The news is about as organic as a combo meal at McDonald’s, according to former CBS veteran Sharyl Attkisson. She gave a Ted Talk recently describing how Google’s Eric Schmidt used his power and influence to try to discredit new media sources as “Fake News”. She noticed that there was a unified message against “fake news”, which meant, conservative websites that deviated from traditional media narratives, even prompting Obama to join in the chorus against them.
“He insisted in a speech that he too thought somebody needed to step in and curate information of this wild, wild west media environment,” Attkisson said. She determined that the first use of the term “fake news” was by a little known non-profit organization called “First Draft”. “On September 13, 2016, First Draft announced a partnership to tackle malicious hoaxes and fake news reports,” Attkisson explained. “The goal was supposedly to separate real from weak, to prevent unproven conspiracy talk from figuring prominently in internet searches.
Attkisson knew there was more to the story; she found that Google was one of the big donors behind First Draft’s “fake news” messaging. Google’s parent company, she pointed out, is owned by Eric Schmidt, who had given large sums to Hillary Clinton. Yet, President Trump achieved what she calls a “hostile takeover” of the term: “But something happened that nobody expected. The anti-fake news campaign backfired. Each time advocates cried fake news, Donald Trump called them ‘fake news’ until he’d co-opted the term so completely that even those who [were] originally promoting it started running from it — including the Washington Post.”
Attkisson’s big tips for spotting fake news are as follows: When the media tries to shape or censor facts and opinions rather than report them; when so many in the media are reporting the same stories, promulgating the same narratives, relying on the same sources — even using the same phrases. The bottom line: don’t let people who believe lies tell you who to believe.
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