Salon: Republicans Are Launching Fake Local News Sites To Spread 'Propaganda' (salon.com) 539
"The Tennessee Star claims to be the 'most reliable' online local paper in the state," reports Salon. "In fact it's just a GOP front." An anonymous reader quotes their report:
An investigation by the fact-checking outlet Snopes found that several new local news websites are actually being launched by Republican consultants whose company is funded in part by the candidates the sites cover. Politico first reported last year that Tea Party-linked conservative activists Michael Patrick Leahy, Steve Gill and Christina Botteri were behind the "Tennessee Star," a website that purported to be a local news website but mostly posted content licensed from groups linked to big Republican donors. Snopes discovered that the trio has since launched similar sites in other battleground states ahead of the 2020 elections: the Ohio Star and the Minnesota Sun...
The group behind the sites does not appear content with just three outlets. According to Politico, Leahy has purchased domain names associated with Missouri, New England, the Dakotas, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, most of which are electoral battleground states that will be vital in 2020.
Kathleen Bartzen Culver, who heads the Center of Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told Snopes that political operatives are free to launch their own news platforms, but it's a problem if they are trying to deceive readers into believing the sites are nonpartisan local news. "I have no problem with advocacy organizations creating content that reinforces the positions they take on public policy issues on the left, right or center. The issue comes in when they're not transparent about that advocacy," Culver said... "The information sphere is so polluted right now that the average citizen has trouble telling what is real and what is not," Culver told Snopes. "I find that very troubling within a democracy."
An investigation by the fact-checking outlet Snopes found that several new local news websites are actually being launched by Republican consultants whose company is funded in part by the candidates the sites cover. Politico first reported last year that Tea Party-linked conservative activists Michael Patrick Leahy, Steve Gill and Christina Botteri were behind the "Tennessee Star," a website that purported to be a local news website but mostly posted content licensed from groups linked to big Republican donors. Snopes discovered that the trio has since launched similar sites in other battleground states ahead of the 2020 elections: the Ohio Star and the Minnesota Sun...
The group behind the sites does not appear content with just three outlets. According to Politico, Leahy has purchased domain names associated with Missouri, New England, the Dakotas, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, most of which are electoral battleground states that will be vital in 2020.
Kathleen Bartzen Culver, who heads the Center of Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told Snopes that political operatives are free to launch their own news platforms, but it's a problem if they are trying to deceive readers into believing the sites are nonpartisan local news. "I have no problem with advocacy organizations creating content that reinforces the positions they take on public policy issues on the left, right or center. The issue comes in when they're not transparent about that advocacy," Culver said... "The information sphere is so polluted right now that the average citizen has trouble telling what is real and what is not," Culver told Snopes. "I find that very troubling within a democracy."
Now there's an old tradition. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now there's an old tradition. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's 148 years since Mark Twain wrote this highly relevant satire:
"Running for Governor"
http://twainquotes.com/Galaxy/... [twainquotes.com]
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
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Isn't there some legal requirement to label such publications?
I don't live in the US but whenever I see US political ads there is a note on screen and usually in voice over noting who made/paid for it.
Looking at these sites they all use the same template and none of them mention who the owner is.
Re: Now there's an old tradition. (Score:3)
No to illegal searches of brown people near the borders!
Independent here and I agree with a lot of your sentiments but [what little remains] of our middle class shouldn't be destroyed just because of the grossly unequal wealth distribution in another country (we already have our own problem with that).
Creating healthy middle classes in Mexico and Central America instead of eliminating America's - a concept you never brought up by proponents of immigration... how strange.
Re: Now there's an old tradition. (Score:2)
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While I agree we in the US need to do what we can to build back up OUR middle class....
We have no obligation or duty to do this for other countries.
Not sure where in the constitution the limited enumerated rights and obligations of our Federal Govt. is directed to help other countries...?
Re: Now there's an old tradition. (Score:2)
Re: Now there's an old tradition. (Score:2)
I love brown people (well, brown women. Okay, some brown women.) and I have it on good authority that the brown women - and even some, perhaps, not so brown - from Argentina, Venezuela and Columbia - though not necessarily in that order - are the best in the world.
We can compromise and let in bunch of them; what say you??
Re: Now there's an old tradition. (Score:4, Insightful)
ONLY major news organization that does not actively try to twist every word that comes out of his mouth
You mean, the only "news" organization that is willing to overlook his constant lies?
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Republicans: Salon.com is a nutbar site.
I’m sure it’s not Russian, though, because Russian intelligence wouldn’t design a site so rickety and hard to use. Try to read an article on it, and the page twitches up and down as if trying to avoid your eyes. When you browse it in Safari, you get that little warning that this page is using excessive resources and you should consider closing it.
Salon can’tg Be Russian. It’s what you get when a bunch of critical race theory majors try to
Re: Now there's an old tradition. (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately you don't need to take their word for it, you can easily confirm that these sites are fake by looking at them yourself. Here are the links:
http://theohiostar.com/ [theohiostar.com]
http://tennesseestar.com/ [tennesseestar.com]
http://theminnesotasun.com/ [theminnesotasun.com]
Notice how they all use the same Wordpress template and have extremely similar content. All lack any information on who owns or operates them.
Re: Now there's an old tradition. (Score:2)
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Well TBH whoever named it "The Minnesota Sun" clearly knows nothing about Minnesota:
a) Two major papers in the state that everyone knows, regardless of whether the papers themselves are in decline: (Minneapolis) Star Tribune and (St. Paul) Pioneer Press;
a) Minnesota identifies with the North Star. Yes, it gets sunny here but we leave "Sun" for the Southwest US and Florida.
So it's hard to imagine that too many people in MN would even give "The Minnesota Sun" a first glance, much less a second.
Re: Now there's an old tradition. (Score:4, Insightful)
Domain Name: theohiostar.com
Registry Domain ID: 2090314152_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: WHOIS.ENOM.COM
Registrar URL: WWW.ENOM.COM
Updated Date: 2019-01-01T04:37:07.00Z
Creation Date: 2017-01-15T20:10:00.00Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2020-01-15T20:10:53.00Z
Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Registrar IANA ID: 48 Domain Status: clienttransferprohibited https://www.icann.org/epp#clie... [icann.org]
Registrant Name: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Organization: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Street: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
It's the same story for the other two websites. All three are registered though the same registrant.
I realize that's not completely odd, but what news organization has all of their registration information redacted?
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Boy, I'd hate to introduce you to the local news sites around here that are most certainly not fake.
You really must hate substantiating your claims or you would have done just that. Come on, give us a link. Just one.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_Mountain_Publishing
Have at it. All of the local news sites owned by the same company. You'll see they're a division of an even larger conglomerate. Start going through the sites all owned by them and you'll see they are all strangely similar.
Figure it's easier to just link the wiki page rather than the individual pages, as this provides a clear link that they're all owned by the same company, and also saves me posting a long list of links.
it's kind of funny, (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:it's kind of funny, (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironic that they use projection?
As with Donald Trump's hiding of his grades when asking for Obama to show his, yeah, that's a conservative trait.
Re:it's kind of funny, (Score:4, Informative)
It's not a *conservative* trait. Philosophical conservatism -- that is to say skepticism of Utopian schemes -- has a long and honorable history. Projection is a *radical* trait, which is why radical groups tend to splinter and break down when they're under pressure -- e.g. when they gain power and have to get things done. As their underlying differences are unmasked, they turn on each other ruthlessly.
Conservative *branding* isn't the same thing as conservatism.
Not projection, tactics (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:it's kind of funny, (Score:5, Informative)
As with Donald Trump's hiding of his grades when asking for Obama to show his, yeah, that's a conservative trait.
Or the President, who has spread memes from Stormfront, saying that the Democrats are the party of antisemitism.
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Actually the rumor was that the reason the transcripts were never released was that he got a foreign student scholarship by claiming to be kenyan. It would have been fuel for the birther movement. Personally, knowing that his mother is a citizen, automatically makes him a citizen. McCain was born in Panama BTW. However, the transcript would be more damning, if true, than actually having been born in kenya. It would have shown some level of fraud in order to get into college. It would have been unclear how t
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for the party the coined the term 'fake news' (and 'alternative facts'), the Republicans seem to generate more of it than the rest of the world combined.
That's like giving Apple credit for inventing the smart phone, or Edison for inviting the light bulb.
Trump may have popularized the expression "fake news", but it was already beginning to gain a foothold several years before he ran for President. He took a phrase he liked and ran with it.
"Alternative Facts" however- that's ALL the Trump Whitehouse, they came up with that one.
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"Alternative Facts" however- that's ALL the Trump Whitehouse, they came up with that one.
I thought it was Orwellian [wikipedia.org] in nature?
Re:it's kind of funny, (Score:4, Insightful)
The term "fake news" wasn't invented by Republicans.
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...just implemented by FOX.
You are right (Score:3, Insightful)
Correct. The GOP managed to...
Get Buzzfeed to run a story that Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress, which CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, ... all ran as well.
They then got them all to run the story on how racist the kids from Covengton were despite overwhelming evidence showing otherwise. Now WaPo and CNN are both being sued for $250 million for these "Fake News" stories.
The GOP followed that up with all those same outlets running the fake Jussie Sommellet story as well.
They are getting good at planting blatantly "
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even if its true, and I am not saying its not, should we still not keep the blame still focused on those media sites you listed? They are ultimately responsible to verify the information they report. The fact that they wanted something to be true so badly they published false news only further proves they have no credibility. Who pulled the strings to expose themselves is only a minor matter in that scenario. It is akin to when Hillary got caught up in all that shit and wanted to blame russian hackers. Mayb
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Or maybe you're intentionally confusing ambulance chasing journalism with intentional propaganda.
I've been generally avoiding the news cause I'm sick of of all this, but your post is yet another example of the right trying to muddy the waters in order to establish a false equivalence.
Some quick google searching shows that the Mueller articles in question all discuss things like, "If Buzzfeed's assertions are true..." or "According to Buzzfeed", etc. Most importantly, barely a day later there are new storie
Re:You are right (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Convington boys" were bused to an anti-abortion march and allowed to wear MAGA hats by their school. Many things failed to create the circumstances that lead to those boys feeling the need to do what they did and none of those failures were the media. Making boys as part of their school field trip decide the fate of women's reproductive rights was failure number one and failure number two as allowing school children to wear MAGA hats and incite the coverage they deserved their own own actions. Why would school bus boys from OK to protest women's reproductive rights and allow them to wear MAGA hats and then let them get involved in making political statements that they then sued to hide? Why would these boys or the school need a PR Firm?
What you are doing is projection. You're blaming others for your own actions as if being a liberal or having liberal media is the problem. The media reported on these kids and if they didn't want to be used for the propaganda they shouldn't have been sent for propaganda.
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Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Anyone who thinks the Republicans coined the term "fake news", needs to watch this youtube video [youtube.com].
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Pot kettle black.
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why are you posting AC, its hard to follow which of the two of you is posting? The first time I heard the phrase was post 2012 when a bunch of congressional dems wanted to shut down news sites that were not 'certified' by them as legitimate. However, their list of sites they did not like were 100% conservative ones and not one liberal site among them. That in itself seems strange considering it would be a statistical impossibility that only conservative sites would be capable of running skewed stories. I wa
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Bye Felicia!
Re:it's kind of funny, (Score:5, Insightful)
Who are "the Democrats"? I know a lot of people who belong to the Democratic party. I can't think of a single one I'd describe as a socialist. I haven't seen any polls suggesting they're unusual in that.
Maybe you mean the party leadership. Are you claiming Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are socialists? Seriously??? Sorry, but no. Not even close.
So when you say "the Democrats", I guess you mean some group that doesn't include either the party leaders or most members of the party. That's a very interesting use of language.
Maybe you just don't understand what socialism is. Maybe you somehow got the idea that Elizabeth Warren proposing to break up big tech companies makes her a socialist? It doesn't. If she were a socialist she would want to nationalize them, not break them up. The goal of breaking up monopolies is to increase competition. That's a totally capitalist goal, and basically the opposite of socialism.
Republicans launching fake propaganda sites? (Score:2)
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Is there a difference? Republicans seem to be willing to go to any lengths for power, so if the Russians offer help winning elections...
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This comment epitomises political disruption propaganda. It has no other purpose than to inflame the debate. It is almost certainly not left or right wing but is almost certainly paid for by an enemy of the United States.
Re: Republicans launching fake propaganda sites? (Score:2, Funny)
It wasn't a fair election.
The DNC cheated, just not hard enough to overcome a landslide and they're super butt-hurt about it.
WHY is this on /. ? (Score:4, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with nerds. Nor is it news... /.
Salon is the biggest piece of shit masquerading as journalism out there right next to Mother Jones and The Daily Stormer. Who gives a rat's ass what they think?
Do better,
Re:WHY is this on /. ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fake News sites like this, gives troll accounts a "valid" source to point too.
So when ever "references needed", this will be the answer.
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Yep, it's an effective online debating tactic too. It forces you to waste time and effort debunking the site or building a case against it. And then they just move on to calling you part of the legacy fake media and an idiot for taking the blue pill.
Because it gets clicks (Score:2)
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By the 1970s, "leftists" had captured academia and were using it as a money-powered think tank to churn out talking points, so the right created their own think tanks to help pay people to do the opposite.
This stupid game of blinders that "your side is biased but not mine!" has been going on for a lot longer.
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side note, i managed to fix my iphone from putting in all those weird characters in my posts when I use quotation marks. I clicked the link to use the real site instead of the mobile version. It also has kept me from having to sign in every single post.
When did slashdot become used as a political site? (Score:4, Insightful)
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mostly the same here. If only because they do NOT censor. The mod points might get abused a bit but overall I can see every post by simply adjusting the filter. I get to see multiple points and arguments. I get to see things I had not considered. Of course sometimes I see just parroting of talking points, which is sad because this site does not appeal to facebook morons. We've all read 1984, some of us a very long time ago. We should always be prepared to discover we have been the victims of double-think. I
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When did slashdot become a politics site where propaganda sources are allowed like salon? Np, we do not want this in our nerd news. Keep this crap on twitter.
There's been the occasional politics piece on Slashdot for at least a decade or more. This isn't new.
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the difference is that our old debates were about us discussing how we are marching right toward an orwellian future. This blind loyalty to one side is new. I mean who would ever suspect that the company making radar detectors was the same company selling the radar enforcement equipment to law enforcement. Or that the anti-virus companies released virus' to drive product demand. Oh wait, we heard that and it totally made sense. Tell someone that their picking a side in a 1-sided battle and no matter who you
Disturbing (Score:2)
Stop posting this crap on Slashdot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are political news on Slashdot all of a sudden? Actually there has been an increase of this garbage. I don't give a fuck if you are Republican, Democrat, anarchist, whatever, don't post your garbage here. Fuck off already.
Well, this is scary (Score:2, Troll)
This story just came up for me and the first (chronologically) 20 posts are about how we can't trust the mainstream media and how the Republicans deserve a voice. I guess this is how a country ends, in a tidal wave of propaganda screaming about "both sides!"
Oh good (Score:2)
This open info-warfare suggests that the endgame of American democracy is at hand, finally we'll see a resolution.
Yeah, and CNN-MSNBC-CBS-ABC are liberal fronts (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe Salon doesn't know this but it been like FOREVER that CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, etc are all in bed with the democrats. Clinton or Obama says something and the media forwards it on as truth but if Bush or Trumps says something they are suddenly obligated to "fact check" and doubt everything the say and filter it to the people with "the Republican is claiming that allegedly water is wet and the sky is blue but we have some political pundits here who disagree with those outrageous claims".
Re:Yeah, and CNN-MSNBC-CBS-ABC are liberal fronts (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe Salon doesn't know this but it been like FOREVER that CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, etc are all in bed with the democrats. Clinton or Obama says something and the media forwards it on as truth but if Bush or Trumps says something they are suddenly obligated to "fact check" and doubt everything the say and filter it to the people with "the Republican is claiming that allegedly water is wet and the sky is blue but we have some political pundits here who disagree with those outrageous claims".
If the Republican's want people to stop accusing them of lying and fact checking everything they could, you know, try to stop lying.
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Fox News makes my skin crawl. I don't ever watch MSNBC. I visit CNN but typically avoid any political story (which can be hard).
Trump is a lying SOB.. anyone still in denial is a moron. He is likely the worst human being that we've ever put in a federal position. He doesn't give a shit about America, he cares about Trump and money. Well, maybe he cares a bit about America becau
Naturally (Score:3, Interesting)
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Of course, if a bunch of Democrats get together and put together a biased newspaper, then it's okay?
It's not just OK, it's virtuous! The dems might as well just go ahead an launch a newspaper actually called The Virtue Signal.
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Of course not, if Democrats did something similar they should be called out too. This has less to do with the political party at fault and more to do with the fact it's happening at all. So, if you've got any examples of stuff like what's listed in the article, feel free to call them out.
This is the future of "News" (Score:2)
If youi want REAL news? (Score:2)
You better go out and get it yourself!
At this point, I don't think ANY of the news sites are that trustworthy, reliable or honest. Print journalism is dying a slow, painful death because nobody is really interested in paying for newspaper or magazine subscriptions anymore. Everyone has gotten used to trying to obtain the news online for free. (What's that? A paywall is in the way? Well, time to find one of those browser extensions that helps you bypass it! Can't do that? Ask someone else to copy/paste th
Bold Move (Score:2)
er (Score:2)
All the major news companies have strong political biases of their own.
Nobody is free from bias. There is nobody you can trust to be the "fact checker" or enforcer.
And this has always been true; it's just much more obvious in the internet age.
So Slashdot is...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Is Full On Venezuela Communist Now?
Journalistic Integrity (Score:2)
Re:So, balance it out a little (Score:5, Informative)
No. None of what you said is true. Even "Let the GOP have one too." Fox News is a prominent "news" source, wholly run for the Republican party. You have got to be troll to claim to be unaware of Fox. You might not know of Sinclair, which is also a conservative news organization, that has been buying up local stations. They are converting local news programs into propaganda machines for the Republicans. So the right is not hurting for "news" outlets.
Re: So, balance it out a little (Score:5, Insightful)
You know Fox is basically controlled opposition and that any time one of their, in many cases real conservative hosts, start talking too close to the core about what's wrong they get shit-canned right? Fox news is right-wing news with a restraining bolt.
Re: So, balance it out a little (Score:5, Funny)
If that's restrained, I don't even want to know what they be like totally unhinged.
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its all of them, CNN too. basically if its not the two achormen sitting at the desk giving the 15min news segment, its a show where a host gives opinion in order to sway the viewer to their point of view. By the very definition that is not news. Its a persuasive argument paper, or in terms of politics, propaganda.
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IMO its not just Fox news. Its ALL of the 24hr news channels. To be clear, the actual News segments are not full of bullshit opinion and political spin. Unfortunately the 24hr news channels only air news for about 10-15min every hour at most. The rest of the time its the stupid ass talk shows which are clearly not news, but opinions about a particular snippet of half of a news story. I think our country would be in a lot less divided state if we simply ditched all these news channels and just went back to t
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guy and his wife actually, but yes
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Its probably true, but Snopes is no longer a reliable source. They compromised integrity for partisanship a couple years ago and its going to take a long time to regain credibility. Snopes is supposed to call out misinformation. Deciding to rank certain and provable false claims as a 'we arent sure, its possible but we just dont know' for DNC related stuff was a stupid ass move. If your going to call out misinformation, you have to have a religious level of commitment to the truth, regardless where it leads
Re:Can you list some hard examples? (Score:4, Informative)
sure, It was pretty dissapointing when it happened. I did not know before then it was just a husband and wife and after they got caught, it then came to life all the photos with high level players in politics, specifically left leaning. While Im digging that up though, read this. Its not political but it is from a left-leaning site that outed them for doing the same pretending a false is a 'maybe true' thing, this time for monsanto.
https://foodbabe.com/do-you-tr... [foodbabe.com]
I find it highly concerning that googling 'snopes fails to report false' that the first 5 hits are articles written BY SNOPES about how non-biased snopes is. Thats like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coup.
Re:Can you list some hard examples? (Score:4, Informative)
heres an earlier forbes article where they outlined other credibility issues with snopes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/k... [forbes.com]
Re:Can you list some hard examples? (Score:4, Informative)
crap I hate citing this source, because using a right-leaning source to discredit an alleged left-leaning one is subjective at best... the takeaway is that you'll need to independently verify the claims outlined here..
https://dailycaller.com/2019/0... [dailycaller.com]
it its true then its a very recent excample of what I saw them do a couple years ago. Are you any good at using the wayback machine? I never used it and would need to verify this screenshot that showed they were both on the board of that PAC.
Re:Can you list some hard examples? (Score:4, Informative)
here is one where WaPo attacked their credibility and I wouldnt call WaPo right-leaning at all.
https://www.washingtontimes.co... [washingtontimes.com]
That's the Washington Times, not Washington Post. Washington Times was created as the conservative alternative. It was created be Unification's Revered Moon, and a prominent proponent of the Obama birther conspiracy.
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Ah, Whataboutism. Such a marker of despearation and deflection. Try again.
Re: So, balance it out a little (Score:3, Insightful)
Salon is one of the worst left wing ones pretending to be neutral.
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Re: So, balance it out a little (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's funny you pointing to Salon's political bias (which it certainly does have) while making claims of an eminent communist revolution in this country. You either don't understand what communism is or have a personal political bias so far departed from reality that you're consciously choosing to characterize the mild Leftist push the Democrats are actually experiencing as communism.
Re: So, balance it out a little (Score:5, Insightful)
"I think it funny that you believe that AOC is "mild Leftist"."
I think it's funny that you think that AOC is the entirety of the Democratic party and not just one of 235 Democratic house members who represent's only one of New York's 27 congressional districts. Is the entire Republican party libertarian because the people of Kentucky elected Rand Paul to the Senate?
" What they want is to take my money so that the politicians can decide who deserves it."
Every government, no matter where on the political spectrum, does this. It's what governments do and the odds are fairly certain you're in favor of government doing this in some sort of context so you can quit with the delusion that only those on the Left practice what you describe.
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Are you contending that the information in the article isn't factual?
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Irrelevant.
Re: Yes! Facts have a strong liberal bias! (Score:2, Informative)
CNN doesn't shill for the DNC?
You know they've actually admitted (finally) that they have debate questions to Hillary ahead of time right?
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To PLU, it sure does. We figured this out a while ago.
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so what happens when they get caught publishing non-facts, ones they forgot to fact check? How does that automatically make you want to believe it because its parroting your personal opinion? thats not facts friend. Thats manipulation. You would think for someone so sick of Fox doing this, you'd recognize others doing it too. I mean if your ex-wife got caught cheating on you, you'd think you'd be more likely to spot the same warning signs if your new wife starts doing it too.
Re: So, balance it out a little (Score:2)
He's a sucker for thinking Fox is truly right-wing.
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Bias isn't in the facts per se but the choice of stories to drumbeat on, day after day, year after year, to get people concerned to build a solid coalition for "your side".
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its having shows on a news network that are not news. They call them Commentary. It has no place on a news channel. They might as well just rent out the extra air time running Rogain commercials. Sean Hannity - not a news segment, Rachel Maddow - not a news segment, Bill O'Reilly - not a news segment, I really dont have the energy to list them all. The problem is that people see them on a news station and assume that they are there to simply report facts. When your segment consists of bringing on guests wh
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Yes, the so-called "facts" should not be trusted. The so-called "theories of evolution" are a lie. The so-called moon landings are a hoax. The so-called "space" does not exist. "Free markets" and "trickle down" are not fantasies, but actually work. Both the victims and the perps share the blame. It ain't bigotry and racism when we do it. Religious fundamentalism of our kind is good.
And so on.
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I liked the way Myth Busters did their fact checking. They filmed experimentation to prove or disprove results. You know, that scientific method we seem to be lacking these days. Independent verified experimentation.
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No, I'm simply accusing what comes out of Slashdot on the front page on a regular basis to be the product of a DNC fanboi.
A couple of owners ago Slashdot was rather neutral, the past two owners at least have been quite left-leaning.
I salute Slashdot for more or less leaving the classic moderation in place, though I do go back and look at some old post and see "-2 Moderation" on some of my post that are less forgiving of the left wing, even some that appear to have been down-moded after the comment period ha
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There is something to be said for investigating the desire to use AGW as levarage for massive government control of the economy, when class warfare no longer works at the polls
I wish there was further investigation into this aspect, but it is lost in all the hoopla regardless of veracity.
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AGW?
Re:The real fake news is the headline (Score:5, Informative)
Simply because a website sources some of their news from large national sources does not make it fake news. Local news companies source stories from Reuters and the Associated Press all the time. Why do you think you can find the exact same article in a range of news outlets?
Presuming news to be fake simply because it comes from a different political perspective is hubris at best.
I'm sure a local news service founded by a man with the following description (taken directly from his publisher's website):
Michael Patrick Leahy is an innovative leader in both the tactics and strategy of grassroots conservative new-media activism. As cofounder of Top Conservatives on Twitter, Leahy helped to form the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition....He lives in Tennessee
will be a bastion of fair, accurate and unbiased reporting. And, while I can see him being concerned about local news in TN since he lives there, it is hard to see what ties he may have to Missouri, New England, the Dakotas, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, as mentioned in the summary. Unless he is just really concerned about local news.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The Republicans of today are not what they claim to be. I'm old enough to remember the 70s. I grew up with people who remember WWII. Today's "conservatives" are anything but. A conservative would never endorse homosexual marriage. There would be zero waffling on the issue. A conservative would not happily go to war at the drop of a hat. A conservative would not want a wall built, because it means more government meddling. True conservatives are penny pinchers. True conservatives want term limits, no lobbyin