{"id":282182,"date":"2016-12-01T20:11:53","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T19:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-are-media-outlets-still-citing-discredited-fake-news-blacklist\/"},"modified":"2016-12-01T20:11:53","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T19:11:53","slug":"why-are-media-outlets-still-citing-discredited-fake-news-blacklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-are-media-outlets-still-citing-discredited-fake-news-blacklist\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Are Media Outlets Still Citing Discredited \u2018Fake News\u2019 Blacklist?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Russian<\/a><\/p>\n

Russians spread “fake news,” says “experts”\u2014you don’t need to know who they are (Washington Post<\/strong>, 11\/24\/16<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Washington Post<\/b> (11\/24\/16<\/a>) last week published a front-page blockbuster that quickly went viral: Russia-promoted \u201cfake news\u201d had infiltrated the newsfeeds of 213 million Americans during the election, muddying the waters in a disinformation scheme to benefit Donald Trump. Craig Timberg\u2019s story was based on a \u201creport\u201d from an anonymous group (or simply a person, it\u2019s unclear) calling itself PropOrNot that blacklisted over 200 websites as agents or assets of the Russian state.<\/p>\n

The obvious implication was that an elaborate Russian psyop had fooled the public into voting for Trump based on a torrent of misleading and false information posing as news. Everyone from Bloomberg\u2019<\/b>s Sahil Kupar <\/a>to CNN\u2019<\/b>s to Robert Reich<\/a> to Anne Navarro<\/a> to MSNBC<\/b>\u2019s Joy Ann Reid<\/a> tweeted out the story in breathless tones. Center for American Progress and Clinton advocate Neera Tanden even did her best Ron Paul YouTube<\/b> commenter impression, exclaiming, \u201cWake up people.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

But the story didn\u2019t stand up to the most basic scrutiny. Follow-up reporting cast major doubt on the Washington Post<\/b>\u2019s core claims and underlying logic, the two primary complaints being 1) the \u201cresearch group\u201d responsible for the meat of the story, PropOrNot, is an anonymous group of partisans (if more than one person is involved) who tweet like high schoolers, and 2) the list of supposed Russian media assets, because its criteria for Russian \u201cfake news\u201d encompasses \u201cuseful idiots,\u201d includes entirely well-within-the-mainstream progressive and libertarian websites such as Truth-Out<\/b>, Consortium News<\/b>, TruthDig<\/b> and Antiwar.com<\/b> (several of whom are now considering lawsuits<\/a> against PropOrNot for libel).<\/p>\n

PropOrNot says their criteria for \u201cRussian propaganda\u201d is \u201cbehavioral\u201d and \u201cmotivation-agnostic,\u201d so even those who publish views that simply coincide with the Russian government\u2019s, regardless of intent or actual links to Russia, are per se Kremlin assets\u2014an absurd metric that casts a net so wide as to render the concept meaningless.<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton of The Intercept<\/b> (11\/26\/16<\/a>) called PropOrNot \u201camateur peddlers of primitive, shallow propagandistic clich\u00e9s\u201d who were \u201cengaging in extremely dubious McCarthyite tactics about a wide range of critics and dissenters.\u201d Fortune<\/b> magazine’s Matthew Ingram \u00a0(11\/25\/16<\/a>) insisted the report had the \u201cbeginnings of a conspiracy theory, rather than a scientific analysis,\u201d while AlterNet\u2019<\/b>s Max Blumenthal (11\/26\/16<\/a>) lamented that \u201cinsiders have latched onto a McCarthyite campaign that calls for government investigations of a wide array of alternative media outlets.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Matt Taibbi wrote in Rolling Stone <\/b>(11\/28\/16<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

The vast majority of reporters would have needed to see something a lot more concrete than a half-assed theoretical paper from such a dicey source before denouncing 200 news organizations as traitors.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Almost everyone outside of \u00a0the Washington Post<\/b> who critically examined the list concluded it was at best shoddy and ill-considered, and at worst a deliberate attempt to encourage a chilling effect on Russia-related reporting. That a group of Cold Warrior hacks would publish such a blacklist is not a surprise; that one of the most established names in American news would uncritically parrot it was. Its reporting, writing-up and referencing is a prime example of how fake real news on real fake news spreads without question.<\/p>\n

USA Today <\/b>(11\/25\/16<\/a>), Gizmodo <\/b>(11\/25\/16<\/a>), PBS<\/b> (11\/25\/16<\/a>), The Daily Beast<\/b> (11\/25\/16<\/a>), Slate<\/b> (11\/25\/16<\/a>), AP<\/b> (11\/25\/16<\/a>) The Verge <\/b>(11\/25\/16<\/a>) and NPR<\/b> (11\/25\/16<\/a>) all uncritically wrote up the Post<\/b>\u2019s most incendiary claims with little or minimal pushback. Gizmodo <\/b>was so giddy its original headline had to be changed from \u201cResearch Confirms<\/i> That Russia Played a Major Role in Spreading Fake News\u201d to \u201cResearch Suggests <\/i>That Russia Played a Major Role in Spreading Fake News,\u201d presumably after some polite commenters pointed out that the research \u201cconfirmed\u201d nothing of the sort.<\/p>\n

\u201cUm \u2018stories planted or promoted by the Russian disinformation campaign were viewed 213 million times,\u2019\u201d New York Times<\/b> deputy Washington editor Jonathan Weisman (11\/24\/16<\/a>) tweeted out to the tune of 2,800 retweets. But the report didn\u2019t show this at all. There was no methodology provided, nor was there any consideration by Weisman that that \u201c213 million\u201d figure of Russian \u201cfake news\u201d included, for example, the third-most popular news site in the United States, the Drudge Report<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Drudge<\/b> not only has no funding or backing from Putin, but predates his administration by several years. But because Drudge<\/b> occasionally publishes stories that make the US look bad in relation to Russia, and because PropOrNot\u2019s \u201cuseful idiots\u201d criterion is \u201cmotivation-agnostic,\u201d its entire footprint has become a \u201cRussian disinformation campaign.\u201d Did Weisman know this? Did he care?<\/p>\n

\"Maddow:<\/a><\/p>\n

(MaddowBlog<\/strong>, 11\/28\/16<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As reports debunking or discrediting The List came out, the story continued to spread. Joy Ann Reid (Daily Beast<\/b>, 11\/27\/16<\/a>) alluded to the PropOrNot story to bolster her claim that there was an \u201calarming consensus of experts\u201d that Russia interfered in the US election by \u201cpumping of fake news and propaganda into the country\u2019s digital bloodstream,\u201d despite no such consensus existing. On Monday, Business Insider<\/b> (11\/28\/16<\/a>) insisted that PropOrNot\u2019s \u201cmethods uncover some connections that merit consideration,\u201d while citing only two examples and ignoring all of the major objections advanced by Greenwald, Taibbi et al. Rachel Maddow\u2019s popular blog (MSNBC,<\/b> 11\/28\/16<\/a>) added another breathless write-up hours later, repeating the catchy talking point that \u201cit was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump\u2019s campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite respected media critics taking the report to task, the Post<\/b>\u2019s spurious claims are being cemented as conventional wisdom, all the while the writer of the story and his editor refuse to answer direct criticism or reveal who this anonymous person or persons is. What are their motives? Who are their funders? Why is \u201cuseful idiot\u201d being propped up by a major news outlet as a useful distinction? Why weren\u2019t those on the blacklist asked to comment? Despite numerous inquiries by The Intercept<\/b>, Rolling Stone<\/b> and The Nation<\/b> (11\/28\/16<\/a>),<\/b> all these questions remain unanswered.<\/p>\n

One would think reports on \u201cfake news\u201d would themselves be held to the highest possible editorial standards, if not out of some instinctual desire to avoid high doses of irony and cognitive dissonance, at least to shield against charges of blatant hypocrisy. But increasingly, as the moral panic surrounding \u201cfake news\u201d reaches fever pitch, the standards of skepticism and sourcing employed by some of our most trusted news sources have inversely sunk to tabloid levels.<\/p>\n

\n

Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org<\/strong>.<\/em> You can follow him on Twitter<\/strong> at @AdamJohnsonNYC<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The group Roots Action has a petition up calling for a retraction of the blacklist story: “Tell the Washington Post: Smearing Is Not Reporting.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission from FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russians spread “fake news,” says “experts”\u2014you don’t need to know who they are (Washington Post, 11\/24\/16). The Washington Post (11\/24\/16) last week published a front-page blockbuster that quickly went viral: Russia-promoted \u201cfake news\u201d had infiltrated the newsfeeds of 213 million Americans during the election, muddying the waters in a disinformation scheme to benefit Donald Trump. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2521,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-282182","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}