Tim Brown
Former CBS investigative
journalist, five-time Emmy Award winner and author of New York Times
bestsellers “The Smear” and “Stonewalled” Sharyl
Attkisson has been one of the few journalists in the mainstream media
willing to try to go beyond partisanship to the facts of a story and draw
conclusions based on those facts.
In the following video,
Attkisson tackles the issue of fake news, and asks just how real it is and
whether or not it was a propaganda effort.
As an investigative
journalist, Attikisson found herself asking several questions about the rise of
fake news as a fad.
1.
What does fake news and what is not?
2.
When did fake news begin?
3.
Who’s behind the massive effort to direct
our attention onto fake news. Is fake news real?
Ms. Attkisson believes the
last one is the most interesting of the three.
“I’ve investigated the shadowy
multi-billion dollar industry that seeks to manipulate all of us through news
social media and online,” she said.
One thing that always must be
put forward are definitions of term and when it comes to the issue of fake
news, it depends on who is talking about it.
“Fake news has always been
embedded in our culture,” she said. ” It just wasn’t called that.
The supermarket rags gave popularized, blatantly fake news with front-page
images of aliens impregnating unsuspecting usually large breasted
earthling women”.
Of course, the majority of
people would believe nothing in those papers, but some would take it all in.
However, fake news was not
relegated to supermarket tabloids.
It has also shown up time and
again in mainstream media.
One example that Attkisson
gave occurred in 1996 when the news media wrongly blamed a security guard
named Richard Jewell for the Atlanta Olympic bombing.
“We later learned that poor
Jule had actually been a hero moving people away from a suspicious backpack
before it exploded,” she said.
As another example of fake
news in the mainstream media, Attkisson pointed to a 9/11 network TV news
reporter who falsely reported that a terrorist plane had crashed in the
presidential retreat Camp David.
It never happened.
She then pointed out that the
internet “revolutionized” fake news in one of several ways.
·
Rumors
·
Intentional disinformation
·
bias, sloppy, erroneous reporting
Now, instead of that
information being disseminated to just a relative few people, those are making
their way into the reading of millions around the world.
As an example, she pointed to
the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, in which she said that
people engaged in things that claimed the entire event was a hoax.
I’m not convinced that we were
given the whole story on that, but there definitely were anomalies and
questions that remain unanswered to this day.
In pointing to a more
established magazine, Attkisson said, “Rolling Stone magazine reported on a
sensational case of a fraternity gang
rape that turned out to be so unsubstantiated that Rolling Stone retracted the article and the reporter was found guilty of malice in a defamation lawsuit.”
rape that turned out to be so unsubstantiated that Rolling Stone retracted the article and the reporter was found guilty of malice in a defamation lawsuit.”
And remember the Michael Brown
shooting that left Ferguson, Missouri in a police state and burning?
Attkisson addressed that too.
“Whatever you think of the
2014 police shooting of Michael Brown, even the Obama Justice Department
eventually ruled that the entire ‘hands up don’t shoot’ scenario, which
blanketed the news day in and day out was probably fabricated and as a police
officer acted in legitimate self-defense,” she said.
However, it wasn’t until 2016
that the American people were introduced to the phrase “fake news.”
“Liberals were first to
heavily promote use of the phrase referring to conservative disinformation and
right-wing websites,” she said.
As an example, Attkisson
referred to not only propaganda pieces, but even written by “fake authors.”
“As Donald Trump and Hillary
Clinton battles about a website called the conservative Daily Post published a
huge amount of Pro-Trump anti-Clinton propaganda under the name and likeness of
a former beauty queen named Laura Hunter. The real Laura Hunter says she
didn’t write any of those articles. She claims imposters turned her into
a spokesman for a radical right-wing website that pedals fake news.”
Hunter sued.
However, fake news resides on
the opposite end of the political spectrum, as well.
“Trump and
conservatives counterpunch with their own notion of fake news, meaning
biased, sloppy, erroneous reporting as committed by the mainstream media and
the left,” she said, adding that there were plenty of examples of this.
“On President
Trump’s first day in office, a Time magazine reporter falsely reported the
Trump had removed the bust statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Oval
Office,” Attkisson recounted. “The White House quickly tweeted out a
photo showing statue still very much there.”
The reporter simply failed to
check his facts.
However, if fake news has
always been around, why does it suddenly become the stuff of daily headlines?
Attkisson talks about what she
found in her investigation.
During the 2016 campaign, I
did a little digging and I traced the effort to a nonprofit called
First Draft, which appears to be about the first to use the phrase ‘fake
news’ in its modern context,” she said.
“On September 13, 2016, First
Draft announced a partnership to tackle malicious hoaxes and fake news
reports,” Attkisson continued. “The goal was supposedly to separate wheat
from chaff, 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. Exactly one month later, President Obama
chimed in.”
“He insisted in a speech that
he too thought somebody needed to step in and curate information in this Wild,
Wild West media environment,” she continued. “Nobody in the public had
been clamoring for any such thing. Yet, suddenly, the topic of fake news
dominates headlines on a daily basis.”
Sounds like the media was
given its marching orders, doesn’t it? Just like with Clinton Care and
Obamacare. Those weren’t on anyone’s concerns lists either.
“I know that few themes arise
in our environment organically,” Attkisson said, understanding from her
experience in the media that these things are promoted to manipulate the
people.
She then dropped this
bombshell.
A noted propagandist told me it’s like
a movie. He said, and it gave me chills at the time, nearly every
scene or image that crosses our path in daily life, he said was put there for a
reason, often by someone who paid a lot of money to place it there.
What if the whole anti-fake
news campaign was an effort on somebody’s part to keep us from seeing or
believing certain websites of stories by controversializing them or labeling
them as fake news?
Attkisson wanted to know who
was behind it, and she found her answer.
“I wanted to know who was
funding the nonprofit First Draft and his anti-fake news effort,” she
said. “I found the answer. It was Google.”
Surprise!
Here’s all she discovered, and
more:
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was
run by a man named Eric Schmidt.
Eric Schmidt had devoted himself to
Hillary Clinton’s election campaign and offered himself up as a campaign
adviser. He became a top
multimillion-dollar donor to it. His company funded First Draft around the start of the election cycle. Not surprisingly, Hillary was soon to jump aboard the anti-fake news train and her surrogate David Brock of Media Matters privately told donors he was the one who convinced Facebook to join the effort.
multimillion-dollar donor to it. His company funded First Draft around the start of the election cycle. Not surprisingly, Hillary was soon to jump aboard the anti-fake news train and her surrogate David Brock of Media Matters privately told donors he was the one who convinced Facebook to join the effort.
I’m not the only one who thinks
the whole thing smacked of the rollout of a propaganda
campaign. Glenn Greenwald of the intercept wrote the most
important fact. You need to realize is that those who most loudly
denounced fake news are typically the ones most aggressively disseminating it,
but something happened that nobody expected.
The anti fake news campaign backfired
each time advocates cried fake news, Donald Trump called them fake news until
he’d co-oped the term so completely that even those who originally promoted it
started running from it, including the Washington Post, which in January of
2017, wrote “It’s time to retire the tainted term ‘fake news.'”
In fact, it’s now commonly misreported
that it was Donald Trump who thought up the phrase. Actually, it was just
a hostile takeover. Suffice it to say that each side now defines
fake news and terms that call the other guy into question.
“So, what’s the lesson in all of this?” Attkisson asked. “I’m not here to litigate who’s right, but I
can tell you there are two ways to tell that powerful interests might be trying
to manipulate your opinion.”
Here they are:
When the media seems to be trying to shave or censor facts and opinions
rather than report them.
When so many of the media are reporting the same stories, promulgating
the same narratives, relying on the same sources, even using the same phrases.
With 24-hour news channels in a land where news is constantly
occurring, one would think those news channels would be having hundreds, if not
thousands of stories every single day, but no, it’s almost like the Top 40
station on your radio. They continue to
play the hits every hour.
Attkisson then presented a final thought and warning.
“Media literacy advocates are busy trying to get state laws passed to
require the fair version of media literacy be taught in public schools,” she
said. “They’re developing websites as
resources for journalists in the public, They’re partnering with universities.”
Attkisson believes the phrase “media literacy” is actually a new name
put out by the same people that promoted “fake news” that is designed to demand
who you should believe, mainly people with their agendas, and fool you into
thinking that they are neutral in the process.
“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.”
Tim Brown, The Sons of Liberty Media, February 16, 2018
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