Mainstream media is the biggest amplifier of White House disinformation – MIT Technology Review

Benklers teamjust published its study, which examinesthepresidents disinformation campaign against mail-in votes and detailsthemethodsand peoplehes using to accomplish his goals.Thefindings found that some ofthebiggest names in American mass media andthepolitical elite are primarily responsible, and that social media plays only a secondary role.Thefindings run contrary tothepopular idea that its foreign troll factories doingtheworst disinformation dirty work.

Thestudy examined 55,000 media stories, 5 million tweets, and 75,000 Facebook posts.Theconclusion, echoingtheir research from 2015 to 2018, is that Donald Trump and Fox News arethekey players in this crucial disinformation campaign, not Russian trolls.Theresearchers mappedthe campaign out, showing a clear and recurring culprit: Trump, whether on TV or Twitter or by close proxy.

Theres been a lot of alarm over Russian interference and clickbait factories on social media, says Benkler, but in 2016 and today, what we see is that mass media is much more important.

TheAmerican press amplifies this dramatically because outlets cannot resist giving attention totheWhite House. Calling his actions a disinformation campaign would be profoundly difficult for some journalists who are desperate to project balance as if it is equal to fairness.

But this has real consequences. Mail-in voting expands access to an election inthemiddle of a national health crisis, and lies are being used as justification to undercut or eliminate this accessa tactic clearly at play in Texas and other states.

There is a way forward, however.Theresearch argues thattheprimary cure is for these media outlets to more aggressively policethepresidents disinformation.

While many Americans are set in their beliefs on election fraud, there is still a substantial group of persuadables, says Benkler. They are unsure of the truth about election fraud, they watch network news, and they read local papers that aggregate journalism from outlets liketheAssociated Press.

That means theonly meaningful players arethenews editors andthe journalists at those outlets most often used for political news bytheleast attentive, least politically engaged people in society, Benkler says.

That includes tacklingthequestion ofthepresidents misinformation clearly and directly, and avoiding false balance. EventheNew York Times, whose readers are well informed onthereality of voter fraud, sometimes publishes credulous and noncritical journalism on this. One recent story about Texas shutting down ballot drop-off sites, for example, was headlined Citing security, Texas governor limits counties to one spot each for in-person ballot drop-offs, giving credence totheidea.Not untiltheseventh paragraph does the story mention, as a brief aside, that there is absolutely no evidence that mail-in voting causes fraud.

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Mainstream media is the biggest amplifier of White House disinformation - MIT Technology Review

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