 70-year-old Trump, who takes office on Friday, tweeted saying that if the Russian leader “likes” him, it would be an “asset” to help repair strained ties with Moscow.
“I don’t think he has a full appreciation of Russian capabilities, Russia’s intentions and actions,” Brennan said of Trump on Fox News Sunday.
“I think Mr. Trump has to be very disciplined in terms of what it is that he says publicly,” he added.
“He is going to be, in a few days’ time, the most powerful person in the world, in terms of sitting on top of the United States government and I think he has to recognize that his words do have impact,” the CIA chief said.
“He’s going to have the opportunity to do something for national security as opposed to talking and tweeting,” he added.
“Spontaneity is not something that protects national security interests.”
Brennan also bristled at Trump’s likening of the US intelligence community to Nazi Germany, calling it “outrageous.”
Facebook’s aim: combat fake news with fact checkers & ‘untrustworthy’ shame label
RT | January 15, 2017
Facebook is gearing up to battle the problem of “fake news” on social media with a new name-and-shame system involving independent fact checkers being trialed in Germany.
The social media giant has employed the services of Correctiv, a nonprofit group involved in investigative journalism and news auditing, as an independent fact checker.
According to Facebook, new updates to the social site for German users can be expected in the coming weeks. It could see content shared by outlets deemed to be purveyors of false information sent to the back of the Facebook algorithm queue.
The changes include tabs that allow users to report suspected fake news, as well as labels that name-and-shame organizations believed to be peddling fraudulent information.
Facebook insists the system will work through third-party fact auditors associated with Poytner’s International Fact Checking Code of Principles.
“If the fact-finding organizations identify contributions as fraudulent, they are provided with a warning label that identifies them as untrustworthy. The warning contains a link to the corresponding article as well as a justification for this decision,” Facebook says.
“Messages classified as untrustworthy may also appear later in the newsfeed,” they added.
Correctiv announced the partnership via their official Facebook page and the fake news phenomenon as a major threat to politics in Germany.
“Fake news – especially on Facebook – is already one of the major threats [to] our society. That is clear. We fear these threats will become even more massive in the comings months. Whether it be in the NWR election [North Rhine-Westphalia state election] or the election of the Bundestag next autumn,” the company said.
A Facebook statement read: “It is important to us that posts and news posted on Facebook are reliable.”
“We are pleased with this progress, but we know there is still a lot to be done. We continue to work on this challenge and will introduce these innovations in other countries in the near future.”
It comes after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg asserted he is taking the issue of misinformation seriously, but admitted the social nature of the business meant the company erred on the side of “letting people share what they want whenever possible.”
“We need to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or to mistakenly restrict accurate content. We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties,” he said last November.
Last year, German Social Democratic Party politician Thomas Oppermann suggested social media sites like Facebook should face individual fines of up to €500,000 for the spread of fake news.
READ MORE:
German politicians want €500k fines if Facebook fails to remove fake news within 24hrs
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By Bob Finch | January 26, 2009
Insanely disproportionate use of violence against unarmed civilians… continue
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