Boardman writes: "When you stop to think about it, can you tell the difference between Russian disinformation bots and Fox News? Actually, that's a serious question."
Newsroom at Fox News in New York City. (photo: AP)
Russian Disinformation Bots, Fake News, Fox News
23 February 18
No one has to lie to avoid telling the truth
hen you stop to think about it, can you tell the difference between Russian disinformation bots and Fox News? Actually, that�s a serious question.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller�s February 16 indictment of people and organizations associated with Russia offers a loose definition of Russian disinformation bots that seems equally accurate as a description of what Fox News has been doing since 1996:
� defraud[ing] the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the US political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.
Russian bots and Fox News both have foreign roots. When Rupert Murdoch, an Australian, set about to buy American television stations in 1985, that was against the law. The Reagan-era FCC turned a blind eye to the law-breaking, and the Clinton-era FCC weaseled a way to affirm the broken law as legitimate by finding that Murdoch�s illegal holding was �in the public interest.� A year ago, for the first time ever, the Obama-era FCC approved 100% foreign ownership of American media to the outcry of almost no one. This is the world that Congress and the executive branch deliberately created over decades, a world where the unending stream of Fox lies and distortion is not only �in the public interest,� but protected by the First Amendment�s rights to free speech and a free press.
This would be an example of the Constitution turning into a suicide pact, albeit a very slow and tortured suicide.
But here we are, all in a twit about Russian bots that are given this imaginary power to affect elections when all they do is re-package the fever dreams already haunting radio, television, and the internet. Russian bots don�t even own anything. What they do more than anything is show us our real selves. So some of us embrace them for their content, others attack the reflection as an �act of war� or some other hyperbole of denial. Few say what is so far obvious: the Russian bots merely stir a pot already boiling over with fantasy and fear fed by homegrown sources for decades.
It�s not that Fox News is all-powerful and unique, but it is the whale of deception that gives some protection to the smaller sharks of deceit like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, and the rest of the right-wing piranha. There is no such large, effective equivalent on the left, even when the left is considered broadly. (Wikipedia�s list of alternative media on the left included CNN and The New York Times, which illustrates the effectiveness of Fox News spin.) Air America couldn�t survive, in part because it never fully abandoned intellectual integrity. The real left hardly exists in the media of today.
Response to the killings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, illustrates the irrelevance of Russian bots to essential American issues. The serious carrier of infectious deceit on gun issues is the NRA, the National Rifle Association. Pitching fear and paranoia with one hand and dishonest Constitutional history with the other, the NRA has frozen gun issues in unyielding irrationality for decades.
President Trump gets attention if not credit for endorsing two gun measures, reported in mainstream media as if he�s made some kind of movement in the direction of reason to address the very real, all-American issue of mass killings. Insofar as Trump is seen as showing any kind of leadership, that�s fake news. His gestures are well within what the NRA deems permissible. When Trump calls for regulations on bump stocks that turn weapons into automatics, that�s exactly what the NRA has endorsed, out of fear of legislation banning bump stocks. The NRA knows a law is much harder to repeal than a regulation (as Trump�s treatment of Obama regulations illustrates). And when Trump indicates some willingness to support modest changes to improve the national gun background check system, he�s not even going as far as the NRA, which supports some changes.
Trump himself is an endlessly reliable spouter of fake news, either in person or on his Twitter account. Russian bots must envy the coverage and respect his lies achieve, but Russian bots must be secretly pleased that Trump works many of the same corrosive divisions they work. Like a team, they help create the environment in which Donald Trump Jr. feels comfortable clicking �Like� on a pair of tweets passing on the story that the Parkland shooting was a false flag operation aimed at eliminating gun protections in the Second Amendment. The story also has it that the articulate student survivors, like David Hogg, are actually �crisis actors� in the employ of the deep state. YouTube took down a similar story after 200,000 hits, but now mainstream media are all spreading the story by reporting on how it was taken down for being false. Rush Limbaugh is just passing it on as true, saying that everything the student protestors are doing �is right out of the Democrat Party�s various playbooks.�
The accused killer at Parkland was a member of the US Army�s JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps), as were two of his 14-year-old victims. The Parkland shooter was trained by the US Army. Let that sink in. No wonder the Army quickly gave out three medals to its members who were killed. That�s a form of fake news. That distracts from the serious questions: what is the Army doing in schools in the first place? Why should the Pentagon have anything to say about ninth grade curricula? Why are tax dollars spent training 14-year-old girls to shoot? And why is the US Army allowed into schools to teach that the Tonkin Gulf incident in Viet Nam was unprovoked by the US? Does it really make sense to let the military teach false history to high school students, or is that just another way to condition them to following orders unquestioningly and to believing Fox News and Trump tweets?
Russian bots didn�t create this media environment, American bots did (some of them even human, technically). Russian bots can�t match reality, and they mostly don�t try. Russian bots just exploit the media reality we�ve created for ourselves. And that media reality in turn creates people who say, with zero supporting data:
Yeah, well, obviously there�s a lot of politics in it, and it�s interesting that so many of these people that commit the mass murders end up being Democrats. But the media doesn�t talk about that.
The person who said that, Claudia Tenney, looks like a poster person for our dominant media bubble. Tenney is a Republican. She is a publisher. She is an attorney. She is 67. She is an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment in its fundamentalist form. She is in Congress. She represents southwestern New York State, including Binghamton. She was on WGDJ radio when she said that. Other media outlets covering the story include The New York Times, the Associated Press, The Washington Post, Syracuse.com, Politico, and the one you�re reading right now. When CNN followed up on the story, she issued a statement saying in part:
I am fed up with the media and liberals attempting to politicize tragedies and demonize law-abiding gun owners and conservative Americans every time there is a horrible tragedy. While we know the perpetrators of these atrocities have a wide variety of political views, my comments are in response to a question about the failure to prosecute illegal gun crime. I will continue to stand up for law-abiding citizens who are smeared by anti-gun liberal elitists.
Could any Russian bot do better than this?
Well, yes, and NRA head Wayne LaPierre did just that on February 22 at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he red-baited Democrats, calling them socialists and adding, without apparent irony, �Socialism is a movement that loves a smear.� In a speech with the apparent primary intent of placing armed guards at every American school and a universal database, he framed his argument with an eerie paraphrase of Claudia Tenney�s version of the party line:
They hate the NRA, they hate the Second Amendment, they hate individual freedom. They care more about control and more of it. Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms, so they can eradicate all individual freedoms�. Their solution is to make you, all of you, less free�. We must immediately harden our schools�. Schools must be the most hardened targets in this country�. To stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun.
When it comes to dishonesty and disruption, these people are not outliers, they are exemplars of how to be mainstream conservative zombies in the politics of the living dead. What they actually try to say doesn�t really matter so long as it gets in the way of any rational discussion of guns. In that sense, these FoxWorld clones are, in the words of the Mueller indictment of the Russian bots, �impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit.�
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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The FCC is also to blame for perpetrating the likes of Fox News, Clear Channel and other nefarious media giants who prefer spewing propaganda and inventing crises to providing actual news and information. The FCC allowed conglomerates like Fox and Clear Channel to consolidate thousands of media outlets around the U.S. -- radio, TV, billboards, etc. -- thereby cornering the market on "news." The result is far less local news, blatantly false insinuations, and a gargantuan mouthpiece to foment fear and lies. And the saddest thing is, try to talk to a faithful follower of Fox News. They just don't get how they're being hoodwinked. I know one gentlemen, a survivor of Nazi Germany, who is glued to Fox News every night for two hours and believes nothing he doesn't hear on Fox.
Wall Street CEOS should be brought to justice. But even before that, I would love to see Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes tarred, feathered, and run out of the U.S. on a rail.
The difference is subtle, but important. MainStreetMento r is essentially saying that Obama is a bum, but he's "our bum".
John Locke apparently considers Obama a "bum" with no other redeeming attributes.
Both are valid and rational perspectives, depending upon their authors' points of view, the expression of which is what these online forums are supposed to be all about.
However, the reason for the dramatic difference in the "thumbs up/down" that you note above is simply that people responding to this article are not inclined to consider, or to even allow, an opinion that does not parrot their own.
Thus, the RSN comment thread that follows most articles becomes an "echo chamber" more similar to, than differentiated from, the very right wing echo chamber that everyone is so understandably unhappy with.
Popular gut-level *sentiments* are applauded, unpopular expressions are boo-ed. Thoughtful discourse itself be damned.
Take off the blinders we must, and recognize that our only HOPE for CHANGE is to say no to candidates from both parties, not merely 'damn a Dem. but vote for them'. Why so?
Your term 'corporate sycophant in the White House' says it all. No mere accident the Faux News is spinning we the sheeple with hype re. OhBombAh's coming landslide. Our villainaire rulers know well that none of the G.O.P. losers they've been distracting us with have a chance in hell of winning. The rulers want their boy, OhBombAh - a continuation of their puppet whore "W" - to return for another four years of more war, war, war for oil, oil, oil, and no real change to the evilrulers' total control of everything and everyone.
Only hope we have? Mass turnout of the 99%ers for an Independent such as Sanders, a non-bought Dem. such as Kucinich, or a fully tested vs. promising third party candidate.
It's far from over - plenty of time before the 2012 election next Nov. to experience a massive surge against the villianaire 1%ers and their candidates, and a recognition that huge ad campaigns, financed by the villainaires, are mere spinning. Candidates for pres. and congress and states offices who say no to such 'Kochsucking' buyouts may just pull it off in '12, providing we can get such 99%er serving people to run and announce their candidacy in a timely nad truthful manner.
Speaking about "willful blindness toward the facts," progressives need to wake up to the potential for stolen and fixed elections a la 2000 and 2004 (see respected journalist Mark Crispin Miller's work on this). The Republicans -- because they more and more represent an obsolete world view can ONLY win by cheating. We should be aware of this.
And maybe, just maybe, 2012 is the year when we abandon that other party, the Democrats, in favor of a third wave party that combines the most functional aspects of progressive and conservative (freedom and responsibility, pulling the plug on the Fed, replacing the income tax with a tax on speculative transactions). Think it can't happen?
Just watch ...
Would love to believe we will see a third wave party emerge in 2012 as farfetched as it may seem.
Who would have believed that TIME magazine would label them as "Most Important" and feature them as they are doing.
And then the only way to stop the Republicans would be a civil war. Not like the peacefull movement of the OWS but a bloody real civil war.
Obama has never had a strong Democratic congress to back him up and when he does cave it is because he is thinking of the hundreds of thousands of American that would suffer if he did not give in some things to the Repugs.
What he needs is a strong and powerfull 100% Democrats in the Congress so he does not have to give in some things to the Repugs.
What you people are suggesting will only weaken the Democratic party and enable the republicans to win again and we will start going back to the laws of 1889.
Thank you but no thanks.
Sorry most Democrats are decent people while most Repugs are horrible people.
If Obama has the support of the congress
Democrats) we will be able to get rid of a lot of those horrible laws they have enacted.
However this can only happen if we do not break up our party and start voting a third party in.
You darn well know the Repugs will vote in droves for all Republicans and that just may be the one to win.
God Forbid.
If Republican's win this election we will be stuck with a Republican Supreme Court for centuries to come .
Some of you sat at home in 2010 and the results were these Tea Baggers in Congress trying to make all sorts of crazy laws while the Republican corporation bought Justices made corporations people essentially able to buy a candidate .
Haven't you learned a lesson from that !Whether you like what Obama has done as president isn't as important as the alternative if you allow the Republican's to win .
We stand a chance of evening up those odds if Obama wins and appoints two more Democratic justices to replace those who will be retiring !
What we need to do is get rid of the Bluedogs and replace them with Liberal Democrats and vote real Democrat's to Congress ,the Senate and governors and mayors in our states . This is how the Tea Baggers came to Washington and changed laws in their states . We have to vote smart not stupid !
The President doesn't make the laws Congress and the Senate does as well as the mayors and governors in the states . If Obama had a clear majority in both houses of left leaning Democrats he would have to move further to the left .
If Obama had not done when he became president we would have gone over the hill.
If you think he is as Republican as the others how come they don't cheer him? They certainly were for Cain who is also black.
No they came after him because he has tried time again to do the right thing.
If he did what they wanted they would have cheered him and welcomed him, so you are entirely wrong. Do you think he had a magic wand to just turn everything around?
What he need is a strong Democratic Congress behind him, and what some of you are suggesting voting for a third party will just weaken the Democratic party and help the Republicans to win.
God Forbid.
You can not lay all the blame for Obama's failures on a weak Democratic Congress or even Republicans in Congress. Obama the candidate has simply not turned out to be the same person that we see now that he's president.
From the outset, for example, many of us were immediately alarmed and disappointed when we saw him choose the likes of Summers and Geithner (Robert Rubin clones) as part of his economic team. These people have never been committed to jobs and the American worker! On the contrary, their primary concern was Wall Street. Moreover, Obama pretty much ignored those in his administration like Christina Romer and Paul Volker. Watch the documentary Inside Job; it's an eye-opener.
the most votes were for Ron Paul with 23%. Fox headline then states that Paul had jumped into second place. even when a guy gets the votes he still doesn't win on Fox, whether his name is Gore or Paul
I continue to mull over the reason for it all, beyond the obvious.
They are NOT Americans for they don't give a damn, that they are weekening the country, and McCain and the other hawks are helping them. Our country is bleeding to death with all the right wing wars, and still they are itching to start a war with Iran.
Our poor men and women in the military are killing them selves at a greater rate than our enimies. It is a tragedy and disgrace,
Of course there is no money for education, so China, India and Brazil are zooming ahead of us. They don't need to fight us, They can just wait and pick up the pieces, when the country crumbles.
Hell...I long for the days of Richard Nixon. No emphasis on cutting social programs and he was an environmental liberal.
His scandal (Watergate) pales in comparison to what Junior Bush did with Iraq-nearly 4500 Americans dead and untold thousands of Iraqis massacred... for what? Of course I am aware of the atrocities of Vietnam,Laos, and Cambodia on Dick's watch. But he inherited Vietnam.
We fail to realize how far right we have fallen when the Dickster can be viewed as a liberal.
So true, they are void of facts, and throw out lies as catch phrases that their faithful followers regurgitate back up as facts. Fair and Balanced is an opposite mantra for Fox News really is, they are more apt to be dishonest and void of any facts. They lie...anyone who thinks they dont are being mislead by them and brainwashed. On the upside, maybe the Teabaglicans will have to revamp and get out of the opinion news and back into the real world not the one Rupert Murdoch has created for them, that is now destroying them.
They are in opposite world when Fox News says its:
Fair and Balanced it means we are lying out our asses.
No Spin it means we are spinning everything out our asses.
The real news you can bet they are lying and making things up that will tickle the ears of their faithful veiwers. No truth but just lying out their asses.
Look at Ruperts world...Greedy One Percent Party time, and its not so excellent! Hes crazy like a Fox news report.
Or rather their brains are getting annihilated.
The Republicans would love him and back him all the way. You know darn well they do not. And not because he is black (they so loved Cain until his (sexy woman appeared). But because he has fought for the 99%. Some times caving in on some things only to get the good things passed because that was the only way he could could get it.
"I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope
I'm sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mama's little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now
I've had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth
No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
It's money for dope
Money for rope "
The Tricky Dick is not as dated as one may think, in fact the line was truly prophetic. Ailes first proposed the concept of privately owned propaganda based TV as a mean to manipulate the masses.
The big banks are backing Obama because he can keep the liberals in the population and congress quiet and in line. If there were a republican in the Whore House, there would be 10 times the protest and a real rebellion might actually be at hand. The liberal imperialist keeps the same policies going but gives some appearance of decency and legitimacy to the same old murder, theft, aggression, and corruption.
The big banks, CIA, and Pentagon are working for the same strategy they pulled off in 1996 when the Republican nominated a viagra charged up Bob Dole to run against Bill Clinton. The fascists wanted Clinton because he was doing their work and keeping the whole world quiet about it. The senile but erect Bob Dole was the perfect loser, someone who referred to himself in the third person.
So we will get another republican loser who will go down to Obama. But Obama deserves to be dumped because he is a tool of the fascists on Wall Street and the Pentagon. He campaigned by raising people's hopes that the really horrible policies of Cheney could be reversed. Obama has not reversed any of them. He has made them even worse than Cheney ever could have because Cheney had no credibility or legitimacy. Dump Obama. Who cares what republican replaces him? Let the full scale rebellion begin against a Newt.
Let's hope the election won't have to be decided by the Supreme Court.
****************************************
It's a common mistake, but I need to call your attention to the fact that you used an incorrect word - since 2000(or earlier) SCOTUS is known as the "Subprime" Court...and it will be known as such until the three remaining members that are traitors(Thomas , Scalia and Kennedy)quit or are replaced...hope fully by people of higher moral & ethical character!
Very nearly 100% of all our economic problems were caused by Republican policies, the very same ones that caused the panic of 1893 and he great depression. The slow (but steady) job creation has been held down by Republicans filibustering 44 jobs creation bills from the Pelosi House.
Certainly Obama has his faults, mostly from either weakness in standing up to the corruption of the entire Republican party or his continuing Bush policies. So, fault him for that, but understand that every Republican is infinitely worse.
The only way we will ever recover is to make certain that Republicans have no say in anything political until they have purged the wingnut component and the corrupt politicans who filibuster everything and who consistently vote FOR pollution and against tax increases on the 1%. In fact the 1% were surveyed and 68% of them said the taxes should be raised, so the only people they're representing are the Kock brother corrupt element.
There are only 5 reasons to vote Republican: Ignorance, stupidity, Insanity, bigotry and greed.