CMC Politics of Journalism: Falsehood, Propaganda, and Fake News I

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Falsehood, Propaganda, and Fake News I

Fake Quotations: A Case Study of Unintentional (but Sloppy) Falsehood

Source material for the Oliver staff.

A remarkable coincidence of timing: a couple of days before we were to discuss fake quotations -- and while I was attending Stan Lee's L.A. Comic Con -- I had this Twitter exchange:

Good quotation, but not Lincoln: https://t.co/wOgtwQo4kf
— Jack Pitney (@jpitney) October 29, 2017

Thanks for the correction. Never knew that.
— @HamillHimself (@HamillHimself) October 29, 2017

Yes, that Hamill.

A couple of relevant sites:

The Blood Libel

Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Victoria Saker Woeste:

The propagandists behind the “Protocols” attributed extraordinary power to the media. A section titled “Control of the Press” “reveals” that Jews seek to control every aspect of the media to protect their new, worldwide government from attack or criticism. Through false stories and skewed analysis, the Jewish-controlled media would lead the masses to see the world not as it was, but as Jews wished it to be seen: “Our subjects will be convinced [of] the existence of full freedom of speech and so [will] give our agents an occasion to affirm that all organs which oppose us are empty babblers.”

Fake news, then, begins as Jewish infiltration of the legitimate media and transforms into complete domination: “Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control.”

The first American to put the “Protocols” before a mass audience was Henry Ford. Long before the “Protocols” reached America, Ford had adopted the belief that Jews had started World War I in order to profiteer from it. Further, he thought he could best spread the word about outsize Jewish influence on world affairs if he had his own newspaper with which to reach the American people directly. So he started the Dearborn Independent.

Like many anti-Semites, Ford did not need to be persuaded that Jews controlled the media. The man who invented mass production for cars knew that the best way to market his ideas was to control how they were distributed. He used the Independent, a paper that derived its credibility from Ford’s sterling reputation, to weave conspiratorial theories about Jewish control of nearly every aspect of American politics and society.

Still around -- Alex Jones's less-than-full-throated reaction

Fake News and War

Fake 1897 newsreel