Media Matters for America had a good story this week describing changes in the news food chain, as fringe media have developed techniques to shoehorn misleading or false stories into the news (“The Susan Rice Unmasking Story Is A Perfect Case Study Of The New Pro-Trump Propaganda Ecosystem“).
Groups that used to be contained to their own bubble have been able to insert themselves into the food chain and been able to spread not just misleading, but patently false information to right-wing outlets and sometimes even in turn to mainstream media. A new dubious allegation regarding Susan Rice, former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, illustrates how this new pattern can spread pro-Trump misinformation and propaganda from fringe sources into mainstream media outlets.
What’s interesting to me is that this incestuous and multi-layered Alt-Right media machinery looks very much like the system used by the Russians in their attempt to support tRump’s candidacy in the 2016 U.S. elections.
Reread the Washington Post’s coverage, or go to the intelligence agencies’ report to Congress (at least the unclassified version).
From the Post:
The Russian campaign during this election season, researchers from both groups say, worked by harnessing the online world’s fascination with “buzzy” content that is surprising and emotionally potent, and tracks with popular conspiracy theories about how secret forces dictate world events.
Some of these stories originated with RT and Sputnik, state-funded Russian information services that mimic the style and tone of independent news organizations yet sometimes include false and misleading stories in their reports, the researchers say. On other occasions, RT, Sputnik and other Russian sites used social-media accounts to amplify misleading stories already circulating online, causing news algorithms to identify them as “trending” topics that sometimes prompted coverage from mainstream American news organizations.
The speed and coordination of these efforts allowed Russian-backed phony news to outcompete traditional news organizations for audience. Some of the first and most alarming tweets after Clinton fell ill at a Sept. 11 memorial event in New York, for example, came from Russian botnets and trolls, researchers found. (She was treated for pneumonia and returned to the campaign trail a few days later.)
That’s very much like what Media Matters describes taking place in the case of the Susan Rice “story.”
Troubling.
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I strongly recommend this story from 60 Minutes about the website http://www.dangerandplay.com, which once wrote, “Clinton’s inner circle includes child traffickers, pedophiles and now members of a sex cult.”
“Danger and Play” is written by Michael Cernovich, a lawyer who describes himself as “right-of-center politically,” but who is a magnet for readers with a taste for obvious lies.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-fake-news-find-your-social-media-feeds/
Scott Pelley: “Hillary Clinton has Parkinson’s Disease, physician confirms.” You don’t think that’s misleading?
Michael Cernovich: No.
Scott Pelley: You believe it’s true today?
Michael Cernovich: Oh, absolutely.
That story was sourced to an anesthesiologist who never met Clinton. It got so much traction it had to be denied by Clinton’s doctor and the National Parkinson Foundation.
Michael Cernovich: She had a seizure and froze up walking into her motorcade that day.
Scott Pelley: Well, she had pneumonia. I mean–
Michael Cernovich: How do you know? Who told you that?
Scott Pelley: Well, the campaign told us that.
Michael Cernovich: Why would you trust the campaign?
Scott Pelley: The point is you didn’t talk to anybody who’d ever examined Hillary Clinton.
Michael Cernovich: I don’t take anything Hillary Clinton is gonna say at all as true. I’m not gonna take her on her word. The media says we’re not gonna take Donald Trump on his word. And that’s why we are in these different universes………………………………………
— BONG HITS FOR JESUS!
Sounds like the failed group slander narrative. Just slander everyone that is tea party as angry white guys. Slander everyone that is not a neocon war monger as white guys that like Putin. Slander everyone against abortion as angry men hating women. Then we win elections! MASSIVE FAIL!
If you think the alt right is alone in this the alt left is just as bad if not worse because there is more of them.
There is no alt-left. Referencing a fictitious group only suggests your view is untethered from reality.