WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived
January 5th, 2017Via: The Intercept:
In the past six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on how Russia is behind a massive explosion of “fake news,” the other on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a humiliating editor’s note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the story were fiction: The first note was posted a full two weeks later to the top of the original article; the other was buried the following day at the bottom.
The second story on the electric grid turned out to be far worse than I realized when I wrote about it on Saturday, when it became clear that there was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid” as the Post had claimed. In addition to the editor’s note, the Russia-hacked-our-electric-grid story now has a full-scale retraction in the form of a separate article admitting that “the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility” and there may not even have been malware at all on this laptop.
But while these debacles are embarrassing for the paper, they are also richly rewarding. That’s because journalists — including those at the Post — aggressively hype and promote the original, sensationalistic false stories, ensuring that they go viral, generating massive traffic for the Post (the paper’s executive editor, Marty Baron, recently boasted about how profitable the paper has become).
After spreading the falsehoods far and wide, raising fear levels and manipulating U.S. political discourse in the process (both Russia stories were widely hyped on cable news), journalists who spread the false claims subsequently note the retraction or corrections only in the most muted way possible, and often not at all. As a result, only a tiny fraction of people who were exposed to the original false story end up learning of the retractions.
Until I clicked through on this article and read around a bit on other sites, I hadn’t realized how much of a sh*t weasel Bezos is. Our family has been trending strongly toward online purchases over the last few years, many of them through Amazon, but as of today Amazon is out when I make the purchase decision.
With the “Russia Hacked Our Election” B.S. coming from Bezos’ Washington Post, it’s clear that both he and his recently purchased WaPo propaganda organ are part of the CIA/Neocon/Clinton(puppet) faction that is battling it out with the Trump/military/(less psychopathic) faction.
The following article lays out pretty well the kind of effort that has gone into the WaPo organ by Bezos and crew since he purchased it in 2013:
” The Post now has a growing team of 700 staff members, including an engineering team that nearly tripled over the past two years. Bezos says The Post’s engineering team rivals “any team in Silicon Valley.” ”
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-washington-post-changed-after-jeff-bezos-acquisition-2016-5/#bezos-initially-wasnt-sure-if-he-wanted-buy-the-post-but-after-a-couple-meetings-with-former-owner-don-graham-bezos-became-intrigued-1
The following link may not, on the surface, seem to be connected to this particular article/subject. But, it seems clear: the more evil and totalitarian a regime is that comes to world power, the less control over the abuse of techniques like parabiosis by the .001% will be possible.
“They” have been gathering genetic data on all of us for a long time. Is there a particular, hidden interest in our kid’s DNA?
“This is all very disturbing and not pleasant to consider by any means. The logical deduction does not lead to a good place. An industrial procurement system would have to be established cataloging the type of blood, it’s origin and vintage(age). We know that ethics are no boundary to the elite throughout history. Any rational person would have to ask themselves this question. How long before the appetites of the rich and powerful create a market for the blood of the young? If they haven’t already.”
https://gizadeathstar.com/2017/01/parabiosis-and-the-elite/
This is a simple, clearly-written explanation of our fractured deep state by the excellent writer/analyst, Charles Hugh Smith.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2017/01/trump-aims-to-cut-neocon-deep-state-off.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+google%2FRzFQ+%28oftwominds%29
I used to think of the Washington Post and the New York times as a single propaganda entity, but the Washington Post has clearly distinguished itself as the worst of the worst over the past several months.
Bezos is slime. Then he took CIA money for their cloud systems.
Sadly, I am highly dependent on Amazon commissions to survive. They could boot me from the U.S. affiliate program at anytime, as they have done in France and Germany. I hardly made any money from Amazon France, but German readers regularly used my Amazon affiliate links.
Certainly looks like someone’s having a meltdown behind the curtain.
@Kevin, how did Amazon France & Germany justify booting you from the affiliate program?
I wrote about the Amazon Germany thing here:
https://www.cryptogon.com/?p=36742
They said I violated their terms, but they wouldn’t give any other specifics.
I didn’t bother contacting Amazon France.
These moves seem more and more desperate. My impression is that WP knows their credibility is f*cked among anyone who logs back into their site, and has pulled out all the stops. Even Fox News is calling them out on running straight propaganda pieces.
I’m on the younger side, I somehow remember propaganda being more convincing in the past. This seems very thinly constructed, even for a rush job. Is that just me? They depend on the quality of their fiction, I’ve been convinced before, but this just seems joke-like from second 1.