Countless observers have noted the obvious fact that the corporate media’s all-encompassing obsession with anti-Russia hysteria is partly just a shameless campaign to prevent change within the Democratic Party by blaming its loss on an outside enemy as opposed to the oligarch-coddling, corrupt disaster it nominated. While true, the strategy is far bigger than that.
It’s quite ironic that the one newspaper most hysterical in warning the American public about the dangers of “fake news,” has become the most prolific publisher of it. The most recent example, of course, relates to the entirely made up story that those dastardly Russians had hacked into the U.S. power grid through a Vermont utility. The paper’s source for the story? Anonymous government officials. Unsurprisingly, the entire thing was a fairytale.
After coming under attack, the alternative media successfully appropriated and reassigned the now ubiquitous term “fake news” to a variety of disingenuous mainstream media outlets. The corporate media is not too happy about this, and is doing what it does best (aside from cheerleading for war). It’s whining about it to its readers.
The current controversy is different. Many people in Washington are irate over Wikileaks — not because the email were untrue but because they proved what many had long suspected . . . that Washington is a highly corrupt place full of truly despicable people. For people who make their living on controlling media and information, it was akin to the barbarians breaching the walls of Rome. So the answer is to call for government regulation to combat what will be declared “fake” news or propaganda.
The European Commission looked into whether the tech giants were meeting a pledge to remove hate speech within 24 hours of it being reported.
Only 40% of reports of hate speech are being removed within a day, it found.
The pledge was made in May when the firms signed up to a “code of conduct” brokered by the Commission.
