Comet Ping Pong Story And The Kremlin's Role In The Media

A lie is neither a false proposition, nor a mistake, nor a mere fiction; it is a type of intentional fiction, a precise act that calls for a twist in reality. This act, the lie, produces effects. The cause-effect relationship of a lie affects an individual or group in a way that twists the personal reality of the subject(s) from the objective reality (the way that things truthfully are) (Raspa 105). Examples of how reality is twisted by lies are rather prevalent in today’s media. Leaders have always tried to manipulate the truth, with modern politics wanting to control the narrative. The most relevant of these examples is mutability of fact for which President Trump has become notorious. He lies, repeats the lie, and his urge to tell them purely reflect a present day Big Brother, from George Orwell’s 1984. When lies are told so often, and so repeatedly, fighting the lie becomes not simply more dangerous, but more exhausting than repeating it. The act of falsifying reality is merely a secondarily way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power. This can be exemplified in one particular circumstance when Trump falsely claimed that millions of illegal votes were cast against him in addition to his administration making unfounded allegations that Trump’s inauguration had record attendance. In response, Kellyanne Conway, infamously coined the false number as “alternative facts,” as opposed to the actual statistics (Beale, We're living

One of the several political issues America faces today is fake news. Any person can go on the news and will see numerous articles stating how President Trump makes accusations that the news is fake (or at least most of it is). In Macbeth, there are Weird Sisters, and they can be compared to fake

“Fake news,” like Pravda during Soviet Russia times, was used in the election to deliberately sway the political views of the voters and increase the support of one party’s side. During the election, “phony articles concerning candidates…emerged…this fake news boosted the image of…Donald Trump…” (“Fake News”). "Phony articles” or “fake news” on social media affected the candidates’ images, thus making voters more likely to vote for one candidate over the other. “Fake news” can be dangerous in spreading unreliable information and planting false accusations about a candidate in the minds of the voters. In 2016, a fake news story was leaked about Hillary Clinton that led to a shooting in a pizzeria,“Incidents such as this demonstrate how potentially dangerous fake news can be and how difficult it is to distinguish…”(“Fake News”). “Fake news” can cause people to abandon their initial beliefs about a person, like a political candidate, and align with the opposing side, destroying a person’s career over counterfeit media. "Fake news” is propaganda used to change people’s way of thinking, like both Pravda and Squealer’s role on The Farm. All of these methods of propaganda were substantial resources in changing people’s minds and feeding thoughts into their minds. They can be dangerous if they are not identified as being false or exaggerated, and can

Fake new became a popular topic in news regarding politically aligned news channels and outlets. For example, YourNewsWire is an online news outlet based in Los Angeles. Based on this website, Hillary Clinton’s victory in the popular vote was due to voter fraud of 25 million votes (Kosoff). YourNewsWire used evidence of an investigation the NPR, National Public Radio, conducted. Though the article’s claim of voter fraud seemed compelling, as evidence was to support the argument was supple. Yet the evidence was incorrectly used. The NPR was involved in this investigation of voter fraud, but only published the information as Pew Research Center conducted the analysis of credibility. Another piece of falsified data is that the investigation was not conducted as a means to discredit Hillary Clinton’s victory in the popular vote, as the investigation was completed in 2012, prior to Clinton and Trump’s campaign for office. This is only one example of skewed stories and biased articles. The creators of YourNewsWire, Sean Adl-tabatabai and husband, Sinclair Treadway, were politically aligned with Bernie Sanders for the 2016 election (Baum). The reputation that YourNewsWire has created for itself has plummeted. Google no longer supports this website with ad-sponsored money, and other accredited websites, such as Snopes, investigate the validity of news articles such as these and discredit their findings

“I am not going to give you a question. You are fake news.” This is the now infamous response from President Donald Trump during his first press conference since taking office when asked “Sir, can you give us a chance to ask a question?” by CNN reporter Jim Acosta (Johnson, 2017). President Trump’s dismissal of Accosta sparked the colloquial usage of the term “fake news,” a phrase the current president uses to lambaste media sources who report stories that do not present a favorable impression of his presidency. However, true “fake news,” has existed for far longer than Donald Trump’s presidency and includes three main types: satire, biased reporting, and deliberate misinformation. Fake news has grown in quantity and now Americans across the country are expressing concerns about not being able to trust media sources once considered honest and reputable, along with having trouble distinguishing between real and fake news.

The spread of fake news can be detrimental and life altering without checking the validity of sources and facts before passing on such news to others. Pizzagate was a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 Presidential Election campaign, which alleged there was a child-sex ring taking place and the top Democrats had something to do with it (Pizzagate: A Slice of Fake News). Some believe it all started when John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, had his email account hacked. Tons of emails were leaked and made public. His emails were said to contain coded messages that referred to human trafficking and were also connected to the Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor (“Pizzagate: A Slice of Fake News). James Alefantis is the owner of the Comet Ping Pong and also an acquaintance of Podesta. One email did contain Podesta and Alefantis discussing a fundraiser idea for Hillary Clinton, but no talk happened about the alleged child-sex ring. While this ‘news’ was spreading fast, Alefantis and his forty plus employees were receiving deaths threats, negative tweets on Twitter and Facebook, and facing harassing altercations with strangers. The staff observed social media outlets and “counted five #pizzagate Twitter posts a minute” at one point (Kang). Alefantis himself said that, “From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we’ve come under constant assault.” (Kang) The only people that know what is true in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory are the ones who are

A study conducted in 2013 by Pew Research found out that 72 percent of Americans get their news from a mobile device. This created a major concern with the credibility of the news that Americans read due to the fact that there are many websites that post news satire. News satire is a false accusation made to scheme the audience into believing some type of hoax. These stories generate major problems for those who are political figures, threatening their legitimacy and even harming their reputations. Every single day people are exposed to fake news, whether that be on Facebook, Twitter, or directly on news sites and “According to Pew Research, 66 percent of Facebook users said they get news from the site” (“Probe Reveals Stunning”…). These false

Being trusted by millions of people is more than an honor or privilege, but rather it is a power of immense impact. It is a force that shapes the nation, for better or worse. As much good a journalism can create, it also used to deceive the masses and incite unrest. Recently, an article circle Facebook sites. The title was FBI Agent Found Dead in a Murder Suicide. It was published in an apparently-legitimate website. Truth is, it was a fake article published in a website meant to confuse readers. Many similar websites and articles had been created by the author Jestin Coler. At first, his motivations were heroic, trying to highlight the “failed” American government. During the 2016 elections, fake news about the candidates went rampant. Coler had 20 to 25 writers working for him publishing article after article of slander and propaganda for either party. Some of the articles published reached 1.5 million views in just ten days. Coler makes anywhere from $10 thousand to $30 thousand every month from ad revenue of people who visit his fake news sites. Despite his initial good intentions, Coler willingly deceived readers into believing outlandish claims simply because it was published in a “news

On September 10th, Katie Sanders from PunditFact and former writer from Politifact Florida gave a speech at the Bob Graham Center titled Pants on Fire: Misinformation in American Politics. The talk and subsequent Q&A centered on the perpetuation of misinformation that is experienced in contemporary American politics as well as what journalists and common people alike can do to combat it. Though these were the focal points, three related tangents were my main takeaway from the experience.

According to Philip K. Dick, an American writer of published science fiction writings, said, “Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, what is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing (University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast, Quotations

On the third, Trump tweeted “The rigged Dem Primary, one of the biggest political stories in years, got ZERO coverage on Fake News Network TV last night. Disgraceful!”. Trump attempts to show the extent of bias in the media exposing that they didn’t report a major event. This tweet has bias towards Trump’s personal agenda against the media. Additionally, Trump exposes the strength of the media’s gatekeepers and how greatly they can impact which issues are talked about.

For instance, only weeks before election day, it was reported that Clinton was part of a child sex trafficking ring run out of a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant. This became known as “Pizzagate” on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Quickly, the story moved from social media to mainstream television and print media, especially when Clinton was required to respond to questions regarding the story. According to Angie Holand in an article entitled “PolitiFact’s 2016 Lie of the Year: Fake News,” Clinton “emboldened her detractors and turned off undecided voters with a lawyerly parsing of facts that left many feeling that she was lying.” Pizzagate is only one example of a story not based on fact that Clinton was called to address. While the story was clearly fiction, it gave people who were already suspicious of her another reason to doubt her character to be president of the United States.

Today we see fake news coming from high up officials. This was seen countless number of times in the Obama and Bush Administrations. Obama promised us “that we can keep our doctors” under the ACA, but that wasn’t the case. Bush did this when he claimed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and used it as a reason to go to war. And we have already seen it with the Trump Administration too. The Trump Administration kicked out news outlets from the White House Press Conference room. This is because President Trump claimed that certain news outlets were spreading “fake news” about him. This is not good because it hints to that the Trump Administration wants to control the news. In 1984, this is exactly what the government does; they spread false information to the people and brainwash them. Our leaders do this today

For example, Donald Trump proudly stated that “any negative polls are fake news,” and constantly refers to mainstream media outlets as “fake news media.” To compound the effect, according to MSNBC, a leading Republican Congressman, Lamar Smith, advised Americans to get their news directly from the President because “it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.” The reason why undermining credibility of news media is so scary is that it reduces their ability to hold politicians accountable. With public’s trust in cable news plummeting (all-time low of 32% according to Gallup), more and more individuals are looking for alternative sources online, which makes them more susceptible to fake news, and so the vicious cycle

The recent surge in popularity of social media comes with a price: fake news. Fake news is defined as news or media that has been altered or modified. Journalists have begun to analyze why that fake news exists and why it continues exist. Two authors, Eoin O’Carroll and Kevin D. Williamson, both have written articles about fake news. Eoin O’Carroll’s article “How Information Overload Helps Spread Fake News,” discusses how the media has bombarded us with news stories, blurring the distinct lines between real and fake news. Kevin D. Williamson, a journalist for the National Review, writes in his article “‘Fake News, Media and Voters: Shared Reality Must Be Acknowledged” that the news is not fake; it just does not align with one’s personal beliefs. Both authors successfully appeal to their audiences’ emotions and feelings, but O’Carroll is more likely to succeed than Williamson in persuading his audience to try and combat fake news because the writer presents himself as someone the intended readers will more readily identify with and offers evidence that his readers will find more compelling.