Month: October 2024

Fake News Internet Site Pays the Price

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Article in The Guardian by Sam Levine, 10/10/24

Headline:  “Far-right site Gateway Pundit settles defamation suit with election workers”

Subheadline:  “Website removed articles falsely accusing Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss of wrongdoing in 2020 election”

“The Gateway Pundit, the far-right news website that played a critical role in spreading false information about the 2020 election, has settled a defamation lawsuit with Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers it falsely accused of wrongdoing.”

” . . . Nearly 20 articles that Freeman and Moss said had falsely accused them of wrongdoing were no longer available on The Gateway Pundit’s website as of Thursday afternoon, according to a Guardian review.”

” . . .The case was one of several libel lawsuits filed against Trump allies and conservative networks that aired false claims about the 2020 election. Nearly all of those cases have settled, which observers have said may underscore the limited role defamation law can have in curbing misinformation.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/10/gateway-pundit-defamation-lawsuit-election-workers

Adapting to New-Media Environment

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Image from hannahcute0779.blogspot.com

 

Article in Axios by Eleanor Hawking, 10/10/24

Headline: “TikTok, podcasts, Substack: How Harris, Trump and CEOs adapt to new media”

While legacy media shrivel, online media-bubbles take over.

“Newsrooms are shrinking and audiences are becoming more dispersed as independent journalists successfully launch Substacks, content creators pivot into podcasting and TikTokers report on the news.”

” . . . While the role of traditional media shouldn’t be ignored, communication teams must be cognizant of what (Josh Rosenberg, CEO of Day One Agency) refers to as “data dissonance” or the idea that volume doesn’t always equal depth.

” ‘When everything has a billion views or a billion impressions, who’s actually, listening? How is that actually moving the needle?’ he said.”

https://www.axios.com/2024/10/10/media-strategy-tiktok-podcasts-creators

The evolution of media from slideshare:

https://www.slideshare.net/rubenjezarryborja/the-evolution-of-traditional-media-to-new-media

Who Regulates Broadcasting, FCC or States?

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Article in The Guardian by Carter Sherman, 10/9/24

Headline: “Florida threatens news stations over ad in favor of abortion rights measure”

Subhead:  “FCC chair condemns state health department for sending cease-and-desists over spot supporting abortion rights”

“The Florida health department has fired off cease-and-desist letters to local news stations over an advertisement urging people to vote in favor of a ballot measure that would expand abortion rights in the state.

” . . . On Tuesday, Jessica Rosenworcel, the Federal Communications Commission chair, condemned the cease-and-desist letters.

“ ‘The right of broadcasters to speak freely is rooted in the first amendment,’ Rosenworcel said in a statement. “Threats against broadcast stations for airing content that conflicts with the government’s views are dangerous and undermine the fundamental principle of free speech.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/09/florida-news-abortion-ballot-coverage

 

 

Journalist Media-Rumor Hurt Presidential Campaign?

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The absurd story believed by many about eating cats and dogs isn’t new. Long ago, some media in a frenzy, picked up a fake story during a presidential campaign up and ran with it.

Article by M. Tomoski in The Plaid Zebra May 10, 2016

Headline:   “Hunter S. Thompson once spread a rumor of a presidential candidate’s drug addiction and it was taken seriously”

” ‘Not much has been written about the Ibogaine Effect as a serious factor in the presidential campaign,’ Thompson wrote in an article he later claimed was never meant to be taken at face value. In it, he declares, ‘word leaked out that some of Muskie’s top advisers called in a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the candidate with some kind of strange drug.’

“. . . To his credit as an upstanding journalist, Thompson claims he tried his best to question Muskie and even searched the hotel for a Brazilian doctor but was met with obstacles beyond his control.

” ‘I was not able to press the candidate himself for an answer because I was permanently barred from the Muskie campaign after that incident on the Sunshine Special in Florida,’ he wrote, referring to Muskie’s train and a story Rolling Stone had published a few weeks earlier.

“ ‘That crazy son of a bitch got on the train wearing your press badge,’ Thompson recalls another reporter saying. ‘He drank about ten martinis before the train even got moving, then he started abusing people. He cornered some poor bastard from one of the Washington papers . . . ‘

“. . . Hunter had told the man that he could use his press credentials to get a free trip to Miami, but never expected to miss the train himself.

“ ‘About half way through the campaign, I suddenly realized that all these poor bastards out there reading the Rolling Stone believed this madness,’ he said.”

https://theplaidzebra.com/hunter-s-thompson-spread-rumor-presidential-candidates-drug-addiction-taken-seriously/

Sanewashing – the New Journalism?

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Article in AP by David Bauder, 10/9/24

Headline: “Sanewashing? The banality of crazy? A decade into the Trump era, media hasn’t figured him out”

“Nearly a decade into the Trump Era of politics, less than a month from his third Election Day as the Republican candidate for president and there is still remarkably little consensus within the media about how best to cover Donald Trump.

“Are reporters ‘sanewashing’ Trump, or are they succumbing to the ‘banality of crazy?’ Should his rallies be aired at length, or not at all? To fact-check or not fact-check?

“ ‘If it wasn’t so serious, I would just be fascinated by all of it,’ said Parker Molloy, media critic and author of The Present Age column on Substack. ‘If it didn’t have to do with who is going to be president, I would watch this and marvel at how difficult it is to cover one person who seems to challenge all of the rules of journalism.’

https://apnews.com/article/trump-media-election-rallies-facts-kamala-harris-e906e990b5dcfe44b5e672336fe82b32

Foreign Manipulators, Social Media and Elections

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Article By Filippo Menczer, Indiana University in UPI 10/8/24

Headline: “Foreign operations manipulate social media to influence your views”

“. . . we found accounts that flood the network with tens or hundreds of thousands of posts in a single day. The same campaign can post a message with one account and then have other accounts that its organizers also control “like” and “unlike” it hundreds of times in a short time span. Once the campaign achieves its objective, all these messages can be deleted to evade detection. Using these tricks, foreign governments and their agents can manipulate social media algorithms that determine what is trending and what is engaging to decide what users see in their feeds.

“. . . The consequences of such operations are difficult to evaluate due to the challenges posed by collecting data and carrying out ethical experiments that would influence online communities. Therefore it is unclear, for example, whether online influence campaigns can sway election outcomes. Yet, it is vital to understand society’s vulnerability to different manipulation tactics.”

https://www.upi.com/Voices/2024/10/08/foreign-operations-manipulate-social-media-influence-views/7961728392145/

Pink Slime Newspaper Fights Solar

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Article in ProPublica by Miranda Green, 10/8/24

Headline: “Fossil Fuel Interests Are Working to Kill Solar in One Ohio County. The Hometown Newspaper Is Helping.”

“The first article in the Mount Vernon News last fall about a planned solar farm simply noted that residents were “expressing their concern.” But soon the county’s only newspaper was packed with stories about solar energy that almost uniformly criticized the project and quoted its opponents.

“Then a new ‘grassroots’ organization materialized and invited locals to an elaborate event billed as a town hall, with a keynote speaker who denied that humans cause climate change.”

The Paper was bought by Metric .  “. . . Both conservative and liberal pink slime sites exist. But Metric is run by Brian Timpone, an Illinois-based former broadcast reporter who has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to conservative campaigns and causes. Timpone’s ventures have been criticized for using foreign-based writers to produce material.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/ohio-mount-vernon-frasier-solar-fossil-fuel-metric-media

Media Hate Speech Stopped in Brazil

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Article by Allen Cone on UPI, 9/21/24

Headline: “Elon Musk to comply with Brazilian court’s orders to restore X in nation”

“Billionaire Elon Musk has decided to comply with court orders in Brazil in an effort to end the ban on his his social platform X in the Latin American nation.

. . . “The company formerly known as Twitter also informed the court that it blocked accounts allegedly responsible for disseminating hate speech and fake news, two sources told Bloomberg.”

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2024/09/21/Brazil-X-Musk-comply-orders/5741726963376/

Article update from the Electronic Freedom Foundation  by  Corynned McSherry, 10/8/24

Headline:  “The X Corp. Shoutdown in Brazil:  What We Can Learn”

“Update (10/8/2024): Brazil lifted a ban on the X Corp. social media platform today after the country’s Supreme Court said the company had complied with all of its orders. Regulators have 24 hours to reinstate the platform, though it could take longer for it to come back online.”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/x-corp-shutdown-brazil-what-we-can-learn

Google May Cut-Off New Zealand News Media

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Article in TechXplore by Charlotte Grahamm-McLay-McLAY, 10/4/24

Headline: “Google says it will stop linking to New Zealand news if a law passes forcing it to pay for content”

“Google said Friday it will stop linking to New Zealand news content and will reverse its support of local media outlets if the government passes a law forcing tech companies to pay for articles displayed on their platforms.

The vow to sever Google traffic to New Zealand news sites—made in a blog post by the search giant on Friday—echoes strategies the firm deployed as Australia and Canada prepared to enact similar laws in recent years.

It followed a surprise announcement by New Zealand’s government in July that lawmakers would advance a bill forcing tech platforms to strike deals for sharing revenue generated from news content with the media outlets producing it”

https://techxplore.com/news/2024-10-google-linking-zealand-news-law.html

Where People Get News Right!

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Article in The Guardian by Rachel Leingang, 10/7/24

Headline: ” ‘Every day is a new conspiracy’: behind Trump’s ironclad grip on rightwing media”

Subhead: “What rightwing outlets cover increasingly differs from the mainstream, furthering the bubbles a divided US lives in”

“Trump’s grip on rightwing media is ironclad, said Julie Millican, the vice-president of Media Matters, a progressive center that tracks conservative media. In the past, the Republican party and its candidates would follow what rightwing media did and align its policies that way – but now, the media follows Trump, she said.”

“. . . As rightwing outlets rise, the stories they cover differ more from what’s on mainstream news, furthering the bubbles a divided United States lives within. While in years past, you’d find different takes on the day’s news in left- and right-leaning outlets, you’ll now find stories that exist solely on rightwing media, Millican said.

“It’s like every day is a new conspiracy or a new attack, and it’s just hard to even keep up on it anymore,” she said. “Half the time, when you listen to somebody who consumes nothing but rightwing media, you have no idea what they’re talking about.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/07/trump-rightwing-media-tv-podcasts-sites