by Chris
If you want to see the “Russia Gate” sausage factory up close and personal, watch as Lee Camp brilliantly takes down one of the more odiferous links when he exposes the who behind the New Knowledge group that both wrote the Senate report on supposed Russian troll interference in the 2016 elections *and* ran fake Russian troll bots to distrupt the Alabama senate race (but got caught and then claimed they were “running an experiment”).
To recap, this ultra-partisan and military-intelligence connected group wrote a widely publicized report on Russian bots that later had to admit that many of the supposed bots were neither Russian nor bots, and then went on to create fake Russian bots and spent $100k on a race where that was a measureable fraction of the total spend, tried to pretend that wasn’t them while using that race as “proof” of Russian interference, and then lamely calling the whole thing an experiment when exposed.
The NYTimes, unsatisfied with becoming a completley useless rag of no merit, actually discovered all this but then went with the headline, “Facebook closes 5 accounts tied to Russia-like tactics in Alabama Senate race.”
Well done, NYTimes! You have plunged to new depths of uselessness and ridiculous propagandizing.
“Russia-like?” Indeed the only thing that’s proven so far is that a US agency funded, MIC connected, group has both whipped up fear around Russian trolls and then exploited similar but even more sophisticated tactics to swing an important US Senate race.
Again, as a general disclaimer, I am not at all interested in the outcome of that race, of who won or who didn’t.
I am deeply concerned at the levels of duplictious reporting, the lack of cntext, and the apparent inability to tell the good s guys from the bad guys on display in the US right now.
It suggests that things are going to have to get worse before they get better.
‘Fake news’ is okay if it’s about #RussiaGate: Top 7 fake ‘collusion’ stories the media pushed
BuzzFeed’s ‘bombshell’ claim last week that Donald Trump told ex-lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to congress is just the latest in a long line of ‘Russiagate’ stories that have later turned out to be false.
But BuzzFeed’s rubbished article is part of a phenomenon of what could be termed ‘acceptable fake news’ — fake news that gets a pass from the media because it serves a certain narrative. In this case, it furthers the ‘Russiagate’ narrative, which the mainstream media has been pushing breathlessly for two years. Lacking hard proof that Trump ‘colluded’ with Russia to win the 2016 election, they have clung to anything shred of fake evidence they can find.
Last week, one astute Twitter user compiled a list of a whopping 42 Russiagate stories which were billed as bombshells but which ended up needing to be retracted or corrected. Here are seven of the most scandalous instances.