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6 secret ways they control information online and in the news

Dated: June 17, 2020 by Sharyl Attkisson 6 Comments

      

1. Twitter Astroturf and Manipulation

In 2015, Twitter made plans for an #AskPOTUS town hall with President Obama to compete with rivals like Reddit, which was drawing a lot of attention for its interactive Q&A sessions with well- known people. But the Twitter session was not the freewheeling event some might have expected. According to a former Twitter senior employee who spoke to BuzzFeed, the head of Twitter, Dick Costolo, had ordered employees to build an algorithm to filter out any abusive tweets that might be directed at Obama. A source said Twitter also manually censored the #AskPOTUS tweets because the automated system was inconsistent. The decision to control the message was kept secret from some senior employ- ees for fear they would object. Some who did find out were said to be upset because they believed the censorship defied Twitterโ€™s supposed com- mitment to free speech. All this subterfuge from a company that had once boasted of itself as โ€œthe free speech wing of the free speech party.โ€ 

2. Facebook News Curating

Former insiders at Facebook claim some news there is presented or withheld for biased reasons. In May 2016, an exโ€“Facebook employee was anony- mously quoted on Gizmodo, a design, technology, and science fiction web- site, saying he was part of a project that โ€œroutinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social networkโ€™s influential โ€˜trendingโ€™ news section.โ€ Several people who were reportedly employed at Facebook as โ€œnews curatorsโ€ told Gizmodo they were โ€œinstructed to arti- ficially โ€˜injectโ€™ selected stories into the trending news module, even if they werenโ€™t popular enough to warrant inclusion. . . . Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending.โ€ One former curator said suppressed topics included former IRS official Lois Lerner, who took the fifth before Congress after being accused of targeting conservative groups, and popular conservative news aggregator the Drudge Report. Facebook denied the allegations. 

Listen to my podcast on this topic by clicking arrow link below:

3. Movie Criticism by News and Quasi-News

Online manipulation can be found on news and quasi-news sites as well. In January 2016, there was an Internet smear directed against a Holly- wood film based on a true-life story. The film is 13 Hours: The Secret Sol- diers of Benghazi. It tells the personal stories of three CIA operators who heroically helped fight off Islamic extremist attackers on September 11, 2012. This is a movie that supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, by necessity, must smear. Clinton was secretary of state during that nightโ€™s tragic events. Dozens of Americans in Benghazi had waited for an outside U.S. military rescue that never came. Obama was missing in action. The military blamed Hillaryโ€™s State Department for not giving the green light to launch a rescue option. Four Americans, including U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed. 

Order "Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism" by Sharyl Attkisson today at Harper Collins, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, IndieBound, Bookshop!

It will be difficult for the administration and Hillary Clinton interests to directly impeach the heroes in the film. So some seek to controversialize the movie itself. To try to keep people from seeing it. Convince the po- tential audience that itโ€™s boring. Tedious. A flop. And so, even before the movieโ€™s release, thereโ€™s a suspicious stampede of negative reviews. Whether intentional or not, they lead to an astroturf smear campaign. 

Vox, the left-wing website headed by a liberal blogger named Ezra Klein, pans 13 Hours in an extensive blog based solely on the trailer, if you can believe it, not the actual film. 

โ€œEven the trailer for Michael Bayโ€™s Benghazi movie is patronizing and dishonest,โ€ writes Voxโ€™s Max Fisher. He then goes on to incorrectly portray as a โ€œmythโ€ the idea that military rescuers were prevented from quickly helping. 

On the website Deadline Hollywood, Anthony Dโ€™Alessandro claims that 13 Hours opened โ€œlower than expected.โ€ Gary Susman of Moviefone claims it โ€œstruck out at the box office.โ€ The Hill agrees in a blog post titled โ€œBenghazi Film Flops at the Box Office.โ€ Salonโ€™s hit job is titled โ€œAudiences Reject โ€˜13 Hoursโ€™: Big Blow for the Rightโ€™s Desperate Quest for Clintonโ€™s Benghazi Smoking Gunโ€”Itโ€™s Just Not There.โ€ (Yes, thatโ€™s the actual headline.) Alyssa Rosenberg, a left-wing culture blogger for the Washington Post, portrays 13 Hours as โ€œboringโ€ and sprinkles her review with tried-and-true astroturf language such as โ€œconspiracy theoriesโ€ and โ€œobsessed,โ€ suggesting sheโ€™s spreading propaganda. Flavorwire, too, claims the film โ€œtanked.โ€ 

Washington Post gossip blogger Erik Wemple also advances the nar- rative of 13 Hours as a conservative movieโ€”apparently hoping the label will discourage viewers from wanting to see it, or at least from admitting publicly how much they like it. Proving the effectiveness of Media Mattersโ€™ nonpartisan veneer, Wemple even quotes Media Matters in his blog without disclosing its conflict of interest: itโ€™s a liberal smear group tied to Hillary Clinton. 

4. Personal Smear Campaigns

In October 2016, Scott Adams, creator of the office humor comic strip Dilbert, wrote a very serious blog post titled โ€œThe Week I Became a Target.โ€ In it, he claimed heโ€™d been targeted by Hillary Clinton interests because of his support for Donald Trump. The campaign against him employed classic facets of astroturf, including attacks against him on social media, in the news, and even on a book review site. 

โ€œThis weekend I got โ€˜shadowbannedโ€™ on Twitter,โ€ Adams writes. โ€œIt lasted until my followers noticed and protested. Shadowbanning prevents my followers from seeing my tweets and replies, but in a way that is not obvious until you do some digging. Why did I get shadowbanned? Beats me. But it was probably because I asked people to tweet me examples of Clinton supporters being violent against peaceful Trump supporters in public. I got a lot of them. It was chilling.โ€ 

Adams reveals that the week before his โ€œshadowban,โ€ his Twitter feed โ€œwas invaded by an army of Clinton trolls leaving sarcastic insults and not much else on my feed. There was an obvious similarity to them, meaning it was organized.โ€ At around the same time, coincidentally, liberal website Slate published a hit piece on Adams. โ€œIt was so lame that I retweeted it myself,โ€ he says. โ€œThe timing of the hit piece might be a coincidence, but I stopped believing in coincidences this year.โ€ 

Adams mentioned two more โ€œcoincidencesโ€ in his blog. The one and only speaking engagement heโ€™d booked for 2017 was suddenly canceled, the host citing a desire to โ€œgo in a different direction.โ€ Then people began posting negative reviews of one of his books on Amazon. 

โ€œI wouldnโ€™t want to buy anything from an author who feels heโ€™s too rich and gets taxed too much,โ€ writes one of the reviewers. Another adds, โ€œAdams thinks heโ€™s the smartest guy in the room. SPOILER: He isnโ€™t. Not by a long shot. Adams also believes he pays too much in taxes. And Donald Trump is a genius. Save your money and save Scott Adams the grief of paying more taxes.โ€ 

5. Op-eds for Hire

If you think thereโ€™s more transparency over at the op-ed pages of major news publications, then you havenโ€™t been paying attention. 

โ€œI write op-eds in the name of other people,โ€ a noted player in the field confesses to me. โ€œIโ€™m advocating for large clients. Communicating some- body elseโ€™s idea. Iโ€™ve written five of them in four days on different topics I know little about.โ€ 

His signature is never at the bottom of his work; itโ€™s always somebody elseโ€™s. Someone whoโ€™s paid for use of their name. Maybe a university doctor, physician, or economist. A current or retired public notable. Itโ€™s like money laundering, only instead of hiding the origin of ill-gotten gains, it masks the source of paid opinions. The ghostwriter never gets credit. He gets a paycheck. 

Another player who dabbles in this business is a trial lawyer and Democrat activist. 

โ€œI get letters published in newspapers all the time for my clients. And you know what? No newspaper editor ever asks if the client really wrote it,โ€ he tells me incredulously. โ€œCan you believe that? They donโ€™t even ask.โ€ 

An internal memo written by the Clinton super PAC Correct The Record boasts that between May 15, 2015, and December 1, 2015, it โ€œhelped write and place 36 op-eds across the country in a number of publications including Politico, Times Union, Huffington Post, CNN, Washington Blade, and New Jerseyโ€™s Bergen Record.โ€ 

6. Comments for Hire

Comments on the Internet are also prime astroturf real estate. Paid interests disguised as ordinary people troll assigned topics, news sites, re- porters, blogs, and social media for the purpose of posting comments that spin and confuse. You already knew that. But thereโ€™s another comment arena thatโ€™s being manipulated under the noses of ordinary Americans: the Federal Register. 

The Federal Register is where federal agencies publish proposed regu- lations so the public can comment on them before theyโ€™re enacted. Itโ€™s a process required by a law called the Administrative Procedure Act. Agen- cies are supposed to respond to the public feedback. 

As I write this, Iโ€™m betting most of you have never submitted a single official comment about any of the millions of federal regulations enacted over the years. So who is filling up these comment sections? You guessed it: insiders and paid interests. Those who want to stop regulations or have them passed or amended in their favor. One player in the field tells me that he spends a great deal of time and effort filing comments on behalf of paid clients. 

โ€œI do a lot of work in beating back bad regulations by using the com- ment period, by driving comments into the government,โ€ he says. Itโ€™s effective and it doesnโ€™t cost a penny. 

As you can see, complacency in the media combined with incredibly powerful propaganda and publicity forces means the public sometimesย gets a lot of spin, and a little of the truth.

Order "Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism" by Sharyl Attkisson today at Harper Collins, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, IndieBound, Bookshop!

      
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About Sharyl Attkisson

Emmy-Award Winning Investigative Journalist, New York Times Best Selling Author, Host of Sinclair's Full Measure

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Tea says

    June 17, 2020 at 11:21 am

    Dear Sharyl Attkisson,
    Learning about these censorships and the paid ghost writers is excellent info to gain deeper insight about the news. You are doing fabulous work to help me open my eyes.

    Grateful for your efforts.

    Reply
  2. Lee Kent Hempfling says

    June 17, 2020 at 10:36 pm

    One more Sharyl:

    LUMEN DATABASE! Look it up! It is the Google copyright vigilante service. Google has been using it FOR YEARS to quietly block pages, sites, content from public search. You can have your skeletons hidden from view for the right price or favor. Arizona (yes THE STATE!) used it to block the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals orders about a specific appeals case. They were caught. Both by the plaintiffs and the court itself in its own internal investigation (on the docket.) When the case which is help up pending parallel criminal proceedings is finally released Google SHOULD be confiscated as a national security threat to the nation and Arizona Republican politicians should be in prison. While looking it up check the Postal Service, service where you can have any mail you want stolen and or read for you before delivery. That was caught by the court as well. Arizona is in deep.

    Reply
  3. Francis Pugh says

    June 18, 2020 at 10:55 am

    This was very informing, keep up the great work...

    Reply
  4. WarEagle82 says

    June 18, 2020 at 11:56 am

    Steps 4, 5 and 6 are obvious even down at the local newspaper levels. Some op-eds are nothing more than smear campaigns or designed to elicit comments to smear.

    Reply
  5. M Green says

    June 19, 2020 at 6:18 pm

    Sharyl needs to include a date of report underneath the title within the body of every news report that she makes, this one included.

    Reply

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