{"id":383439,"date":"2018-11-03T02:38:38","date_gmt":"2018-11-03T01:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/33-trillion-more-reasons-why-the-new-york-times-gets-it-wrong-on-russia-gate-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2018-11-03T02:38:38","modified_gmt":"2018-11-03T01:38:38","slug":"33-trillion-more-reasons-why-the-new-york-times-gets-it-wrong-on-russia-gate-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/33-trillion-more-reasons-why-the-new-york-times-gets-it-wrong-on-russia-gate-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"33 Trillion More Reasons Why The New York Times Gets it Wrong on Russia-gate \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New research shows\u00a0The New York Times<\/em> was even further off the mark in blaming Russian social media for Trump\u2019s win, as Gareth Porter reports.<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n

Facebook Said 80,000 Russian <\/span><\/strong>Posts Were Buried in 33 Trillion Facebook Offerings Over Two-Year Period\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>Further Undermining NYT\u2019s Case\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Gareth Porter<\/strong>
Special to Consortium News<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Even more damning evidence has come to light undermining The New York Times<\/i>\u2018 assertion in September that Russia used social media to steal the 2016 election for Donald Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

New research shows that a relatively paltry 80,000 posts from the private Russian company Internet Research Agency (IRA) were engulfed in literally trillions <\/i>of posts on Facebook over a two-year<\/i> period before and after <\/i>the 2016 vote.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That was supposed to have thrown the election, according to the paper of record. In a 10,000-word article<\/a><\/span> on Sept. 20, the Times<\/i>\u00a0reported that 126 million out of 137 million American voters were exposed to social media posts on Facebook from IRA that somehow had a hand in delivering Trump the presidency.<\/span><\/p>\n

The newspaper said: \u201cEven by the vertiginous standards of social media, the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of\u00a0126 million Americans\u00a0on Facebook alone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But <\/span>Consortium News<\/b><\/span>, on Oct. 10, debunked<\/a><\/span> that story, pointing out that reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti failed to report several significant caveats and disclaimers from Facebook officers themselves, whose statements make the<\/span> Times\u2019 <\/i><\/span>claim that Russian election propaganda \u201creached\u201d 126 million Americans an exercise in misinformation.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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