#fake news
As the past 30 years of press history shows, everything changes. Great journalism helps us understand how and why things change, and we need that now more than ever.
Read More: Fake news is everywhere. Here’s how the internet can stop it
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The third Republican Senator announced Monday that they’d be supporting Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in the approval vote at the U.S. Supreme Court. But that wasn’t what MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell wanted to talk about during his hour. He connected the dots for the groups and right-wing people who manufactured things they could use against her.
It’s a disinformation machine designed to create outrage and drama.
Racist Illegitimate Puppet President Trump being Trump. Absolutely no respect for people who actually fought in war and wasn’t a coward who got deferments to avoid war. Trump is a draft dodging coward.
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Twitter blocks Senate candidate from advertising false claim about Planned Parenthood
- Twitter has blocked current Tennessee Representative and Senate hopeful Marsha Blackburn from paying to promote a campaign announcement that falsely claimed she “stopped the sale of baby body parts.”
- According to the Associated Press, Twitter told vendors for the campaign that the statement was “inflammatory,” and stopped the ad from being promoted on the service.
- The ad can still, however, be posted as usual on Twitter, a company spokesperson confirmed to The Verge. The spokesperson pointed to Twitter’s advertising policy, which bans “inflammatory or provocative content.” Read More
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Today I shared a video of a pentagon meeting where they talk about how they’re going to kill the “religious fanatics” with a vaccine.
The following screenshot is the email that I got, and although I am pissed that my work is gone, I now know for sure that the dictators that run the world do not want Christians alive. When I sent the email screenshot to my other email, it was labeled as “dangerous”, which has never happened before. If after this post this blog is gone also, at least let someone out there remember this as the beginning of the end. Fuck you too, satanists. Let’s see for how long you can laugh at the ignorance of the masses. Misinformation my ass, you just feel threatened. If the video I shared was so stupid you wouldn’t have been that quick. And how is “misinformation” about a bunch of elites dangerous?? No one has died from believing lies, after all, everyone who trusts the news is doing well???
danger my ass, oppressive dictators
By Kyle Green on January 12, 2018
During a year marked by social and political turmoil, the media has found itself under scrutiny from politicians, academics, the general public, and increasingly self-reflexive journalists and editors. Fake news has entered our lexicon both as a form of political meddling from foreign powers and a dismissive insult directed towards any less-than-complimentary news coverage of the current administration.
Paying attention to where people are getting their news and what that news is telling them is an important step to understanding our increasingly polarized society and our seeming inability to talk across political divides. The insight can also help us get at those important and oh-too common questions of “how could they think that?!?” or “how could they support that politician?!?”
My interest in this topic was sparked a few months ago when I began paying attention to the top four stories and single video that magically appear whenever I swipe left on my iPhone. The stories compiled by the Apple News App provide a snapshot of what the dominant media sources consider the newsworthy happenings of the day. After paying an almost obsessive attention to my newsfeed for a few weeks—and increasingly annoying my friends and colleagues by telling them about the compelling patterns I was seeing—I started to take screenshots of the suggested news stories on a daily or twice daily basis. The images below were gathered over the past two months.
It is worth noting that the Apple News App adapts to a user’s interests to ensure that it provides “the stories you really care about.” To minimize this complicating factor I avoided clicking on any of the suggested stories and would occasionally verify that my news feed had remained neutral through comparing the stories with other iPhone users whenever possible.
Some of the differences were to be expected—Peoplesimply cannot get enough of celebrity pregnancies and royal weddings. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and CNN frequently feature stories that are critical of the current administration, and Fox News is generally supportive of President Trump and antagonistic towards enemies of the Republican Party.
However, there are two trends that I would like to highlight:
1) A significant number of Fox News headlines offer direct critiques of other media sites and their coverage of key news stories. Rather than offering an alternative reading of an event or counter-coverage, the feature story undercuts the journalistic work of other news sources through highlighting errors and making accusations of partisanship motivations. In some cases, this even takes the form of attacking left-leaning celebrities as proxy to a larger movement or idea. Neither of these tactics were employed by any of the other news sources during my observation period.
2) Fox News often featured coverage of vile, treacherous, or criminal acts committed by individuals as well as horrifying accidents. This type of story stood out both due to the high frequency and the juxtaposition to coverage of important political events of the time—murderous pigs next to Senate resignations and sexually predatory high school teachers next to massively destructive California wildfires. In a sense, Fox News is effectively cultivating an “asociological” imagination by shifting attention to the individual rather than larger political processes and structural changes. In addition, the repetitious coverage of the evil and devious certainly contributes to a fear-based society and confirms the general loss of morality and decline of conservative values.
It is worth noting that this move away from the big stories of the day also occurs through a surprising amount of celebrity coverage.
From the screen captures I have gathered over the past two months, it seems apparent that we are not just consuming different interpretations of the same event, but rather we are hearing different stories altogether. This effectively makes the conversation across political affiliation (or more importantly, news source affiliation) that much more difficult if not impossible.
I recommend taking time to look through the images that I have provided on your own. There are a number of patterns I did not discuss in this piece for the sake of brevity and even more to be discovered. And, for those of us who spend our time in the front of the classroom, the screenshot approach could provide the basis for a great teaching activity where the class collectively takes part in both the gathering of data and conducting the analysis.
Kyle Green is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Utica College. He is a proud TSP alumnus and the co-author/co-host of Give Methods a Chance.
By Ryan Larson, Evan Stewart, and Andrew M. Lindner on April 10, 2018
The recent controversy about local news stations in the Sinclair Broadcasting Groupreading a coordinated, nationwide message against “fake news” raises questions about the state of news consumption in the United States. Where are Americans getting their news from? If more people are reading the news online, did the Sinclair message have a large impact?
The General Social Survey asks respondents where they get most of their information about the news. This graph shows big changes in Americans’ primary news source, including the rise of online news and the decline of television and newspapers. Notably, in the 2016 GSS, the Internet overtook TV as Americans’ primary source of news for the first time.
Another survey, The Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, takes a different approach. They ask respondents to select whether they use newspapers, blogs, television, or other sources for their news information. When a survey doesn’t ask respondents to pick a primary source, we see that use rates are more steady over time as people still use a variety of sources.
Reported rates of news watching have also stayed pretty stable over the last eight years, with about three-quarters of Americans getting some of their news from TV. Of people who watch news on TV, many respondents report that they watch both local and national news, and this choice has stayed relatively stable over time. Since local news is still a steady part of our news diet, the Sinclair broadcast had a much broader potential reach than we would typically assume about news today.
Ryan Larson is a graduate student from the Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. He studies crime, punishment, and quantitative methodology. He is a member of the Graduate Editorial Board of The Society Pages, and his work has appeared in Poetics, Contexts, and Sociological Perspectives.
Evan Stewart is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota. You can follow him on Twitter.
Andrew M. Lindner is an Associate Professor at Skidmore College. His research interests include media sociology, political sociology, and sociology of sport.
Inspired by demographic facts you should know cold, “What’s Trending?” is a post series at Sociological Images featuring quick looks at what’s up, what’s down, and what sociologists have to say about it.
From David Wise’s cover story, The President and the Press in the April 1973 issue:
The First Amendment clearly protects the printed press. But the Founding Fathers, after all, did not foresee the advent of television, and the degree to which broadcasting is protected by the First Amendment has been subject to shifting interpretation. Technology has outpaced the Constitution, and the result is a major paradox: television news, which has the greatest impact on the public, is the most vulnerable and the least protected news medium.
Read David Frum’s cover story from the March 2017 issue. In a cautionary report, Frum lays out how the preconditions already exist in the U.S. for a leader like Donald Trump to lead the country down a path toward illiberalism.
Controversial Summer Camp Shut Down
Stories, photos depicting handcuffs bondage and abuse bring an end to “Confidence” Camp Dakanehv
THOMPSON – Officials Monday shut down Camp Dakanehv on Route 17B and Coopers Corners Road.
Billed as a confidence camp, the 400-acre property catered to parents concerned about their kids’ general survival skills as well as handling “high crisis” situations such as kidnappings and terrorist actions.
Police raided the offices of Camp Dakanehv, confiscating files and computer hard drives after photos emerged of campers handcuffed, bound gagged and apparently being abused.
“It’s disturbing what we’ve discovered,” said a police spokesperson,”It would be inappropriate to comment further while investigations are ongoing.The safety and welfare of children is our top priority.”
Parents took to Facebook to express their dismay and to praise the camps. Joanna-Rose Kravitz posted: “I’m very sad. The camp was the best camp my son has ever been to.”
The children’s camp, which was founded four years ago, runs throughout the summer holidays and was due to finish on 28 August.
Ben Lewis, a camp director, said: “Unfortunately we cannot comment at this stage. We are not able to disclose any information.”
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Hotel Manager Assaulted; Drug Ring Escapes
SINISTER details have emerged in Albany, with CCTV footage showing an afternoon hotel manager being assaulted, bound and gagged by several unknown men.
“One minute I was knocking on the door to room 128, the next there was a gun on my face.” the manager declared to police.The perpetrators remain at large. Police are looking for a 2 silver-grey Chevrolet Tahoe or GMC-like vehicles in connection with the attack.
“She was attempting to collect on a bad credit card and walked right into a drug deal.” police spokeswoman Christine Downs said, “She was roughed up, bound and gagged and left behind as the four suspects escaped, taking most of the evidence with them. We recovered a small bag containing methamphetamine from the scene.”
Police arrived moments after the attack due in part to a call received from a guest across the hall who partially witnessed the attack.
“I saw her pulled violently into the room and she let out a scream. I called as soon as I could,” the guest told reporters.
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“Whatever It Takes To Get The Part”
ActressCharisma Carpenter snap-chatted this peculiar pic as she sat outside the offices of FILMKAPTURE PRODUCTIONS, script in hand and bandanna tight across her mouth. Her publicist told ET NEWS that the actress was following the explicit directions of enigmatic independent film director Tye N. Gaghir, CEO, and owner of the film company.
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Eco-Feminist Group SPRUNT Kidnaps Daughter of Waste Management CEO
Katherine Pratt, eldest daughter of GEOGarbage magnate James Pratt was kidnapped over three days ago by the radical Eco-Feminist group SPRUNT, in protest over the company’s plan to expand its operations close to a federally protected animal sanctuary…
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Nunnery Used as ‘Cover’ In Arthouse Robbery
Eight masked men with a moving van used the St. Anne Nunnery as a cover as they dug a tunnel to crack an underground vault containing artwork and jewelry.
The Porcelain Doll, a famous art showplace, and storage facility was looted of $10.5 million dollars in artworks and another $2 million in antique jewelry during a daring robbery in which a tunnel was dug from the cellars of the St. Anne Nunnery to an adjacent underground storage vault. A single nun at the site was left bound and gagged on a mattress by the gang.
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Security Guards Left Helpless as $500k Sapphire Ring Vanishes
A sapphire-and-diamond ring worth over half a million dollars has gone missing after an apparent break-in at a West Vancouver jewelry store, with two female security guards trussed up and gagged at the scene.
The ring was reported stolen from a business in the 500 block of Eastcot Road in the British Properties Feb. 7, said Constable Jeff Palmer, spokesman for the West Vancouver Police Department.
The owners arrived within 5 minutes of a silent alarm being triggered at about 7:30 p.m. that night to find several rooms had been ransacked and a safe had been forced open.
The ring, which had been inside the safe, was missing.
The ring, a Tiffany sapphire, features a large deep blue sapphire in a setting encrusted with diamonds. It is valued at about $500,000, said Palmer.
Also missing from the safe was a white gold Van Cleef & Arpels necklace with diamonds and shamrock patterns valued at more than $75,000. Two Vacheron Constantin gold watches – one man’s and one woman’s – each worth about $50,000 were also missing from the safe.
Two female security guards on site were discovered in a backroom bound gagged and tied to chairs with duct tape.
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By the hand of Witch Penelope, the only person God gave specific instructions to prophesy about the coming things.
To the fakers who claim Gods name, those who claimed Jesus Christ, but have ignored Gods voice, about who you should be associating yourselves with and about who you are serving.
The places you go, the places you bring your innocent children to are fortresses of the enemy. You have purposely placed your and Gods people in danger out of pure pride, you hold on to your fake beliefs. God turns His face away from your prayers. You are to Him a clashing of symbols with no rhythm.
You are about ready to be hit hard too.
In Jesus Christ holy name, Amen.
So which side of the Isle do you stand on?
The side of Godlessness, people who purposely caused defrauding of an election? Then fly out to have a vacation on our tax dollars after they think they got away doing the “dirty”?
Or Gods side, where His people are being systematically shut down and shut up illegally. Businesses are closing, churches are being shut down, Christians are being deleted and shut up on the internet, conservatives are being attacked in the streets by racist bigots. Not Fake but Real Issues.
Shame on the American people who voted for racism, shame on Americans who voted to snip babies spinal cords on their way out of the birth canal, shame on Americans who voted to cut God out of every avenue in government and home lives, shame. YOU are the problem.
This just in…
Freezing cold boy goes to corner because it is 90 degrees
What do you call a belt made of watches?
Waist of time
Bell bottoms
This just in… Paper had a tearable day
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer removes lint from Senior White House Advisor Stephen Miller’s jacket as he waits to go on the air in the White House Briefing Room in Washington, February 12, 2017.
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“Fact check”
I came across this painting and couldn’t look away from it. Rene Magritte’s Not to Be Reproduced encourages us to look longer for a very important reason. It shows a man with his back to the viewer, standing in front of a mirror. On the ledge we see a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s(my inspiration for Poetry) only novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordan Pimm of Nantucket. We cant help ourselves but to see a rather odd visual. Instead of man’s face being reflected as we would expect, the mirror shows the back of his head, while the book is reflected back in the mirror correctly. This obscurity strikes on the main theme of our ever changing perception. We assume what the mirror will reflect but we are denied the answer we expect. This theme becomes more prominent in today’s world where misinformation mends our perception by appealing to emotions and other storytelling measures. We take things at their face value(first impression is not the last impression for f**k sake) without ever questioning and interrogating things in the first place. The significance of Edgar’s book is that most of his work also deals with the perception of reality. Without getting too philosophical about nature of truth and falsehood, we like to think that our viewpoints about the world are backed up by the facts which we acquire through our timelines and newsfeed. Another major theme present in the painting maybe that of our own identity. The man looks with care into the mirror and wonders who he really might be. We lose our identity in this world where regulation of behaviour and pseudo interaction has become quite the norm. We are always hungry for praise, attention and worried about opposition and in this way lose much of our originality in thinking. We don’t have a secure hold on our values and judgements. This technique of hiding faces, is used by Magritte in many of his paintings like The Lovers, Son of Man and the Great War. This technique evokes confusion, unease and curiosity. Therefor i think, we should use these ordinary moments in our ordinary lives by cleaning up our conflicting inner selves.
This was pieced together very savagely…
