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MEDIA

Der Spiegel Reporter Was a Rotten Apple, and CNN Went Bananas for Him By Jim Treacher

https://pjmedia.com/trending/der-spiegel-reporter-was-a-rotten-apple-and-cnn-went-bananas-for-him/

These are tough times for journalists, at least according to journalists. The president who loved and nurtured them all (except Fox News) has been replaced by a president who hates and battles them all (except Fox News). Journalists came up with the idea of “fake news” to explain why Hillary Clinton lost, then watched helplessly as they themselves were branded “fake news.” Jim Acosta gets shouted down every time he bravely stands up in the White House and asks a question makes a speech. Things are bad out there.

As if all that isn’t enough to make journalists feel sorry for themselves, seven of them were killed in the United States in 2018. Five reporters in Maryland were murdered during a shooting rampage by a lunatic who’d held a longstanding grudge against their newspaper, and two others were killed by a falling tree while reporting on a rainstorm in North Carolina. Somehow, these two incidents mean America is now one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. Somebody keeps a list every year, and now we’re on it. This is welcome news for journalists who need to think of themselves as martyrs. Move over, firefighters, because the real heroes are here!

And now, journalists have to deal with yet another hardship: Being reminded that their industry richly rewards liars.

Have you heard of Claas Relotius, star reporter for Der Spiegel? Me neither, at least until today, but apparently he’s a respected, award-winning journalist. And now, Der Spiegel has some bad news about him:

Claas Relotius, a reporter and editor, falsified his articles on a grand scale and even invented characters, deceiving both readers and his colleagues…

For example, he included individuals in his stories who he had never met or spoken to, telling their stories or quoting them. Instead, he would reveal, he based the depictions on other media or video recordings. By doing so, he created composite characters of people who actually did exist but whose stories Relotius had fabricated. He also made up dialogue and quotes…

Since 2011, just under 60 of his articles were published in DER SPIEGEL magazine or on SPIEGEL ONLINE. By his own admission, there are at least 14 articles in question that are at least in part fabrications.

Which means the number is probably higher.

Human Extinction: Hot Again The New York Times sees some upside and Xi Jinping lauds Mao. By James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/human-extinction-hot-again-11545177213

Before condemning any more Donald Trump tweets, take a look at what his critics in Beijing and Manhattan are publishing. The message from both locales is highly disturbing. Still, there’s reason to hope the President can successfully negotiate with China’s communist dictatorship, even if he’ll never win over the editors of the New York Times.

This week the Times runs an op-ed with the headline: “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?” Strolling along the frontiers of radical environmentalism, author Todd May ponders whether we should all kill ourselves but appears to prefer extinction by attrition:

One might ask here whether… it would… be a good thing for those of us who are currently here to end our lives in order to prevent further animal suffering. Although I do not have a final answer to this question, we should recognize that the case of future humans is very different from the case of currently existing humans. To demand of currently existing humans that they should end their lives would introduce significant suffering among those who have much to lose by dying. In contrast, preventing future humans from existing does not introduce such suffering, since those human beings will not exist and therefore not have lives to sacrifice. The two situations, then, are not analogous.

Kudos to Mr. May for discovering that the death of 7.7 billion people might involve some measure of suffering. Such keen insights may ultimately leave readers more amused than shocked, especially when they get to the bottom of the story and learn that he is no less than a “philosophical adviser” to a television program starring Ted Danson. It remains unclear from the Times op-ed whether the author is in charge of all philosophical advice for the NBC comedy “The Good Place” or merely one of a number of people ready to offer such assistance on set. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Guardian, Tommy Robinson, and Me Britain’s top rag uncovers a nonexisent “global network”. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272200/guardian-tommy-robinson-and-me-bruce-bawer

Damn it, the Guardian is on to us. On Friday, Britain’s most important, or rather self-important, newspaper ran a piece headlined “Revealed: the hidden global network behind Tommy Robinson.”

Move over, Pentagon Papers.

Clearly, this is Pulitzer Prize-level journalism – although, unfortunately, Brits are ineligible for that particular distinction. Obviously, the Guardian reporters in question – Josh Halliday, Lois Beckett, and Caelainn Barr – have stumbled upon that obscure and highly sophisticated research tool known as Google. And through Google, they’ve uncovered the sensational, previously unnoticed fact that two “US thinktanks…have published a succession of articles in support of Robinson,” while a third U.S. think tank has – gasp! – helped pay for Tommy’s legal fees.

These three think tanks, the Guardian scribes assert, “have been repeatedly accused of stoking anti-Islam sentiment in the west and spreading false information about Muslim refugees in Europe.” (Among the institutions that have been in the forefront of making these baseless accusations, unsurprisingly, is the Guardian itself.) The Guardian writers further contend that Tommy’s support from these “prominent and well-financed groups undermines Robinson’s self-styled image of a far-right populist underdog whose anti-Islam agenda is being silenced by the British establishment.”

Hold on a second and take a look at that last sentence. Has Tommy really sought to style an image for himself as a “far-right” activist? Who on earth would do that? Or has he constantly denied, quite correctly, that there’s anything “far-right” about him? This is journalism at its shabbiest. As for his being “silenced by the British establishment” – no, he hasn’t exactly been silenced. This Guardian article itself is a perfect illustration of the fact that he has, rather, been smeared, maligned, defamed, vilified, calumniated, misquoted, misinterpreted, and misrepresented by that establishment. Consistently.

What the Facebook Wars are Really About Soros and the media’s censorship plot. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272157/what-facebook-wars-are-really-about-daniel-greenfield

Facebook got its start as FaceMash: a site comparing the attractiveness of female Harvard students. It was then reborn as a social network for Harvard students, Ivy League schools and then everyone.

More recent surveys showed that the average Facebook user in the United States is 40 years old. That makes Facebook users less likely to start stupid viral trends, those tend to come from younger social media apps, some owned by Facebook, and more likely to be deeply engaged in politics.

Mark Zuckerberg had created a company to appeal to college students who wanted to rate the cutest girls on campus, but is instead stuck with a monster worth hundreds of billions (that number will continue fluctuating with media hit pieces) used by people with actual jobs to share family photos and talk politics. And it’s the politics part, not the baby photos, that’s turning the heat up on Zuckerberg.

Despite the hundreds of billions of dollars, the marriage, the language lessons, the awkward tour of America, Zuckerberg is still on some level the drunken college kid who got in trouble setting up a site to rate his classmates. He doesn’t understand the stakes of the game. As Facebook aged, it became an unwanted gatekeeper for global politics, instead of for teens doing viral challenges.

And though Zuckerberg has given the media some of what it wants, allowing its “fact checkers” to censor certain trending conservative stories, he hasn’t allowed Twitter’s wholesale censorship.

Zuckerberg was told he had to clean up Facebook after Trump’s victory. He failed to do it. Now the Left and its media apparatus is coming for the heads of Facebook leadership. The endgame is to inflict punishing harm on Facebook’s valuation, forcing the company to replace its leadership with media types who will lock down Facebook and make it a safe space for the media and for its political agenda.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the Google CEO’s Tuesday testimony on Capitol Hill could inform what kind of regulatory action GOPs might pursue against the search engine by Bridget Johnson

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/mccarthy-self-policed-nature-of-google-to-be-probed-at-ceo-hearing/

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the Google CEO’s Tuesday testimony on Capitol Hill could inform what kind of regulatory action GOPs might pursue against the search engine.

Sundar Pichai had been scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee last week, but that was bumped to this week because of President George H.W. Bush’s death.

“Two-thirds of every adult American gets their news from the Internet. But there’s no other company that has a greater control over the Internet on searches than Google,” McCarthy told Fox News this morning. “And Google has not been coming to any of our hearings, whereas Twitter, Facebook, and others — 90 percent of all Internet searches goes through Google.”

McCarthy noted that he “gave Google credit in 2010 when they pulled out of China, what China was asking them to do in their searches.”

“But now there’s talk of them coming back, this Dragonfly. But then Google pulled out of working with the armed forces of America because they disagreed with the A.I. platform, which our armed services want,” he said, stressing the China relationship will be among the questions asked Tuesday.

“I give Sundar credit. Their CEO came in to see me after I put out a tweet. He promised he would come to a hearing… But these are questions that have to be answered. Then — that’s about China, but what about the privacy of Americans? How long do they keep those searches that are supposed to be private that you go through? How do you get the — what is it that you doing with the data that you’re finding? Because they know almost everything about us.”CONTINUE AT SITE

Facebook Censors at Random The social network’s rules on political advertising burden nonprofits and are impossible to understand. By Daniel Gallant

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-censors-at-random-1544395970

If you used Facebook in late November, you probably saw a stream of fundraising campaigns for charities and cultural organizations. That’s because Facebook offered up to $7 million in matching donations for nonprofits that used its platform to raise funds on Giving Tuesday. But this gesture masks the negative impact Facebook’s newly adopted advertising policies have had on nonprofit organizations that rely on social media.

In response to public scrutiny stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal this year, Facebook has implemented enforcement measures aimed at improving election security and discouraging anonymous political messages. These measures have been poorly executed and inconsistently applied. They unfairly burden charitable organizations and small businesses, yet are easy for organized or well-funded actors to circumvent.

Several paid advertising campaigns run by my colleagues and clients have been inexplicably obstructed by Facebook’s policing in the past several months. Facebook refused to allow my New York cultural nonprofit, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, to pay to promote a post encouraging people to vote in the midterms because our page was not “authorized to run ads related to politics.” A campaign promoting a lecture about sculpture at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was blocked because Facebook’s censors mistakenly believed it was intended to influence an election in Ireland.

Similarly, Arts Japan 2020, an entity that highlights Japan-related cultural programs in the U.S., was unable to promote a post celebrating an award given by the emperor of Japan to an American arts curator. Facebook claimed the topic was of “national importance.” These harmless posts remain on Facebook in unpromoted form, but unpromoted content has a limited reach.

The problem is widespread. The Atlantic reported on Nov. 2 that Facebook’s election-security policies have caused it to block advertising campaigns from organizations including community centers, national parks and charities that serve wounded veterans.

Representatives of charities are often reluctant to register as political advertisers on Facebook because of privacy concerns. Facebook requires users to disclose significant personal information before promoting posts about politics or national issues. To be authorized to run such advertisements on behalf of my nonprofit organization, I would have to send Facebook my residential address, my Social Security number, and a photo of myself holding my passport or driver’s license. I’m loath to entrust any entity with all of that sensitive information—especially Facebook, which could use its facial-recognition software to match my personal information with photos of me that might appear online.

But suppose I did submit those items and was therefore allowed to promote political content. If I subsequently broke the rules, Facebook wouldn’t necessarily hold the nonprofit I represent responsible. Under Facebook’s policies, the person who operates an ad account is accountable for any ads placed by that account.

The only real protection Facebook’s identification requirements might provide is a guarantee that Facebook users can determine the true identity of the marketer responsible for a political advertisement. Or can they? A well-resourced advertiser with nefarious intent could simply hire a patsy (or use fake credentials) to pass Facebook’s screening process and establish a nominal presence at an American address. CONTINUE AT SITE

Why the Press Pays Less Attention to the Murder of Journalists Not Named Khashoggi by Peter Baum

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13375/journalists-murder

Ironically, the same members of the media who have been obsessed with Khashoggi and the Saudi-US alliance have devoted little space to the reality that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has been imprisoning, torturing and killing journalists for years.

The ongoing story of Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, more than being a function of concern for the Saudi journalist, was less important to Western journalists than attacking the Trump administration.

While the October 2 murder of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, continues to be discussed across the world, the November 23 assassination of a Syrian journalist, Raed Fares, and his devoted friend and cameraman, Hammoud al-Jneid, gunned down in Fares’s home village of Kafrandel, Syria.

This neglect is noteworthy: Fares was among the most prominent critics of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brutal regime. According to CBS News:

In 2013, Fares posted a satirical YouTube video depicting cave men repeatedly killed by the men representing the Syrian government as men wearing American and European Union flags idly sit by. “This is how the international community reacted to the genocide committed by Assad against the Syrian people,” Fares wrote.

Fares was also a key voice in the “Arab Spring,” and he daily challenged Assad as well as terrorist organizations operating in Syria, such as the Iranian proxy, Hezbollah. According to The New Yorker:

Three years before his assassination, to the day, Fares posted a photo on Facebook of a protest banner lampooning the fact that other countries were fighting proxy wars in Syria: “BLACK FRIDAY SPECIAL OFFER, WHOEVER WHEREVER YOU ARE, BRING YOUR ENEMY AND COME FIGHT IN SYRIA FOR FREE (FREE LAND & SKY) LIMITED TIME OFFER.”

“In the absence of peaceful, democratic political voices,” Fares noted in an op-ed for The Washington Post, “terrorists have been able to convince Syria’s vulnerable youth that violence and destruction can somehow pave the way to stability.” One can view his talk to the Oslo Freedom Forum here. In an interview with NPR, Fares said:

“… Jabhat al-Nusra tried to bomb my car. And I was in it, but I survived. And December, 2014, Jabhat al-Nusra, they kidnapped me from their checkpoint, and three days in their jail. They hanged me to the ceiling for six hours. But an activist in Istanbul, he came and talked to them and convinced them to release me. And earlier this year, they attacked my Radio Fresh station and attacked the Women’s Center, which belongs to us.”

8 Fake News Stories Being Peddled About Michael Cohen’s Guilty Plea Following Michael Cohen’s surprise guilty plea, the media and critics of the president wasted no time pushing collusion narratives, conspiracy theories, and outright falsehoods.By Margot Cleveland

http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/03/8-fake-news-stories-peddled-michael-cohen-right-now/

Last week, Donald Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower complex in Moscow. Cohen told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the Trump Organization stopped pursuing the project in January 2016, but in pleading guilty Cohen stated that he continued to pursue the Trump Tower project into June of that year. Cohen claimed he lied out of loyalty to Trump and to be consistent with then-candidate Trump’s political messaging.

Following Cohen’s surprise guilty plea, the media and critics of the president wasted no time pushing collusion narratives, conspiracy theories, and outright falsehoods. Here are the top eight examples of the fake news being peddled.
1. Donald Trump Jr. Lied To Investigators

NPR’s Friday morning reporting of the development provides the clearest example of the mainstream media pushing fake news in response to Cohen’s guilty plea. After summarizing the details of his plea, NPR pivoted to Donald Trump Jr.’s role in the Moscow Trump Tower negotiations, and claimed the younger Trump lied about the timing of his involvement in the project.

“Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017 that although there had been negotiations surrounding a prospective Trump Tower in Moscow, they concluded without result ‘at the end’ of 2014,” the NPR story said, adding that “Trump’s account contrasts with the new version of events given by Cohen on Thursday in a guilty plea in federal court.”

But as The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway explained on Friday, NPR confused Trump Jr.’s testimony concerning another Russian deal, which fell apart in 2014, with the Trump Tower negotiations, which the younger Trump stated ended in 2015 or 2016. Thus, contrary to NPR’s breaking story, Trump Jr.’s testimony mirrored the details contained in Cohen’s guilty plea.

Stop Pretending Big Tech Companies Are Neutral Platforms By Ned Ryun

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/30/stop-pretending-big-tech

Our friends at Twitter have finally crossed the Rubicon.

For years social media executives have been telling the public that their platforms are neutral. They assure us they are not content creators or publishers or telecommunications companies. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Congress that Twitter “does not use political ideology to make any decisions” going on to state “from a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform.” The executives from Facebook and Google have said much the same after being questioned by Republican legislators.

Yet this last week has provided more evidence to the contrary, as Twitter banned prominent conservatives, ostensibly for holding conservative viewpoints. Jesse Kelly, a radio host, writer for The Federalist, and a veteran, was banned from Twitter on Monday, seemingly with no explanation. Kelly is certainly one who enjoys stirring the pot, but he’s far from an abusive or threatening Twitter user, and he certainly isn’t calling Jews “termites” as some leftists are. As of yet no justification has been provided for his ban from the platform.

Then magically, Twitter reversed this ban, doing so without providing any explanation for its actions. This frustrating exercise cuts to the core of Twitter’s issues; the company is flying by the seat of its pants, unsure what rules, actions, and principles should prevail, reacting instead to the leftist outrage machine that fuels their platform and likely drives the thinking of many of their employees.

But Kelly isn’t the only person silenced from the platform. Feminist Meghan Murphy was permanently banned from Twitter for arguing that “men are not women,” as she was discussing transgenderism. This might not be popular in the privileged halls of the Silicon Valley Twitter headquarters, but more than half of all Americans (54 percent) agree with Murphy that sex is determined at birth. The American public is totally divided on transgender issues, as is the Democrat Party. For example, 55 percent of black Democrats stated that sex is determined at birth. So are Dorsey and his cronies at Twitter ready to ban more than half of black Democrats?

Google Bias Against Conservative News Is ‘Much More Dangerous’ Than China’s Actions, Expert Says By Tyler O’Neil see note please

https://pjmedia.com/trending/google-bias-against-conservative-news-is-much-more-dangerous-than-china-expert-says/
SEE THE DOCUMENTARY “THE CREEPY LINE” WHICH REVEALS THE OUTRAGEOUS MANIPULATION OF OPINION AND POLICY BY GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK…..RSK

On Thursday, the Daily Caller’s Peter Hasson reported leaked emails showing Google executives scheming to isolate conservative news sites in the wake of the 2016 election. Dr. Robert Epstein, a Ph.D. psychologist who focuses on search engine manipulation, warned that Google’s attempts to manipulate public opinion are more terrifying than the Chinese government’s attempts to control its citizens.

China’s government seems intent to implement George Orwell’s “1984” with facial recognition, data mining, a social credit system, and roving electronic “doves” to watch over citizens. Yet Epstein finds Google more terrifying, partially due to the recent leak.

“To me. [China’s manipulation] is scary, but people are aware of it. It’s done openly by the government. I think what is happening elsewhere in the world that’s being driven mostly by Google I think is much more dangerous, because it’s mostly invisible,” Epstein, whose research features prominently in the recent film “The Creepy Line,” told PJ Media Friday.

“There’s no transparency, there’s no accountability,” he added. “It’s a more ambitious kind of surveillance than that of the Chinese government.”

On Thursday, Hasson revealed a very damning post from Google engineer Scott Byer dated November 9, 2016. “This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it,” Byer wrote. “How many times did you see the Election now card with items from opinion blogs (Breitbart, Daily Caller) elevated next to legitimate news organizations? That’s something that can and should be fixed.”

Byer went on to add, “Let’s make sure that we reverse things in four years – demographics will be on our side.”

Other Google employees disagreed and presented other alternatives to influence people.

Epstein, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose research suggested that Google’s pro-Clinton bias explained most of her vote lead in the popular vote, said the news confirmed his suspicions.