punked loop exploit
new 3/19
this is for exploitation of vulnerabilitY EXPLOITS
see jrnl fail (to discover BS sources/$]
hmnn, this started as a list of legit sources that for some reason unintentionally made themselves an insertion point for disinfo/memes to start way up escalator
but maybe broaden (eg wfb on iran nuke deal?)
see peter schweizer poster boy
often virus picking a log of some sort of democratization eg blog on sci am, thus kinda evil
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SCAIFE
AI Overview GGL 6 26
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (TribLIVE) frequently publishes climate-skeptic content, primarily through its opinion pages. The publication has faced criticism for providing space for columns and letters to the editor that dispute the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
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By ERIC TUCKER, MATTHEW LEE and DAVID KLEPPER
Updated 6:58 PM PDT, September 4, 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration seized Kremlin-run websites and charged two Russian state media employees in its most sweeping effort yet to push back against what it says are Russian attempts to spread disinformation ahead of the November presidential election.
The measures, which in addition to indictments also included sanctions and visa restrictions, represented a U.S. government effort just weeks before the November election to disrupt a persistent threat from Russia that American officials have long warned has the potential to sow discord and create confusion among voters.
Washington has said that Moscow, which intelligence officials have said has a preference for Republican Donald Trump, remains the primary threat to elections even as the FBI continues to investigate a hack by Iran this year that targeted the presidential campaigns of both political parties.
- AP’s Role:The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. Learn more.
“The Justice Department’s message is clear: We will have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic systems of government,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
One criminal case disclosed by the Justice Department accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of covertly funding a Tennessee-based content creation company with nearly $10 million to publish English-language videos on social media platforms including TikTok and YouTube with messages in favor of the Russia government’s interests and agenda, including about the war in Ukraine.
The nearly 2,000 videos posted by the company have gotten more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, prosecutors said.
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The two defendants, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They are at large. It was not immediately clear if they had lawyers.
The Justice Department says the company did not disclose that it was funded by RT and that neither it nor its founders registered as required by law as an agent of a foreign principal.
Though the indictment does not name the company, it describes it as a Tennessee-based content creation firm with six commentators and with a website identifying itself as “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.”
That description exactly matches Tenet Media, an online company that hosts videos made by well-known conservative influencers Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and others.
Johnson and Pool both responded with posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, calling themselves “victims.” Calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “scumbag,” Pool wrote that “should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived.”
In his post, Johnson wrote that he had been asked a year ago to provide content to a “media startup.” He said his lawyers negotiated a “standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated.”
Tenet Media’s shows in recent months have featured high-profile conservative guests, including RNC co-chair Lara Trump, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake.
In the other action, officials announced the seizure of 32 internet domains that were used by the Kremlin to spread Russian propaganda and weaken international support for Ukraine. The websites were designed to look like authentic news sites but were actually fake, with bogus social media personas manufactured to appear as if they belonged to American users.
The Justice Department did not identify which candidate in particular the propaganda campaign was meant to boost. But internal strategy notes from participants in the effort released Wednesday by the Justice Department make clear that Trump was the intended beneficiary, even though the names of the candidates were blacked out.
The proposal for one propaganda project, for instance, states that one of its objectives was to secure a victory for a candidate who is currently out of power and to increase the percentage of Americans who believe the U.S. has been doing too much to support Ukraine. President Joe Biden has strongly supported Ukraine during the invasion by Russia.
Intelligence agencies have previously charged that Russia, which during the 2016 election launched a massive campaign of foreign influence and interference on Trump’s behalf, was using disinformation to try to meddle in this year’s election. The new steps show the depth of those concerns.
“Today’s announcement highlights the lengths some foreign governments go to undermine American democratic institutions,” the State Department said. “But these foreign governments should also know that we will not tolerate foreign malign actors intentionally interfering and undermining free and fair elections.”
The State Department announced it was taking action against several employees of Russian state-owned media outlets, designating them as “foreign missions,” and offering a cash reward for information provided to the U.S. government about foreign election interference.
It also said it was adding media company Rossiya Segodnya and its subsidiaries RIA Novosti, RT, TV-Novosti, Ruptly, and Sputnik to its list of foreign missions. That will require them to register with the U.S. government and disclose their properties and personnel in the U.S.
In a speech last month, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Russia remained the biggest threat to election integrity, accusing Putin and his proxies of “targeting specific voter demographics and swing-state voters to in an effort to manipulate presidential and congressional election outcomes.” Russia, she said was “intent on co-opting unwitting Americans on social media to push narratives advancing Russian interests.”
She struck a similar note Thursday, saying at an Aspen Institute event that the foreign influence threat is more diverse and aggressive than in past years.
“More diverse and aggressive because they involve more actors from more countries than we have ever seen before, operating in a more polarized world than we have ever seen before, all fueled by more technology and accelerated by technology, like AI, and that is what we have exposed in the law enforcement actions we took today,” she said.
Much of the concern around Russia centers on cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns designed to influence the November vote.
The tactics include using state media like RT to advance anti-U.S. messages and content, as well as networks of fake websites and social media accounts that amplify the claims and inject them into Americans’ online conversations. Typically, these networks seize on polarizing political topics such as immigration, crime or the war in Gaza.
In many cases, Americans may have no idea that the content they see online either originated or was amplified by the Kremlin.
Groups linked to the Kremlin are increasingly hiring marketing and communications firms within Russia to outsource some of the work of creating digital propaganda while also covering their tracks, the officials said during the briefing with reporters.
Two such firms were the subject of new U.S. sanctions announced in March. Authorities say the two Russian companies created fake websites and social media profiles to spread Kremlin disinformation.
The ultimate goal, however, is to get Americans to spread Russian disinformation without questioning its origin. People are far more likely to trust and repost information that they believe is coming from a domestic source, officials said. Fake websites designed to mimic U.S. news outlets and AI-generated social media profiles are just two methods.
Messages left with the Russian Embassy were not immediately returned.
Associated Press writers Dan Merica and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, Ali Swenson in New York and Alan Suderman in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.
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to be fair no way to estb fake? but did not have to run it, no disclaimer?
aha? antifa blm merge
https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/fox-news-and-right-wing-media-circulate-seemingly-inauthentic-antifa-poster
pix of poster bring rocks ...
mma 1 23
protests emerged around the country following the release of police body camera footage of officers fatally beating Tyre Nichols, Fox News and other right-wing media sources promoted an “antifa poster” whose authenticity has not been proved. The poster supposedly called for protesters to “burn it all down” and bring rocks and heavy objects to riots in New York City.
The image was initially shared in a Daily Mail article, which called it “a shocking poster,” and on Twitter by user Rob O’Donnell, per disinformation researcher Caroline Orr.
On January 27, Fox News’ Jesse Watters hosted O’Donnell, who said he knows the poster was “put out by antifa” and it’s “calling for protests and riots at all police precincts across the city, to bring rocks, to bring pipes, to bring box cutters,” saying it’s “circulating in the underground of New York City.”
Video
In the next hour, Fox host Tucker Carlson showed the poster, using it to suggest there is “an organized militia encouraging organized violence across the United States of America.”
Carlson’s guest during the segment, former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, told Carlson the police should have “zero tolerance” for antifa protesters and chastised “Biden’s DOJ” for doing “absolutely nothing” about antifa, who he said are “threatening cities across this country.”
Carlson also suggested the poster was evidence of a “criminal conspiracy” by antifa.
Carlson’s commentary was circulated by right-wing blogs The Daily Caller and The Gateway Pundit, and FoxNews.com promoted his segment with Craig.
Video 1 27
With the poster on screen, Fox correspondent Christina Coleman saidon The Ingraham Anglethat “antifa put out this bulletin, calling for violence, even though Tyre's own family has called for peace.”
The poster was also picked up by other right-wing outlets.
On Newsmax, host Lidia Curanaj said “a police source” sent her “a flyer that showed that antifa was organizing throughout the country” but did not show it on screen. She speculated that “a lot of times these horrible incidents, like what happened to Tyre Nichols, are amplified and used by other organizations in order to achieve their political agenda.” Later on the network, Curanaj repeated that the protests must have been planned ahead of time, accused the protests of having “professional agitators,” and called on the media to “do their due diligence and actually investigate” the situation.
The poster also appeared on far-right website The Post Millennial, in an article titled “Antifa vows to 'burn it all down' in NYC following death of Tyre Nichols,” which cites the Daily Mail as having obtained the poster. Neo-Nazi collaborator and Twitter personality Jack Posobiec shared the article on Twitter.
Right-wing commentary siteTownhallshared O’Donnell’s tweet, including the image in a Friday night piece warning about “potential riots” in Memphis.
Newsmax’s Justine Brooke Murray shared the poster on Twitter, writing, “ANTIFA terrorists plan to burn down New York tonight. They’re blasting THIS out.”
Right-wing radio host David Webb on Twitter claimed the image showed that “violence is not a solution but it is a possibility.”
yahoo mail 11 22 judd pop info
shortly after he took office, President Biden announced a goal of building 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030, enough clean energy to power 10 million homes. For the administration, the offshore wind target was a part of a larger strategy of reducing carbon pollution and putting the country on track for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But, like many clean energy plans, this one was met with immediate resistance.
In August 2021, CBS News reported that Nantucket Residents Against Turbines — or ACK Rats — launched a lawsuit against the administration's offshore wind plans. The Massachusetts-based resident group argued that offshore wind development “poses a threat to the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.”
A few months later, a resident group in New Jersey launched another lawsuit against the Biden administration. Bob Stern, president of Save Long Beach Island, told Reuters that he and his fellow residents worried that the wind turbines would destroy their local tourism economy.
Within a year of announcing the goal, the Biden administration faced lawsuits from resident groups in every coastal state from Maine to North Carolina. Some groups sued over endangered whales. Others argued that the turbines would hurt their property values or the local fishing industry.
If you only read the news stories about these lawsuits, you might think this was yet another example of wealthy residents blocking clean energy development. Or you might see a familiar story of environmentalists getting in the way of environmental progress. But you’d be missing the most important part of the story. Nearly every story neglects to mention these groups are being funded by a far-right think tank that receives funding from fossil fuel companies and billionaires.
Who’s behind the offshore wind lawsuits?
According to their website, Protect Our Coast NJ — one of the groups opposing Biden’s offshore wind plans — is a group of “residents, homeowners, business owners, fishermen and visitors of the New Jersey coastal communities.” Media reports accept this description at face value.
In May 2022, Ashbury Park Press — the third largest newspaper in New Jersey — ran a story about Protect Our Coast NJ with the headline, “Could offshore wind turbines blow away Long Beach Island tourism?” The story positions Protect Our Coast NJ as a group of residents and features many of the talking points and studies on the nonprofit’s website:
Ric Bertsch, an Ocean City resident and member of the group Protect Our Coast NJ, which opposes the wind projects as they are currently designed, said he worries about the impacts to communities like his own.
He said the county will suffer the consequences of New Jersey's new experiment with offshore wind turbines, which will harm the tourist experience and block large swaths of ocean from commercial fishing
"The only brand (in Ocean City) that we have to offer the world is our old-fashioned values, our quiet, our peaceful place to be," said Suzanne Hornick, also of Ocean City and leading member of Protect Our Coast NJ. "This (wind turbine project) really screws with our brand."
As of this writing, the “Donate” button on the Protect Our Coast NJ website redirects to a PayPal link that reads “Donate to Caesar Rodney Institute.”
| [grift gfx] |
Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI)is one of more than 50 think tanks in the State Policy Network (SPN). As The Intercept’s Lee Fang reported, CRI receives funding from fossil fuel trade groups like the American Fuel & Petrochemical Association. The think tank also receives funding from Donors Trust, the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement.”
In September 2021, CRI’s David Stevenson — a former member of President Trump’s EPA transition team — held a press conference in front of the Massachusetts State House where he announced a legal fund for groups fighting Biden’s offshore wind plans. By that point, Stevenson had raised $75,000 from his network of donors, and said he hoped to raise $500,000 for the effort.
When asked by E&E’s Ben Storrow who was funding the campaign, Stevenson said, “So far there is no Koch money, not that we wouldn’t take it.”
CRI’s efforts quickly attracted the attention of much larger conservative groups like theHeartland Institute and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). In September 2022, one year after the press conference, both organizations announced a partnership with CRI to sue an offshore wind project in Virginia.
According to the Union for Concerned Scientists, the Heartland Institute and CFACT have both received about $500,000 in funding from ExxonMobil. The Heartland Institute has been called “a leading force in climate change denial.” Media Matters for America named CFACT Founder Marc Morano its climate denier of the year in 2012. Marano, who began his career working for Rush Limbaugh, has said climate scientists “deserve to be publicly flogged.”
In a press release, CFACT President Craig Rucker said, “We are not only very concerned about the future of the right whale, which extensively uses the ocean waters affected by the wind-power project, but also concerned as to how [the federal government] will address the fact that this project, despite its alleged benefits regarding carbon dioxide and climate change, will actually cause the release of more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it will consume.” This, like most of CFACT’s statements about climate change, is false.
Reporters consistently tell a misleading story
None of these connections to the country’s infamous climate denial network are mentioned in the Ashbury Park Press news story about Protect Our Coast NJ. And the local New Jersey newspaper isn’t alone. According to a Popular Information analysis, 11 media outlets have covered Protect Our Coast NJ. None of them mention CRI, its donors, or the legal fund.
Popular Information found that reporters routinely failed to mention connections to CRI when writing about Save Our Beach View, Save Long Beach Island, and Nantucket Residents Against Turbines, three of the other resident groups in the coalition. Instead, these articles spread many of the resident groups’ misleading claims about clean energy.
In January, Reuters wrote a story about Save Long Beach Island’s lawsuit against the federal government. The article did not mention the group's ties to CRI.
Bob Stern, president of Save Long Beach Island, told Reuters that they are concerned by the aesthetic impacts of the turbines, and potential lost tourism due to their interference with Long Beach Island's current unobstructed seascape. The group says tourism is the community's "economic lifeblood."
In 2019, researchers at the University of Rhode Island published a paper analyzing the impacts of offshore wind farms on tourism. They used empirical data based on the United States’ only offshore wind farm off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island. The researchers concluded that the wind farm resulted in more tourism, not less. This study isn’t mentioned in the Reuters story.
Another frequent concern mentioned by resident groups is the risk to endangered species. CBS covered this last year when they wrote:
The "ACK Residents Against Turbines" who filed the lawsuit said the proposed Vineyard Wind project poses a threat to the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.
Jessica Redfern, a senior scientist at Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, told Cape Cod Times that the greatest threat to the North Atlantic Right Whale’s continued existence “comes from collision with vessels and entanglement in fishing gear, particularly lobster pot buoy lines.” She added, “Another big factor is climate change and one of the ways we can minimize that is adopting clean energy (policies) and offshore wind is a great source of that.” She said she had never heard of Save Long Beach Island.
In addition to misleading readers, this poor coverage creates more opposition to offshore wind projects and funnels local residents to the nonprofits’ websites and Facebook pages, which routinely share misinformation about clean energy.
Decarbonizing America’s electric grid and economy will require support from people in every community in the country. But, letting fossil fuel companies and climate deniers control the narrative is a sure way to turn communities of supporters into groups of passionate opponents.
heated
no lnx
How Exxon duped "The Daily"
The New York Times' popular podcast aired a misleading climate ad during COP26, despite policies designed to prevent misinformation.
Emily Atkin
Nov 17
The corporate logo of the New York Times hangs above the front door of their headquarters on October 23, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
The New York Times’s podcast The Daily is one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Each day, millions of people tune in for a deep-dive news story—plus three uninterrupted messages from a trusted advertising partner.
Early last week, that partner was ExxonMobil, the world’s fourth most-polluting fossil fuel company. In paid audio messages that aired amid high-stakes climate negotiations in Scotland, the oil giant sought to convince The Daily’s audience it was moving toward a safe climate future.
The ad appeared to violate The Daily’s policy against fossil fuel sponsorships, which the Times itself revealed earlier this year. In response to growing concerns that oil ads misinform people about the climate crisis, the paper said it “does not allow oil and gas companies to sponsor its climate newsletter, its climate summit, or its podcast ‘The Daily.’”
In an e-mailed statement to HEATED, however, Times Communications Director Nicole Taylor said oil advertisements are still allowed on the podcast. “We do not allow oil and gas companies to sponsor The Daily wholesale,” but “Any company can place spot advertising within The Daily podcast, as long as it meets our advertising acceptability guidelines.”
Asked to explain the difference between a sponsorship or advertisement—and why the Times banned one and not the other—Taylor doubled down on the integrity of the paper’s advertising policies. The Times ”prohibits advertising that is intentionally misleading, deceptive, or contains false information,” she said. “Ads submitted to The New York Times are reviewed by an advertising standards team and are subject to fact-checking.”
But the fact remains that a highly misleading Exxon ad aired on The Daily last week, which means one of two things: Either the New York Times is bad at fact-checking, or Exxon has them fooled just as well as the public.
The Exxon ad that aired last Monday and Tuesday on The Daily reads as follows:
A number of climate experts agree that carbon capture and storage is crucial to reducing emissions to combat climate change.
That’s why ExxonMobil is working to deploy this technology at scale for the highest-emitting sectors.
It can remove more than 90% of CO2 emissions from carbon-intensive industries,
which can help lower the carbon footprint of many everyday things,
like the roads we drive on and devices we all rely on.
Learn more about how ExxonMobil is advancing climate solutions, like carbon capture and storage, at ExxonMobil dot com slash solutions.
“There’s so many misleading aspects to this ad,” said Ben Franta, who studies the history of climate disinformation at Stanford University. Because of its strategically vague language and presentation of micro-facts without context, he said, “You read it and it gives you the impression that carbon capture is new and effective and we’re gonna scale it up, when in reality none of that is the case.”
For Exxon’s ad in The Daily to be accurate, it would have to read something like this:
A number of climate experts agree that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is crucial to reducing emissions to combat climate change. But it’s a small number, and it’s always only when paired with significant fossil fuel reductions, which Exxon is actively fighting against.
That’s why ExxonMobil is working to deploy this technology at scale for the highest-emitting sectors. But it’s at a place too slow to make any sort of difference. Exxon is currently capturing less than 1% of its annual emissions, and most of that carbon is being used to produce more oil. Exxon is working much harder to keep emitting.
It can remove more than 90% of CO2 emissions from carbon-intensive industries. Yeah, and my body can technically perform a backflip, but it’s never actually done one before. The technology that could do this on a significant level does not yet exist. There is one estimate that says a single CCS plant could theoretically reduce 90 percent of one single industrial plant’s emissions— but it’s never happened, and it’s highly debatable. Also, absolutely no one thinks CCS could ever capture 90 percent of all industrial emissions, which this cleverly-worded sentence falsely implies.
It can help lower the carbon footprint of many everyday things, like the roads we drive on and devices we all rely on. Carbon capture can’t be used on cars. Roads and devices are not a significant source of carbon emissions.
Learn more about how ExxonMobil is advancing climate solutions, like carbon capture and storage, at ExxonMobil dot com slash solutions. We provide no information about how we’re advancing climate destruction.
Most people who listen to The Daily aren’t experts on carbon capture. So unless they had done a good amount of research on their own, they likely wouldn’t pick up on how misleading the Exxon ad was.
Indeed, in this case, Exxon used the truth’s complexity to its advantage. It submitted an ad that was simple and easy to understand, yet difficult to debunk in a similarly easy and digestible way.
But this is the New York Times we’re talking about. If anyone should be able to separate complicated truth from fiction, shouldn’t it be them?
How did Exxon’s misleading ad get past the Times’ supposedly stringent advertising standards? Could it be that the paper’s standards aren’t that stringent in the first place?
The Times’ advertising guidelines prohibit content that’s “intentionally misleading.” But it’s unclear how the Times determines intent. “The real question should be if the ad is misleading in effect,” said Genevieve Gunther, the activist leading the Ads Not Fit to Print campaign. Otherwise, oil companies will always be allowed to mislead Times readers about climate change.
Times spokesperson Taylor also only said advertising was “subject to fact-checking.” She did not clarify if all ads are fact-checked. Taylor also did not explain the Times’ fact-checking standards. Are these holistic fact-checks an article might go through? Or are they legal checks to make sure nothing will get them in trouble?
Exxon’s ad in The Daily used a common climate misinformation technique called “paltering.” No individual sentence was 100 percent false, but together they created a misleading impression of the company and its climate efforts. If the Times’ fact-checks are only legal in nature, paltering would easily and always slip through. Oil companies would always be able to pay the Times to misrepresent themselves.
But the issue could also simply be that no one on the Times advertising team believes Exxon’s ads are misleading. They could actually believe one of the world’s biggest climate polluters is working hard to capture their emissions. They could actually believe that humanity can preserve a safe climate while continuing to produce and burn fossil fuels. They could actually believe an effective solution lies in a highly expensive technology that mostly does not exist.
Whatever the explanation, though, the result remains the same: the nation’s most-trusted news platform is exposing millions of people to misinformation about a crisis that grows deadlier and deadlier by the day.
As the climate crisis grows deadlier, the campaign against fossil fuel advertising grows louder. Last month, green groups in Europe launched what Reuters called “the boldest salvo” against fossil fuel advertising yet—a campaign to force the European Commission to take up a law against the practice. Last week, activists in America launched a new initiative targeting PR giant Edelman for producing Exxon ads. The company announced it would undergo a 60-day review of its client roster just a few days after.
The reason is the same as ever. “These adverts are misrepresenting the true nature of companies’ businesses, of their contribution to climate change, and of their transition plans,” said Johnny White, a lawyer for ClientEarth, which successfully forced BP to withdraw some of its misleading climate advertising last year. By misrepresenting their business, he said, oil company advertising “distracts the public” from reality. “We cannot underestimate the real world impact this advertising has on the pace of change.”
The Times remains under pressure from Ads Not Fit to Print, the activist campaign run by Gunther. And the campaign is having an effect beyond the paper. “I’ve had many calls with journalists at other news outlets in the past month, taking about how they feel this is an important issue and how it’s creating momentum in their newsroom,” she said. “It’s really opened up a conversation about journalistic responsibility during a crisis.”
Gunther’s main target, however, is the Times. “The pressure is only going to increase,” she said. “Especially in the wake of COP26, the Times needs to join the reality-based community and understand that climate change is real, fossil fuels are the primary cause, and to be promoting these products is a moral failing and reprehensible policy for any newspaper that purports to report the truth.”
https://www.drillednews.com/post/why-is-news-coverage-leaving-out-the-fossil-fuel-funding-of-the-anti-greta
[pix]
Journalists are creating a false equivalence between environmental activist Greta Thunberg and a 19-year-old German Youtuber named Naomi Seibt, without including information about the fossil fuel ties of the group funding her.
Seibt recently joined the Heartland Institute, a think tank with documented fossil fuel industry funding, and is scheduled to speak at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., this week.
The coverage of Seibt, which has appeared in outlets including The Washington Post and The Independent, has focused on her “skepticism” while failing to note her fossil fuel ties, which are not limited to the funding connection. Several of her talking points are demonstrably false, decades-old talking points cooked up by the fossil fuel industry itself.
When mainstream media outlets generally considered to be credible leave out such details, subsequent pieces in smaller outlets tend to follow their framing, which can allow disinformation topropagate more quickly.
The Washington Post, which was the first American media outlet to cover Seibt, described her as “like Greta...blond, eloquent and European.” Thunberg is a brunette, but the more important difference between her and Seibt is that she cites scientific studies, while many of Seibt’s points on climate come from industry, not science.
The Post's story stated that the Heartland Institute is “funded largely by anonymous donors” without mentioning any of the known donors, some of which are fossil fuel companies or trade groups that represent the industry.
When the Post story came out, Seibt had about 50,000 YouTube followers, a relatively small audience for the platform. In the days since, she has gained more than 10,000 more.
During a recentinvestigation by German outlets CORRECTIV and Frontal21, Heartland director James Taylor told undercover journalists that much of the organization's money is funneled through the dark money group Donors Trust, which has ties to Charles Koch.
“Donors Trust is now directing between two-thirds and three-quarters of its budget to Heartland to support its climate-skeptical positions," Taylor told the undercover reporters.
The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, an industry trade group whose members include ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, also gave $75,000 to the Heartland Institute in 2017.
The Post story also quoted Graham Brookie, who directs the Digital Forensic Research Lab, an arm of the nonprofit Atlantic Council. Brookie said the ideology Seibt presents “is not outright disinformation," but that it does "bear resemblance to a model we use called the 4d’s — dismiss the message, distort the facts, distract the audience, and express dismay at the whole thing.”
The Post's story did not mention that the Atlantic Council is funded by ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Chevron, Shell, and BP.
In response to a request for comment, The Washington Post’s Molly Gannon said only, “Our story speaks for itself.”
Other news outlets seem to have copied the omission. The Guardian, The Independent, France24, the Daily Mail, Mediaite, Mic, and MassLive all published follow-on stories that did not mention the Heartland Institute’s financial backing from the fossil fuel industry.
The Heartland Institute seems to be trying to look like it has the youth on its side. So it has found a Gen Z surrogate who can parrot decades-old fossil fuel talking points, and earned major press coverage that frames her as a figure who compares to Thunberg, while completely leaving out the group's obvious, and documented, oil and gas industry connections.
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has a history of defending controversial and harmful legislation, but the man behind ALEC’s public relations machine, Bill Meierling, has defended actions far worse than anything done by ALEC.
Two of Africa’s most notorious dictators hired Meierling to downplay their abuses of power and build political support for their authoritarian regimes: Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and Democratic Republic of Congo’s Joseph Kabila.
Meierling helped set up the information ministry of Equatorial Guinea for the country’s tyrant, Obiang, and in the Democratic Republic of Congo he advocated for Joseph Kabila’s illegal attempt at a third term as president.
A “former member of ALEC who grew disillusioned with the organization” sourced the materials for this story to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), which were confirmed through Foreign Agent Registration Act filings. Anyone representing the interests of a foreign government has to register as a lobbyist and disclose their activities.
Meierling officially joined ALEC in January 2013as executive vice president for external relations and strategic partnerships. As head of the group’s spin machine, he has since retained that role and become the chief marketing officer. Meierling “manages crisis response and provides senior level counsel to investor-, government-, and public relations divisions of Fortune 500 member companies regarding state and federal advocacy; environmental, social and governance (ESG) activism; and other concerns.”
In Meierling, ALEC found an experienced propagandist who led the organization through a donor crisis and member exodus when its promotion of “Stand Your Ground” legislation was tied to the death of the unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin. He managed PR when Google’s executive chairman said ALEC was “literally lying” about the climate emergency, and when corporations again dropped ALEC for its keynote speaker David Horowitz’s racist and bigoted remarks at a 2018 annual meeting.
Meierling Assisted in Equatorial Guinea Propaganda Campaign
Before joining ALEC, Meierling ran his own PR firm, OpinionMakers International. Through OpinionMakers, he was hired in 2007 as asubcontractor of lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates to work for the Equatorial Guinea government and President Teodoro Obiang. He was paid handsomely, raking in $15,000 a month in fees for his firm. Cassidy and Associates made headlines with their work for Obiang when an executive bragged about how they were able to get Obiang off Parade Magazine’s top ten list of worst dictators. Obiang only “improved” to being ranked the world’s 13th worst dictator.
Meierling fondly recounted his time in Equatorial Guinea in an interview, saying, “I was brought there in the mid 2000’s to help train them and help prop up the information ministry within the country.” The Ministry to which he referred is not so much one of information as it is propaganda.In its 2007 Freedom of the Press Report, the organization Freedom House described Equatorial Guinea as having “virtually no independent media” and stated that “all domestic radio and television stations are owned directly by the government or by the president’s family. State-owned media are dominated by sycophantic coverage of the government and the president.” The country still ranks at the bottom of Freedom House’s rankings with no independent journalism or freedom of speech.
The coverage by state run media is so atrocious, a presidential aide once compared President Obiang to Godwhile on a radio interview in 2003. “He [Obiang] can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell because it is God himself, with whom he is in permanent contact, and who gives him this strength,” said the aide. Obiang uses the state controlled media to stay in office, most recently in 2016 when he won a sham election with over 90 percent of the vote.
“It was just an incredible opportunity to build something from the ground up and to work in a developing nation with the people and the government that was really interested in growing, changing, and telling their story,” Meierling said of his work in Equatorial Guinea.
As part of that job, Meierling specifically worked to spin the dictator’s dismal human rights record.
In August of 2007, Meierling wrote a press release highlighting a visit by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions and the Equatorial Guinea’s supposed progress on “deprivation of liberty” and other human rights abuses.
Whatever progress allegedly occurred, however, was short-lived. In October of 2007, opposition party member Salvador Ndong Nguema died from injuries after being tortured in prison.
Later in 2010, four political opponents of President Obiang were abducted by Equatorial Guinean security forces in Benin after fleeing the country years earlier. They were held in the notorious Black Beach prison, where they allegedly confessed to a 2009 attempted coup. The military executed them after a brief military trial. Human rights observers viewed the military trial as a sham and believed the men were coerced to confess after being tortured.
Meierling also consulted with Equatorial Guinea on the development of its oil industry. In 2008, he wrote a press release for the government highlighting a trip by Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) to the country’s new liquefied natural gas facility. A biography on Meierling for another PR firm that was recently removed described his work on the project and touted his connections to the Obiang regime. “When the Republic of Equatorial Guinea and Marathon Oilsought American support for construction of the world’s largest LNG export train from Bioko, Malabo, Equatorial Guinea to Elba Island, Georgia, the African nation’s leadership turned to him,” it said.
While the country’s oilfields have proven to be plentiful, the average citizen of Equatorial Guinea still lives in poverty. Despite having a per capita gross domestic product higher than that of Brazil and China, the country ranks 141st out of 189 on the United Nations Human Development Index.
Meierling has also worked for Obiang’s son, Teodorin, directly. In March, Meierling’s website listed Teodorin and his girlfriend at the time, Eve, as former clients for “reputation” management services, but the content has since been removed.
Teodorin has been the subject of numerous corruption investigations, and has assets have been seized by U.S., French, Swiss, and Brazilian authorities based on what the U.S. Justice Department characterized as “relentless embezzlement.”
According to a 2010 U.S. Senate investigation,
From 2004 to 2008, Teodoro [Teodorin] Nguema Obiang Mangue, son of the President of Equatorial Guinea, has used U.S. lawyers, bankers, real estate agents, and escrow agents to move over $110 million in suspect funds into the United States. Mr. Obiang is the subject of an ongoing U.S. criminal investigation, has been identified in corruption complaints filed in France, and was a focus of a 2004 Subcommittee hearing showing how Riggs Bank facilitated officials from Equatorial Guinea in opening accounts and engaging in suspect transactions.
The report attributed the success of Obiang and his family’s ability to embezzle funds to the help they received from numerous lawyers, lobbyists, and consultants to gain influence.
Meierling Assisted Congo Dictator in Misinformation Campaign to Keep Him in Office
In 2017, while working in his current capacity as chief marketing officer for ALEC, Meierling was paid $20,000 per month for public relations work by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Meierling described the work done through a company calledHow Handy is ThatLLC as “strategic communications services” and reported that he would be “writing for, advising or representing the foreign principal.”
Documents disclosed in compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act show a series of op-eds appearing in the Washington Times in 2017, many of which attack Moise Katumbi, a candidate who was running in opposition to DRC President Joseph Kabila. While the articles are labeled as “sponsored,” none of them disclose the DRC government as the sponsor. One of the pieces authored by Meierling describes the electoral situation in the DRC as follows:
As President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) readies his country and its government for Congo’s next free and fair national election, some of the very opposition groups with whom he worked to arrange next year’s vote are coordinating with powerful forces outside of DRC who are deploying millions of dollars in foreign money to influence its outcome, undermine its integrity and financially benefit from its aftermath.
Meierling brazenly misinformed readers about the elections in the DRC when he described them as being “free and fair.” At the time, Kabila was illegally holding office, as his constitutionally limited two terms had expired in 2016.
Kabila’s government delayed the presidential election until 2018, claiming to need more time to update the country’s voter registry. Protests erupted in response to the delay, and the United Nations reported that government security forces killed 49 protesters.
The group Journalists in Danger “reported 121 cases of attacks on media from November 2017 to October [2018] and attributed 77 percent of these attacks to government agents, including nearly half to state security forces.”
Meierling is not currently registered as a foreign agent.
CMD reached out to ALEC for comment twice for this piece and received no response.
:{
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}:
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not exactly punked?
https://www.mediamatters.org/abc/abc-takes-bait-and-suspends-veteran-correspondent-over-bad-faith-right-wing-hit-job
2/26/20
ABC News suspended veteran correspondent David Wright on February 25 after he gave reasonable criticism of the network while being secretly recorded in a video later released by Project Veritas. The organization has a well-known reputation for videotaping media figures and progressive activists and releasing bad-faith, edited videos to push a right-wing agenda.
The video, which Project Veritas
on February 26 after teasing it the night before, features Wright offering criticisms of ABC’s coverage of the Trump administration and other political issues. It has clearly been edited to portray Wright’s comments in a negative light.
In the heavily edited video, Wright was critical of the broadcast news business model and suggested that the network still hasn’t figured out how to properly cover Trump. He claimed that ABC fails to give Trump credit for things he does right while also failing to “hold him to account”; chooses more exciting, “TV-friendly” stories over practical issues that matter to voters; takes Trump’s coverage bait in a way that enables him; and overcompensates for the false accusation from groups like Project Veritas that mainstream media pull for the Democratic Party.
Wright also complained that drama surrounding Trump dominates the news cycle and the “voters are poorly informed.” He criticized ABC’s “self-promotional” relationship with Disney, saying that the network often blends news with commercial interests: “You can’t watch Good Morning Americawithout there being a Disney princess or a Marvel Avenger appearing.”
Many of these comments are consistent with criticisms other journalists have made of political media in the age of Trump, and thus there was swift condemnation of ABC for its decision to suspend Wright.
Others were furious that Wright was suspended after he expressed support for progressive policies and said he considers himself a socialist, calling his suspension “absolutely outrageous” given a lack of progressive voices in mainstream media.
Project Veritas, founded by James O’Keefe, has a long history of secretly recording videos and then deceptively editing and releasing them in order to paint its subjects as negatively as possible and catch them in a “gotcha” moment. Veritas targets organizations that it claims have a “liberal” association, and its operatives often approach targets using a false name to coax information from them through casual conversations.
O'Keefe's goal is typically to obtain footage that can be edited in a way that embarrasses or delegitimizes targeted organizations, often seeking to expose “liberal bias” in the media. Past targets have included NPR, The New York Times, and CNN, and as a result, many news organizations are aware of Project Veritas’ motives when these videos are released.
Wright has been a journalist with ABC for nearly 20 years, covering the White House and reporting from the Middle East and Europe. His reporting has earned him an Emmy and a Peabody Awardfor work related to Iraq and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, respectively.
The reasonable nature of Wright’s criticisms of a business model that prioritizes generating ratings over informing viewers, combined with Project Veritas’ well-known reputation and bad-faith tactics, make ABC’s decision to suspend Wright and reassign him from political reporting to “avoid any possible appearance of bias” concerning.
Conservative media outlets like Fox News and The Federalist and figures such as Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson have already pounced on the footage to advance the right-wing narrative that ABC is a biased source that does a poor job of informing viewers -- and by suspending Wright, the network has fallen for it too.
Update (5:45 p.m.):O'Keefe and Sean Hannity agreed that ABC News should not have suspended Wright[aUDIO]
O'KEEFE: This guy Wright is just being honest. He's just talking about how ABC's pushing Disney products on Good Morning America. He called himself a socialist. He calls Trump a bad name, the d-word, in this tape. He also seems to say that they don't give Trump credit -- they don't give him enough credit. He actually says this about Trump, that they don't give him enough credit for the things that he does right. So he's simultaneously kind of trashing Trump, calling himself a socialist, but also saying Trump does some good things and we don't talk about it, we don't care about voters, we don't cross the Hudson River, this guy says, to look at what voters care about. So he's just being honest, he's been suspended for being honest, and for that I think it was wrong to suspend him. I think he was just telling the truth, Sean.
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Well, I think so too.
see IRL eg
http://time.com/5362183/the-real-fake-news-crisis/
August 9, 2018
One inauthentic page, titled “Resisters,” ginned up a counterprotest to a “white civil rights” rally planned for August in Washington, D.C., and got legitimate organizations to help promote it. More than 2,600 people expressed interest in going before Facebook revealed that the page was part of a coordinated operation, disabled the event and alerted users. The company has hired thousands of content reviewers that have the sophistication to weed through tricky mixes of truth and lies. But Facebook can’t employ enough humans to manually review the billions of posts that are put up each day, across myriad countries and languages.
==
this is an expansion of term
corruption it's also a devil term; djt needed to defend from it, so he i'm not a puppet 'd joe hunter biden --> ukraine (also bizarro mirror on server)
“Do So. Don't vote. Don't be involved in politics. It's like a sign of resistance against – not government, against politics. And voting. And very soon they're making their own YouTube videos. This is the prime minister’s house that's being graffitied! … It was carnage.
“And the reason why this was such a good strategy is because we knew, and we really really knew, that when it came to voting, all the Afro-Caribbean kids wouldn't vote, because they ‘Do So’. But all the Indian kids would do what their parents told them to do, which is go out and vote. And so all the Indians went out and voted, and the difference on the 18-35-year-old turnout is like 40%, and that swung the election by about 6% – which is all we needed!”
Again, Nix was selling his company’s expertise in promoting cynicism and apathy to suppress turnout among the opposition. But this campaign was even more manipulative: enlisting young Afro-Caribbeans in what pretended to be an authentic youth movement, secretly designed to manipulate them into surrendering their votes. This is what ‘compliance’ means in psychological warfare: achieving the desired behavioural effect from a ‘hostile audience’.
Asked for comment on the Do-So campaign, Nix responded in an email earlier today, writing, “The objective of this campaign was to highlight and protest against political corruption.There is nothing unlawful or illegal about assisting with this activity. SCL / CA has never undertaken voter suppression and there is no evidence to the contrary.”
Nix’s closing comments in his summer 2016 pitch were tantalising: “We’ve got an in-house intelligence team, so we can do full intelligence protection… Opposition don’t hack your emails and everything else. And we're pretty good at getting intelligence too… You know what? We do a lot of counter operations.You can spend $10 million on an election.Or we can send one of our guys in to go offer the leader of the opposition a bribe, you know, three weeks before polling. It's a very good way to win an election.”
Beneath the veneer, this seems to have been some of the work Alexander Nix was most proud of. This is how he pitched his company around the world, just as he was finally starting to work for Trump. This is the man who the Mercers and Steve Bannon enlisted to help them reshape the American political mind.
==
==
PR wire?
nat'l press club?
ca research
==
pw clinton cash
Publication
The New York Times, The Washington Post and Fox News were granted exclusive agreements with the book's author to pursue the story lines found in the book.[6] The Times faced considerable criticism for this arrangement from both its readers and from other media outlets.[6] The paper's own public editor, Margaret Sullivan, said the arrangement was "troubling" and lacked transparency.[6] Salon wrote that Schweizer was not a responsible journalist and that the arrangement showed that right-wing forces were luring the mainstream press into giving attention to gossip and innuendo much as they had during various supposed Clinton controversies of the 1990s.[7] In addition, Media Matters criticized these two newspapers for failing to report in a timely fashion on inaccuracies that had been discovered in the book.[8]
Clinton campaign reaction
The day the book was published, Hillary Clinton's campaign set up a portal called "The Briefing" on its official website. The Briefing is designed to rebut the allegations made in Schweizer's book. Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, wrote: "The book has zero evidence to back up its outlandish claims... While we will not be consumed by these kinds of attacks, we will also not let them go unchallenged."[9] Various spokespeople for Hillary and Bill Clinton disputed the book's allegations,[10] e.g. concerning the charges that Clinton was paid for speeches by Irish billionaire Denis O'Brien of Digicel in exchange for help in securing telecommunications contracts in Haiti in 2010.[11]
Commercial reception
Clinton Cash debuted at number two on the *New York Times* Best Seller list. In its first week it sold 31,000 copies and was also second on the Nielsen BookScan ranking for adult nonfiction.[12] The book stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover non-fiction for five weeks.[13]
A paperback edition of the book released in 2016 made the relevant Times best seller list as well.[14] According to Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard, the book sold approximately 200,000 copies, in hardcover and paperback as of July 2016.[15]
Critical reaction and actions taken
Writing for The Washington Post, academic and political activist (and briefLY 2016 U.S. Democratic presidential primary opponent of Hillary Clinton) **Lawrence Lessig** wrote "On any fair reading, the pattern of behavior that Schweizer has charged is corruption."[16] James Freeman reviewed the book for The Wall Street Journal, writing that "Almost every page of the fascinating Clinton Cash... will be excruciating reading for partisans on both sides of the aisle".[17]
Ed Pilkington, writing for The Guardian,reported that it was factually correct that "large donations to the foundation from the chairman of Uranium One,Ian Telfer, at around the time of the Russian purchase of the company and while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, were never disclosed to the public. The multimillion dollar sums were channeled through a subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation, CGSCI, which did not reveal its individual donors."[18] Following publication and in reaction to areas where it said improvements were warranted, the Clinton Foundation said it would put into place some new procedures for better financial reporting and that it would limit some kinds of foreign donations. Pilkington assessed those claims made by the Clinton Foundation as unlikely to put the matter to rest: "But with Bill refusing doggedly to give up his speaker engagements – “I gotta pay our bills” – and foreign corporations and super-rich individuals still able to donate to the family charity, it looks like this controversy may run and run."[18]
==
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/how-white-power-went-viral/507473/
atlantic
no lnx
Sitting on the neon-lit stage, Dave McClure couldn’t contain himself. The 500 Startups founder and investor used his appearance at the Web Summit conference on Wednesday to loudly criticize his own industry for President-elect Donald Trump’s victory:
Technology has a role in that we provide communication platforms for the rest of the fucking country. It’s a propaganda medium and if people aren’t aware of the shit they’re being told; if they’re being told a story of fear; if they’re being told a story of other; if they’re not understanding that people are trying to use them to get to fucking office then, yes, assholes like Trump are going to take office and it’s our duty and our responsibility as entrepreneurs, as citizens of the fucking world, to make sure that shit does not happen.
He’s not the first to place the blame (or credit, depending on one’s view) for Trump’s unexpected win on digital platforms like Facebook, which allowed fake-news sites to proliferate and spread pro-Trump hoaxes such as, “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President.”
Facebook, where nearly half of Americans get their news, has borne the brunt of the ire, both for creating echo-chambers of partisan news and for failing to promote high-quality information over false drivel. But online extremism researchers say America’s misinformation problem is bigger than Facebook. They are also pointing fingers at sites like 4chan, Twitter and Reddit, online free-for-alls that lack Facebook’s relatively strict stance on hate-speech and have allowed racist communities to flourish in recent years. These forums have grown angrier and more multitudinous since Trump announced his candidacy, and while it’s not yet clear how much they contributed to the triumph of Trump, they certainly lined up behind him.
“When we talk about online radicalization we always talk about Muslims. But the radicalization of white men online is at astronomical levels,” the journalist Siyanda Mohutsiwa, who said she has been following the so-called “alt-right” forums on Reddit for years, wrote in a Twitter thread earlier this week. “These online groups found young white men at their most vulnerable & convinced them liberals were colluding to destroy white Western manhood.”
Groups that oppose immigration and political correctness, such as neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and the “alt-right,” have bloomed online in recent years. (It’s worth noting that these groups consider themselves distinct, and most don’t use the term “racist;” at most, they prefer the term “racialist.”) A study published in September by George Washington University extremism researcher J.M. Berger found “major American white nationalist movements on Twitter added about 22,000 followers since 2012, an increase of about 600 percent.” Berger found that people who followed white nationalists on Twitter referenced Trump “more than almost any other topic.”
The Nazi and white nationalist accounts in Berger’s sample rarely tweeted about Mitt Romney in 2012, but this year, “three of the top 10 hashtags for both white nationalist and Nazi datasets were related to ... Trump: #trump, #trump2016, and #makeamericagreatagain,” Berger wrote. The most common hashtag was “whitegenocide;” Trump retweeted a user with WhiteGenocide in his username in January.
(Trump’s campaign said the tweet wasn’t related to his personal views. In response to past stories about their white-power supporters, the campaign has said, “We have rejected and rebuked any groups and individuals associated with a message of hate and will continue to do so.”)
It’s impossible to tell how many people were motivated by racism to vote for Trump, who used anti-immigrant rhetoric and, occasionally, white-nationalist memes, all while telling black Americans he would “be your greatest champion.” Other issues, like abortion, the economy, and dissatisfaction with Obamacare also turned out Trump voters. But some Trump supporters were energized by concerns that people of color are somehow overrunning the nation, spreading violence and sucking up precious resources. Eight of 10 people who favor the deportation of illegal immigrants voted for Trump, according to exit polls, and Trump also performed better among voters who said their top issue was immigration or terrorism.
Early on, Republicans who felt white Americans were under threat preferred Trump to his rivals. In a Pew survey in April, those who felt it was “bad for the country” that in 30 years the U.S. will consist mostly of people of color were more likely to feel warmly toward Trump, as were those who felt Islam is violent. Other issues—homosexuality, family values, or economic fairness—didn’t polarize Republicans similarly.
Several mainstream platforms, including Reddit, Twitter, and even Google, all became fertile ground for white-power groups to discuss these ideas, voice support for Trump, and often, recruit new followers, according to Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which monitors online extremism.
Reddit, for example, has long been a racist haven. Keegan Hankes, a research analyst for the SPLC, documented in Gawker how the racist subreddit “GreatApes” was formed in 2013 and grew into a larger network called "the Chimpire," organized by a user calling themselves "Jewish_NeoCon2." Their mission statement, riddled with Nazi references and n-words, mentioned expanding their “sphere of influence.” At the time Hankes was writing in 2015, the Chimpire had grown to 46 subreddits, including two dedicated to discussing Trayvon Martin and the protests in Ferguson, Missouri. One of the subreddits, CoonTown, had 3,287 subscribers, ranking it within the top 2 percent of subReddits, Hankes wrote. CoonTown was later banned, but other “WhiteRights” subReddits persist.
Certain corners of Twitter have also become cesspools of white supremacy, Beirich said. In the Washington Post in September, Jonathon Morgan, a researcher of violent extremism, described how alt-right Twitter accounts appear to have become more virulent throughout the year. “The social media content of the alt-right in July was 25 percent more radicalized than it was in January,” he wrote. “And the rate of radicalization is increasing exponentially.” In January of this year, for example, the accounts Morgan monitored rarely mentioned Jewish people. By July, the word “Jewish” in these forums “implies a belief in large-scale conspiracy, racial antagonism and even explicit support for Hitler,” he wrote. The Anti-Defamation League also found an uptick in anti-Semitic tweets in the first half of this year.
For some, even a simple Google search can be a pathway to radicalization. Dylann Roof, who allegedly killed nine people in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, last year, was indoctrinated almost entirely online, according to the SPLC. In his manifesto, Roof described typing “black on White crime” into Google, ending up on a racist website, “and I have never been the same since that day.” The third result in a Google search for “Martin Luther King,” for example, is a white supremacist site, “MartinLutherKing.org,” which paints the civil-rights leader as a fraud. (Regarding that site, Google has said, “Our search results are generated objectively and are independent of the beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google.”)
“Racist propagandists have motivation to put that stuff out,” Beirich told me. “The anti-Semites can flood an area, and there’s no contradictory evidence. There aren’t people out there trying to prove that Jews aren’t running the government.”
Beirich said white supremacists, far from talking amongst themselves online, do try to bring new followers into the fold. Academic literature suggests online white-supremacy groups grow rapidly after launching and use social issues of the day, such as illegal immigration, to build bridges with potential new recruits.
...
-=
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-associated-press-circulated-right-wing-misinformation/
no lnx dox
The Associated Press Circulated Right-Wing Misinformation
By Jared Holt | March 12, 2019 10:44 am
The Associated Press, a standard-bearer for the news industry, published at least three press releases on its APNews.com website and AP News app that contained misinformation and partisan propaganda from conservative political groups,Right Wing Watch has learned. One press release advocated for prosecuting doctors who perform abortions, another claimed that measles vaccines cause autism, and one was used to advertise a shady right-wing fundraising campaign. All appeared on the AP’s site, surrounded by the company’s branding.
On January 25, a press release from WeBuildTheWall Inc., circulated by Business Wire, was published to APNews.com in its entirety. It advertised a questionable GoFundMe campaign seeking to privately fund President Trump’s promised U.S.-Mexico border wall by advancing Kris Kobach’s claim to The New York Times that the president had given the project his blessing during a phone call. “President Trump ‘Blesses’ Private Solution to Build the Wall As Government Reopens,” the headline reads on APNews.com.
The only apparent written indication that the press release was not an actual AP article was a dateline with the name of the wire service as evidenced by a screenshot captured on January 28. An uninformed reader would have been forgiven for mistaking the press releases for a news article.
AP appears to be trying to address the problem. On February 27, the news service incorporated more visual indications to alert readers to the fact that what they are viewing is not the newsroom’s reporting. As of this writing, press release content on site displays a bolded disclosure above the headline and a note stating: “This content is a press release from our partner [wire company name]. The AP newsroom and editorial departments were not involved in its creation.” However, as recently as last month, the pages displaying such releases did not include those elements, as shown in screenshots and archives of press releases on AP’s site.
Brian Kolfage, who started the GoFundMe campaign, shared a screenshot of the press release’s headline posted to social media alongside AP branding and thanked President Trump for his ostensible support. He did not note that his own organization had authored the content appearing on AP’s website.
[twit]
Brian Kolfage
@BrianKolfage
Replying to @BrianKolfage
Thank you @realDonaldTrump
312
6:41 PM - Jan 27, 2019
112 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
On December 7, an anti-vaccine press release from the conservative political advocacy group Association of American Physicians and Surgeons was aggregated from Globe Newswire and published on the AP website. That release warned of a supposed connection between measles vaccines and autism in children, a thoroughly debunked and dangerous myth. The press release has since been removed from the Associated Press website.
Right Wing Watch was able to find copies of the article on the Wayback Machine internet archive and Google’s cache, which both flashed the AP story briefly before displaying a message stating that the page no longer existed.
On February 26, another since-deleted press release was published on AP News and was captured by Wayback Machine and Google’s cache. It was an announcement from Texas Right to Life aggregated from Globe Newswire. The release contained criticisms of abortion laws passed in New York and Virginia and promoted legislation that would seek to prosecute doctors who provide abortion services.
AP has maintained years-long business relationships with several other wire companies that distribute press releases, including Globe Newswire and Business Wire. When one of those wire services distributes a press release, automated software duplicates it on the Associated Press site.
A spokesperson for AP told Right Wing Watch that APNews.com has “for years also served as a distribution channel for clearly-labeled third-party content from several press release companies” as part of a business arrangement independent from its news-gathering.