Why Is Media Stoking Disinformation Campaigns

 

Why Is Media Stoking Disinformation Campaigns

Yuri Vanetik, American Greatness 

Americans need to insist that legacy media be held to account as a treacherous culprit in the mass deception campaigns attributed to politicians, shady public relations operatives, and foreign powers.

Disinformation media campaigns operated by the Russians and the Chinese may also have a domestic origin. It is not what one would think. They don’t come from sleeper cells. Instead, the American legacy media, by way of its greed and lack of accountability, is responsible for the deception. 

Stealth public relations operatives drive conspiracy theories and smear campaigns using the complicit media of record as their echo chamber. Whether you are a supporter of President Trump or you consider him to be a lawless authoritarian is irrelevant because all Americans should be concerned that what is presented as news may actually be part of a paid public relations campaign or a sensation-oriented spin that is not newsworthy at all. 

Often the media is doing the dirty bidding of fringe groups and paid reputation assassins solely to maximize profits, knowing that their malfeasance is relegated to that of a protected class of free speech and free press. Media today is like the clergy in the middle ages—their profession considered sacred and their actions above the law.

Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law professor, led a team of researchers that dissected the way information is amplified. Benkler’s team just published its study, which examines President Trump’s alleged “disinformation” campaign against mail-in voting and details the techniques the Trump world used to share Trump’s opinions on the election. Benkler and his team began from the biased position that a difference of opinion on policy questions qualifies as disinformation, nevertheless, the findings inadvertently run contrary to the popular idea on the Left that it is the Russian and Chinese foreign troll factories that are interfering with our elections with “disinformation.”

The research examined 55,000 media stories, 5 million tweets, and 75,000 Facebook posts. The researchers mapped the campaign out, showing a clear origin: Trump—whether on TV or Twitter or by close proxy. Yet, the legacy media insists that the Russians manipulated Trump’s election, that Trump is working for the Russians, and that now—again the Russians—foreign influencers are pushing misinformation to keep Trump in control or return him to the White House.

The American press magnifies this dramatically because news platforms cannot resist giving attention to the Trump White House. Calling his actions a disinformation campaign would be challenging for journalists who are desperate to project balance as if it is the same thing as fairness. More importantly, it is easier to get readers (and advertising dollars) if you advance a monolithic notion that foreign villains are sabotaging our elections. 

Media disinformation has real consequences and calling it “fake news” does not deter dishonest journalists or capture the depth of their betrayal of the trust our republic has bestowed upon them.

But whether the president tweets or goes on TV, the study says, it is media coverage of the tweets that amplifies the message—often uncritically—far beyond what the account accomplishes alone. Yet the American legacy media clings desperately to the distortions it publishes—like the theory that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians.

Whatever happened was most likely not much more than intelligence jousting between competing countries. To claim otherwise gives President Trump too much credit. The media, undaunted, amplifies the narrative even more, fulfilling Einstein’s definition of insanity. We see this everywhere. The New York Post recently had a compelling scoop on how Joe Biden, when he was vice president, met with a top executive of a shady Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, at the request of his son, Hunter. Burisma was paying Biden’s son $80,000 a month for his connections. Hunter’s emails show that he told people he was handing 10 percent to 50 percent of the foreign windfall to “the big guy”—President-elect Joe Biden himself.

The rest of the media ignored it—and focused, instead, on the possibility that this latest scoop somehow was the work of Russian operatives. Never mind whether the emails were authentic—they were. The media did this even after Twitter and Facebook brazenly muzzled the New York Post and blocked users from being able to retweet or open the online link to read the story.

The media continues this behavior despite a stunning revelation in late September: the CIA knew in July 2016 that Russian intelligence believed—or was pretending to believe—the Hillary Clinton campaign was plotting to smear candidate Donald Trump. This news came not from an anonymous and illegal leak, as did so many headlines in the Russiagate investigation. This news came on the record from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who declassified secret information and released it to Congress.

It follows, therefore, that the FBI and the CIA waged a full-scale investigation of the newly elected Trump Administration based on allegations they knew to be questionable, and possibly fabricated by the Clinton campaign or Russian spies. Then, the Mueller team investigated this farce: 675 days, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 500 witnesses, 19 lawyers and 40 FBI agents. Cost: $25 million for a 488-page report that cited “no evidence” that “any American” had colluded with the Russians. The mainstream media outlets that spread this scandal have never explained how they got it so wrong. Nor did they explain why they became useful idiots for Russian spies. Unfazed by the knowledge of the lies they were spinning, some journalists and their editors continued to pursue a false, but politically useful, narrative.

I take media disinformation personally. In early 2018, I was collateral damage in this Russiagate smear, a part of the media-driven disinformation campaign (see my Wall Street Journal op-ed explaining this from last year). An absurd four-part series speculated that I might be a Russiagate co-conspirator. No one alleged this outright—because there was no basis whatsoever to tie me to anything nefarious. It was all insinuation and innuendo rife with ad hominem comments about me and my family, outright lies from anonymous, paid sources. Followed by the waffle: “It isn’t known what, if any, connections Mr. Vanetik may have to” so and so.

Various newspapers and websites picked up the bogus reporting. None of them gave me any chance to refute or even respond to the lies and bizarre insinuations. Nor did the three McClatchy reporters who started it all: Kevin G. Hall and Ben Wieder in the McClatchy Washington Bureau, and Angela Hart, then at the Sacramento Bee (and now at a Kaiser health policy website, healthline.com).

A well-known journalist and television personality who became a friend, told me after reading the stories that “it was a drive-by shooting into an empty window.” And now, in the same vein, Hall, Wieder, and Hart can’t be bothered to respond to my phone calls and emails. Whatever happened to the standards of journalistic fairness and professionalism?

The corporate media, unrepentant and blind to its own sins, should agree to strict standards: that no negative story can be based solely on anonymous sources; that news stories must disclose the motives and agenda of the identified sources they quote; that all targets must be given early notice that they are being investigated so that they could prepare their defense, which should include the right to be quoted fully and prominently.

The media will do this when pigs fly, to use a cliché that journalists favor. Perhaps the Supreme Court will revisit New York Times vs. Sullivan. That ruling in 1964 said any public figure, to win a libel case against the media, must prove reporters acted with malice or utter disregard for the truth. That is an impractically high hurdle. As soon as they cover you, you now are a public figure who cannot fight them in court and have a real chance of winning. Amy Coney Barrett, now a Supreme Court Justice, has come under attack from Trump haters and the Democrats boosted by media campaigns aiming to discredit her. Justice Brett Kavanaugh endured even worse vitriol in his confirmation hearings two years ago. Perhaps the high court, with these two newest members, will set in motion the measured change in law that puts victims of smear campaigns at a virtually insurmountable disadvantage. 

More importantly, perhaps, Americans will insist that legacy media be held to account as a treacherous culprit in the mass deception campaigns attributed to politicians, shady public relations operatives, and foreign powers. Keeping in mind First Amendment guarantees, something must be done to ensure that Americans can be confident that what is reported to them is factually correct and newsworthy. The stakes for our country are much too high to demand anything less.

If There Is a President Biden, Don’t Expect to See Him Around for Long

If There Is a President Biden, Don’t Expect to See Him Around for Long

Roger Kimball, The Epoch Times 

Several times during the election season, I noted that no matter who was said to have won the presidential contest, there never would be a President Biden, not really.

There were basically two reasons there would not be a President Biden, except, very briefly, in some strictly nominal sense.

The first reason is that Joe Biden is an empty cipher. He is a drowsy Howdy-Doody puppet, manipulated by a committee of woke ventriloquists.

They picked Biden out of the primary line-up because he seemed the least threatening and most pliable. Biden promised “normality” after the brashness of Donald Trump.

Biden’s painfully obvious flirtation with senility was as much an asset as a liability, because, though it made for some cringe-worthy displays of incompetence, it conspired with COVID to allow his handlers to keep him tucked safely away in his basement for most of the campaign.

Writing for The Epoch Times in August, I compared Joe Biden to the aged Achon, a character in Evelyn Waugh’s novel “Black Mischief.”

Achon, the legitimate emperor of the fictional kingdom of Azania, had been safely confined to a cave for 50 years.

After some elaborate negotiations among the real powers of state, Achon is set free and is carried to the capital to be invested as emperor. Alas, his long captivity left him bent and senile. He dies upon coronation.

Waugh did not record whether his last words were “Come on, man.”

Who knows whether Joe and Jill will actually move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue come Jan. 20. Maybe they will.

It would be interesting to sit in on his first meeting with Jake Sullivan, the man Biden wants to be his National Security Advisor.

Sullivan recently disclosed that the “Big Guy” asked him to “reimagine national security” to include “the pandemic, the economic crisis, the climate crisis, technological disruptions, threats to democracy, racial injustice and inequality in all forms.”

I’m sure that will amuse the Chinese, as much for the fact that they didn’t make the list of concerns as for the many fatuous items that did.

I hate to introduce a discordant note into this green dream of perfect wokeness, racial inclusivity, and mandatory readings of Harrison Bergeron. But the current Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, has a different list of national security threats.

“It is that the People’s Republic of China,” he wrote, that “poses the greatest threat to … democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.”

It appears that when Joe Biden thinks about China, he thinks about that Chinese office mate that his son Hunter lined up for him.

Mention of Hunter Biden brings me to the second reason that Joe Biden’s tenure as President, if it happens at all, is likely to be merely nominal.

Many people wonder why Biden picked, or agreed to, Kamala Harris as his running mate.

With the possible exception of Elizabeth Watch-Me-Drink-a-Beer-With-My-Hubby Warren, Harris was the least popular of all the Democrat candidates for President. She was from a state that anyone with a “D” after his name would carry. She had no national following.

So why pick her? Sex and race were part of it, of course, but there are plenty other half-black females parading around.

I think Kamala Harris was chosen because she was an eager disciple of the left flank of the Obama-Clinton coalition.

It is they who have defined the Biden profile. And it is they who would staff his administration, assuming he has one.

But have you noticed the sudden flurry of attention to Hunter Biden and his travails?

There’s the $400,000 from Burisma he forgot to declare. There’s that “laptop from hell.”

There’s all that money—millions and millions—that had been shoveled to him and his family for … for what? For meetings with “the Big Guy,” i.e., dear old dad.

We knew all this before the election. But the media dismissed it when they didn’t actively censor it. “Just drag Biden over the finish line. Then we’ll talk.”

Well, he is almost over the finish line now. Maybe he’ll have a chance to put his hand on the Bible and recite the oath of office.

But it will not be long, I predict, that a reason will be found to cut him loose.

Maybe people will start noticing all the things he doesn’t notice and sound the alarm: “Hey, he’s President of the United States! He can’t remember what day it is!”

Or maybe “grave concerns” will be raised about all the nefarious revelations that are lurking on Hunter’s hard drive.

One way or another, it will be President Harris before you can say “Paris Climate Accord” or “Let’s Not Be Beastly to the Chinese.”

I thought the Dems were pretty cynical when they nominated Biden in the first place. I suspect I didn’t know the half of it.

Roger Kimball is the editor and publisher of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. His most recent book is “Who Rules? Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom in the 21st Century.”

WALTER WILLIAMS’ LAST COLUMN

 

WALTER WILLIAMS’ LAST COLUMN

John Hinderaker, Powerline

Walter Williams, economist, teacher and columnist, died yesterday. His long-time friend Thomas Sowell writes movingly about Williams here. Williams’ last column appeared the day before his death. The information it contains is so remarkable and so timely that I want to highlight it. The subject is education, specifically the education of urban blacks:

Several years ago, Project Baltimore began an investigation of Baltimore’s school system. What it found was an utter disgrace.

In 19 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, out of 3,804 students, only 14 of them, or less than 1%, were proficient in math.

In 13 of Baltimore’s high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math.

In five Baltimore City high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math or reading.

These schools nevertheless have a 70% graduation rate. They are, as Williams writes, a fraud that is perpetrated on parents and taxpayers.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District scored the lowest in the nation compared to 26 other urban districts for reading and mathematics at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels.

A recent video captures some of this miseducation in Milwaukee high schools: In two city high schools, only one student tested proficient in math and none are proficient in English.

Is there any exception to the disgrace of urban public schools? Not that I know of. What many have forgotten is that it hasn’t always been this way:

Should we blame this education tragedy on racial discrimination or claim that it is a legacy of slavery? Thomas Sowell’s research in “Education: Assumptions Versus History” documents academic excellence at Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School and others. This academic excellence occurred during the late 1800s to mid-1900s, an era when blacks were much poorer than today and faced gross racial discrimination.

Also in Sowell’s “Education: Assumptions Versus History” is the story of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, a black public school in Washington, D.C. As early as 1899, its students scored higher on citywide tests than any of the city’s white schools. From its founding in 1870 to 1955, most of its graduates went off to college.

Dunbar’s distinguished alumni include U.S. Sen. Edward Brooke, physician Charles Drew, and, during World War II, nearly a score of majors, nine colonels and lieutenant colonels, and a brigadier general.

Today’s Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frederick Douglass high schools have material resources that would have been unimaginable to their predecessors. However, having those resources has meant absolutely nothing in terms of academic achievement.

Why do we put up with it? I don’t know. No doubt part of the answer is that the people who wield most authority in our society, of all races, have left the urban public schools far behind. They are content to pay taxes to support those schools, which far from being underfunded consume large amounts of money. But money, as Williams said, has nothing to do with it.

For those left behind in the public schools, the school environment has deteriorated alarmingly:

The school climate, seldom discussed, plays a very important role in education. During the 2017-18 school year, there were an estimated 962,300 violent incidents and 476,100 nonviolent incidents in U.S. public schools nationwide. Schools with 1,000 or more students had at least one sworn law enforcement officer. About 90% of those law enforcement officers carry firearms.

Aside from violence, there are many instances of outright disrespect for teachers. First- and second-graders telling teachers to “Shut the f— up” and calling teachers “b—h.”

Williams was a man of my era. His description of the role of the vice principal is exactly what we had in my youth in a South Dakota town:

Years ago, much of the behavior of young people that we see today would have never been tolerated. There was the vice principal’s office where corporal punishment would be administered for gross infractions. If the kid was unwise enough to tell his parents what happened, he might get more punishment at home.

The rot in our urban public schools is a disgrace, but it largely reflects, in concentrated form, the larger rot in our society. The incoming Biden administration will undoubtedly restore the Obama-era guidance that imposed racial quotas in school discipline, meaning that the urban public schools will become even more lawless and dangerous. For reasons that I assume have to do with the money and clout of the teachers’ unions, not a single Democrat seems to care.