8 ms·

WaPo Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist from a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group

76 points by Jerry2 10y ago

api 10y ago
So basically anything critical of standard US foreign policy or centrist neoliberalism is all a big Putin conspiracy. Got it. There does appear to be some kind of Russian propaganda machine online but it's voice is mixed in with all the rest of the noise.
- salimmadjd 10y ago
  IMO this is part of the Wapo's editorial board agenda for a neoconservative [1] plan in Syria. The Washington Post editorial was instrumental in convincing the public of the Iraq war, "From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front page pieces in THE WASHINGTON POST making the administration's case for war," [2] A regime change in Syria has become difficult with such a visible backing of Russia. Unless we use the pretext of Russia interfering in our elections to equate confronting Russia abroad as fighting back for our democracy. Wapo's editorial board never liked Trump [3]. This new push of Russian agenda, is killing two birds with one stone. Delegitimizing Trump while building the narrative of regime change in Syria or anything Russia is backing. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hiatt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hiatt [2] http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html [3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/opinions/2016/10/13/the-closing-argument-against-donald-trump/?utm_term=.3f97850e1658 http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/opinions/2016/10/13/the-clo...
  - hackuser 10y ago
    The WaPo's ownership changed between the Iraq war and today, though I don't think Bill Moyers' statements are reliable sources of fact in any case. Yes, the Post opposed Trump (as did almost every newspaper in the U.S., conservative, moderate, or liberal). The rest is pure speculation and conjecture; their motives, good and bad, could be anything, and likely have little to do with your particular concerns.
    - salimmadjd 10y ago
      if you had the chance to look at my Wikipedia reference, you'll see Hiatt is still the editor. You will also see there many references that he has shifted the paper into more of a neoconservative leaning paper.
      - hackuser 10y ago
        To be honest, I don't look at Wikipedia references. I think Wikipedia is the prime example of people's willingness to accept misinformation on the Internet. I would expect the owner, not the editor, determines the politics of the editorial page. Newspapers don't change their political stances significantly when they change editors, but they do when they change owners.
        api 10y ago
        The editor sets the voice. If the owner wants to change that they would change the editor.
- panarky 10y ago
  Not at all. PropOrNot outlines eight steps to manually identify Russian propaganda [0]. Of course it's not an exact science, but it's a lot more rigorous than just "anything critical of standard US foreign policy". [0] http://www.propornot.com/p/the-yyycampaignyyy.html http://www.propornot.com/p/the-yyycampaignyyy.html
  - barrkel 10y ago
    That algorithm is an exercise in bias confirmation; it's ludicrous, IMO. Any criticism of current orthodox ideology is interpreted as a point in favour of Russian propaganda. Could it possibly be that some people have the genuine thought that starting a new cold war with Russia wouldn't be a very good idea? Or is that simply impossible without it being a Russian propaganda plot? IMO this is all heat that obscures what's going on. There's a new culture war afoot. IMO this site (PropOrNot) is a paranoid reaction to the rejection by a certain segment of the American population to an orthodox groupthink. Instead of people talking to one another and trying to communicate, they're polarizing. It's no good. (I flagged the article, FWIW.)
  - FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
    These are some of the steps they use to identify propaganda: Check to see whether the social-media account/commenter/outlet has a history of generally echoing the Russian propaganda "line" by using themes, arguments, talking points, images, and other content similar to those used by obvious Russian propaganda outlets. These themes include: 1. How terrible, weak, aggressive, and corrupt the the opponents of Russia and their friends are: The US, Obama, Hillary Clinton, the EU, Angela Merkel, NATO, Ukraine, Jewish people, US allies, the "mainstream media", and democrats, the center-right or center-left, and moderates of all stripes. Investigate this by searching for mentions of, for example, "NATO", on their site by Googling for "site:whateversite.com NATO" and seeing what comes up. 2. How dangerous standing up to Russia would be: It would inevitably result in "World War 3", nuclear devastation, etc, and regardless of who shot first or is bombing civilians where now, would be the West's fault. Russian propaganda never suggests it would just result in a Cold War 2 and Russia's eventual peaceful defeat, like the last time. This is the criteria for being a russian propaganda outlet? Basically, anyone who parrots 'Crooked Hiliary' is now part of it. This is hogwash
CalChris 10y ago
Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist from a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group Kind've breathless writing there, almost Trumpish. Myself, I discount anything that Greenwald says. Slate has a more sober reaction: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/25/how_russian_propaganda_used_facebook_to_spread_fake_news_during_the_election.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/25/how_russia...
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  Greenwald's reporting has always been incredibly inept (to this day, he won't admit how wrong he was about PRISM). The culture of making wild accusations and not interviewing subjects of a story to verify the facts continues to pervade the organization.
  - tastythrowaway2 10y ago
    in what way(s) was he wrong about PRISM?
    - lern_too_spel 10y ago
      He claimed that NSA analysts could read anybody's communications straight off the internet companies' servers. Multiple journalists, bloggers, tech workers, companies, and even the government corrected him and pointed out how he misread the slides, but he continues to make that claim.
rokosbasilisk 10y ago
In this fake news era, Im glad for the intercept and greenwalds journalistic integrity.
- panarky 10y ago
  I appreciate Greenwald and The Intercept, but nothing in this piece addresses the real question -- are high-traffic US sites disseminating Russian disinformation? Yes, it's true that the PropOrNot site is new. Yes, it's true that the people behind PropOrNot are anonymous. Yes, it's true that the Washington Post's article on PropOrNot didn't seem very rigorous. None of this speaks to whether sites like Drudge, Zero Hedge, Alex Jones, etc. are actively disseminating Russian propaganda. PropOrNot lists eight steps to manually identify propaganda and disinformation, and they seem pretty useful to me. http://www.propornot.com/p/the-yyycampaignyyy.html http://www.propornot.com/p/the-yyycampaignyyy.html
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > the Washington Post's article on PropOrNot didn't seem very rigorous The article was based on many sources, despite the Intercept's characterization of it. PropOrNot is just one of many: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045686
  - FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
    Truth is not the absence of propaganda; propaganda thrives in presenting different kinds of truth, including half truths, incomplete truths, limited truths, out of context truths. Modern propaganda is most effective when it presents information as accurately as possible. The Big Lie or Tall Tale is the most ineffective propaganda. Here's more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques I'm very wary of this attempt to silence "fake news"
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > Truth is not the absence of propaganda ... Well put and essential; thanks > I'm very wary of this attempt to silence "fake news" But then the comment seems to slide into a propaganda talking point. 1) It's not being "silenced", just identified, and such exaggeration or hyperbole is a standard technique; 2) it presupposes this extreme relativism where there is no fake news; and 3) criticizing news sources is a very common, normal part of a health marketplace of ideas. Look at the criticism the NYT and Fox take, for example.
dominotw 10y ago
Does wapo not enforce its own comment guidelines[1] anymore? We will remove posts that include profanity, hate speech, name-calling and personal attacks. This Tila Tequila[2] piece has comment section full of people calling her dumb whore who needs to be marched into a gas chamber. 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ask-the-post/discussion-and-submission-guidelines/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ask-the-post/discussion-... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2016/11/22/tila-tequilas-twitter-account-suspended-after-appearance-at-white-nationalist-convention/#comments https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2016/...
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  Irrelevant to this article, and no comment in your article says she needs to be marched into a gas chamber. I found one comment saying that the people she supports would do that to her.
  - dominotw 10y ago
    >Huge headed failed porn star, Nazi pig. > Over-compensating dumb beeyatch > stupid w*e > I wasn't in the restaurant when they did their "Sieg Heil" salute. I would have gone into instant Veteran's Day Mode and sent as many as I could to the hospital somebody at wapo said yea these are great comments and approved them ^ ( every comment goes through moderation before publication) , at the same time wailing about how horrible comment section is horrible and ' is especially true for women and minorities.'[1]. 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/21/comments-are-making-the-internet-worse-so-i-got-rid-of-them/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/21/...
    - lern_too_spel 10y ago
      No, it is not true that every comment goes through moderation before publication. Like your gas chamber claim, this statement is also false. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/ask-the-post/discussion-and-submission-guidelines/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/... > Do my comments have to be approved before they are published? > We review comments by new commenters to verify that they don’t violate site discussion guidelines. Comments by other users are published automatically on most threads.
hackuser 10y ago
The Intercept article is a bit [EDIT: very] misleading. The Post article from the start relies on two groups: * The Foreign Policy Research Insititute * PropOrNot * EDIT: The Post also says, The findings about the mechanics of Russian propaganda operations largely track previous research by the Rand Corp. and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. * EDIT: The Post uses yet more sources later in the article. Unless you read about two-thirds of the long Intercept article, to where FPRI is first mentioned, the impression is that the Washington Post relied only on PropOrNot. EDIT: In fact, The Intercept seems to misrepresent how propaganda is identified. It's simply information from known Russian gov't sources (e.g., Russia Today (RT)) that is repeated elsehwere. Here is the heart of the Post's report: .... The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity. PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-prop...
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  This article from The Intercept is even more misleading than the article it criticizes. The Intercept has been pretty lax editorially in the short time it has been running. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/02/the-intercept-fires-reporter-juan-thompson https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/02/the-intercept-...
- return0 10y ago
  What about the other referenced article from Fortune? http://fortune.com/2016/11/25/russian-fake-news/ http://fortune.com/2016/11/25/russian-fake-news/
andrewclunn 10y ago
I take issue with the standard of repeating Russian funded organizations talking points as being labeled as propaganda. If that's the case, then aren't American news outlets that push US government talking points also propaganda? Why only blacklist one?
- skrowl 10y ago
  Because this is the "bad" kind of propaganda. CNN telling the public that it's illegal for them to go to wikileaks or that globalism is just a conspiracy theory is the "good" kind. Don't worry if you're confused, your TV will tell you which is which. You know, just like state TV in North Korea or Cuba does. The idea is to be more like them, right? At least that's what I'm seeing here.
  - panarky 10y ago
    Be careful with false equivalence. US media has many serious faults, but it is not state-controlled as it is in Russia, China and North Korea. They are not the same.
- hackuser 10y ago
  Hey, that's an approach right out of the Washington Post article. Thanks for providing an example!: “They don’t try to win the argument,” said [former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael A.] McFaul, now director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “It’s to make everything seem relative. It’s kind of an appeal to cynicism.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-prop... What you describe isn't something that happens. The U.S. government doesn't control American news outlets. If it did, I imagine that Trump would have received a lot less coverage and Obama quite a bit less criticism!
return0 10y ago
"And so, in 2016, the World news war 1 began, my grandchildren"
rounce 10y ago
This is a pretty ridiculous article, and I'm sad to say, indicative of what seem to be increasingly 'fast-and-loose' editorial standards on theintercept.com. As was mentioned by another commenter[0], the authors make some rather misleading allegations of their own without ever fully supporting them. Instead preferring to leap to extremes with cries of 'McCarthyism!', with seemingly little mind for it's significance, failing to draw any parallels between events reported and the Army-McCarthy hearings of the '50s. Not that the WaPo article was any good, but this is the pot calling the kettle black. Heavy rhetoric with maximum volume; light on facts or any real point, other than being outraged or condescending. Seems like the way all US political and cultural discourse is conducted nowadays, so not surprised really. Sad though. Even (re)defined a whole lexicon to describe this narrow projection of the world. Conservative, Liberal, Progressive, Caucasian, African-American, Libertarian, Patriot, et al. All subtlety reduced to a set of meaningless labels that denote nothing but your "team". Invoking nothing other fear, rejection, aggression, and anger from any "opposition". [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045686
- return0 10y ago
  i checked and ycombinator.com is not approved by PropOrNot (/s) Joking aside, it's not ridiculous to castigate a piece of bad journalism by a renowned paper. I suppose the McCarthy remark is a bit tongue-in-cheek, given how cold-war-like this situation is, but despite the hyperbolic title , the article is not full of hyperbole.
  - skrowl 10y ago
    Drudge Report and Wikileaks are on the PropOrNot list. Do you believe that they're propaganda?
    - hackuser 10y ago
      The list is of sources that repeat Russian propaganda, IIRC. If so, Wikileaks certainly belongs on the list, having published information very likely provided to them by Russian intelligence. Drudge would not surprise me, as it is already a propaganda site for the a U.S. political group.
coldcode 10y ago
Although both articles are pretty terrible, having just reread 1984 again, it all seems familiar. It's funny how when the internet began we thought it would make the truth easier to see; what we got instead is this, both the truth and the lies are mixed up and you can't tell one from another. What we need, assuming you can build it given how hard it is to tell them apart, is a technology that can tell them apart. Of course it might also be co-opted and then we can't believe anything. I always find it amazing how 1984 turned into a how-to manual.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  I don't see any evidence The Intercept's article is deceitful. The Intercept and Greenwald are almost always credible and legit. Being targeted and harassed illegally by your own government for doing journalistic work on your government is a much greater badge of honour than a Presidential Medal of Freedom or Nobel Peace Prize.
skrowl 10y ago
"Fake News" is just the newest thing to scream in order to convince yourself that censorship is OK. At least they're not trying to continue beating the "If you don't agree with me then you're racist!" dead horse. Did you expect liberal elites to just take the election loss lying down? Of course they're going to start trying to discredit the alternative media outlets that lead to their loss. The more people they can drive away from Drudge / Breitbart to CNN / Comedy Central, the more people that can control.

76 points by Jerry2 10y ago

api 10y ago

So basically anything critical of standard US foreign policy or centrist neoliberalism is all a big Putin conspiracy. Got it. There does appear to be some kind of Russian propaganda machine online but it's voice is mixed in with all the rest of the noise.

salimmadjd 10y ago
IMO this is part of the Wapo's editorial board agenda for a neoconservative [1] plan in Syria. The Washington Post editorial was instrumental in convincing the public of the Iraq war, "From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front page pieces in THE WASHINGTON POST making the administration's case for war," [2] A regime change in Syria has become difficult with such a visible backing of Russia. Unless we use the pretext of Russia interfering in our elections to equate confronting Russia abroad as fighting back for our democracy. Wapo's editorial board never liked Trump [3]. This new push of Russian agenda, is killing two birds with one stone. Delegitimizing Trump while building the narrative of regime change in Syria or anything Russia is backing. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hiatt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hiatt [2] http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html [3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/opinions/2016/10/13/the-closing-argument-against-donald-trump/?utm_term=.3f97850e1658 http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/opinions/2016/10/13/the-clo...
- hackuser 10y ago
  The WaPo's ownership changed between the Iraq war and today, though I don't think Bill Moyers' statements are reliable sources of fact in any case. Yes, the Post opposed Trump (as did almost every newspaper in the U.S., conservative, moderate, or liberal). The rest is pure speculation and conjecture; their motives, good and bad, could be anything, and likely have little to do with your particular concerns.
  - salimmadjd 10y ago
    if you had the chance to look at my Wikipedia reference, you'll see Hiatt is still the editor. You will also see there many references that he has shifted the paper into more of a neoconservative leaning paper.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      To be honest, I don't look at Wikipedia references. I think Wikipedia is the prime example of people's willingness to accept misinformation on the Internet. I would expect the owner, not the editor, determines the politics of the editorial page. Newspapers don't change their political stances significantly when they change editors, but they do when they change owners.
      - api 10y ago
        The editor sets the voice. If the owner wants to change that they would change the editor.
panarky 10y ago
Not at all. PropOrNot outlines eight steps to manually identify Russian propaganda [0]. Of course it's not an exact science, but it's a lot more rigorous than just "anything critical of standard US foreign policy". [0] http://www.propornot.com/p/the-yyycampaignyyy.html http://www.propornot.com/p/the-yyycampaignyyy.html
- barrkel 10y ago
  That algorithm is an exercise in bias confirmation; it's ludicrous, IMO. Any criticism of current orthodox ideology is interpreted as a point in favour of Russian propaganda. Could it possibly be that some people have the genuine thought that starting a new cold war with Russia wouldn't be a very good idea? Or is that simply impossible without it being a Russian propaganda plot? IMO this is all heat that obscures what's going on. There's a new culture war afoot. IMO this site (PropOrNot) is a paranoid reaction to the rejection by a certain segment of the American population to an orthodox groupthink. Instead of people talking to one another and trying to communicate, they're polarizing. It's no good. (I flagged the article, FWIW.)
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  These are some of the steps they use to identify propaganda: Check to see whether the social-media account/commenter/outlet has a history of generally echoing the Russian propaganda "line" by using themes, arguments, talking points, images, and other content similar to those used by obvious Russian propaganda outlets. These themes include: 1. How terrible, weak, aggressive, and corrupt the the opponents of Russia and their friends are: The US, Obama, Hillary Clinton, the EU, Angela Merkel, NATO, Ukraine, Jewish people, US allies, the "mainstream media", and democrats, the center-right or center-left, and moderates of all stripes. Investigate this by searching for mentions of, for example, "NATO", on their site by Googling for "site:whateversite.com NATO" and seeing what comes up. 2. How dangerous standing up to Russia would be: It would inevitably result in "World War 3", nuclear devastation, etc, and regardless of who shot first or is bombing civilians where now, would be the West's fault. Russian propaganda never suggests it would just result in a Cold War 2 and Russia's eventual peaceful defeat, like the last time. This is the criteria for being a russian propaganda outlet? Basically, anyone who parrots 'Crooked Hiliary' is now part of it. This is hogwash

CalChris 10y ago

Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist from a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group Kind've breathless writing there, almost Trumpish. Myself, I discount anything that Greenwald says. Slate has a more sober reaction: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/25/how_russian_propaganda_used_facebook_to_spread_fake_news_during_the_election.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/25/how_russia...

lern_too_spel 10y ago
Greenwald's reporting has always been incredibly inept (to this day, he won't admit how wrong he was about PRISM). The culture of making wild accusations and not interviewing subjects of a story to verify the facts continues to pervade the organization.
- tastythrowaway2 10y ago
  in what way(s) was he wrong about PRISM?
  - lern_too_spel 10y ago
    He claimed that NSA analysts could read anybody's communications straight off the internet companies' servers. Multiple journalists, bloggers, tech workers, companies, and even the government corrected him and pointed out how he misread the slides, but he continues to make that claim.

rokosbasilisk 10y ago

In this fake news era, Im glad for the intercept and greenwalds journalistic integrity.

panarky 10y ago
I appreciate Greenwald and The Intercept, but nothing in this piece addresses the real question -- are high-traffic US sites disseminating Russian disinformation? Yes, it's true that the PropOrNot site is new. Yes, it's true that the people behind PropOrNot are anonymous. Yes, it's true that the Washington Post's article on PropOrNot didn't seem very rigorous. None of this speaks to whether sites like Drudge, Zero Hedge, Alex Jones, etc. are actively disseminating Russian propaganda. PropOrNot lists eight steps to manually identify propaganda and disinformation, and they seem pretty useful to me. http://www.propornot.com/p/the-yyycampaignyyy.html http://www.propornot.com/p/the-yyycampaignyyy.html
- hackuser 10y ago
  > the Washington Post's article on PropOrNot didn't seem very rigorous The article was based on many sources, despite the Intercept's characterization of it. PropOrNot is just one of many: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045686
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  Truth is not the absence of propaganda; propaganda thrives in presenting different kinds of truth, including half truths, incomplete truths, limited truths, out of context truths. Modern propaganda is most effective when it presents information as accurately as possible. The Big Lie or Tall Tale is the most ineffective propaganda. Here's more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques I'm very wary of this attempt to silence "fake news"
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > Truth is not the absence of propaganda ... Well put and essential; thanks > I'm very wary of this attempt to silence "fake news" But then the comment seems to slide into a propaganda talking point. 1) It's not being "silenced", just identified, and such exaggeration or hyperbole is a standard technique; 2) it presupposes this extreme relativism where there is no fake news; and 3) criticizing news sources is a very common, normal part of a health marketplace of ideas. Look at the criticism the NYT and Fox take, for example.

dominotw 10y ago

Does wapo not enforce its own comment guidelines[1] anymore? We will remove posts that include profanity, hate speech, name-calling and personal attacks. This Tila Tequila[2] piece has comment section full of people calling her dumb whore who needs to be marched into a gas chamber. 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ask-the-post/discussion-and-submission-guidelines/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ask-the-post/discussion-... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2016/11/22/tila-tequilas-twitter-account-suspended-after-appearance-at-white-nationalist-convention/#comments https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2016/...

lern_too_spel 10y ago
Irrelevant to this article, and no comment in your article says she needs to be marched into a gas chamber. I found one comment saying that the people she supports would do that to her.
- dominotw 10y ago
  >Huge headed failed porn star, Nazi pig. > Over-compensating dumb beeyatch > stupid w*e > I wasn't in the restaurant when they did their "Sieg Heil" salute. I would have gone into instant Veteran's Day Mode and sent as many as I could to the hospital somebody at wapo said yea these are great comments and approved them ^ ( every comment goes through moderation before publication) , at the same time wailing about how horrible comment section is horrible and ' is especially true for women and minorities.'[1]. 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/21/comments-are-making-the-internet-worse-so-i-got-rid-of-them/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/21/...
  - lern_too_spel 10y ago
    No, it is not true that every comment goes through moderation before publication. Like your gas chamber claim, this statement is also false. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/ask-the-post/discussion-and-submission-guidelines/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/... > Do my comments have to be approved before they are published? > We review comments by new commenters to verify that they don’t violate site discussion guidelines. Comments by other users are published automatically on most threads.

hackuser 10y ago

The Intercept article is a bit [EDIT: very] misleading. The Post article from the start relies on two groups: * The Foreign Policy Research Insititute * PropOrNot * EDIT: The Post also says, The findings about the mechanics of Russian propaganda operations largely track previous research by the Rand Corp. and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. * EDIT: The Post uses yet more sources later in the article. Unless you read about two-thirds of the long Intercept article, to where FPRI is first mentioned, the impression is that the Washington Post relied only on PropOrNot. EDIT: In fact, The Intercept seems to misrepresent how propaganda is identified. It's simply information from known Russian gov't sources (e.g., Russia Today (RT)) that is repeated elsehwere. Here is the heart of the Post's report: .... The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity. PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-prop...

lern_too_spel 10y ago
This article from The Intercept is even more misleading than the article it criticizes. The Intercept has been pretty lax editorially in the short time it has been running. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/02/the-intercept-fires-reporter-juan-thompson https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/02/the-intercept-...
return0 10y ago
What about the other referenced article from Fortune? http://fortune.com/2016/11/25/russian-fake-news/ http://fortune.com/2016/11/25/russian-fake-news/

andrewclunn 10y ago

I take issue with the standard of repeating Russian funded organizations talking points as being labeled as propaganda. If that's the case, then aren't American news outlets that push US government talking points also propaganda? Why only blacklist one?

skrowl 10y ago
Because this is the "bad" kind of propaganda. CNN telling the public that it's illegal for them to go to wikileaks or that globalism is just a conspiracy theory is the "good" kind. Don't worry if you're confused, your TV will tell you which is which. You know, just like state TV in North Korea or Cuba does. The idea is to be more like them, right? At least that's what I'm seeing here.
- panarky 10y ago
  Be careful with false equivalence. US media has many serious faults, but it is not state-controlled as it is in Russia, China and North Korea. They are not the same.
hackuser 10y ago
Hey, that's an approach right out of the Washington Post article. Thanks for providing an example!: “They don’t try to win the argument,” said [former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael A.] McFaul, now director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “It’s to make everything seem relative. It’s kind of an appeal to cynicism.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-prop... What you describe isn't something that happens. The U.S. government doesn't control American news outlets. If it did, I imagine that Trump would have received a lot less coverage and Obama quite a bit less criticism!

return0 10y ago

"And so, in 2016, the World news war 1 began, my grandchildren"

rounce 10y ago

This is a pretty ridiculous article, and I'm sad to say, indicative of what seem to be increasingly 'fast-and-loose' editorial standards on theintercept.com. As was mentioned by another commenter[0], the authors make some rather misleading allegations of their own without ever fully supporting them. Instead preferring to leap to extremes with cries of 'McCarthyism!', with seemingly little mind for it's significance, failing to draw any parallels between events reported and the Army-McCarthy hearings of the '50s. Not that the WaPo article was any good, but this is the pot calling the kettle black. Heavy rhetoric with maximum volume; light on facts or any real point, other than being outraged or condescending. Seems like the way all US political and cultural discourse is conducted nowadays, so not surprised really. Sad though. Even (re)defined a whole lexicon to describe this narrow projection of the world. Conservative, Liberal, Progressive, Caucasian, African-American, Libertarian, Patriot, et al. All subtlety reduced to a set of meaningless labels that denote nothing but your "team". Invoking nothing other fear, rejection, aggression, and anger from any "opposition". [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045686

return0 10y ago
i checked and ycombinator.com is not approved by PropOrNot (/s) Joking aside, it's not ridiculous to castigate a piece of bad journalism by a renowned paper. I suppose the McCarthy remark is a bit tongue-in-cheek, given how cold-war-like this situation is, but despite the hyperbolic title , the article is not full of hyperbole.
- skrowl 10y ago
  Drudge Report and Wikileaks are on the PropOrNot list. Do you believe that they're propaganda?
  - hackuser 10y ago
    The list is of sources that repeat Russian propaganda, IIRC. If so, Wikileaks certainly belongs on the list, having published information very likely provided to them by Russian intelligence. Drudge would not surprise me, as it is already a propaganda site for the a U.S. political group.

coldcode 10y ago

Although both articles are pretty terrible, having just reread 1984 again, it all seems familiar. It's funny how when the internet began we thought it would make the truth easier to see; what we got instead is this, both the truth and the lies are mixed up and you can't tell one from another. What we need, assuming you can build it given how hard it is to tell them apart, is a technology that can tell them apart. Of course it might also be co-opted and then we can't believe anything. I always find it amazing how 1984 turned into a how-to manual.

wallace_f 10y ago
I don't see any evidence The Intercept's article is deceitful. The Intercept and Greenwald are almost always credible and legit. Being targeted and harassed illegally by your own government for doing journalistic work on your government is a much greater badge of honour than a Presidential Medal of Freedom or Nobel Peace Prize.

skrowl 10y ago

"Fake News" is just the newest thing to scream in order to convince yourself that censorship is OK. At least they're not trying to continue beating the "If you don't agree with me then you're racist!" dead horse. Did you expect liberal elites to just take the election loss lying down? Of course they're going to start trying to discredit the alternative media outlets that lead to their loss. The more people they can drive away from Drudge / Breitbart to CNN / Comedy Central, the more people that can control.