Escalator Effect

THIS REFERS TO HOW DISINFO FROM MARGINAL SOURCES MOVES UP THE FOOD CHAIN TO MAINSTREAM

ECHO CHAMBER CITES/traces SOMEONE ON DRUDGE TO nyt?promoted to primary, leverage;freepers a hub/booster of trump conspiracy?=<div>=</div><div>milloy bs smoked out: partic holocausr BS</div><div>The report also had another upside  this EPA PM2.5 human experimentation scandal finally made a media breakthrough. Though the issue had previously been covered by some conservative media and also on an ongoing basis by an NBC-TV affiliate in North Carolina, on April 2, 2014 it made the very top of the Drudge Report with the headline:SHOCK REPORT: EPA tested deadly pollutants on human beings.The next day the Drudge Report added the headline:Experiments on children?The EPA inspector general’s ploy to discourage media reporting of the controversy had failed. The Associated Press ran the headline, “EPA Fails to Disclose Risks in Human Tests.”<a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote1anc" href="https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/E212D5AA-EEF5-535C-9D0D-27920B094E45#sdendnote1sym">i</a> The New York Times headline was “E.P.A. Faulted for Failure to Report Risks.”<a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote2anc" href="https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/E212D5AA-EEF5-535C-9D0D-27920B094E45#sdendnote2sym">ii</a> The Washington Post followed with “EPA did not disclose cancer risks in tests.”<a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote3anc" href="https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/E212D5AA-EEF5-535C-9D0D-27920B094E45#sdendnote3sym">iii</a>The good news was that the EPA human experiments story had achieved a level of national prominence that EPA had sought to avoid. The bad news was that no one was getting to the real issue  whether, in fact, PM2.5 was as deadly as EPA claimed and whether the agency had justified its PM2.5 regulations on the basis of blatant falsehoods<div id="sdendnote1"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote1sym" href="https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/E212D5AA-EEF5-535C-9D0D-27920B094E45#sdendnote1anc">i</a>  Associated Press, EPA Fails to Disclose Risks in Human Tests, April 2, 2014.
</div><div id="sdendnote2"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote2sym" href="https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/E212D5AA-EEF5-535C-9D0D-27920B094E45#sdendnote2anc">ii</a>  New York Times, E.P.A. Faulted for Failure to Report Risks, April 3, 2014.</div><div id="sdendnote3"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote3sym" href="https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/E212D5AA-EEF5-535C-9D0D-27920B094E45#sdendnote3anc">iii</a>
  Washington Post, EPA did not disclose cancer risks in tests, April 2, 2014.</div></div><div></div>=<div>echo escalator 2: this is age of trump</div><div>
</div><div>layers/scales:</div><div>
</div><div>1) CEC Conservative Entertainment Complex: fox news of course but also reality TV, wrestling, even moving pict inst "documentaries" eg duck dynasty guy; give the lie to Liberal Media (tho they just claim puny counter-wt).</div><div>
</div><div>2) Echo chamber; this refers to earlier and now seemingly quaint constellation of WSJ, Forbes, Fox maybe Drudge.</div><div>
</div><div>3)  Escalator Effect: refers to low level no filter areas of vulnerability that allow BS to work its way up the food chain to mainstream legit media.  Thus "punked"</div><div>
</div><div>see Breitbart, fake news, bots, conspiracy theory
<div>
</div><div>=</div></div><div>e internet has given us many things, some of them wonderful and some of them awful. The so-called alt-right—the racist, misogynist collective of angry white men—deserves a place in the digital garbage pile, alongside cyberbullying, revenge porn and “2 Girls 1 Cup.” (And to a far, far lesser degree, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">choreographed wedding dance videos</a>.) In short, the alt-right is a product of online troll culture, a direct outgrowth of the internet’s digital Wild West. For years it expanded—or more appropriately, festered—in the dark corners of sites like 4chan and Reddit, where it ultimately became the group that gained peak visibility with the horrible events of Charlottesville.It’s important to remember that there are no card-carrying members of the alt-right. It’s not an official organization, and alignment is self-defined. What’s collectively described as the alt-right is a loose coalition of overwhelmingly white male representatives of various online communities, including anti-women “meninists,” gamers, white nationalists, neo-Nazis and their sympathizers, anti-government types, conspiracists, and dudes who’ve just decided that women and people of color are the reason they don’t have dates or C-suite jobs. The alt-right houses all of those groups, but they might not have come together so seamlessly under its big tent were it not for a unifying loathsome cause. Enter Donald J. Trump, King of the Internet Trolls and Patron Saint of Racists. Trump’s campaign—nearly two years of his gross and violent racist, xenophobic and anti-woman rhetoric and behavior—gave these groups a central figure around which to rally. The_Donald, the Reddit community that helped get the president elected, gave them a home base.Perhaps the best way to describe The_Donald is as the internet hivemind of Trump’s most fervent—and vicious—supporters. Launched in June 2015, it now has nearly 450,000 subscribers, making it one of the most popular subreddits on one of the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/most-popular-websites-google-youtube-baidu/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">most popular sites</a> in the United States. The_Donald is like a virtual local watering hole where aggrieved young men can come together, put their differences aside and celebrate the Trump that unites them amidst a cesspool of shared internet ephemera, Holocaust jokes and racist memes. More than a year ago, Vice’s <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/53d5xb/what-is-rthedonald-donald-trump-subreddit" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Motherboard</a> summed up The_Donald as “a disconcerting melting pot of posts that run the gamut from InfoWars-style conspiracies, men's rights activists and GamerGate-style real and faux outrage, memes and shitposts (basically, jokes that are only meant to be understood by those in the community), and, yes, Donald Trump news.”As with all fraternal communities, The_Donald users have their own speak. Tim Squirrell, an expert in digital culture, wrote a lengthy <a href="https://qz.com/1056319/what-is-the-alt-right-a-linguistic-data-analysis-of-3-billion-reddit-comments-shows-a-disparate-group-that-is-quickly-uniting/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">piece at Quartz</a> on the unique identifying language markers used by the multiple groups in attendance at The_Donald. He identified the "4chan Shitposters,” a group that posts “the most extreme racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic slurs, but without necessarily fully buying into racist ideology.” Consider them trolls who hurl horrific abuse online and then claim innocence with the defense that they were only joking. They most frequently use words like “Pepe, God Emperor Trump and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/06/11/some-trump-supporters-want-a-holy-war/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">deus vult</a>" (Latin for “God wills it,” in this case, meaning Trump’s ascendancy).Another group Squirrell noted is “Anti-progressive Gamers,” who you might be familiar with because of their freakouts when fictional characters from fictional movies such as <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/paul-feig-on-trump-and-the-alt-rights-war-on-ghostbusters-and-female-heroes" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Ghostbusters are recast as women</a>. They frequently toss around terms like “snowflake, pandering, tumblr, feminist [and] triggering.” The “Men’s Rights Activists” lean heavily on words like “cuck” (taken from “cuckold,” a demeaning term implying male weakness but deployed against any man who disagrees with them), “bitch” (any woman who won’t sleep with them, aka all of us), and “beta” (a heterosexual male who treats women like actual human beings and thus gets laid). There are the “Anti-Globalists,” who rant about “the establishment, elites” and of course, “George Soros.” And the “White Supremacists,” who use a mixed bag of racial slurs and the phrase “western culture,” a stand-in for “we’re white and we’re right.”The_Donald brings all of these groups together into a powerful Trump-worshipping whole. Recognizing the rapid expansion of the group last year, conservative provocateurs like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos participated in AMAs (“Ask Me Anything,” or Q&A sessions) hosted by the subreddit. So did <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/donald-trump-reddit-ama-wednesday" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Trump himself</a>, who during the campaign and as recently as July has <a href="https://qz.com/1020045/us-president-donald-trump-sourced-his-cnn-wrestling-tweet-from-a-racist-troll-on-reddit/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">retweeted inflammatory Reddit-generated content</a>. According to Vice’s Motherboard, Reddit administrators took pains to make The_Donald and its often highly offensive output less visible to site visitors, and <a href="http://gizmodo.com/reddit-is-tearing-itself-apart-1789406294" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Gizmodo</a>’s interviews with multiple other subreddit moderators led the outlet to conclude The_Donald is internally regarded as Reddit’s “most problematic community.” But with exponential growth on their side, members of The_Donald have chided site administrators and all other critics.</div>http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/susan-rice-and-pro-trump-propaganda-machinedanger and play lil ecosystem conway= NYT the paper of record? thus biggest prize of escalator effectsort of punked by desire to leverage sorta social network / crowdsource?<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/glenn-beck-thinks-the-womens-march-was-george-sorosradical-islam-astroturf</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Glenn Beck opened his radio show today by attacking the media for failing to report that last weekend’s massive <a href="https://www.womensmarch.com/" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">Women’s March on Washington</a> was nothing more than an “astroturf” rally orchestrated by George Soros and radical Islamic groups.[trms hi % trump ppl believe]<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Beck heaped praise on <a href="http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2017/01/20/billionaire-george-soros-has-ties-to-more-than-50-partners-of-the-womens-march-on-washington/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">a piece</a> on the New York Times website by Asra Nomani, a self-described liberal Muslim who has previously said that she <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2016/11/10/im-a-muslim-a-woman-and-an-immigrant-i-voted-for-trump/?utm_term=.70d747a74e96" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">voted for Donald Trump</a> because <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/11/muslim_reform_movement_founder_i_dont_fear_donald_trump_i_fear_islamic_extremists.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">she believes</a> that “the liberals and the left have really betrayed America” when it comes to fighting Islamic extremism, who claimed that “<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;">Soros has funded, or has close relationships” with dozens of organization that participated in or supported the march. [<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;">Update: The piece was not actually posted on the Times’ website, but rather, as the NYT’s public editor <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/public-editor/times-affiliated-story-praise-glenn-beck-liz-spayd-public-editor.html?r=1" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">explained</a>, it was posted “on a site affiliated with The Times — but completely distinct from the paper — called Women in the World … The Times is a business investor in Women in the World and provides the website’s digital platform, but the two have separate editorial operations.”]<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">“I’m afraid tomorrow I have to go back to my chalkboard,” Beck said. “We’ve been working on it this weekend. We’re going to give you some of the connections, we’re going to talk to the woman who wrote that article for The New York Times about the connections to George Soros and to radical Islam and have a talk with her. Tomorrow I’m bringing the chalkboard in because the connections are there and if you want to call me a conspiracy theorist again, you can; I’m not going to accuse anybody of anything, I’m just going to point out the facts because somebody has to and perhaps someone in the media will listen.”</div>trump:<a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2017/01/02/media-outlets-poised-become-trump-s-personal-propaganda-machine/214773">http://mediamatters.org/research/2017/01/02/media-outlets-poised-become-trump-s-personal-propaganda-machine/214773</a>see alt rt 2:ecosystem.escalator:The “alt-right” weaponizes fake news stories that others drum up to harass and abuse opponents. Its members attack women, people of color, and the poor -- and their allies and advocates -- from “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/14/if-we-took-gamergate-harassment-seriously-pizzagate-might-never-have-happened/?utm_term=.7a8a232c4911" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">Gamergate</a>” to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/8/26/12653474/leslie-jones-hack-alt-right-culture-war" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">Leslie Jones</a>, to <a href="http://www.snopes.com/pizzagate-conspiracy/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">“Pizzagate”</a> and now to <a href="https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/12/19/one-alt-right-men-who-brought-you-pizzagate-now-attacking-vic-berger/214867" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">Vic Berger</a> (also see Megyn Kelly below). Radio host Alex Jones ties the conspiracy theories together and gives everything a common language. Reddit <a href="http://gizmodo.com/reddit-is-tearing-itself-apart-1789406294" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">allows</a> the herd to self-organize and quickly pivot from one harassment campaign to another. The Drudge Report tries to push these things into the mainstream. And tying the whole enterprise together is Breitbart, which was up until recently run by Bannon, now President-elect Donald Trump’s chief strategist. Breitbart is now even <a href="https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/12/21/breitbart-admits-role-trump-enforcer-showing-why-it-should-be-denied-congressional-press-credentials/214883" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">admitting</a> that it will take on any Republicans who try to hurt Trump, again neatly echoing oppressive regimes of the past. Meanwhile, Trump is <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/when-everything-is-a-lie-power-is-the-only-truth-1e641751d150" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">deliberately trying</a> to undermine the reliability of truth itself, in a hope to push as many people as possible toward this ecosystem.Denialism From Forbes Courtesy of Heartland Hack James TaylorPosted by MarkH on February 15, 2013http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2013/02/15/denialism-from-forbes-courtesy-of-heartland-hack-james-taylor/<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s fascinating when you catch the start of a new bogus claim enter the denialsphere, bounce from site to site, and echo about without any evidence of critical analysis or intelligence on the part of the denialists. A good example of this was an article by Heartland Institute’s contributor to Forbes, James Taylor, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">falsely claiming only a minority of scientists endorse the IPCC position on the causes of global warming</a>. This new nonsense meme gets repeated by <a href="http://junkscience.com/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">crank extraordinaire Steve Milloy</a>, bounces the next day to <a href="http://www.climatedepot.com/a/19708/PeerReviewed-Survey-Finds-Majority-Of-Scientists-Skeptical-Of-Global-Warming-Crisis" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Morano’s denialist aggregation site</a>, and before long I’m sure we’ll be seeing it on Watt’s site, Fox news, and in a couple more weeks, in an argument with our conservative uncles.The claim is, of course, a deception (or possibly total incompetence) on the part of Heartland’s “senior fellow for environment policy” (I wonder if there is significance to the use of “environment” as opposed to “environmental”). Linking <a href="http://oss.sagepub.com/content/33/11/1477.full" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">this paper</a> in the journal Organization studies, Taylor makes a false claim that a mere 36% of scientists, when surveyed, hold the consensus view. Anyone want to guess at the deception? Cherry-picking! It was a survey of largely industry engineers and geoloscientists in Alberta, home of the tar sands. In the study authors’ words:<a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/how-misinformed-tweet-was-manufactured-major-right-wing-news">http://www.alternet.org/media/how-misinformed-tweet-was-manufactured-major-right-wing-news</a> <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook?utm_term=.fyovdvW932#.hqPXYXMjLo" style="text-decoration: none;">Buzzfeed News</a> analysis found that the top 20 fake political news stories in circulation during the election got more clicks, views, shares and reactions on Facebook than the top 20 real news stories. The vast majority of those fake stories—all but three—were “overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton,” meaning they pinged around the conservative webosphere, where they were accepted without question by millions and then passed to the next gullible consumer.Paul Horner, among the most prolific and successful fake news writers, recently told the <a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/fake-news-writer-feels-guilty-helping-put-trump-white-house" style="text-decoration: none;">Washington Post</a> that Trump voters and other “right-wing Republicans” were almost single-handedly responsible for the $10,000 he pulls in every month, because they “post everything, believe anything,” and continue to share fake news even when they find out it isn't true. That might explain why so many fake news stories seem specially tailored for the conservative news reader.One of Horner’s most popular stories was a fabricated interview with a made-up person who said he’d been paid to protest Trump ahead of the election. During the campaign, multiple members of <a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/fake-news-writer-feels-guilty-helping-put-trump-white-house" style="text-decoration: none;">Trump’s team</a> retweeted the story, even though many sources pointed out it wasn't true. The ludicrous idea that anti-Trump demonstrators are each paid thousands of dollars by billionaire George Soros—who plays a starring role in pretty much every right-wing conspiracy—has now become conservative gospel.Eric Tucker, a marketer in Austin, Texas, was probably very familiar with this rumor when he recently sent an erroneous tweet that launched a viral right-wing story.The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-news-spreads.html?mc=aud_dev&mcid=fb-nytimes&mccr=NovHighMC&mcdt=2016-11&subid=NovHighMC&ad-keywords=AudDevGate&r=0" style="text-decoration: none;">New York Times</a> decided to examine how Tucker's tweet became a major topic of conservative discussion, following its online travels step by step. On the evening of November 9, just as protests against President-elect Trump were erupting all over the country, Tucker tweeted the photo and message below to his tiny group of 40followers. <div alt="" class="media-image" height="447" width="480" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[img]</div>According to the Times, Tucker heard about anti-Trump demonstrations in Austin hours after he saw the buses in the photo, and for reasons that aren’t entirely clear (except that if you look for boogeymen everywhere you will find them), assumed a connection between the two. The Times confirmed that Tucker’s photo actually features buses booked for employees of Tableau Software, which was having a conference in the city. (Tucker told the Times he did a search for nearby conferences but didn’t find anything.) Roughly four hours after the original tweet went out, it ended up <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5c6ag1/breaking_they_found_the_buses_dozens_lined_up/" style="text-decoration: none;">on Reddit</a>. “BREAKING: They found the buses!” the header reads. “Dozens lined up just blocks away from the Austin protests.” The thread of comments that follow indicate subreddits full of Trump supporters who, riding high on an election victory, are ecstatic to have a new conspiracy they can hang on the left.“Alex Jones is based in Austin,” one commenter declares. “Let him know, and his crew can check it out.”That’s followed by a lot of wishing the worst on Soros, complaints about “cucks,” suggestions that James O’Keefe get involved, and a lot of assumptions rooted in racism and paranoia. “Busing in violent mobs? Please tell me how this isn't inciting treason,” one person demands. This inexplicably devolves into a conversation about Obamaphones.By the morning of November 10, the story appeared on right-wing message board Free Republic, where a user linked back to the original tweet. Here’s the point at which things quickly build momentum, picking up the pace across right-wing echo chambers. According to the Times, that same day, “Facebook pages like Robertson Family Values, which is named for but not affiliated with the stars of ‘Duck Dynasty,’ and Donald Trump Commander in Chief 2020, linked to the Free Republic discussion.” A Times screengrab of a Free Republican Facebook post repeating the Reddit message shows 307,616 shares. The paper also cites 5,000 shares of each of the aforementioned blog posts.By now, the story had trickled upward to local news outlets. When the Austin-based affiliate for Fox called Coach USA North America bus company to get more information, they were told by spokesperson Sean Hughes that the company wasn’t involved in any protests. Hughes even sent the station a <a href="http://www.fox5ny.com/news/216900687-story" style="text-decoration: none;">statement clarifying</a> that buses were in town "for a conference” and that “at no point were Coach USA buses involved in the Austin protests." The television station’s website, now empty of most of the content that appeared there, still features photos of the buses taken by Tucker, with a caption that poses this leading question: “Were tens of thousands of protesters across the U.S. paid to walk the streets, hold signs, and chant anti-Trump sayings?”That evening, Gateway Pundit, a major conservative blog, posted a story with the headline, “Figures. Anti-Trump Protesters Were Bussed in to Austin #FakeProtests.” They used Tucker’s original pictures, and according to the Times, linked the nonexistent busloads of fake protesters to “Soros money.” Three hours later, President-elect Trump or someone on his team took to social media <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/796900183955095552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" style="text-decoration: none;">to tweet</a> about the fake story to his 16 million followers.“Just had a very open and successful presidential election,” the message reads. “Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!”As of this writing, the tweet has more than 71,000 retweets and 240,000 likes.<div class="in_content_ad_container ad_13" style="width: 300px; height: 250px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); float: left; margin: 0px 15px 15px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="div-gpt-ad-1420251685282-1" data-google-query-id="CNm1-YvAxNACFUIGgQodYvQMMw" style="width: 300px; height: 250px;"><div id="google_ads_iframe_/1010624/New_AlterNet_300x250_STORY_EMBED_2_0container" style="border: 0pt none; display: inline-block; width: 300px; height: 250px;"></div></div></div><div alt="" class="media-image" height="258" width="480" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="258" width="480" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/large/public/screen_shot_2016-11-23_at_4.22.48_pm.png" style="border: none;" /></div>On November 11, a spokesperson for Tableau, the tech company that rented the buses for its conference attendees, sent a statement to the Austin American-Statesman. The newspaper, in turn, published <a href="http://austin.blog.statesman.com/2016/11/11/anti-trump-protesters-in-austin-not-bused-in-contrary-to-twitter-verse/" style="text-decoration: none;">an article</a> debunking Tucker’s original tweet and all of the stories that followed. Included was an interview with Eric Tucker, who praised Alex Jones and stated, “I think that it is necessary for us to risk sometimes being wrong to help develop moving the dialogue forward.”Later in the day, according to the Times, Tucker sent a tweet that acknowledged the possibility his first suggestion may have been “flat wrong.” There was also a <a href="http://www.snopes.com/anti-trump-protesters-bused-into-austin/" style="text-decoration: none;">Snopes article</a> declaring the rumor false. Instead of stopping the fake news dead in its tracks, the case essentially turned into proof that "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes," as the old saying goes. Also, the internet loves a lie that supports its political agenda. According to the Times, “Mr. Tucker’s initial tweet continued to generate thousands of shares on Facebook through Free Republic and pages like Right Wing News and Joe the Plumber.”On the night of November 11, Tucker put up the tweet below, which shows his original message updated to carry a bright red “FALSE” across it. The corrected tweet, as of this writing, has a paltry 60 retweets and 66 likes. He told the Times that moving forward, "I can assure you I’m going to try my best to be balanced with the facts and be very clear about what is opinion and what is not." He also said that knowing what he knows now, he “might have still tweeted it but very differently. I think it goes without saying I would have tried to make a more objective statement.”The same night, Tucker finally trashed the tweet that started it all. While that’s been scrubbed from social media, its impact isn’t going anywhere. Neither, coincidentally, is President-elect Donald Trump. perfect example: james taylor blogs about bogus study by spencer, see belowNote also CONSERVATIVE Military-Industrial-ENTERTAINMENT-Complex?
Note that escalator effect/echo chamber also creates ideological room: limbaugh, beck and bachmann constantly push edge to keep right riled with red meat, but also functions as test baloon for ideas and even messaging?  Pushes the party to the right, and what seems wacko (privatize social security) seems tame next to FEMA camps and death panels).
interesting, somewhat metaphorically, escalator effect could also refer to people/ideological entrepreneurs who move up the food chain, starting with blogs and social networks, low barrier to entry and no filters/rules, they get attention, then job offers.  Might be some parallel to the more traditional route of atty gen'l making their bones going after poor ppl leveraging that notoriety to run for higher office.  All these of course related to pension plan.

Good to look at crew around Sam Adams alliance that launched TP eg Eric o'Keefe (link to snyder) , also Ryuns who now cash in on big data, joe the plumber
daily caller?  townhall etc
Also brownfield soc network guy for snyder (using koch money?) ends up at Heritage with a title, his blog hit on OWS leads to AZ cop crackdown?

---example?
A new NASA study found that there has been a net increase in land ice in Antarctica in recent years, despite a decline in some parts of the continent. The study's lead author astutely predicted that climate science deniers would distort the study, even though it does nothing to contradict the scientific consensus on climate change or the fact that sea levels will continue to rise....<h2 style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px; clear: both; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 153, 255); line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And Other Measurements Show Net Loss Of Antarctic Ice In Recent Years</h2>NASA's Gavin Schmidt: "I Would Pin More Weight" To Recent Data From NASA GRACE Satellite "Than To This Latest Paper." VICE News reported:<blockquote style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); margin: 20px 20px 25px; padding: 25px 30px 10px; box-shadow: rgb(204, 204, 204) 0px 6px 0px -4px; clear: both; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gavin Schmidt, who directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and was not affiliated with the study, said that data from a pair of satellites called GRACE, which measure gravity, actually points towards a net loss of ice on the Antarctic continent in more recent years.Schmidt said that there are two methods for measuring the mass of an ice sheet. The first measures gravity, and the second measures the elevation of the top of the ice sheet. Both methods need to take different variables into account to be accurate. The method used in this most recent study measured the ice sheet's elevation, and the most recent time period it considered ended in 2008."I would pin more weight to the GRACE data than to this latest paper," Schmidt told VICE News. [VICE News, <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/just-because-antarctica-might-be-gaining-ice-doesnt-mean-climate-change-isnt-happening" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/2/15</a>]</blockquote>Slate's Phil Plait: Since End Of Study Dataset In 2008, Antarctic Ice Loss Has Greatly Accelerated. Slate science writer Phil Plait wrote:<blockquote style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); margin: 20px 20px 25px; padding: 25px 30px 10px; box-shadow: rgb(204, 204, 204) 0px 6px 0px -4px; clear: both; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A new study just published in the Journal of Glaciology is causing some buzz in climate circles, because it appears to claim that Antarctica -- long thought to be losing ice at extremely alarming rates -- is actually gaining ice. However, note the word "appear". The reality is more complicated, and in the end the important aspect of this is that the study only talks about part of Antarctica, and only used data up to 2008. Both of these points are critical.[...]They looked at data going from 1992 - 2008. Starting right around that time, mass loss due to melting ice in Antarctica (mostly in the west) has accelerated. It's actually been speeding up for some time, but in recent years it's really kicked in. Every year, about six billion more tons of ice are lost than the year before. In the past two decades, the loss rate has doubled.This is enough to easily outpace the mass gained by snowfall over East Antarctica. Using data taken by the Grace satellites (which measure how mass underneath them changes over time), we know that overall, Antarctica is currently losing more than 130 billion tons of ice per year, and again, that number is increasing every year. Since 2002 it's lost about two trillion tons of ice. [Slate, <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/11/03/antarctic_ice_still_losing_mass.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/3/15</a>]</blockquote><h2 style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px; clear: both; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 153, 255); line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Study Author Was Right: Conservative Media Used Study To Deny Climate Science Consensus</h2>Fox's Varney: Study Provides "Doubt" That "Global Warming Theories Are Going The Right Way." On the November 2 edition of Fox Business' Varney & Co., host Stuart Varney teased a segment on the NASA study by claiming it is "putting some doubt that some global warming theories are going the right way. That's NASA saying that." Varney later brought on Fox News contributor Stephen Moore, who complained that the media touts every "story that seems to validate global warming," while ignoring studies like the NASA study, which are an "indication that it's actually not happening." At the end of the segment, Moore joked that "this might be the start of another Ice Age." [Fox Business, Varney & Co., <a href="http://mediamatters.org/embed/clips/2015/11/02/42925/fbn-varney-20151102-antarctictease" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/2/15</a>; <a href="http://mediamatters.org/embed/clips/2015/11/02/42924/fbn-varney-20151102-antarcticclip" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/2/15</a>]Drudge Report Hyped NASA Study Underneath Headline About Putin Calling Global Warming "A Fraud." The Drudge Report, a highly trafficked conservative news aggregator, linked to the Christian Science Monitor's article on the NASA study with the headline "Antarctica gaining ice ..." The headline was placed beneath another headline that stated: "PUTIN: Global Warming 'A Fraud'..." (as well as a headline touting the baseless claim that the United Nations is planning to create a "climate justice" court):<img src="http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/uploader/image/2015/11/02/drudgeicescreencap.jpg" alt="drudge" style="border: none; outline: none; display: block; margin: 0px auto 20px; padding: 0px; max-width: 645px; border-radius: 2px; clear: right;" height="103" width="365" />[Drudge Report Archives, <a href="http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2015/11/02/20151102_125503.htm" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/2/15</a>; Media Matters, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/11/03/right-wing-media-baselessly-warn-of-internation/206599" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/3/15</a>]Limbaugh Criticized Media Outlet For Reporting That Study Does Not Disprove Global Warming. On the November 2 edition of his show, Rush Limbaugh criticized the Christian Science Monitor for reporting that the NASA study is not evidence that "global warming is over":<blockquote style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); margin: 20px 20px 25px; padding: 25px 30px 10px; box-shadow: rgb(204, 204, 204) 0px 6px 0px -4px; clear: both; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);">LIMBAUGH: Is global warming over? No, no, of course not. We're not supposed to assume that! We only assume when the ice is melting that there is global warming. But when the ice is expanding? No, no, no, no, no. That does not mean that there isn't any global warming! See how this works? [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/embed/clips/2015/11/02/42928/pri-rush-20151102-icecapsgrowing" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/2/15</a>;Christian Science Monitor, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1101/Antarctica-is-actually-gaining-ice-says-NASA.-Is-global-warming-over" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/1/15</a>]</blockquote>American Thinker: "The Fraud Is Falling Apart." Conservative blog American Thinker published a blog post headlined: "Oh-oh! NASA study finds Antarctic ice cap growing." In it, American Thinker asserted that the global warming "fraud" is "falling apart." [American Thinker, <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/11/ohoh_nasa_study_finds_antarctic_ice_cap_growing.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/2/15</a>]The Telegraph: Antarctic Ice Growing "Despite Fears Over Global Warming." The Telegraph reported: "Antarctica's ice floes have been found to be growing faster than they are shrinking despite fears over global warming." [The Telegraph, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/11970682/NASA-reveals-that-Antarctica-is-actually-gaining-ice.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/2/15</a>]The Daily Express: "What Global Warming?" The Daily Express published an article headlined, "What global warming? Antarctic ice is INCREASING by 135 billion tonnes a year, says NASA." The article asserted: "Global warming theories have been thrown into doubt after Nasa also claimed current horror predictions into future sea-level rises may not be as severe." [The Daily Express, <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/616356/What-global-warming-Nasa-Antarctic-ice-INCREASING-135BILLION-TONNES-year" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/2/15</a>]Newsmax: "NASA Debunks Global Warming." Right-wing website Newsmax published an article headlined: "NASA Debunks Global Warming: Ice Sheets Growing." [Newsmax, <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/antarctic-ice-gain/2015/11/01/id/700061/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">11/1/15</a>]Conservative Media Have History Of Distorting Scientific Research To Fit Deniers' Agenda. Over the past several years, scientists have frequently had to call out right-wing media for distorting their studies to promote climate science denial. [Media Ma<a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/11/04/nasa-scientist-warned-deniers-would-distort-his/206612" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/11/04/nasa-scientist-warned-deniers-would-distort-his/206612</a>---===fox effect book art'l:
There is a chapter on the Tea Party that describes how integral Fox

was to its inception and development. The network literally branded the

fledgling movement as FNC Tea Parties and dispatched its top anchors to

host live broadcasts from rallies. The Fox Effect also details the

extensive coverage devoted to the deceitfully edited videos that brought

down ACORN. Fox was instrumental in promoting the story and stirring up

a public backlash that resulted in congressional investigations and

loss of funding. The book followed the story from Andrew Breitbart’s new

and little known BigGovernment blog to Glenn Beck’s conspiracy factory

to the wall-to-wall coverage it enjoyed on Fox’s primetime. This chapter

is where the authors introduce what they call “The Six Steps” that Fox employs to create national controversies:

<ul><li>STEP 1: Conservative activists introduce the lie.</li><li>STEP 2: Fox News devotes massive coverage to the story.</li><li>STEP 3: Fox attacks other outlets for ignoring the controversy.</li><li>STEP 4: Mainstream outlets begin reporting on the story.</li><li>STEP 5: Media critics, pundits praise Fox News’s coverage.</li><li>STEP 6: The story falls apart once the damage has been done.</li></ul>

This is a pattern that has played out with varying degrees of

success. Fox used this blueprint to engineer the career-ending slander

of presidential adviser Van Jones and Department of Agriculture official

Shirley Sherrod. But the strategy was less effective when used against

Attorney General Eric Holder and Planned Parenthood, although not for

lack of effort.
Escalator:I saw news of a ridiculous sort this morning when scanning the headlines. The whole mountain of science concluding that climate change was happening and was a great concern for humanity got a hole blown through it due to findings from a new study. Of course, this is far, far, far, far from the case. But, unfortunately, due to an all-too-commonly copied trail of disinformation, thousands upon thousands of people probably think so now. It is a disgrace that this sort of thing can happen in a supposedly “advanced” society. First off, the trail:–> A widely discredited climate scientist who is trying to be a maverick and prove that he’s a genius and 97% of top climate scientists are wrong (and who seems to have some beef with his former bosses at NASA) publishes a deeply flawed study in an obscure online journal (using models that have been picked apart and thrown in the trash by respectable scientists previously).–> A blogger from a conservative, global-warming-denial, fossil-fuel-funded think tank gets Forbes (owned by the now quite infamous Rupert Murdoch) to publish his interpretation of this study and its implications (as if Forbes hasn’t published enough climate nonsense over the years).–> More mainstream news outlets (and hordes upon hordes of uninformed deniers) who think Forbes and the Heartland Institute are reputable sources publish stories on the matter as well, adding their own bit of extremism to catch people’s eyes (they know how much people love a good controversy, even if it’s based in nothing more than Jerry Springer style theatrics).–> The population becomes that much more confused about the completely concerning threat of climate change… and the results will speak for themselves if more people who are informed don’t speak up.Anyway, Brad Johnson & Dr. Joe Romm of Think Progress wrote good pieces on this story today which I’ll just go ahead and re-print in full below. Everything from here on is from them:2nd try // durban; again press does not come off well:

To read Kate Sheppard's story on the first Climategate scandal, click <a href="http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/04/history-of-climategate" target="_blank">here</a>.The new round of <a href="http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/11/climategate-again">hacked emails</a> from climate scientists floating around the internet hasn't generated the same buzz as the last iteration—at least not yet. But in certain circles, it's playing out <a href="http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/04/history-of-climategate">much like the first</a> batch of emails did in 2009. In addition to the tranche of emails, the poster included a list of "greatest hits"—short quotes from the emails taken out of their context that are intended to paint scientists as scheming or lying. The entire batch was quickly posted <a href="http://foia2011.org/">in searchable format</a> on another site.As with the first "Climategate," a link to the emails was first noticed on several skeptic blogs, to which their commenters have responded with glee.  Climate Depot, the denial site run by Marc Morano, quickly jumped all over it, boasting headlines claiming the emails confirm a "pattern of deception and collusion by alarmists" and a comic that that reads "Same cast, same story, same secrets … Will they survive this time?" Morano's page is also touted over on the National Review's <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/283992/climategate-20-greg-pollowitz">Planet Gore blog</a>, along with a bunch of other coverage of "Climategate 2.0." ESCALATORIt's since also traveled up line to conservative commentators at the <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100119087/uh-oh-global-warming-loons-here-comes-climategate-ii/">UK's Telegraph</a> and <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0/">Hot Air</a>. And of course, it's getting covered at Fox News, which <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/11/22/climategate-20-more-emails-leaked-from-climate-researchers/">declared that the emails</a> were "certainly eye-opening" before listing some of the quotes selected by the original poster.=<h1 class="print-title" style="margin-bottom: 0.2em;">Major News Outlets Give Fossil-Fuel-Funded Think Tanks a Free Platform</h1><div class="dek" style="font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0.5em;">National newspapers publish anti-green-energy articles—without disclosing that the authors work for industry-backed groups, a new study finds.</div>By <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/authors/kate-sheppard" rel="author">Kate Sheppard</a> | Thu Dec. 13, 2012 3:03 AM PST<hr class="print-hr" /><div class="field field-type-text field-field-short-body"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd">The fossil fuel industry has long been a source of talking points and "studies" aimed at spreading doubt about climate change, and over the past few years, it has broadened its scope to undermine support for clean energy, as well. Often, this criticism is published in the form of articles in major media outlets—penned by employees of think tanks who don't disclose their groups' industry funding, a new <a href="http://checksandbalancesproject.org/2012/12/12/report-fossil-fuel-front-groups-on-the-front-page/">study</a> [1] finds.The <a href="http://checksandbalancesproject.org/">Checks and Balances Project</a> [2], a pro-clean-energy watchdog group, surveyed stories published over the past five years in 60 news outlets, including national and regional newspapers, the Associated Press, and Politico. Researchers found that only 6 percent of the stories disclosed the funding when they cited "experts" from those think tanks. Typically, the stories referred to the groups as "free-market" or "libertarian," without mentioning the dirty-energy support.</div></div></div>Among the most frequent op-ed contributors is Robert Bryce, a senior fellow with the <a href="http://www.manhattan-institute.org/">Manhattan Institute</a> [3], a think tank that has made promoting fossil fuels and downplaying climate change a central focus—and that has received $1.21 million in funding from the likes of ExxonMobil and <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/06/953240/-Who-is-this-Claude-R-Lambe">Claude R. Lambe</a> [4], a Koch-owned charitable organization. Bryce is quite deft at mowing down clean energy, which is probably why he's become a regular in the op-ed pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, on TV, and speaking at events.The Checks and Balances report notes that Manhattan Institute was mentioned 65 times in the papers it surveyed. That count includes pieces like Bryce's April 2010 <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/23/AR2010042302220.html">op-ed in the Washington Post</a> [5], "Five Myths About Green Energy," which includes lines like, "[I]n in the electric car's century-long history, failure tailgates failure." The piece describes Bryce as a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute, but doesn't mention the funding. Nor does his Wall Street Journal piece from August 2010, "Wind Power Won't Cool Down the Planet," which claims that increasing the use of wind will actually increase our emissions of carbon dioxide. Bryce also <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/0710/Six-lessons-from-the-BP-oil-spill/%28page%29/7">popped up in</a> [6] a Christian Science Monitor piece on lessons from the BP oil spill, arguing that nothing can compete with oil—again, with no indication that his organization has a dog in the fight. (Media Matters also <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2011/10/07/who-is-robert-bryce/181888">posted a piece in 2011</a> [7] that noted Bryce had made 39 different media appearances that failed to disclose the fossil fuel ties.)<div class="pullquote-right">Fossil-fuel-funded AEI fellow Steven Hayward has penned WSJ op-eds with titles like "No: Alternatives Are Simply Too Expensive."</div>Other conservative think tanks have jumped in the clean-tech-bashing game, too. Take the American Enterprise Institute, recipient of at least $2.8 million in money from fossil-fuel interests like ExxonMobil since 1998. AEI fellow Steven Hayward has penned Wall Street Journal op-eds with titles like <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574406673454653820.html">"No: Alternatives Are Simply Too Expensive."</a> [8] Then there's the Institute for Energy Research, an <a href="http://grist.org/article/2009-04-30-industry-front-group-goes/">industry aligned</a> [9] nonprofit that has taken money from Exxon and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, one of the Koch family foundations. The institute's president, Thomas Pyle, appeared in a January 2010 <a href="http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Texas-is-in-line-to-get-clean-energy-tax-credits-1694015.php">Houston Chronicle article</a> [10] arguing that the government should not provide tax credits to renewable energy, because it's been proven that they are "not economically viable in the marketplace."...<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/print/210806">http://www.motherjones.com/print/210806</a>=MANN CLIMATEGATE: <h3 style="text-align: justify;">Denialists Frothing Up the Abusers</h3>There is a clear connection between the behavior at climate denialist blogs and the abuse directed towards climate scientists.  Denialist blog posts constantly leap from their own flawed scientific analyses to the conclusion that climate scientists must be guilty of fraud, data manipulation, and other immoral behavior.  The letters received by climate scientists contain this same sort of language, with baseless accusations of fraud and data manipulation, followed by abusive language and often death threats.Climate denialist blogs are also the source of the CEI and National Review accusations of fraud,[ESCALATOR] which soon warped into a denigrating comparison betweEn an honest climate scientist and a serial child molester.  Instead of condemning this reprehensible behavior, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/24/fighting-the-mann/">climate denialist ringleader WattsUpWithThat in particular appears to encourage it</a>.=atrazine: Secret Payments to “Independent” Allies

Court documents include a “Supportive Third Party Stakeholders Database”

of 130 people and organizations the company could count on to publicly

support atrazine, often for a price.  Documents show people on the list

were coached, their statements in support of atrazine were edited by the

company and payments to them were not publicly disclosed. In some

cases, Syngenta or its PR team wrote the Op-Ed pieces and then scanned

its stakeholder database for a signer.

In an Oct. 17, 2009, memo to Syngenta’s Ford, Jayne Thompson warned that some of the

language in four Op-Eds penned by the White House Writers Group is

suggestive of their source, which “should be avoided at all costs.”

Hiding the source of Op-Eds on atrazine (p. 12)[coursey hack nat press club cited as indep nationally]
 ==It is just over one week since Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma read Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/31/1183622/-Sen-Inhofe-Takes-Chuck-Hagel-Sec-of-Defense-Hearing-Questions-From-Jennifer-Rubin-s-WaPo-Post">four questions</a> suggested to him by Washington Post

blogger Jennifer Rubin during Hagel's confirmation hearing. The

substance of the questions Inhofe delivered to Hagel in the Senate

chamber -- a typical Rubin laundry list of neoconservative wisdom

gleaned from her January 28 post titled, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDUQFjAA&url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/01/28/our-dimwitted-state-department/&ei=DcQTUbC0Naea0QHAwYDoBw&usg=AFQjCNHvEpoIQTqFxg4yqc-k8numuVPgmQ&sig2=M3bRgj4F-4CStzNAMoXcfg&bvm=bv.42080656,d.dmQ">"Our Dimwitted State Department"</a> -- was quickly overshadowed by the public reaction of Post

senior correspondent and associate editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran. When

Inhofe described Rubin's post as "kind of an interesting article,"

Chandrasekaran shot off an angry tweet. "I hate it when senators refer

to WP opinion blogger posts as articles," he growled. "<a href="https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger">@JRubinBlogger</a> is NOT a WaPo reporter."

That he's right is a fortunate thing for the Post. If the daily employed Rubin to cover national security and international affairs, they'd have a bit of a <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/06/03/bill-keller-speaks-out-on-judy-miller-iraq-war/180289&ei=UsYTUe-rCpSF0QHzu4CoCA&usg=AFQjCNFSEIw_BUEXqp4h51r_l_709kGJug&sig2=7PXG0t-TCcx1LfBN4DB0jQ&bvm=bv.42080656,d.dmQ">Judith Miller problem</a>. Since the Post hired Rubin in late 2010, she has routinely <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/192479">embarrassed the paper</a> by <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/10/05/wapos-rubin-repackages-romney-press-release-as/190378&ei=osYTUcr4L4e_0QHrmYGwAg&usg=AFQjCNH8ZZq1CBIO5IXesYuAA_DOjDZwjw&sig2=vOz26P94iR7JqFruKmyBOQ&bvm=bv.42080656,d.dmQ">putting bylines</a> on Romney campaign press releases; <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/omblog/post/post-roast-jennifer-rubins-retweet/2011/11/07/gIQAxxLQ1M_blog.html">endorsing</a> blood-thirsty calls for revenge against Palestinians; and successfully experimenting with the manufacture of <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/01/24/who-started-the-benghazi-real-time-video-falseh/192380">durable conservative fantasy narratives</a>. 
==
related?  METHOD: 1 activist lie, 2 massive coverage 3) attack other media for not

covering 4) mainstream media picks up  5) media critics praise fox  6)

story falls apart after damage done 168-9

----

This takes place in two primary way, blog to radio, disreputable newspaper (or editiorial smuggled into a reputable one), then gets picked up by networks.

Second related way is unholy trinity of Drudge, Breitbart, O'Keefe  (then leveraged by Beck, Rush?)

===

<h1 style=" margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;">How An Austrian Blogger's Report That Paul Krugman Filed For Bankruptcy Ended Up On Boston.com</h1>

<h5><a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog"> Blog </a>››› <time datetime="2013-03-11T18:01:38-04:00" itemprop="datePublished"> March 11, 2013 6:01 PM EDT </time> ››› JOE STRUPP </h5>

</div>

<h2>Web News Experts: Bogus Krugman Story Shows Dangers of "Mechanical Aggregation"</h2>

<img src="/50c3ac4c-5a39-5dd0-94f7-e1ad11b1968a.jpg"/>The <a href="http://dailycurrant.com/2013/03/06/paul-krugman-declares-personal-bankruptcy/">bogus story</a> that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman had filed for bankruptcy appeared on Boston.com, the sister website of The Boston Globe, through a third-party content provider that posts content without editorial approval and provides such content to more than 200 web outlets.

That provider, meanwhile, took the story from an Austrian-based blog without any editorial review or fact-checking of its own, a practice that is becoming more and more common in the Internet content sharing world. The blog has since deleted its post and all posts from the author appear to have been removed from Boston.com.

The false story, which had its roots in a satire by the website <a href="http://dailycurrant.com/">Daily Currant</a>, was subsequently <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/03/11/breitbartcom-runs-with-satirical-story-about-kr/192996">picked up</a> by the conservative site Breitbart.com, a move later criticized by Krugman himself and numerous news outlets from <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/03/breitbart-krugman-bankruptcy/62952/">The Atlantic</a> to <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/03/the-daily-currant-strikes-again-158983.html">Politico</a>. Breitbart.com has deleted the post, with its author blaming Boston.com, which he says he "trusted" for the story.

But according to Boston.com, they played no role in the creation of that post, an editorial mechanism which troubles some observers.

Ron Agrella, editor of <a href="http://boston.com/">Boston.com</a>, said the item was placed on his site by the content provider <a href="http://www.financialcontent.com/index.php">financialcontent.com</a> on March 7, without approval or review from either Boston.com or the Globe.

He said he reached out to financialcontent.com at roughly 9 a.m. EDT today to have the item removed. It was removed at 11:34 a.m. EDT.

"The reason why we partner with them is to provide stock data," Agrella explained Monday, just hours after the item was taken down. "That is why we contract with them. The stories are additional content provided on the side. We have partnered with them for 10 or 12 years."

Financialcontent.com had picked up the item from an Austria-based business blog, <a href="http://www.prudentinvestor.com/">Prudent Investor</a>, without any editorial review of its own, according to financialcontent.com CEO Wing Yu.

"We are a technology company, we don't have an editorial desk," Yu explained. "There is an RSS feed that we parse from each content provider. We have categorized [Prudent Investor] as a business content provider and the content is syndicated along with the byline."

YU said Prudent Investor is one of more than 400 content providers that financialcontent.com draws on for news and data, which it then forwards to some 200 news outlets such as Boston.com, as well as others owned by McClatchy, Media News Group and AOL.

The Prudent Investor website is based in Vienna, Austria, and run by Toni Straka, who describes himself on the blog as "an INDEPENDENT Certified Financial Analyst who worked as a financial journalist for 15+ years and now evaluate global market trends."

Straka said he picked up the item from the Austrian online magazine <a href="http://www.format.at/">Format</a>, which he says posted it without any notice that it was satire. Straka said he posted the item on his own website on March 7 and removed it within an hour after Format advised him it was bogus.

But by then the damage had been done, as financialcontent.com and thus Boston.com had already picked up the post. Asked why he did not inform financialcontent.com that he removed the item because it was bogus, Straka said, "I do not always know where" the content is picked up.

Agrella said financialcontent.com is one of a dozen content providers that are able to post content on the Boston.com site without Globe or Boston.com review. He said Boston.com pays a fee to each provider, but did not disclose the amount.

Financialcontent.com actually posts the items on its own websites, which are linked to Boston.com and appear with the Boston.com shell around them so that they remain under the site's web brand. The Krugman item appeared on the financialcontent.com page that provides market information for Boston.com.

"The page is run by them," Agrella said of financialcontent.com. "They have a multitude of partners that are pulled in by a variety of blogs."

Yu criticized Breitbart.com for wrongly attributing the bogus item on Boston.com to the newspaper rather than to Prudent Investor, whose byline was on the story.

"It seemed that Breitbart should have attributed it to the right outlet," Yu said. "It should have been attributed to Prudent Investor."

Such second- and third-hand sourcing for online news is becoming more commonplace, and more worrisome, according to Al Tompkins, an instructor at The Poynter Institute who lectures about online news.

"You see the cost of mechanical aggregation, the cost is that a lot of junk is going to flow through when you just open the gates to things that look like they are legitimate, that is the curse of human editing," Tompkins said. "If it was as easy as running it though an algorithm we would have no need for human editors. But you need human editors to ask questions like, how do we know that? Has anyone called him? All it would have taken is to actually report it."

Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, and a former Globe ombudsman, offered similar concerns.

"The danger is that news organizations, if not careful, could be increasingly diminishing their reliability in the eyes of a public that already has some doubts," he said.

Yu said no policy changes were expected related to how the service draws content from outside sources. He did say he had stopped taking content from Prudent Investor for the moment, stating they are "on probation for lack of a better word," and described their content as "on hold."

Agrella called the bogus story appearing on his site "obviously a concern of ours," but also said no changes in procedures were planned.

"In the past, we have had very few problems if any," he said. "It appears this one slipped through and we are trying to determine how it slipped through and prevent it from happening again."

</div>

===

CTT put letters to editor in LA Times, then quote it as if a real vetted news story

===

<h2 class="entry-title">The supply chain of a lunatic right wing story that duped Representative Rehberg</h2>

Back in 1998, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton blamed the<a title="Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vast_right-wing_conspiracy"> “vast right wing conspiracy”</a> for the persecution of her husband, the president, who was later impeached by the Republican-led House of Representatives for lying about his sexual affairs in the Oval Office.

Mrs. Clinton’s meme quickly dominated the news cycle for a day or so, a sidebar in the sordid<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewinsky_scandal"> Monica Lewinsky affair</a>. The future senator and secretary of state was describing tactics used by the political right to legitimize marginal stories designed to embarrass their enemies. Enemies No. 1 and 2 at that time, of course, were the Clintons. The tactics went roughly like this: A story would be planted in the ideological British tabloid press, which routinely chased scandal at the expense of standards (as the News of the World phone hacking affair has subsequently underscored). That would give Drudge something to link to, compelling the mainstream American to chase and advance the story.

Remember, this was before Fox News had any influence (the network launched in 1996 but was accessible to only 10 million households). The Web bandwidth was a fraction of what it is today. In the 14 years since, the right-wing echo chamber architecture has been built out, and the tools for manipulation are much more vast.

The model, however, remains largely the same: Plant the story at the edges (and often the fringes) of the news universe and create the illusion of credibility with each layer of coverage, usually by outlets with larger audiences. Repeat a lie often enough, and people will believe it.

So many right-wing memes that civil and rational people once upon a time would have dismissed outright as lunacy have gained prominence and notoriety this way. Exhibit 1 is the notion that President Obama isn’t a natural born citizen. And sometimes it bites the right wing in the ass. See, e.g., <a href="http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/convicted-criminal-james-okeefe-dupes-right">James O’Keefe</a> and his amateurish Project Veritas.

The sad thing is, a lot of people get taken in by this manipulation. Even our lawmakers.

Evidently, Representative <a href="http://rehberg.house.gov/">Denny Rehberg</a>, a Montana Republican, takes everything he hears and reads in the right-wing press at face value. Two weeks ago, he dashed off a strongly-worded letter to the Environmental Protection Agency demanding to know why it had deployed surveillance drones to monitor American farmers and ranchers.

Problem is, the EPA did no such thing. Which Rehberg would have learned had he bothered to ask questions rather than level an accusation.

Where did this congresscritter get his information? The <a href="http://missoulian.com/article_1a44837e-ba84-11e1-aae7-0019bb2963f4.html?fb_ref=.T-HFNDdoq2w.like&fb_source=home_multiline">Missoulan newspaper</a> in Billings lays out the vast right wing conspiracy in action:

The drone story had been circulating for several days in the right-wing media before Rehberg wrote Jackson.

Conservative talk radio host Alex Jones published the bogus drone story on his website<a href="http://infowars.com/">Infowars.com</a> on June 4, complete with a photograph of a military drone flying through blue skies.

The next day, the New American, a biweekly owned by the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, reported the bogus drone story. That story credited Nebraska’s congressional delegation for the news. The gist of the New American story was that drones were being used to spy on large feedlots where cattle urine and feces are highly concentrated and potentially threaten water supplies.

On June 6, the story was picked up by the Daily Caller, a news site founded by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, former chief policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. The Daily Caller made the news last week when its reporter Neil Munro heckled Obama during a White House news conference in the Rose Garden.

Investors Business Daily also picked up the story. Montanans might recognize the politically conservative publication’s featured columnist, Andrew Malcolm, former communications director for former Republican Gov. Marc Racicot.

Fox News also reported that the EPA was using military-style drones to spy on farms and ranches in the Midwest. Fox linked the bogus EPA drones to U.S. military drone use.

</blockquote>

Naturally, of course, it’s President Obama’s fault that Rehberg revealed himself as a fool:

“The Obama Administration rarely reveals its secretive plans to anyone but its closest allies. Since Denny doesn’t vote with the President 95 percent of the time, he must often rely on news reports and constituent input,” wrote Jed Link, Rehberg’s spokesman. “In this case, Denny heard from concerned Montanans, saw reports in the media and took the responsible first step – asking the EPA about it.”

</blockquote>

Right. He “asked” the EPA about it.

In actuality, he shot first and asked questions later. Only now he’s been burned by backfire. And his right-wing media cronies.  <a href="http://strawmanchronicles.com/2012/06/20/the-supply-chain-of-a-lunatic-right-wing-story-that-duped-representative-rehberg/">http://strawmanchronicles.com/2012/06/20/the-supply-chain-of-a-lunatic-right-wing-story-that-duped-representative-rehberg/</a>

===

<a href="http://www.grist.org/climate-skeptics/2011-10-01-how-inhofe-turns-balloon-animals-into-news">http://www.grist.org/climate-skeptics/2011-10-01-how-inhofe-turns-balloon-animals-into-news</a>

The professional deniers are at it again. Every chance they get, the people who are paid to spread doubt and confusion about climate change take some minor report or news event, fill it with hot air and twist it up like a balloon animal, then try to persuade everyone that it is alive and kicking -- that it "proves" that the planet isn't warming or human activities aren't the big reason why.

This time, the professional deniers are seizing on a <a href="http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=e0584e33-d3da-4fba-b95a-e93548105e09">report</a> [PDF] from the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general (IG).

In reality, the IG's report upholds EPA's efforts to address climate change, affirming that the agency followed the law when it determined that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

But Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who says he thinks global warming is a hoax, and his team of professional deniers have been trying to pretend that their latest balloon animal is living, breathing proof that the EPA process was faulty and the underlying science flawed. And some news organizations fell for it -- again.

To make his claim, Inhofe had to ignore the crystal-clear opening sentence of the IG's report, which concludes that EPA "met statutory requirements for rulemaking" when it issued its endangerment finding, the scientific basis for action under the Clean Air Act. The IG's report takes issue with some bureaucratic minutiae -- EPA procedures that have nothing to do with the validity of the agency's conclusions. These procedures were created by the federal Office of Management and Budget, and OMB agrees with the way EPA followed them, not with the IG's minor criticisms.

It's one agency squabbling with another over which boxes got checked.

Here's how my colleague Steve Hamburg, chief scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, <a href="http://www.edf.org/news/epa-followed-law-greenhouse-gas-endangerment-finding">put it</a>:

Let's be clear on what this report does not do: it does not call into question any of the underlying science. And the report affirmed that EPA complied with the law when making the endangerment finding.

</blockquote>

EPA's endangerment finding is based on assessments by the National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program -- assessments that considered tens of thousands of peer-reviewed articles and involved thousands of scientists.

Inhofe is peddling another balloon animal. No surprise there. But let's pull back the curtain and see how a balloon animal gets treated like news.

Step one. It all starts when Inhofe himself demands that the IG look into the endangerment finding. "This evaluation was initiated based on a request from Senator James M. Inhofe," the IG report says -- and to carry it out, "the estimated direct labor and travel costs for this report are $297,385." So Inhofe, a putative champion of small government and enemy of bureaucratic waste, triggered almost $300,000 in unnecessary spending for the report. That's an expensive balloon.

Step two. Inhofe breaks the IG's embargo by putting out an overheated press release claiming that the report "calls the scientific integrity of EPA's decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding." In fact, it does nothing of the kind.

Step three. Inhofe's former communications director, Marc Morano, who runs a climate denier website, trumpets the false charges, conservative outlets pick up the drum beat, and mainstream news organizations like <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/epa-needed-more-data-before-ruling-on-greenhouse-gas-emissions-report-says/2011/09/28/gIQABs2X5K_story.html">The Washington Post</a> and Politico quote Inhofe's specious charges. Headlines announce that EPA "cut corners" and "needed more data before ruling." Other journalists begin <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/09/28/28greenwire-new-ig-report-faults-process-in-epas-greenhous-53062.html">weighing in</a> on the "wide-reaching political implications."

Now, an IG report is news, no doubt about that. But reporters should know better than to believe that Inhofe's balloon animal is real. Anyone who looks at it can tell it's just a balloon. Can't they?