By Greg MillerOct. 26, 2020 , 1:25 PM

It started with a tweet from a conservative media personality, accompanied by photos, claiming that more than 1000 mail-in ballots had been discovered in a dumpster in Sonoma county in California. Within hours on the morning of 25 September, a popular far-right news website ran the photos with an exclusive story suggesting thousands of uncounted ballots had been dumped by the county and workers had tried to cover it up.

In fact, according to Sonoma county officals, the photos showed empty envelopes from the 2018 election that had been gathered for recycling. Ballots for this years general election had not yet been mailed. Even so, within a single day, more than 25,000 Twitter users had shared a version of the false ballot-dumping story, including Donald Trump Jr., who has 5.7 million followers.

This election season, understanding how misinformationand intentionally propagated disinformationspreads has become a major goal of some social scientists. They are using a variety of approaches, including ethnographic research and quantitative analyses of internet-based social networks, to investigate where election disinformation originates, who spreads it, and how many people see it. Some are helping media firms figure out ways to block it, while others are probing how it might influence voting patterns.

The stakes are high, researchers say. This narrative that youre not going to be able to trust the election results is really problematic, says Kate Starbird, a crisis informatics researcher at the University of Washingtons Center for an Informed Public. If you cant trust your elections, then Im not sure democracy can work.

In 2016, Russian operatives played a major role in spreading disinformation on social media in an attempt to sow discord and influence the U.S. presidential election. Foreign actors continue to interfere. But researchers say the bulk of disinformation about this years election has originated with right-wing domestic groups, attempting to create doubt about the integrity of the election in general, and about mail-in voting in particular. An analysis by the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a multi-institution collaboration, showed that the false story about the Sonoma ballots was spread largely by U.S.-based websites and individuals with large, densely interconnected social media networks. Theyre just sort of wired to spread these misleading narratives, says Starbird, who is an EIP collaborator.

Much of the election disinformation EIP has tracked so far originates in conspiratorial corners of the right-wing media ecosystem. What were seeing right now are essentially seeds being planted, dozens of seeds each day, of false stories, says Emerson Brooking, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab, which is part of EIP. Theyre all being planted such that they could be cited and reactivated after the election by groups attempting to delegitimize the result by claiming the vote was unfair or manipulated.

So far, most of the disinformation EIP has documented focuses on election integrity. But as Election Day draws near, Starbird and Brookingexpect to see more attempts to create confusion about voting procedures and attempts to suppress turnoutby raising fears about violence at polling places, for example.

Election deception can take various forms on social media. Joan Donovan, research director of Harvard Universitys Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, has been doing digital detective work on Facebook groups targeting Latinos with proPresident Donald Trump messages that appear to be run by non-Latinos who have assumed fake identities. These groups coordinate their campaigns and recruit participants on public message boards or chat apps, allowing researchers to observe their operations; the postings also provide clues the researchers can follow to investigate who the members are and what motivates them.

Purveyors of disinformation have become expert at exploiting the dynamic between social and mainstream media, researchers say. Right-wing conspiracy groups like QAnonwhich promotes a false narrative that a cabal of cannibalistic, Satan-worshiping pedophiles are trying to bring down Trumphave learned how to create content and trade up the chain of social media users and hyperpartisan websites with increasingly large followings, Donovan says. When the falsehoods start to get traction, mainstream media outlets often feel compelled to debunk them, which can end up further extending the storys reach. Several stories that had been circulating in QAnon networks got mainstream coverage around the time of the first presidential debate, for example, including unfounded claims that former Vice President Joe Biden might take performance-enhancing drugs or cheat by wearing an earpiece during the debate. What were seeing is that the ways in which news media traditionally operate is now being turned into a vulnerability, Donovan says.

Not all election disinformation is coming from the bottom up, however. Yochai Benkler, co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Societyat Harvard, and colleagues recently examined how claims of potential fraud associated with mail-in ballots entered public discourse. The researchers analyzed more than 55,000 online news stories, 5 million tweets, and 75,000 posts on public Facebook pages between March and August. They found that most spikes in media coverage and social media activity on the topic were driven by Trump himselfeither through his own hyperactive Twitter account, press briefings, or appearances on the Fox TV network. Donald Trump has perfected the art of harnessing mass media to disseminate and reinforce his disinformation campaign, the researchers write in a preprint posted earlier this month.

EIP is working with social media companies to help them refine and clarify their policies so they can react more quickly to disinformation. Several companies have taken recent steps to flag or remove content, or make it harder to sharesteps experts say are welcome, if long overdue. (Some platforms are also trying to nudge users toward better habits, as with Twitters recent experiment with prompts that appear when someone tries to share a link to an article they havent opened, encouraging them to read it first before sharing.)

The impact of disinformation on the election wont be easy to measure. Some clues, however, might come from a research collaboration with Facebook aimed at studying the platforms impact on this years election. The company has given 17 academic researchers access to data on the Facebook activity of a large number of users whove consented to be involved. (Facebook expects between 200,000 and 400,000 users to volunteer.) Participants agree to answer surveys and, in some cases, go off Facebook for a period of time before the election to help researchers investigate the effects Facebook use on political attitudes and behavior.

Among other things, the Facebook users will be asked at different times to rate their confidence in government, the police, large corporations, and the scientific community. Were able to look at things like changes in attitudes and whether people participated in the election and link it to their experiences on Facebook and Instagram, including exposure to election disinformation, says Joshua Tucker, one of the projects coordinators and a professor of politics and co-director of New York Universitys Center for Social Media and Politics.

Some evidence suggests the impacts might not be as great as feared, says Deen Freelon, a political communication researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Theres a long history of research, for example, showing that political ads only have marginal influence on voters. And more recent studies have suggested misinformation did not have a major effect on the 2016 election. A study published in Science in 2019 found that 80% of exposure to fake news was concentrated within just 1% of Twitter users. A survey study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found no evidence that that people who engaged with Russian troll accounts on Twitter exhibited any substantial changes in political attitudes or behavior.

Freelon, who was a co-author on the PNAS paper and is also a member of the Facebook collaboration, says hes more worried about second order effects of disinformation on our culture, such as the general sense of paranoia and distrust it creates. When people look at social media and cant figure out whats true and whats not, it degrades the overall informational quality of our political conversations, he says. It inserts doubt into a process that really shouldnt have any.

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As U.S. election nears, researchers are following the trail of fake news - Science Magazine

As journalists assembled for a photo op, setting up cameras, Trump quipped: "Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn't it? You don't have this problem in Russia, but we do."

"We also have, it's the same," Putin replied.

Meanwhile, some of those same leaders have greenlit the deliberate spread of real disinformation -- US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia, for example, had used false news to interfere in the 2016 election.

"There is no question that the fact that the President of the United States is using this term to attack independent media gives an element of license to other politicians elsewhere."

For experts like Jankowicz, who have closely followed the President's war on facts and the undemocratic behavior they inspire, the potential coup de grace could be yet to come: After November, any suggestion that the US election results are phony would have a devastating effect -- and not just in America.

At a time when authoritarians are working to stamp out domestic dissent and roll back fundamental rights, undermining elections at the heart of the world's beacon of democracy sets a dangerous precedent -- one likely to be embraced by other leaders trying to maintain their grip on power.

Trump was, however, the first US President to deploy it against his opponents. And over the last four years, he has brought the phrase into the mainstream, popularizing it as a smear for unfavorable, but factual coverage.

This has given cover and conferred legitimacy to other politicians hoping to do the same. "Fake news" has been invoked by dozens of leaders, governments and state media around the world, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Polish President Andrzej Duda, former Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis, Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom Liu Xiaoming and former Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Razak, just to name a few.

"It [fake news rhetoric] has emboldened authoritarians, who are capable of taking even more brutal action against domestic opponents than President Trump can in the US."

"There is no question that the fact that the President of the United States is using this term to attack independent media gives an element of license to other politicians elsewhere, including some authoritarian leaders to dress up their own attacks on independent media and point to the example of the US," said Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Patrcia Campos Mello, who has been harassed for her reporting on alleged corruption in Brazil, told Pence that President Jair Bolsonaro had mirrored Trump's rhetoric and attacks on the press, even canceling the government's subscription to her publication, Folha de S.Paulo, after the US President did the same to The New York Times and The Washington Post newspapers. Other reporters at the event also flagged the worrying rise in "fake news" legislation, used to target critical media.

"It [fake news rhetoric] has emboldened authoritarians, who are capable of taking even more brutal action against domestic opponents than President Trump can in the US," said Allie Funk, a senior research analyst for technology and democracy at Freedom House, pointing to an escalation of arrests and violence.

Trump's promotion of the phrase "fake news" will have lasting implications for democracy around the world, say academics, press freedom advocates and policymakers -- not least because the global laws enacted in the wake of his rhetoric will be difficult to overturn.

"It's been almost four years of equating journalists with fake news. And we've seen that taken up by countries and leaders around the world, from the obvious ones like China and Russia, Egypt, which need no excuse for their press freedom crackdowns but are nonetheless happy to have the cover of the United States doing the same, through to Hungary, Poland, across Europe and in Latin America," said Courtney C. Radsch, CPJ's advocacy director.

"I doubt that's going to somehow dissolve once you have a new administration in place. I just don't see the genie being put back in the bottle."

The timeless problem of powerful people trying to mislead the public has been compounded by social media platforms, which allow demonstrably false information to be shared to very large audiences with limited regulation or oversight. The content moderation policies that do exist are often applied unequally -- politicians' posts that break the rules and misleading political advertisements are rarely removed, because they are considered to be in the public interest. Addressing that reality requires more transparency on the part of the platforms -- specifically, revealing how their algorithms work -- as well as political will to improve the online information ecosystem and hold tech companies, which are almost entirely headquartered in America, to account.

"Never before has a leader in the highest office in one of the world's most powerful, if not the most powerful, democracies, taken the hammer himself, to start breaking down the very principles that the country once was proud to defend."

To date, however, efforts in the US to police the platforms have been hindered by a belief that any regulation would impinge on the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. Marietje Schaake, international policy director at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center, says that framing ignores the way that data collection, algorithmic amplification, artificial intelligence, curation and virality influences the way speech travels online -- including hate speech, conspiracy theories and propaganda. And that can have a perilous impact on public discourse.

Facebook and Twitter have begun to add fact-checks and warning labels to misleading or false posts from politicians, and, in some cases, are taking them down altogether. But a narrow focus on factually incorrect content ignores what is possibly more dangerous -- rhetoric that, over time, undermines faith in democracy itself, says Deborah Brown, senior researcher and advocate on digital rights at Human Rights Watch. "They're looking at information that could mislead voters about when or where the poll is taking place, or specific charges that can be proven untrue. But I think what we've seen with Trump's strategy is he's calling into question the entire legitimacy of the process," she said.

So what happens, for example, if the US President does take to Twitter on election night and calls the results "fake"?

Casting doubt over any adverse outcome is a tactic that other foreign leaders have deployed for decades, but it would be unprecedented for a sitting President of the United States. "Never before has a leader in the highest office in one of the world's most powerful, if not the most powerful, democracies, taken the hammer himself, to start breaking down the very principles that the country once was proud to defend," said Schaake, whose research focuses on disinformation, digital democracy and election security.

"No matter who wins. I think it's also going to be very hard to repair, if it's even possible."

The rest is here:

No matter who wins the US election, the world's 'fake news' problem is here to stay - CNN

ANKARA

While the scourge of fake news is blamed for people worldwide making unwise choices, when it comes to COVID-19, the stakes for personal health could be truly life threatening.

But according to a recent study, limited exposure to misinformation may not be enough to achieve behavioral change.

Recent years have seen an enormous quantity of misinformation circulating via social media, including a virtual tidal wave infodemic of false reports about the coronavirus pandemic.

Public health officials have feared that such fake news could dissuade people from widely accepted health measures such as wearing masks or even push them to refuse to take a vaccine.

Researchers from Ireland wanted to test whether brief one-time exposure to online misinformation is actually as harmful to public health as some might suppose.

They exposed the studys 3,746 participants to fabricated news stories saying, for example, that certain foods might help protect against COVID-19, or that an vaccine in the pipeline might not be safe.

Over half of the participants were well-educated, with 2,395 participants (64%) having earned at least an undergraduate degree.

"Surprisingly, what we observed is that behavioral effects of one-off fake news exposure might be weaker than previously assumed," Ciara Greene, a professor of psychology at University College Dublin and one of the studys co-authors, told Anadolu Agency.

The study also examined whether providing a warning about fake news might reduce susceptibility a measure media critics might be interested in but, perhaps surprisingly, found that such warnings had no effects.

It suggested that if fake news does affect public behavior on matters of health, then generic warnings used by governments and social media organizations might be effective in combating this, or perhaps not.

Fast falsehoods

According to Greene, most of the research on fake news tends to just focus on targeted fact-checking, which aims to debunk the contents of specific stories.

Critics talk a great deal about how top platforms like Facebook and Twitter can protect people from misinformation and what governments can do about it, she noted.

"Yet they cannot warn all of us since there has been lots of misinformation out there," she added.

"By the time someone's already been exposed to something, it's kind of too late to come around and say, oh not that's not right," she explained.

Or, to quote the well-known saying: A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

This is the reason why, Greene suggested, governments should warn people in advance, giving them a kind of toolkit to help ensure that they are not influenced by fake news in the first place.

There are already some measures in place trying to make people think more critically about fake news, she said, but the people who sign up for such measures are unlikely to be the sort to be fooled by fake news, but rather people who think more critically anyway.

Such measures are maybe not getting to who needs it," she said.

Misinformation warnings

The researchers also looked at the effectiveness of measures to fight fake news.

For example, generic warnings that governments tend to use, such as public service announcements on the radio or posters saying: "Hey look out for fake news, be media smart."

She said they employ different warnings ones framed positively, such as, "Be a good citizen," or ones framed negatively, such as, "This is dangerous, don't do it" and in some cases people get no warnings at all.

"We were very surprised because we expected the warnings to have a considerable effect on people's response to misinformation, and we found absolutely nothing, regardless of its framing," she said.

This finding, she stressed, runs contrary to research suggesting that general warnings about misinformation may be the best way of encouraging critical engagement with suspicious online material.

She said governments possibly cannot target every piece of misinformation out there, as this would be a losing battle.

It is actually very difficult for governments to change or direct citizens' behavior for the public good, she added.

"Think about the amount of money that is put into elections to try and make people change their behavior, even whether it's to vote for a particular candidate, or even just register to vote," she explained.

"So they need to train people to be more critical consumers of news, she said.

Such training should be included in schools, she suggested, with children taught about media literacy.

Given the results of the study, the researchers argued that real-world behavioral effects might result from multiple exposures to a story. Multiple sources might increase consumers faith in a story, and thus influence their subsequent behavior.

Indeed, demagogues have long employed the technique of repeating a falsehood again and again to break down resistance and finally win over listeners.

What are the factors that will actually lead to someone changing their behavior as a result of exposure to fake news?

The new research provides one important piece of the puzzle, but in order to answer the question more fully, more research on the issue needs to be done for the good of both governments and the public.

Read more:

A small dose of fake news: The mouse that roared? - Anadolu Agency

At this point, most of us know the drill when it comes to COVID-19: proper hand hygiene, mask wearing and social distancing.

But does setting fire to cell towers make your list? Probably not. A conspiracy theory linking 5G mobile technology to the COVID-19 outbreak has ignited fears worldwide, prompting just this response from a few individuals in Qubec, who set ablaze seven mobile towers.

Read more: Cell tower vandals and re-open protestors why some people believe in coronavirus conspiracies

Although such destructive responses are rare, thousands of digital consumers have absorbed aspects of this falsehood, pushing fringe beliefs into the mainstream despite refutations from the World Health Organization and multiple agencies in Canada and the United States. What started as a conspiracy turned into a real crisis for the people who immediately believed what theyd heard.

My research focuses on critical media studies and ideological representations in news and popular culture. I regularly offer workshops to schools and community groups that engage the public in contemporary media literacy issues. My book, Wont Get Fooled Again: A Graphic Guide To Fake News, helps readers identify the underlying purpose of the messages they receive and learn how to do basic research before accepting the validity of whats being presented to them.

Fake news is an increasingly pressing problem. In fact, a 2019 poll found 90 per cent of Canadians reported falling for false information online.

As consumers, we need to learn how to filter content and become our own educators, editors and fact-checkers to ensure the information we act upon is trustworthy. In a constantly changing informational and political environment, its no wonder we often struggle to separate fact from fiction.

Research indicates people create misinformation for two primary reasons: money and ideology.

Articles, videos and other forms of content can generate large amounts of money for the websites that host these pieces. Most of their income comes from clicks on advertisements, so the more people who visit their sites, the better chances they have of boosting ad revenue. This feedback loop has led many publishers to lean on false information to drive traffic.

The threshold for making believable fake news has fallen as well. A conspiracy theorist, for example, can create a web page using a professional template with high-quality photos in just a few clicks. Once the content has been added, sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms requires even less effort.

These misinformation and fake-news campaigns amplify and circulate through false digital accounts using automated programs known as bots that use certain keywords to influence and impact conversations among like-minded clusters of people. The results can foment discord on hot-button Canadian policy issues like immigration and refugees possibly disrupting election outcomes.

Canadians are expressing anxiety about the social impact of fake news, with 70 per cent fearing it could affect the outcome of a federal election. The Pew Research Center warns that fake news may even influence the core functions of the democratic system and contribute to truth decay.

Dubious and inflammatory content can undermine the quality of public debate, promote misconceptions, foster greater hostility toward political opponents and corrode trust in government and journalism.

The effects of misinformation have been evident throughout the COVID-19 epidemic, with many citizens confused as to whether a mask will decrease the chances of spreading the infection. Similar tactics are being levelled against Black Lives Matter protesters, such as labelling them all as rioters when videos and photos show most behaving peacefully.

Conspiracy theories about the Chinese virus, amplified by politicians in Canada and the U.S., have fanned the flames of anti-Asian sentiments following the spread of COVID-19. Data from law enforcement and Chinese-Canadian groups has shown an increase in anti-Asian hate incidents in Canada since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read more: Anti-Asian racism during coronavirus: How the language of disease produces hate and violence

Aside from a few social media platforms that identify misleading content and provide a brief explanation, most information online or in print can appear factual. So how can we figure out which sources to trust?

As a sociologist who focuses on critical media studies, I formed focus groups and collected input from my students to create a resources to guide readers through identifying fake news. While regulation and legislation are part of the solution, experts agree we must take swift action to teach students how to seek verification before acting on fake news.

In my findings, students identified several reasons why media outlets post or re-publish fake news, including making mistakes, being short-staffed, not fact-checking and actively seeking greater viewership by posting fake news.

The students pointed to holistic media literacy and critical thinking training as the best responses. This finding runs counter to the tactics currently used by publishers and tech companies to label or fact-check disputed news.

One student summarized this mindset best: As citizens and consumers, we have a responsibility to be critical. Dont accept stories blindly. Hold those in power responsible for their actions!

Getting multiple perspectives is a great way to expand our digest of viewpoints. Once we can see a story from more than one angle, separating truth from falsehood becomes much simpler.

At this point, I transitioned from recording perceptions of fake news to determining how to identify it. Providing students with information about the nature and agendas of fake news, in an immersive format, seemed to be a key step in engaging and cultivating their critical literacy capabilities. Information delivery was a key consideration.

Researchers have shown graphic narratives can accelerate cognition by focusing the readers attention on crucial information. Images clarify complex content, especially for visual learners. Comic books require readers to create meaning using multiple factors that helps develop a complex, multi-modal literacy.

A major goal of my book involves unpacking the motivations behind the news we consume. Consider why a particular person was interviewed: Who do they represent? What do they want us to believe? Is another point of view missing?

Wont Get Fooled Again: A Graphic Guide to Fake News is the culmination of my research and the insights drawn from media literacy scholarship. This guide helps readers understand what fake news is, where it comes from, and how to check its accuracy.

If theres one habit my students and I hope everyone will develop, its this: pause before sharing news on social media. Double-check anything that immediately sparks anger or frustration and, remember, fake news creators want a reaction, not thoughtful reflection.

More:

Comics can teach readers how to identify fake news - The Conversation CA

Fears that foreign political consultants and fringe parties would turn Facebook followers and fake news into votes in the election proved unfounded. The major parties mostly ran a clean game online too. So is misinformation in political messages really something to worry about?

Dr Mona Krewel Photo: RNZ Mediawatch

At the last election in 2017 worries about the political impact of misinformation were only beginning to emerge here as people tried to make sense of the role it played in the UKs Brexit Vote and the 2016 US election.

In subsequent elections in France and Australia and elsewhere, fake stuff and degrees of misinformation on social media became part of the campaign strategy even from established political parties.

I dont want New Zealand to fall into the trap of the negative fake news style campaigns that have taken place overseas in recent years, Labour Party leader Jacinda Ardern said in January.

But political parties here - including hers - had to be prompted to sign up for the Facebook transparency tool which reveals how much parties spend on specific online ads, how often and who they target with those ads. (Labour, the Greens and ACT signed up before Facebook made it compulsory in mid June.)

As the election drew closer, the so-called Bad Boys of Brexit claimed they had done a deal with NZ First to deliver Winston on steroids via social media.The National Party was putting out misleading memes on Facebook and Twitter and statistically-unsound graphics,some of which were deemed merely mischievous rather than misleading by the advertising watchdog.

Billy Te Kahika Jr seized on Covid-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories in his bid to build support for his new political movement - later joined by former Botany MP Jami-Lee Ross and his Advance NZ party. Just two days from the end of polling Facebook removed Advance NZ's page for "repeated" violations of its misinformation policy.

Co-leader Billy Te Kahika Jr said he was "horrified beyond belief" at being de-platformed - while others asked what took Facebook so long to enforce its own long-standing terms and conditions.

But last weekend it became clear they had converted only a fraction of their Facebook following into votes.

Do we really need to fear political fake news disrupting our democracy?

Victoria University of Wellington Professor Jack Vowles told a university podcast early in the election campaign social media messages were definitely reaching more potential voters.

He said 3 percent of people surveyed received political ads on social media in 2011. By the 2017 elections that was up to 12 percent. And another thing which means we ought to pay attention to parties social media election messages: were all paying for a lot of them.

It is an effective means of political communication now for parties and we've seen them transfer the resources they use to campaign from television to social media," he said.

One of several National Party online ads featuring statiscaly exaggerated graphic. Photo: screenshot

The New Zealand Social Media Study (NZSMS), led by Dr Mona Krewel and Professor Jack Vowles from Victoria University of Wellingtons Political Science department, scrutinised thousands of social media posts from political parties during the final four weeks of the campaign.

Its part of the Digital Election Campaigning Worldwide project which analyses elections around the globe. In time it will reveal whether our political players are as prone to political misinformation as others.

Dr Krewel told Mediawatch the study found New Zealands parties and their leaders overall ran positive messages during the campaign.

Judith Collins and also the National Party have been more negative than Labour. However, this is normal, as challenger parties ... they use all forms of communication to level the playing field.

They not only post more, but also show a higher incidence of negativity and the traditional media pick up on that, she said.

For the same reason, the study found minor parties and their leaders have also been more negative than the major parties - and they are also more dependent on media attention.

But Dr Krewel said the amount of fake news and half-truths in the campaigns was pretty low. Several parties did not post any fake news at all - and most posts with misinformation were half-truths.

National Party leader Judith Collins was criticised for posting a selective soundbite of Jacinda Ardern from the first live leaders TV debate. But Dr Krewel noted the party leaders were far less likely to post fake news and half-truths themselves.

That was generally left to parties online accounts - presumably to minimise the risk of blowback for the individuals.

During the 2017 general election campaign, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received only 16 complaints about advertising with false content.

But with 10 days to go before the 2020 election, Newsroom.co.nz reported it had received 80 - and even some Advance NZ ads were still circulating even after they had been deemed misleading by the regulator.

The news media focused on Advance NZ and Billy Te Kahika Jr for online misinformation.

Talk to the hand - Newshub's political editor Tova O'Brien accuses Advance NZ leader Jami-Lee Ross of "peddling misinformation" during the election campaign. Photo: screenshot / Newshub Nation

The media were right to focus on them, Dr Krewel told Mediawatch.

She said the worst offender was Advance NZ (half-truths: 31 percent, fake news: 6 percent) and the New Conservatives (half-truths: 16 percent, fake news: 3.7 percent).

Our data also shows that most of the misinformation was around Covid-19 and if this misinformation becomes widely spread, it has the potential to become life-threatening, she said.

News media have upped the game a with fact-checking during this campaign, such as Stuffs The Whole Truth and Australian news agency AAP factchecks reported by other media.

Dr Krewel said the higher the trust in the established media, the better are the chances that this fact-checking has a positive effect.

I think it is definitely very welcome when the traditional media fulfills its role as watchdog and keeps a sharp eye on the parties in an election campaign. The politicians get wind of being fact-checked pretty soon and might fear reputational damages. In particular, the major parties wont risk too much reputational damage, she said.

Dr Krewel said some use traditional media criticism of their social media campaigns strategically.

Parties such as Advance New Zealand might care a lot less about this, as it is part of their rhetoric that the media elites want to silence them and that they are the ones who tell the truth, she said.

Regulatory authorities in all countries must understand how fast social media is and react faster to complaints, Dr Krewel said.

But she said she thinks in general the study shows that regulations around campaigning in New Zealand are working. Compared to some other countries, there are more ways to complain about fake news in New Zealand and - if its bad enough - stop it from being repeated.

The Advertising Standards Authority takes complaints about political party advertising. The Broadcasting Standards Authority, the New Zealand Media Council and the Electoral Commission also have a role.

However, this monitoring still has some limits: if a Facebook post is unpaid content, then it falls outside the brief of complaints about advertising. And it can take some time until misleading content is taken down and until then it is on display, said Dr Krewel.

Read more:

Should we fear fake news in our politics? - RNZ

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"The draft code released by DIGI for public consultation is a long way from the model that we proposed to address these important issues."

Under the proposed model, a tech company would agree to measures to address the ACMA's concerns, which are based on the risk of harm to a user, as well as how they will report back on their attempts to meet these measures.

But the draft code does not provide the specific measures. Instead, it outlines examples such as flagging or demoting content and stopping receiving revenue on ads based on disinformation.

The code defines disinformation as "inauthentic behaviour" for economic gain or that is designed to mislead and may cause harm. It does not include misleading ads, satire or clearly identified news and commentary.

Decisions on what measures need to be taken will be based on factors such as the severity of the post or article, who is involved in its creation, the speed at which it is disseminated and whether it is "maliciously motivated".

This could mean that posts or articles from anti-vaxxers or conspiracy theories that are not published with malice may not be removed or placed lower in a newsfeed.

The code also explicitly states companies will not have to remove content on the basis that it is misleading or false if it isn't unlawful, to balance removal of harmful content with rights of users to engage in free speech.

The companies can opt in or opt out of the code as they wish. It excludes articles sent on private messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

Ms O'Loughlin said the ACMA will meet the tech platforms later this week for further discussions. Consultations about the code are taking place until November 24.

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DIGI's code is the first voluntary proposal to be created by the tech giants. It also has been published at a crucial time for the tech giants, which are awaiting the imminent release of a finalised compulsory code that will make Facebook and Google pay news outlets for use of their content.

Separately, a report published by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last week found Australians were being "extensively tracked" online, with Google and Facebook the key recipients of the data.

The ACCC analysed the 1000 most popular websites in Australia and found Google's third party scripts on 80 per cent of the websites, while Facebook's were present on 40 per cent. Third party scripts can be embedded into websites to collect analytics or for advertising purposes.

The report also found that Google and Facebook had increased their dominance of the online advertising market to 81 per cent in 2019, up from 73 per cent in 2018.

"Based on information provided to the ACCC, for a typical $100 spent by advertisers ononline advertising in 2019, $53 went to Google, $28 to Facebook and $19 to all otherwebsites and ad tech," the Digital Platform Services interim report said.

ACCC chairman Rod Sims said the figures underscored the difficulty faced by news media businesses, in particular newspapers, in competing for a slice of the digital advertising pie.

"It's a difficult environment to be in if you're relying on online advertising with Google and Facebook growing so quickly," Mr Sims said.

Zoe Samios is a media and telecommunications reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Lisa Visentin is a federal political reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, covering education and communications.

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ACMA: Tech giants' code to handle fake news fails to meet expectations - Sydney Morning Herald

U.S. President Donald Trump blamed Thursdays global Twitter outage on a deliberate attempt by the company to protect Joe Biden, citing an obviously fake news story written in the style of The Onion.

Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread of Negative Biden News, read the headline on the Babylon Bee, a Christian satire site. The fake story claimed that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had smashed up his servers on Thursday to censor an unverified New York Post story about the Democratic nominee for president and his son, Hunter.

Twitter did limit the spread of the story on Thursday due to its policy around hacked materials. However, there is no evidence that the story had anything to do with the Twitter outage on Thursday afternoon.

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Wow, this has never been done in history, Trump tweeted Friday morning, along with a link to the Babylon Bee story. This includes his really bad interview last night. Why is Twitter doing this. Bringing more attention to Sleepy Joe & Big T.

Its unclear if Trump actually read the story, which starts with Dorsey and several weak-armed programmers struggling to smash all the computers at Twitter HQ, and ends with a bunch of robots attacking all the cis white males in sight. The article does not include anything about Bidens town hall event on Thursday, as Trump mentioned in his tweet.

Critics mocked Trump for seemingly believing some literally fake news a term he often uses for real news reports that he does not like.

Its satire, writer Dan Fagin wrote in response to Trumps tweet. Satire is the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose stupidity. It worked.

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The Bees website crashed multiple times on Friday as Trumps legions of followers and critics flocked to the site.

The Babylon Bee describes itself on Twitter as fake news you can trust, and its homepage is filled with satirical headlines such as Trump gets totally stoned in lively 7-hour interview with Joe Rogan, and Amazons NewLord of the Rings series to include bisexual transgender elf in wheelchair.

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The Babylon Bee is the worlds best satire site, totally inerrant in all its truth claims, the site says.

The Bee celebrated Trumps error by sharing a link to one of its stories from 2018.

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President Trump declares the Babylon Bee his most-trusted news source, the website tweeted.

The story was originally written as satire, though Trump provided evidence to support its claims on Friday.

Trump appeared to blame Twitter for his error Friday morning in a follow-up tweet.

Big T was not a reference to me, but rather to Big Tech, which should have been properly pointed out in Twitters Fake Trending Section! he wrote.

Trump has renewed his attacks in recent days on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects social media companies from being held responsible for what others publish on their platforms. Trump has been targeting Section 230 amid efforts by Twitter and Facebook to fact-check his false and misleading posts about mail-in ballots.

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Section 230 protects sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube from liability for posts made by their users, including Trump.

If platforms were not immune under the law, then they would not risk the legal liability that could come with hosting Donald Trumps lies, defamation, and threats, Kate Ruane, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Associated Press in May.

Trump has a well-documented history of promoting conspiracy theories and other misinformation around the coronavirus, far-left anarchists, mail-in voting, his crowd sizes and Barack Obamas birth certificate, among other things. He has also been reluctant to condemn extreme views.

On Thursday night, for example, he refused to denounce the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds him up as a warrior for God against so-called deep state pedophiles out to drink childrens blood.

I know nothing about QAnon, he claimed during the debate.

Trump made similar claims when asked about the group and its beliefs in August.

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I dont know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate, he said at the time. Ive heard these are people that love our country.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have banned the extremist movement from their platforms amid concern that it was encouraging real-world violence.

The U.S. presidential election is slated for Nov. 3.

2020 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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Trump duped by fake news story of Twitter going down to protect Biden - Global News

Two embarrassing episodes over the past 24 hours highlighted the depth of President Donald Trumps credibility crisis as time runs short for him to turn around his flailing reelection campaign.

From refusing to denounce an absurd, obviously false online conspiracy theory during a high-profile town hall on NBC to retweeting a satirical website as if its breaking news, its becoming increasingly difficult to tell if Trump can separate fact from fiction.

While Trump campaigns on misleading messages about the coronavirus (which he insists is going away despite rising case numbers) and the economy (which he says is strong even as hes poised to become the first president in modern history to oversee a net shrinkage in jobs), hes behaving online like that far-right family member weve all had to mute on Facebook. And he doesnt feel any shame about it.

At this late date, everyone, whether theyre on social media or not, understands that Trump isnt above lying. But an exchange during his NBC town hall with Savannah Guthrie showcased for viewers who arent on Twitter just how off the rails his posting has become.

Guthrie grilled Trump about a retweet he posted on Wednesday evening of a conspiracy theory promoted by a QAnon account. The tweet accused Biden of pulling strings to take out the group of Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden a theory refuted by the fact that every Navy SEAL involved in the bin Laden raid is in fact still alive.

Instead of even trying to defend himself, Trump suggested to Guthrie that because he read it on the internet it might be true, describing the conspiracy theory as an opinion of somebody and that was a retweet. Ill put it out there. People can decide for themselves. I dont take a position.

Its obviously reckless and irresponsible for the president to amplify incendiary conspiracy theories that are clearly false, not to mention defend QAnon, which he did during the same town hall. And in one of the more memorable moments of the evening, Guthrie hit back, admonishing Trump, Youre the president. Youre not someones crazy uncle who can retweet whatever.

Watch:

But if you thought Guthrie drawing blood on national TV would be enough to chasten Trump, he quickly demonstrated otherwise.

On Friday morning, Trump embarrassed himself for the second time within a day by retweeting an article from the satirical Babylon Bee website (the sites motto is Fake news you can trust) as part of a failed attack on Twitter and Hunter Biden.

Suffice it to say, Twitter did not shut down in order to suppress bad Hunter Biden news. But instead of admitting his error or even deleting the tweet, Trump followed up with another, clarifying that by Big T he wasnt referring to himself, but rather Big Tech.

Its unclear whether Trump has anybody in his orbit at this point whos willing to point out to him that hes tweeting out satire as though its breaking news. Its also possible he simply has no shame about amplifying egregious fake news if he thinks getting people to believe lies is in his self-interest.

Whatever the case, its clear that this presidents truth barometer is broken beyond repair. He has access to the best intelligence in the world, yet all too often hes liable to believe anything he reads on the internet so long as its useful for his political ends. And his fake news problem only seems to be getting worse.

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Trump fooled by satirical Babylon Bee article - Vox.com

People with poor numerical literacy are more likely to believe Covid-19 misinformation, according to a survey conducted in five countries.

Researchers at Cambridge University said the findings suggested improving peoples analytical skills could help turn the tide against an epidemic of fake news surrounding the health crisis.

Five national surveys reflecting national quotas for age and gender were conducted this year to evaluate susceptibility to coronavirus-related misinformation and its influence on key health-related behaviours.

The study found the most consistent predictor of decreased susceptibility to misinformation about Covid-19 was numerical literacy the ability to digest and apply quantitative information broadly.

People in Ireland, Spain, Mexico, the US and the UK took part in the study. Their numerical literacy levels were calculated on the basis of three different numeracy tests.

Participants were presented with nine statements about Covid-19, some false (for example, 5G networks may be making us more susceptible to the coronavirus) and some true (for instance, people with diabetes are at higher risk of complications from coronavirus).

Participants were also asked about their risk perception of Covid-19, what extent they complied with public health guidance and their likelihood of getting vaccinated if a vaccine were to become available.

Overall, higher susceptibility to fake news was associated with lower self-reported compliance with public health guidance for Covid-19, as well as peoples willingness to get vaccinated against the virus and recommend the vaccine to vulnerable family and friends.

Some scientists think that susceptibility to misinformation is related to political views, while others think it is linked to reasoning abilities, study author Dr Sander van der Linden explained.

My take is that both are relevant. And I was surprised to see numeracy playing such a strong role here it was one of the single most important predictors, he said. I like that finding in a sense because it gives me hope that theres a solution out there.

Another distinct factor linked to belief in Covid-19 fake news was age, the researchers found. Being older was associated with lower susceptibility to misinformation everywhere (except Mexico) inconsistent with prior research that typically found the opposite pattern, at least in the context of elections.

It could be that older people are less susceptible [to misinformation] but theyre still sharing it more, Linden said, adding that they may also be less inclined to endorse Covid-19 misinformation because there is an incentive to be accurate as the elderly are the biggest casualties of the disease.

The research, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, also found that people who were more receptive to misinformation viewed themselves as minorities and appeared resistant to voices in authority such as scientists and politicians.

Political conservatism was also linked to a slightly higher susceptibility to misinformation, the researchers found, but surprisingly, this link was not as strong in the US and UK as it was elsewhere.

Dr Emma ODwyer, a senior lecturer at Kingston University who was not involved in the study, wondered why the researchers had chosen these five countries to survey.

There are differences across the countries, she said. This paper doesnt provide an account at the country level for why these relationships are different.

The paper also does not give as much attention to how or why misinformation takes root in the first place, said Dominic Abrams, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent, who was not involved in the research.

Beyond individuals susceptibility there is the question of how and why some misleading sources can achieve an air of legitimacy.

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Poor numerical literacy linked to greater susceptibility to Covid-19 fake news - The Guardian

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Posted: Sunday, October 18, 2020 5:00 am

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Beware of Fake News On City Council Races Jeff RussellOdessa Odessa American

It appears that Kirk Edwards has become the CNN or MSNBC of Odessa when it comes to spreading fake news about our local city council races.

In his recent letter to the Editor, Mr. Edwards goes on a wide ranging rant about the Ector County Republican Party and other involved parties such as the Government Accountability Project. Mr. Edwards clear intent is to spread misinformation and mistruths about groups that are working to change the status quo in Odessa - a status quo that has greatly benefited the establishment over many years but which has come at the expense of the average hardworking, taxpaying Odessan.

He calls the Government Accountability Project a foreign group but in fact this group is led by Jaimie Tisdale, a 29 year resident of our city who owns the Wilsons Corner store at Pleasant Farms. A quick review of Jaimes Facebook page would clearly show her as the leader of this group and I applaud Jaimie for her relentless efforts to uncover waste and abuse in our local governments. Mr. Edwards clearly takes umbrage against any group other than his own group of insiders releasing information to the public or supporting any candidates that he deems unworthy.

Mr. Kirk then goes on to disparage our local Republican Party officials for their recent endorsements of local candidates which were carefully chosen and vetted by duly elected Republican Precinct Chairs for their work in the local party and for their adherence to core Republican values such as fiscal conservatism and a small and limited government. The duplicity of Mr. Edwards statements in this regard are surreal; he begins with accusing Republican leaders like Dick Saulsbury who make up the Ector County Republican Party Executive Committee as being part of an AOC Squad, while in the next breath he endorses and encourages Republicans to vote for JoAnn Davenport, who is an unabashed and vocal progressive Democrat running for city council.

Mr. Kirk claims that this imaginary squad has a nefarious agenda of being against economic development and infrastructure work which couldnt be further from the truth exhibited by the candidates that were endorsed by the Republican Party. Much in the same way that President Trump is continually attacked by the insiders who would seek to rule our country for their own benefit, these candidates are, at their core, Trump Republicans who understand that, as leaders, they must strive to meet the most needs of the most Odessans and not be beholden to narrow special interests like those represented by Mr. Edwards. It makes one wonder what Mr. Edwards will gain by promoting his block of big spending politicians?

My belief is that Odessa voters are smarter than to fall for a pack of lies and mistruths that insiders such as Kirk Edwards are promoting and that they will vote for solid Trump Republicans that will put voters needs ahead of the agenda of a small group of elites who desire to rule Odessa for their own benefit. My hope is that Mr. Edwards will leave the Fake News business to the real pros who constantly attack President Trump.

Posted in Letters To Editor on Sunday, October 18, 2020 5:00 am. | Tags: Letter To The Editor

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Beware of Fake News On City Council Races - Odessa American

(In paragraph eight, inserts dropped words)

CHICAGO, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Two weeks ago, Mark Schultz was getting ready to go to work at the tavern he owns in the Wisconsin city of Oshkosh when he started to feel sweaty, achy and chilled.

Within days, the 64-year-old was in an intensive care unit at a local hospital fighting for his life.

Schultz, his 45-year-old fiance and his 10-year-old son are three of the 41,000 Wisconsinites who have tested positive for the virus over the last two weeks, according to state health officials.

I want people to know this is real. This is not a hoax. Its not fake news like the president said, Schultz said.

Wisconsin has recently become an epicenter of the pandemic in the United States.

On Friday, the states department of health services reported grim records as daily COVID-19 cases reached 3,861 and the seven-day average of new confirmed cases topped 3,000 for the first time.

This virus is unbelievable what it does to people, he said during a phone interview with Reuters on Friday from his home, four days after getting out of the hospital. I literally thought I was taking my last breath. Its like someone has a foot on your chest.

Despite the surge in cases in Wisconsin, President Donald Trump plans on Saturday to make a campaign stop in Janesville as he seeks to make up for time lost during his own bout with the coronavirus earlier this month.

Wear a mask, Schultz said to those who plan to attend. There is so many unknowns with this thing. That is the scary part.

For a second day in a row, the United States reported more than 60,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday as infections spike in all regions of the country, according to a Reuters analysis.

The United States reported over 63,000 new cases on Thursday and over 60,000 new cases on Wednesday, a level on back-to-back days not seen since late July and as total U.S. cases surpassed 8 million.

The surge in cases comes in the final weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential election. Trump has continued to minimize the threat to public health posed by the virus that has killed more than 217,000 Americans and 1 million globally.

The rise in U.S. cases is beginning to tax hospitals in some regions, with Wisconsin setting up a field hospital and reporting that in some areas more than 90% of hospital intensive care unit beds were filled as of Thursday.

The field hospital had yet to receive its first patient as of Friday morning, according to a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Administration.

Meanwhile in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott said on Friday the state was increasing medical personnel and supplies as well as personal protective equipment for hospitals in Amarillo, Lubbock and surrounding counties, which are seeing a rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Deaths nationally remain fairly steady at 700 per day, but health experts caution fatalities are a lagging indicator that rise weeks after a surge in cases.

Deaths were already rising in several Midwest states over the past two weeks compared with the prior two-week period, including Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Reporting by Lisa Shumaker and Brendan OBrien in Chicago, additional reporting and writing by Maria Caspani in New York, editing by Cynthia Osterman

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REFILE-'Not fake news:' COVID-19 cases surge in Wisconsin ahead of Trump campaign rally - Reuters

A lot of people throw around the term fake news about any story that doesnt meet their ideology. But do you really know how to tell the difference between fake and the real thing?Separating fact from fiction can be difficult in the current politically-charged climate. You need to know how to tell if someone has a specific agenda to judge everything from what you repost to knowing how you want to vote.WLWT News 5 investigative reporter Todd Dykes shares a series of tips and tools that can help you spot the fake online.First, you need to be skeptical. That sounds like an easy tip, but with the flood of news articles, reposts and retweets currently clogging news feeds, it may be easier said than done.To avoid falling into traps, first ask yourself if an article backs up your own beliefs. No one wants to be the person who gets caught in an echo chamber. If a news stories verifies something youve always thought, then run a quick search with a few keywords to see if you can find an opposing viewpoint.Remember that popularity is not proof. Just because a tweet has been shared millions of times does not make it true. Likewise, a number of articles about the same subject does not always mean you can take it at face value. Several articles from reputable news sources that are all independently written almost always means you can trust the underlying facts. But if the articles you find are all from sites with a particular bias and all contain similar language, its possible one article has been reposted to several sites. Determining which news sites are reputable and independent can also be tough. Some things to look for include: Bios of authors that allow you to click through to see their backgrounds and other articles theyve written Multiple sources from various sides of the political spectrum Few if any uses of exclamation points or writing in all caps No conclusions from the author about the motives of a person in an articleWhen you read an article always check to see if it is labeled as opinion. Most reputable news sites will clearly label any opinion story.You should also be sure the site youre on -- or the story you see posted or tweeted -- is from an actual news website. A large number of websites specialize in satire or spoof stories. The more reputable among them will clearly identify that their websites are providing humor rather than news. But some need a closer examination to get to the truth.You also need to run any pictures or videos through your filters too. Both are easier than ever to fake. A few tips to help you: Check for consistent lighting. Look at surroundings to be sure they match the time and place a photo or video claims to represent. Look for the source of a photo to see if it says who took it and when. Ask yourself why its being sent to you now to understand the context of the message being conveyed. Know how to check for the origin of a photo.Several online tools are available to help you verify a photos origins:https://images.google.comwww.tineye.comhttps://yandex.com/imagesAre all quick and easy to use sites that allow you to track down a photos origin, where else its been used, and possibly the original photographer.The final tips are two of the most important points. First, remember that finding the truth is ultimately up to you. Finally, you need to work hard to avoid being part of the problem. If you see something you cant be certain is true dont share it.

A lot of people throw around the term fake news about any story that doesnt meet their ideology. But do you really know how to tell the difference between fake and the real thing?

Separating fact from fiction can be difficult in the current politically-charged climate. You need to know how to tell if someone has a specific agenda to judge everything from what you repost to knowing how you want to vote.

WLWT News 5 investigative reporter Todd Dykes shares a series of tips and tools that can help you spot the fake online.

First, you need to be skeptical. That sounds like an easy tip, but with the flood of news articles, reposts and retweets currently clogging news feeds, it may be easier said than done.

To avoid falling into traps, first ask yourself if an article backs up your own beliefs. No one wants to be the person who gets caught in an echo chamber. If a news stories verifies something youve always thought, then run a quick search with a few keywords to see if you can find an opposing viewpoint.

Remember that popularity is not proof. Just because a tweet has been shared millions of times does not make it true. Likewise, a number of articles about the same subject does not always mean you can take it at face value. Several articles from reputable news sources that are all independently written almost always means you can trust the underlying facts. But if the articles you find are all from sites with a particular bias and all contain similar language, its possible one article has been reposted to several sites.

Determining which news sites are reputable and independent can also be tough. Some things to look for include:

When you read an article always check to see if it is labeled as opinion. Most reputable news sites will clearly label any opinion story.

You should also be sure the site youre on -- or the story you see posted or tweeted -- is from an actual news website. A large number of websites specialize in satire or spoof stories. The more reputable among them will clearly identify that their websites are providing humor rather than news. But some need a closer examination to get to the truth.

You also need to run any pictures or videos through your filters too. Both are easier than ever to fake. A few tips to help you:

Several online tools are available to help you verify a photos origins:

Are all quick and easy to use sites that allow you to track down a photos origin, where else its been used, and possibly the original photographer.

The final tips are two of the most important points. First, remember that finding the truth is ultimately up to you. Finally, you need to work hard to avoid being part of the problem. If you see something you cant be certain is true dont share it.

See more here:

Spot the fake so you can focus on the facts - WLWT Cincinnati

Fake News and Conspiracy Theories in the Age of Trump, a talk by investigative journalist Michael R. Isikoff, will be offered via Zoom webinar Tuesday, Oct. 20 by Ripon College.

The talk will run from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. Registration is available at ripon.edu/fake-news.

A post-event recording will be available on YouTube at go.ripon.edu/p1a.

The event is sponsored by the Center for Politics and the People, with funding by the Menard Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovation at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Isikoff is an investigative journalist and chief investigative correspondent at Yahoo! News.

The moderators will be professor of communication Steve Martin, Ripon Class of 1996, and Henrik Schatzinger, associate professor of politics and government and co-director of the Center for Politics and People.

Isikoff will highlight the importance of a free press in a democracy. He also will address other topics and issues related to the media and the press during the Trump administration such as the idea of fake news and its impact on the election cycle.

Formerly, Isikoff was a national investigative correspondent for Newsweek and NBC, where he reported on politics and government scandals such as the abuse in Abu Ghraib and Bill Clintons involvement with Monica Lewinsky.

He also is the author of Uncovering Clinton: A Reporters Story and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, and the coauthor of Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putins War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.

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Investigative journalist will address 'fake news' in virtual talk - Ripon Commonwealth Press

Wow! Bombshell! Let me get this right. Trump pays $750 in taxes? The same amount a person making $20,000 a year pays?

I guess its OK to write off $70,000 in haircuts and $109,000 in silverware and linens, but he took away traveling expenses for those of us in the trades such as work clothes, lodging and anything used for work purposes when we need to travel to work to support our families.

Yes, that must be OK because, after all, his needs are more important than ours, right? How can he possibly be expected to be the outstanding citizen he is without getting $70,000 in haircuts and being able to write it off?

I know, I know, he says hes being smart by not paying taxes. Thats OK for him but for the rest of us it probably means prison time. Thats OK though, right Trump supporters? Double standards are acceptable for him but not us because, hey, its always the fake news and witch-hunts that are really the issue, right? Its never his fault and accountability is beneath him right? Hes never ever wrong, and they will support him no matter what he does because its always always fake news and witch hunts. Those evil Democrats are out to get him.

Its actually genius on his part. The perfect scapegoat, the media. Brilliant. Im sure there will be plenty of rebuttals defending him, there always are.

Don Morgan

Channahon

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The Trump tax bombshell | The Herald-News - The Herald-News

President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden will at times have their microphones cut during their next debate, the event's sponsors announced Monday.

When one of the two candidates is given a chance to provide a two-minute answer to each of the six debate topics, his opponent's microphone will be muted, the Commission on Presidential Debates said in a statement.

"It is the hope of the Commission that the candidates will be respectful of each other's time, which will advance civil discourse for the benefit of the viewing public," the statement said.

The final debate scheduled between Trump and Biden is set for Thursday at 9 p.m. ET in Nashville. It will be moderated by NBC News' Kristen Welker. It will run 90 minutes in length, with each of the six topics allotted 15 minutes.

The topics, selected by Welker, are:

The changes were implemented in the wake of the vicious and messy first debate in late September, during which Trump frequently interrupted the former vice president and at times argued with the moderator, Fox News' Chris Wallace.

The debate commission's statement Monday night said it "considered the opinion of many who expressed concern the debate fell short of expectations, depriving voters of the opportunity to be informed of the candidates' positions on the issues."

In order to allow the candidates to freely share their views in the final debate, the commission announced that "the only candidate whose microphone will be open during these two-minute periods is the candidate who has the floor under the rules."

"We realize, after discussions with both campaigns, that neither campaign may be totally satisfied with the measures announced today. One may think they go too far, and one may think they do not go far enough," the commission said in the statement.

"We are comfortable that these actions strike the right balance and that they are in the interest of the American people, for whom these debates are held."

The commission's statement noted that "both campaigns this week again reaffirmed their agreement to the two-minute, uninterrupted rule."

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien in a statement accused the commission of bias, but said the president "is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last minute rule changes."

Stepien's statement also signaled that Trump would bring up allegations against Biden's son, Hunter Biden, during the debate.

A spokesman for Biden's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The commission had originally scheduled three debates between the two presidential candidates. Trump had previously pushed for a fourth debate to be scheduled.

But the second debate was canceled after Trump refused to participate, following the commission's decision hold the event virtually, rather than in person. That move was made following Trump's diagnosis with the coronavirus and subsequent hospitalization.

The president and his campaign have aggressively criticized the debate commission and its chosen slate of moderators. Wallace, who had repeatedly admonished Trump during the debate to wait his turn before speaking, was attacked by the president and his surrogates.

The now-canned second debate was set to be moderated by C-SPAN's political editor, Steve Scully. Beforehand, Trump had accused Scully of political bias.

After the debate had already been scrapped, Scully was suspended by C-SPAN after he admitted to lying that his Twitter account had been "hacked." Scully had made the false claim after tweeting a message to former White House official-turned-critic Anthony Scaramucci, which had apparently been intended to be private.

On Saturday, Trump said of Welker in a tweet: "She's always been terrible & unfair, just like most of the Fake News reporters, but I'll still play the game."

Earlier Monday, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien shared a letter on Twitter urging the debate hosts to ensure that foreign policy would be the main focus, rather than the coronavirus, climate change or race in America.

-- CNBC's Amanda Macias contributed to this report.

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Trump and Biden will have mics muted for part of last presidential debate - CNBC

Alexander Heffner and Alan C. Miller, Opinion contributors Published 5:00 a.m. ET Sept. 13, 2020 | Updated 10:04 a.m. ET Sept. 14, 2020

Don't fall for misinformation on voting and candidates in 2020. Protect yourselves and democracy by verifying facts and breaking out of your bubbles.

In the 2016 presidential election, foreign and domestic disinformation flooded social media platforms, misled and misinformed Americans and sought to depress turnout, especially among historically marginalized young and Black voters. Memeswith false information were deliberately directed toward voters on Twitter and Facebook to deter people from voting.

Once again in 2020, disinformation about the election including the voting process has been spread widely and endangers our democracy. U.S. intelligence officials have issued warnings about ongoing tactics to hack Americans, manipulate the mediaand sow confusion about the campaign and election. President Donald Trump himself hassuggestedthat peoplevote twice, which is illegal, and has amplified electoral and QAnon conspiracies.

Thats why our organizations, the News Literacy Project and The Open Mind Legacy Project, are distributing public service announcements around the country this week to combat malicious fabrication, botsand online trolls that seek to mislead voters and suppress voting. These engaging and animated PSAs will seek to inoculate voters against viral deception about how and when they can vote and encourage them to be skeptical about the election information they encounter.

We fully expect the onslaught of disinformation to ramp up over these next weeks, including more pernicious and deliberate attempts to stymie voters and effectively deny them their franchise. Its essential to repel these efforts to dupe voters into believing that they can vote via text, social media, or telephone, that the election has been postponed or canceled, or that polling places have closed or moved.

Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and helped Donald Trump win. We look back at history and ask: Will they do it again? USA TODAY

Our PSAs, which will air in Spanish and English, debunk myths about voting,encourage voters to break out of their filter bubbles, and advise them to verify facts with multiple sources before sharing social media posts. The campaign will focus especially on Black and Latinx populations particularly hard hit by the pandemic that were targeted in previous election-related misinformation campaigns and remain vulnerable to suppression.

Don't be fooled:I'm a former CIA analyst trained to spot fake news. Here's how you can do it, too.

Earlier this year, during the initial stage of the coronavirus, Americans were voting in primaries and caucusing around the nation with little guidance on how to safely and reliably participate in our elections during a pandemic. Now, in addition to the continued public health advisories about mask wearing and social distancing, we need to increase public awareness to safeguard the countrys public life as well as our public health.

In the absence of more rigorous social media standards, spam protectionand the passage of legislation like the Honest Ads Act that establishes transparency in digital advertising, we know there will continue to be memes, robocallsand other nefarious online dirty tricks designed to hurt voters.

In 2016, most Americans did not know that they were victims of a cyberespionage campaign, and neither the government nor social media platforms wereable to protect the integrity of the airwaves or the digital ecosystem. This year can be different. Even during the pandemic, we have effective virtual means to communicate with our communities, neighbors, co-workersand classmates to ensure that the electorate stays informed.

Tory Burch:Don't take anything for granted. Voting now is as important as it was 100 years ago

We need to work together to preserve a fact-based future. Americans can protect themselves and our democracy by correcting misinformation in real time, staying vigilant for deepfakeor cheapfake videos, not sharing articles they have not read, and remaining skeptical about any information about voting they encounter. Remember: Voting depends on you, and democracy depends on us.

Alexander Heffner (@heffnera)is the host of The Open Mind on PBS and president of The Open Mind Legacy Project. Alan C. Miller (@alanmillerNLP) is the founder and CEO of the News Literacy Project.

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We're launching an election-season ad campaign to fight fake news, and we need your help - USA TODAY

NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) - Mayor John Cooper called it "fake news" that Nashville is hiding information about its COVID clusters in bars.

The mayor spoke at length in a one-on-won interview with News4's Nancy Amons on Friday.

"It's a national story that no one locally believes is true," Cooper said.

National news outlets have latched onto questions of whether Nashville's mayor deliberately overstated the number of COVID cases tied to Nashville bars before shutting them down for two weeks on July 2.

Cooper's 14-day closure on the eve of the Fourth of July weekend angered bar owners.

Internal emails show that Metro's Health Department had traced only 19 COVID cases to bars since March.

Cooper told News4 the numbers were increasing and he wanted to prevent community spread, making the comparison between COVID case in a crowded indoor bar to lighting a match in a barn.

"This is just a group of people who have been playing with matches in a barn, complaining about taking the matches away," Cooper said.

The mayor of Nashville says his administration is committed to "providing timely and transparent information" in regards to public health.

Internal emails have raised questions about how information concerning the bar clusters was going to be released.

In an exchange between a health department employee and Ben Eagles, the Mayor's Senior Adviser, on June 29, Eagles asked the health department, "How many cases have spread at bars?"

The health department employee responds with a chart showing 19 cases, but asked, "This isn't going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayor's Office?"

Eagles answered: "Correct, not for public consumption. To help understand and guide policy formulation."

Eagles told News4 Thursday the information was to form a policy to curb what had become a runaway spike in COVID cases.

"To paint the city as a big cover up, that's flatly untrue," Eagles said Thursday.

"We were tough early and that's why we're successful today," Cooper said Friday.

On July 2, the city disclosed that there had been an outbreak tied to 10 bars. News4 filed an Open Records request for the names of the bars and details about the clusters.

The health department wrote to News4 some six weeks later that there were no records available.

Cooper was asked about this on Friday.

"Will you reconsider releasing that information?" Amons asked Cooper.

"Sure, I mean I am going to sit down with the lawyers and public health. Anything that is more transparent, we are going to do," Cooper said.

Cooper added that the city has to be careful not to damage the reputation of a small business by saying there was a COVID outbreak there, especially if there's no proof.

Cooper issued a statement on Friday afternoon about the email exchange that has been the subject of a story at other media outlets.

Following an exchange of emails dating June 29th, 2020, between the Mayors office and Metro Public Health in which our administration gathered information about the sources of COVID-19 spread in Davidson County, the number of cases and clusters linked to Nashville bars was shared with media in response to a question during a press conference on July 2nd, 2020. FOX17 Nashville was at this press conference.

Among others, The Tennessean and NewsChannel 5s Phil Williams have fact-checked and debunked the allegations within FOX17s September 16th report. Mayor Cooper calls on the stations general manager, Noreen Parker, and the reporter, Dennis Ferrier, to apologize to all Nashvillians for misleading the city and eroding public trust through negligent reporting.

Members of Tennessee's Congressional delegation is speaking out about the controversy of whether Nashville Mayor John Cooper withheld health data.

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Cooper: Nashville hiding information about COVID clusters in bars is 'fake news' - WSMV Nashville

Ibet you didnt know I, Joel Myhre, used to be a kicker in the Canadian Football League. I played for the Toronto Argonauts from 1989 to 1992. We actually won the CFL championship in 1991. I set the CFL record by making 32 consecutive field goals that year.

None of this is true, of course. But I am writing this because this column will be uploaded to the internet. So I thought I would experiment to see if my bold-faced lie will actually be turned into truth somewhere in cyberland.

I bring this up because the other day, while entering Walmart, while wearing a Mr. Rogers T-shirt, someone told me that Mr. Rogers, the long-time childrens show host, was covered in tattoos from his days serving as a U.S. Navy Seal in Vietnam, with more than 25 confirmed kills to his name.

Like my story about being a kicker in the CFL, the Mr. Rogers tattoo story is absolute hogwash. Rogers was born in 1928, which means he was 36 when the U.S. started sending troops to Vietnam in 1964. No, Rogers had no tattoos, and never served in Vietnam.

Yet, that guy believed it. Why? Because it was on the internet.

This is what I think bothers me the most about this election. It isnt that a win by Donald Trump would mean Republican policies would continue to be enacted for the next four years.

What bothers me is that Trump has convinced his supporters that any stories that are critical of him are fake news.

Keep in mind that the fake news stories are coming from questionable places like the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Economist.

As a former journalist, this is just unacceptable to me. When I was going to college to be a reporter, such outlets were the pinnacle of journalism. If a story appears in the newspapers or magazines above, I knew that an exhaustive amount of research was done before it was published. I believed it to be the truth. Thats the point, right? Journalists seek out the truth.

But while such media outlets are still operating, they, at least by the right, have been minimized, and declared as fake news. Yet, the real news is from people who will run with rumors without bothering to research them, provided it benefits the political party they support.

I guess its a good thing that all of us now have the ability to get our opinions published globally. Its not a good thing, however, that facts are simply not relevant anymore.

As I read on a bumper sticker the other day, I miss the truth.

As a teacher, I have been asked many times how things are going. Well, its been stressful, to say the least.

One of the primary issues is, we are supposed to be everything to everyone. Last spring, when we went from traditional school to distance learning, we made a clean transition, and had more than a week to figure out how to make that transition. Distance learning was a statewide thing, so everyone had to do it.

Now, it is a convoluted mess.

At the school Im at, we are back to school, with a lot of masks and hand sanitizers. However, there are students who have chosen to do distance learning. It means that teachers, we have to plan for in-person learning and distance learning, simultaneously.

That, my friends, is not an easy thing to do.

Im definitely torn. If a student truly needs to do distance learning due to health concerns, I am all for it. On the other hand, I hope students are not doing distance learning because its easier or because they dont want to go to school. Its just hard for teachers to focus on the students in front of them every day, and the students who are distance learning.

My opinion is, lets get this coronavirus stuff over with so we can all get back to normal.

Joel Myhre is a Fergus Falls resident.

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Kicking around the 'fake news' tag | Opinion | fergusfallsjournal.com - Fergus Falls Daily Journal

Less than a day after two Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies were shot and wounded as they sat in their police cruiser outside a transit station in Compton, Darnell Hicks cellphone began to light up with messages from friends: He was identified as the alleged gunman in an alert circulated on social media.

Hicks, 33, a father of two and youth football coach from Compton who lives with his 93-year-old grandmother, then saw screenshots of something that seemed to be an official be on the lookout alert. It included his drivers license photograph, name and address and associated him with a Los Angeles gang.

A Twitter post characterized Hicks as wanted for attempted murder in connection with the shooting Saturday evening. The suspect has vowed to shoot more law enforcement officers, the fake alert added.

At first, Hicks said, he thought it was a prank. But then threats starting coming in as the post spread on social media.

It was terrible, he said. I feared for my familys safety.

He said he was dirt-biking in Compton all day Saturday, but that didnt stop people from questioning him.

I got so worried, I called in to the sheriffs station, he said.

Hicks said he didnt know who was behind the accusation and had no connection whatsoever to the shooting.

The post was retweeted and shared by bloggers. One Malaysia-based, conservative, self-styled independent journalist with more than 250,000 followers claimed he learned from sources that Hicks was the prime suspect.

The wounded 31-year-old female deputy and 24-year-old male deputy were on patrol Saturday evening, sitting in their SUV, when a man walked up to the vehicle, pointed a gun at the passenger window and fired multiple times. The deputies were hit in the face, head and arms. The suspect fled on foot and remains at large.

Hicks attorney, Brian Dunn, said the false accusation couldnt get much worse.

It is a sign of the times. We have drifted far away from rational thought, Dunn said.

He said that people were willing to make such accusations without a thought to the consequences and that he was still investigating the origins of the false report. The original poster removed it from Twitter. But others also claimed to have heard the information.

The Sheriffs Department took to Twitter on Sunday, calling the report erroneous and saying, There are no named or wanted suspects at this time.

Sheriff Alex Villaneuva said that his department never issued an alert and that the one on social media was fake news.

There was some bad information floating around yesterday about a suspect, he added in a briefing Monday. All that information is false.

Dunn said that it was impossible to undo the damage and that nobody has taken responsibility for it.

Hicks said he wanted to send my prayers to the two deputies. But he also worried about other young Black men, with such a generic description of the perpetrator floating around.

Community activist Jasmyne Cannick said the departments initial description of the suspect as dark-skinned and, then, as a Black male, age 28 to 30, opened the door to profiling.

Cannick, who works as a political strategist, became involved after she received calls from a friend of Hicks asking for her help.

What if he would have been killed? What if anybody would have thought he was the wanted suspect? she said. His kids, his 93-year-old grandmother could have got hurt.

Read more from the original source:

Man falsely accused of shooting deputies received threats - Los Angeles Times

A study published in Politics and the Life Sciences suggests that a conspiracy mentality is linked to increased support for conspiracy theories and higher endorsement of fake news claims.

The nonacceptance of well-supported science is a pervasive problem in todays society. Support for pseudoscience is alarmingly common, and conspiracy theories and fake news claims are rampant on social media.

The proliferation of deceptive claims on social media has done a lot to normalize conspiracy, and to some extent conspiratorial worldviews, study authors Asheley R. Landrum and Alex Olshansky say. We can try to dismiss conspiracy theorizing as something undertaken only by a foil-hat-wearing fringe, however when our friends and neighbors (and sometimes ourselves) begin to believe and share conspiracies on social media, we must acknowledge that conspiracy theorizing is much more widespread.

Landrum and Olshansky wanted to explore factors that lead people towards a disbelief in science, by focusing on the role of conspiracy mentality.

A nearly nationally representative sample of 513 Americans was recruited to take part in an online survey. In order to capture data from individuals with heightened support for conspiracy theories, a separate sample of 21 adults recruited from a flat Earth convention was also included.

The survey measured scientific belief with questions addressing beliefs in climate change and evolution. The survey also questioned subjects belief in certain fake news topics proliferated on social media, such as the belief that the Zika virus was caused by the genetically modified mosquito or that childhood vaccinations are unsafe and cause disorders like autism. Conspiracy mentality was assessed by questioning subjects support for seven different conspiracy theories.

As expected, the sample recruited from the flat Earth conference had much stronger scores on the conspiracy mentality assessment than the national sample. Furthermore, 100% of those from the flat Earth convention reported not believing in climate change, while only 36% of the national sample did. While these findings seem to support the existence of a conspiracy mentality, when the two samples were merged, a conspiracy mentality did not predict the denial of climate change.

Greater conspiracy mentality did predict susceptibility to every fake news claim that was included in the survey (i.e., misleading claims about GMOs, the Zika virus, vaccinations, and a cure for cancer).

Support for these inaccurate, viral claims was not altogether uncommon. As the authors illustrate, About 56% of our national sample said it is likely or definitely true that Monsanto is covering up for the fact that GMOs cause cancer, and 32% of our national sample said that it is likely or definitely true that the Zika virus is caused by the genetically modified mosquito.

The authors stress, even though the number of individuals with pathological levels of conspiracy mentality is arguably small, viral fake news campaigns are dangerous because people who may not be conspiracy oriented are predisposed to accept conspiracies that support their worldviews.

The study was limited since it included a small number of items addressing scientific belief and the rejection of scientific fact. Future studies should aim to include assessments for a wider range of science-related beliefs.

The study, The role of conspiracy mentality in denial of science and susceptibility to viral deception about science, was authored by Asheley R. Landrum and Alex Olshansky.

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Conspiracy mentality linked to the acceptance of fake news about science - PsyPost