FAKE NEWS? You haven't seen the real thing yet.

Biggles
Every day I peruse the websites of CNN & Fox. The resulting whiplash is bad for my health. :boggled:
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Here's a good current (obviously won't remain the same for long) example of "diverging" perspectives on the news:

https://www.foxnews.com

https://www.cnn.com

The article on Lev Parnas is there, but totally buried on Fox's site.

On the other hand BBC leads with David Attenborough's dire climate change warning:

https://www.bbc.com

While Aljezeera leads with a bombing in Syria.

https://www.aljazeera.com

I actually find Aljazeera has the most "serious" approach to world news of all these networks. However, not a good source for information on what the Jenner/Kardashian clan are up to, or Jennifer Annistan diet tips.
 
I've gotten into the habit of searching links so that I can get a preview when no information is provided, and so that I can avoid giving garbage outlets my click.

Someone posted a link to a Daily Mail (garbage outlet, indeed) article on what I have since figured out is the Cannon Hinnant murder in North Carolina, but in my search, I came across a forum post on Law Enforcement Rant, a board with a considerable right normal bias.

I didn't click the link from the search, but here's a screenshot highlighting the fake news:

Screenshot_20200811-211357.png


("whom"?)
 
TexRex
I've gotten into the habit of searching links so that I can get a preview when no information is provided, and so that I can avoid giving garbage outlets my click.

Someone posted a link to a Daily Mail (garbage outlet, indeed) article on what I have since figured out is the Cannon Hinnant murder in North Carolina, but in my search, I came across a forum post on Law Enforcement Rant, a board with a considerable right normal bias.

I didn't click the link from the search, but here's a screenshot highlighting the fake news:

View attachment 948722

("whom"?)
Click to expand...
What are you saying? A 5 year old boy was murdered.
 
VolkswagenX
What are you saying? A 5 year old boy was murdered.
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He was murdered and the man who killed him is in custody.

He wasn't lynched by a terrorist working for BLM as presented in the links posted here. That's totally fake news (yes, someone finally found it!).

That's what I think he's saying.
 
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Someones bias just shown through aye?
I like that the MMA website is the only one right out of the three.
 
Rallywagon
Someones bias just shown through aye?
I like that the MMA website is the only one right out of the three.
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That was just an uncropped screenshot to show a single result. I didn't even notice the one above until you pointed out the one below. So Darius Sessoms is BLM now?
 
www.dallasobserver.com

Flyers Threatening White HP Parents Who Send Their Kids to the Ivy League Reek of Fakeness

As soon as Casie Tomlin found the FedEx envelope in her mailbox, she knew something looked fishy. Inside, a flyer from a group called Dallas Justice Now urged parents in Dallas’ wealthy — and largely white — Highland Park and University Park suburbs to not send their kids to Ivy...
www.dallasobserver.com www.dallasobserver.com
As soon as Casie Tomlin found the FedEx envelope in her mailbox, she knew something looked fishy. Inside, a flyer from a group called Dallas Justice Now urged parents in Dallas’ wealthy — and largely white — Highland Park and University Park suburbs to not send their kids to Ivy League schools.

The parents needed to make space for students of color, the statement said. If they didn’t sign the pledge, Dallas Justice Now would publish their names online. The statement also appeared on PR Newswire, a pay-for-play press release service.

Then, she typed a few questions on Dallas Justice Now’s Facebook page. She donated money to the group to see if she could get more information. She tried to contact the people behind it.

Before she knew it, Tomlin had been doxxed. Dallas Justice Now published a follow-up press release, accusing her of being a white supremacist. The group then wrote several posts about Tomlin on its Facebook page.

Later, Tomlin took to Twitter and wrote, “I knew it was fake and designed to draw a rise the first time I saw this nonsense.”

Meanwhile, Dallas Justice Now blew up in right-wing media. The story appeared at the Post Millennial, a far-right website based in Canada. The British Daily Mail tabloid ran a story about the saga. Conservative media figures had a field day. "Yes, this is real," wrote Matt Walsh, a conservative Twitter personality and columnist for the Daily Wire.

The ultra-conservative PJ Media warned that the “local Black Lives Matter group Dallas Justice Now launched a new campaign, urging white parents in wealthy Highland Park to sign a pledge to keep their children from applying to America’s top colleges — in the name of ‘equity.’”

On Tuesday night, the scandal even found its way to Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Fox News showed headed by its eponymous far-right host. Host Mark Stein, who was filling in for Carlson, described the Dallas Justice Now debacle as "one of those stories that would have been a rather dull satire a decade ago, but these days, it is just standard operating procedure." (To be fair, no one said Tucker's team included crack fact-checkers.)



Now, Tomlin suspects the entire operation is a hoax and she’s been targeted for her attempts to get to the bottom of it. “This is a major alt-right extremist production designed to get people to do things they aren’t even doing so you will vote Republican,” Tomlin wrote in a public post on Reddit.

She may be onto something. Scant public information is available about Dallas Justice Now or its leadership. The group hasn’t replied to the Observer’s inquires, but the group’s website traces back to a right-wing PR firm called Arena. Online research also connects Arena to Keep Dallas Safe, an organization run by a confirmed astroturfer, suggesting there may be deeper connections between these efforts in terms of funders and strategy.

One of the local anti-fascists who combed through the website’s history told the Observer that they “noticed [Dallas Justice Now] had backdated blog posts from before their website was up, and so we started looking through their posts.” (The researcher requested to remain anonymous.)

It didn’t take long for the researchers to locate source code that led back to Arena in an archived version of Dallas Justice Now’s website. From there, they found a server that showed several similar testing sites, including one for Keep Dallas Safe.

Profiles on GitHub, a website where computer programmers share their work, confirm that the template that these staging websites use, including the ones for Dallas Justice Now, was created by individuals who work at Arena.

Arena has worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Michigan Republican Party and various other right-wing politicians and political campaigns. They also appear to have worked with Keep Dallas Safe, according to the Luceo Solutions site index as well as source code of the Keep Dallas Safe staging website. (Earlier this year, Keep Dallas Safe targeted candidates in the Dallas City Council election with false claims that they intended to defund the police.)

None of this explains the name on the flyer: Michele Washington. Washington could not be reached for comment. And questions remain about why a woman identified as Washington and another woman who appeared in a Dallas Justice Now promotional video, identified only as Jamila, are working with a right-wing PR firm.

Though the organization claims to be a nonprofit, Dallas Justice Now doesn’t show up in the government’s nonprofit database. A recently reported claim by Washington that Dr. Troy Harden, a professor of ethnic studies, would be joining the group's advisory board has been rejected by Harden as a lie, according to the Daily Mail report.

Public records searches turn up one person by the name of Michele Washington, the quoted spokesperson for the group, who ostensibly resides in Richardson. Multiple attempts to contact Washington have gone unreturned. Other than one video on Facebook, little else is known about Jamila, the only named member whose face has appeared in photos or videos online. No other named individuals can be linked to the organization.

Still, the story of the pledge threatening to expose non-signatories as racists has continued to spread on the internet.

Early on, opponents of critical race theory boosted the story. It was first covered by Dallas City Wire, a website owned by conservative businessman and former journalist Brian Timpone. Timpone heads a network of content farm “local news” websites.

In October 2020, The New York Times investigated a network of 1,300 local news sites that regularly published stories “directed by political groups and corporate PR firms to promote a Republican candidate or a company, or to smear their rivals.”

Many of those articles, the Times observed, were written under fake bylines, sometimes by people as far off as the Philippines.

“The network is largely overseen by Brian Timpone, a TV reporter turned internet entrepreneur who has sought to capitalize on the decline of local news organizations for nearly two decades,” the Times wrote. “He has built the network with the help of several others, including a Texas brand-management consultant and a conservative Chicago radio personality.”

In an article that same month, D Magazine observed that “what sets Timpone’s network apart is both its size — it is now twice as large as Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain — and the lengths it goes to obscure the source and funding behind content.”

In December 2019, Columbia Journalism Review dug into Timpone’s network, which it described as “pink slime,” or “low-cost automated story generation.”

Dallas Justice Now’s Twitter account sprung up in October 2020, and the following month, Dallas City Wire published the first story mentioning the organization. In that article, New York-based reporter Juliette Fairley wrote that Dallas Justice Now was campaigning to abolish police unions.

Fairley has also contributed to the pro-Trump Newsmax website and The Epoch Times, a far-right newspaper linked to the Chinese cult Falun Gong. (The Epoch Times has since published a story about the Dallas pledge controversy.) Fairley has also written for the Dallas Express, a formerly Black-owned newspaper that local hotelier Monty Bennett recently resurrected as a right-wing clickbait site.

On July 23, Fairley wrote a second story about Dallas Justice Now, highlighting the pledge controversy and citing the PR Newswire press release. On their website, Dallas Justice Now thanked Fairley for the coverage, a puzzling choice given that the group is supposedly a social justice outfit and that Fairley has written widely for far-right media outlets.

When approached for assistance reaching Washington, whom Fairley quotes widely in her articles, she responded but wouldn’t provide Washington’s phone number. Instead, she linked to the paid press releases. When asked if she had personally spoken with Washington, she refused to comment, and then said she had forwarded the request to her supervisor.

His name, Fairley said, was Brian Timpone.
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Famine
Why are we watching a six-minute video without reference?

Explain what it is, what it shows, and what it's doing in the "fake news" thread. Don't just drop it without context.
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Saagar provides the details on the most recent round of mainstream media smears of Joe Rogan and he debunks the fake news spread by the media about ivermectin.
 
VolkswagenX
details on the most recent round of mainstream media smears of Joe Rogan
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Which doesn't qualify as "fake news". "Fake news" is information that is not true which is presented as if it is true. Smears are routinely either a mixture of both or information that is at best plausible presented in question form.
VolkswagenX
he debunks the fake news spread by the media about ivermectin.
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Then post the "fake news spread by the media about ivermectin", not an unreferenced video without context. This is the "Fake News" thread, not the "some random guy with zero obligation to truth, or accountability, guffs off because it happens to match your particular choice of axe" thread.
 
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www.mediamatters.org

Right-wing media blame trans-inclusive policy for a sexual assault in VA. It wasn’t even in place at the time.

www.mediamatters.org www.mediamatters.org
Right-wing media have seized on a report of a sexual assault at a high school in Loudoun County, Virginia, to attack trans-inclusive bathrooms, often suggesting that a policy in the school district opened the door to predators in girls’ bathrooms. In reality, the policy was not in effect when the reported sexual assault occurred, and it is always illegal to assault or harass someone.

On October 11, right-wing outlet The Daily Wire published a story about the reported assault and interviewed Scott Smith, the victim’s father, who was arrested at a June 22 school board meeting after an altercation.

In the article, Smith seemed to acknowledge that the suspect might not have been affected by the district's trans-inclusive policy, which allows students to use facilities that align with their gender identity. He said, “The person that attacked our daughter is apparently bisexual and occasionally wears dresses because he likes them. So this kid is technically not what the school board was fighting about." However, he then seemed to blame the policy, saying, “The point is kids are using it as an advantage to get into the bathrooms.”

However, the policy was passed by the school board on August 11 -- months after May 28, when the assault was reported to have taken place, making it impossible for the suspect to have used the protections “as an advantage to get into the bathrooms.”

The myth that trans-inclusive bathrooms allow predators to attack women has been repeatedly debunked; additionally, assaults and harassment are already illegal regardless of whether bathrooms allow trans people. In fact, the suspect was later charged in a second assault in Loudoun County that was reported to have taken place in “an empty classroom.” The suspect has now been arrested and detained in juvenile detention.

The Washington Post has noted that authorities have not confirmed the gender identity of the suspect or that they were wearing a dress but identified as a boy. It also noted that “at the time of the alleged assault involving [Smith’s] daughter, that rule was not in effect”:
The parents she is representing have spoken out this week, often in interviews with conservative news outlets, to assert that the charged youth is “gender fluid” and that the assault took place in a girls bathroom. Those details have not been confirmed by authorities. The parents have also denounced a policy put in place by Loudoun’s school board in August that lets students use bathrooms matching their gender identities. At the time of the alleged assault involving their daughter, that rule was not in effect.
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Nevertheless, right-wing media have quickly spread the story, frequently citing the alleged gender identity of the suspect and the school’s trans-inclusive policy -- which they often falsely suggested was to blame for the reported assault.

For instance, the Heritage Foundation’s outlet, The Daily Signal, published a report that quoted anti-trans advocate Lauren Adams, who said, “Assaults like these are the natural result of transgender bathroom policies, which allow boys to freely enter girls’ spaces and erode boundaries.”

In an op-ed in The Washington Times, columnist Robert Knight suggested Virginia may once again give us an “American Revolution,” in part due to backlash over the case. Knight lied that the suspect “was allowed into the girl’s room because of the idiotic transgender mandate.”

The Daily Mail wrote, “Smith says the boy took advantage of the school's trans policies to get into the girls' bathrooms and assault her.”

The New York Post also repeated this claim, writing: “Smith told the Daily Wire that his daughter was attacked at Stone Bridge High School on May 28 by a boy ‘wearing in a skirt’ who took advantage of transgender rules ‘to get into the bathrooms.’”

Unfortunately, right-wing media have once again perpetuated the debunked bathroom predator myth and ignored the facts in order to attack trans people.
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They think their base to be morons. As much as I deign to side with Fox News, I concede that they are absolutely right to think that.
 
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The short of it is that the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor issued a call for grant proposals for rights advocacy projects on behalf of non-practicing, non-religious and atheist individuals in parts of the world where heterodoxy may result in fines, incarceration or even execution.

Screenshot-20220705-182508-Samsung-Internet.jpg


Now this obviously isn't likely to generate domestic outrage, so right-wing media outlets and political figures obfuscated facts or outright lied to whip their idiot base into a furor.
www.foxnews.com

House Republicans demand answers from Biden admin over grants 'to promote atheism worldwide'

Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., led several House Republicans in demanding answers from the Biden administration about a grant program they say will "promote atheism worldwide."
www.foxnews.com www.foxnews.com
metrovoicenews.com

Biden administration grants to promote atheism are illegal says GOP - Metro Voice News

GOP leaders in Congress have sent a letter to the State Department saying the Biden administration funding promotion of atheism is illegal.
metrovoicenews.com metrovoicenews.com
thepostmillennial.com

Biden’s global initiative to replace Christianity with atheism faces GOP backlash

The 2021 federal grant program is designed to promote atheism and humanism overseas and encourage “dissent from religious belief.”
thepostmillennial.com thepostmillennial.com
thefederalist.com

Reps. Demand Answers From State Department For Funding Atheism

'Any such program – for any religiously-identifiable group – in the United States would be unconstitutional.'
thefederalist.com thefederalist.com
www.theepochtimes.com

House GOPers Demanding Answers on Why Grants Going to Boost Atheism Overseas

www.theepochtimes.com www.theepochtimes.com
 
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Getting paid to make stuff up and use an occasional ooga booga word.



And of course, the word liberal is not used this way in the UK so there is a lot of pandering going on too.
 
Where have all the Republicans gone? Why don't they post here anymore? Oh well...

Republicans support preferential treatment for rapists who penetrate the vaginas of minors. That's disgusting!

Let's go for a ride.



I call it three things:

1) It's old.

2) It's false (not that Democrats want Newsom to be president--that may well be true--but the Breitbart* headline is certainly false).

3) It's evidence that stupid Republicans (the Department of Redundancy Department approves) aren't willing to scrutinize things they read if they want to believe it and/or they can use it against the opposition.

*Breitbart. I mean ****ing seriously. It would be a disservice to dirt to use it as a basis for comparison against the stupidity of these mother****ers. Breitbart is not a source for factual reporting. Okay so a broken clock is correct twice a day, but Breitbart perpetuates falsehoods with sufficient consistency that it should never be considered a legitimate source.

The law was SB 145 and Newsom signed it in September of 2020. The law has no effect on the penalties for sodomy with minors or anything else. The law has no effect on penalties whatsoever.

California's age of consent is 18 years. Anyone over 18 years of age who has sexual intercourse with anyone under the age of 18 is committing a crime. That crime is sexual assault. It doesn't matter if the minor consents in spirit (consent to sexual intercourse with a minor isn't recognized by law, so even non-coercive sexual intercourse with a minor is against the law--termed "statutory rape") or if the perpetrator does indeed force themselves upon a minor. There's some relevant flexibility with sentencing here, as one who perpetrates non-coercive statutory rape and is no more than 10 years older than the minor (this is an absolute maximum), a prosecutor may exercise discretion and charge the perpetrator (regardless of the sex of the perpetrator and the minor) with a misdemeanor rather than a felony. SB 145 didn't affect any of this, but we're getting a little closer.

Prior to the passage of SB 145, a judge in California had discretion in cases of statutory rape within the 10-year differential (again, this is an absolute maximum) over whether the convicted perpetrator must register as a sex offender...but only if they perpetrated vaginal penetrative sexual assault. In cases of statutory rape involving non-vaginal penetrative (sodomy; oral and/or anal penetration) sexual assault, there was no judicial discretion over reporting and sex offender registration was mandatory. SB 145 gave judges discretion over sex offender registration in statutory rape cases involving non-vaginal penetrative sexual assault.

What this means in practice is that homosexual males (because there are no vaginas involved) aren't automatically discriminated against by the criminal justice system over non-coercive penetrative sexual assault.

In the absolute simplest of terms, the passage and execution of SB 145 established equality before the law. That's a good thing. Thia isn't perfect because it's still subject to the discretion of individual actors, but it's an improvement to the penal (heh...penal) code.

People absolutely should be treated equally by the criminal justice system. To think otherwise is deeply unAmerican.

So given what SB 145 actually did, really what Republicans who oppose it are saying (even if they do so unwittingly because they don't scrutinize the information they receive) is that those who perpetrate vaginal penetrative sexual assault should get preferential treatment.

Let's strip all minutiae to make it sound as bad as possible, in much the way that right-wing propagandists do, and as I did for effect at the start.

Republicans support preferential treatment for rapists who penetrate the vaginas of minors. That's disgusting!
 
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TexRex
Where have all the Republicans gone? Why don't they post here anymore? Oh well...

Republicans support preferential treatment for rapists who penetrate the vaginas of minors. That's disgusting!

Let's go for a ride.



I call it three things:

1) It's old.

2) It's false (not that Democrats want Newsom to be president--that may well be true--but the Breitbart* headline is certainly false).

3) It's evidence that stupid Republicans (the Department of Redundancy Department approves) aren't willing to scrutinize things they read if they want to believe it and/or they can use it against the opposition.

*Breitbart. I mean ****ing seriously. It would be a disservice to dirt to use it as a basis for comparison against the stupidity of these mother****ers. Breitbart is not a source for factual reporting. Okay so a broken clock is correct twice a day, but Breitbart perpetuates falsehoods with sufficient consistency that it should never be considered a legitimate source.

The law was SB 145 and Newsom signed it in September of 2020. The law has no effect on the penalties for sodomy with minors or anything else. The law has no effect on penalties whatsoever.

California's age of consent is 18 years. Anyone over 18 years of age who has sexual intercourse with anyone under the age of 18 is committing a crime. That crime is sexual assault. It doesn't matter if the minor consents in spirit (consent to sexual intercourse with a minor isn't recognized by law, so even non-coercive sexual intercourse with a minor is against the law--termed "statutory rape") or if the perpetrator does indeed force themselves upon a minor. There's some relevant flexibility with sentencing here, as one who perpetrates non-coercive statutory rape and is no more than 10 years older than the minor (this is an absolute maximum), a prosecutor may exercise discretion and charge the perpetrator (regardless of the sex of the perpetrator and the minor) with a misdemeanor rather than a felony. SB 145 didn't affect any of this, but we're getting a little closer.

Prior to the passage of SB 145, a judge in California had discretion in cases of statutory rape within the 10-year differential (again, this is an absolute maximum) over whether the convicted perpetrator must register as a sex offender...but only if they perpetrated vaginal penetrative sexual assault. In cases of statutory rape involving non-vaginal penetrative (sodomy; oral and/or anal penetration) sexual assault, there was no judicial discretion over reporting and sex offender registration was mandatory. SB 145 gave judges discretion over sex offender registration in statutory rape cases involving non-vaginal penetrative sexual assault.

What this means in practice is that homosexual males (because there are no vaginas involved) aren't automatically discriminated against by the criminal justice system over non-coercive penetrative sexual assault.

In the absolute simplest of terms, the passage and execution of SB 145 established equality before the law. That's a good thing. Thia isn't perfect because it's still subject to the discretion of individual actors, but it's an improvement to the penal (heh...penal) code.

People absolutely should be treated equally by the criminal justice system. To think otherwise is deeply unAmerican.

So given what SB 145 actually did, really what Republicans who oppose it are saying (even if they do so unwittingly because they don't scrutinize the information they receive) is that those who perpetrate vaginal penetrative sexual assault should get preferential treatment.

Let's strip all minutiae to make it sound as bad as possible, in much the way that right-wing propagandists do, and as I did for effect at the start.

Republicans support preferential treatment for rapists who penetrate the vaginas of minors. That's disgusting!
Click to expand...



Womp-womp.
 
TexRex


Womp-womp.
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Not sure that telling your boss he's going to hell is a great career move.

1663660216031.png


Cue dozens of chud Schaffer fans doubling down on his tweet and condemning Beck and Mormonism in general for Schaffer's dismissal. :lol:
 
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