Category Archives: Fake News

Autism rates through the roofwhy doesnt the Obama administration do something about doctor-inflicted autism. We lose nothing to try.

9:19 AM - 22 Oct 2012

Starting in 2012, Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed his personal belief that autism is linked to childhood vaccinations, saying it in interviews, on Twitter, and even during a Republican debate.

On the show Fox & Friends in April 2012, Mr. Trump was asked about the rising number of children with autism diagnoses and said, I have a theory and its a theory that some people believe in, and thats the vaccinations. Later in the segment, one host noted most doctors disagree and that studies do not show a link, which Mr. Trump acknowledged, adding, Its also very controversial to even say, but I couldnt care less. He said he had seen changes in children firsthand to support his belief.

Plenty of studies, including a recent one that involved almost 100,000 children, have shown there is no scientific evidence linking vaccinations to autism, and that there is no benefit to delaying vaccinations. Instead, children who are not vaccinated on the regular schedule can be at risk for infectious diseases for a longer period. One doctor told Scientific American that misinformation on the internet often frightens parents away from following the vaccination schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the only one endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. In 2015, a measles outbreak in California, which started at Disneyland, was partly attributed to diseases spread by children who were not vaccinated.

In October 2012, Mr. Trump took to Twitter to ask why President Obamas administration was not intervening. He then wrote in March 2014, If I were President I would push for proper vaccinations but would not allow one time massive shots that a small child cannot take - AUTISM.

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10 Times Trump Spread Fake News - The New York Times

Americas fake news problem is getting worse, not better.

According to an analysis released by NewsGuard and first reported by Axioss Sara Fischer on Tuesday, websites that provide unreliable news increased their share of social media interactions this year. In 2019, 8 percent of engagement with the 100 top-performing news sources on social media was dubious. In 2020, that number more than doubled to 17 percent.

NewsGuard, which rates news websites according to reliability, found that people are engaging in a lot more news this year than they were last year. Engagement with the top 100 US news sources (meaning likes, shares, and comments on Facebook and Twitter) went from 8.6 billion reactions to 16.3 billion reactions between 2019 and 2020. That makes sense given, well, everything that has happened in 2020. There has been a lot of news, and due to pandemic-related factors such as unemployment and lockdowns, people have a lot of time on their hands to read stuff online.

But an increasing amount of the news people are seeing is problematic, inaccurate, or suspicious. And thats something to worry about. The analysis found that the Daily Wire, the outlet founded by right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro, saw 2.5 times more interactions this year than last.

The blossoming of false and unreliable news on the internet is a cultural, political, and technological phenomenon thats hard to get your head around, let alone tackle. Conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation run rampant on the internet, and its often difficult for people to tell what is true and whats not. Social media companies are not exactly doing a bang-up job of addressing the problem, either.

Right-wing content, in particular, thrives on platforms such as Facebook. But just because someone sees certain content doesnt necessarily mean they are particularly influenced by it, and figuring out just how powerful certain messages are can be complicated. Over the summer, Kevin Roose at the New York Times reported on what he described as a parallel media universe of super-conservative content on Facebook, noting that right-leaning pages and posts on the platform consistently get more interactions and shares than more liberal and mainstream ones. (Though just because someone likes a news post doesnt mean they actually read it.)

As Recodes Rebecca Heilweil pointed out at the time, its hard to know whats happening on Facebook just by engagement:

Theres now a running debate among academics, analytics experts, and observers like Roose around what we know about whats happening on Facebook and why. Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan recently argued that likes, comments, and shares are just a small part of what people actually see on Facebook, and that its difficult to draw conclusions from these interactions alone or to know what they might mean for an election.

Still, the trend is concerning. Social media is making political polarization worse in America, and its often the case that people no longer agree on even basic facts. What people consume shapes what they see basically, someone clicks on a certain article and algorithms start to predict what else they might like in alignment with that. And the further down the rabbit hole they go, the more they begin to seek out that media, often winding up in an information bubble.

Republicans have spent years complaining that social media companies are biased against them and that their content is being censored and removed. President Donald Trump has often lashed out against tech companies with unfounded claims of bias. He and his administration have also attempted to undercut and scrap Section 230, a law that basically says social media companies are allowed to police their platforms however they want and arent liable for the content third parties post on them. (Recodes Sara Morrison has a full explainer on Section 230.)

Rather than bias toward a certain political leaning, social media algorithms are often biased toward outrage they push content that people have an emotional reaction to and are likely to engage with. The NewsGuard data and other research shows that people are increasingly being drawn to unreliable content and often, unreliable content that has a conservative bent. And that content can influence all sorts of attitudes and cause confusion on even basic facts.

The New York Times recently took a look at Georgia and how misinformation and unreliable news is playing a role in the US Senate runoffs there. A conservative local news network called Star News Group announced it would launch the Georgia Star in November, and NewsGuards analysis found that the website has published misleading information about the presidential election and the Senate races. One story making false claims about Georgias presidential election results reached up to 650,000 people on Facebook.

Combating fake and misleading news would require efforts from multiple stakeholders. Yet Facebook recently rolled back changes to its algorithm that would promote news from reliable sources. Given the pace at which the problem is growing, the matter is likely to worsen without intervention.

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Americas growing fake news problem on social media, in ...

Disinformation has become a prominent, even dominant component of every political crisis. Fabricated images, AI bot, and troll farms make the headlines today and struggling to understand disinformations impacts has become an

Disinformation has become a prominent, even dominant component of every political crisis. Fabricated images, AI bots, and troll farms constantly make headlines today. The struggle to understand disinformations impacts has become an essential topic of inquiry.

From polling, data research or scientific analysis, here are some of the most important recent studies about disinformation.

1) Remember the fake news campaign that brought disinformation into the mainstream discussion? Yes, that one: Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. This research from 2018 by Oxford Universitys Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a leading computer network analysis firm, for the United States Senate was, at the time, the most comprehensive analysis of Russian meddling. The researchers analyzed millions of posts and reactions online and determined how the notorious troll farm, the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency, tailored different messages to galvanize individual Trump supporters and discourage non-supporters from casting votes at all. The focus had been on Facebook and Twitter; these researchers unraveled how the Internet Research Agency used YouTube in their campaign and also uncovered their sloppiness, like cases of them paying for political ads with Russian rubles.

2) How were scientists in different disciplines discussing fake news before disinformation went literally everywhere? In 2018, as fake news became a catch-all buzz term, a group of 16 political scientists, psychologists, computer scientists, media experts, historians, and journalists led by Harvard professors David Lazer and Matthew Baum teamed up to publish a paper about the science of fake news, looking at how it works on an individual and societal level.

3) In 2020 EU DisinfoLab published Indian Chronicles, an exhaustive research project uncovering a 15-year long international pro-India and anti-Pakistan disinformation campaign run by the New Delhi-based Srivastava Group, mainly targeting the UN and EU. Fake and resurrected think tanks and NGOs lobbied the European Parliament, spoke at sessions, and convinced parliamentarians to write pro-India and anti-Pakistan op-eds for over 750 of their fake media outlets across 119 countries. Reportedly, ANI, South Asias leading news agency, played a major role in spreading content from these websites, giving them credibility. Srivastava Group was also the organizer of controversial trips to Kashmir in 2019, when a couple dozen far-right European Parliamentarians visited the Indian-controlled disputed regions in Kashmir.

4) In 2020 QAnon, a conspiracy theory about how a global child trafficking ring is ruling the world, conquered every other outlandish conspiracy theory and went global. It infiltrated politics, public health, yoga groups, the hip-hop scene and disrupted the personal lives of thousands of people in the U.S. and abroad. Huge numbers of disinformation stories in the past year had something to do with QAnon, and this poll by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core published last May made clear just how far QAnon has traveled. In the U.S. alone, 30 million people believe at least some QAnon tenets, ranking QAnon next to major religions.

5) Last spring, amid Covid-19 vaccine rollouts, an international non-profit research organization, The Center for Countering Digital Hate, investigated Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for harmful, Covid-19 related disinformation. They uncovered the Disinformation Dozen the influencers who accounted for 65% of Covid-19 related misinformation online. The list includes notorious anti-vaccine campaigners like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., alternative medicine practitioners like Christiane Northrup and the leading pseudoscientific influencer-physician Joseph Mercola. Mercola, who has been profiting from his misinformation, also made our list of top business owners profiting off bad science. He will continue to express his professional opinions and defend his freedom of speech, his representative told Coda when approached for a comment.

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These 5 disinformation studies changed the way we think about fake news - Coda Story

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) From miracle cures for COVID-19 to numbers that lie, weve been busting myths and misinformation about the pandemic.

Nearly two years into it, a question: Are we going about it the wrong way?

A new paper co-authored by a Triangle expert on fake news points out a few things we can all do better.

Perhaps the way we check facts deserves a fact-check of its own.

Theres more we could be doing to work together to try to get through this collectively together, said Brian Southwell, a senior research scientist at RTI International and an expert in human behavior.

Its easy to shame people who fall for misinformation and share the things they see on social media with others.

But that might be the wrong approach, Southwell said.

I think its really easy to blame people that are falling prey to it, and saying, Well, theyre, really causing a lot of our problems, he said. I dont think thats entirely fair. I think we need more empathy and sympathy, and to recognize that were all vulnerable to misinformation. And that we probably need to be thinking a little bit differently about it.

A better question might be why those people look to those inaccurate sources of information instead of trusting the people doctors, health care providers and others in public health who do have the right answers.

He points out that misinformation-spreaders might not have the relationships with those in health care and fill that void with fake news.

If youve got a situation which people are lacking trust, then they might well turn to other sources of information as alternatives, he said.

So whats the solution?

They argue in the paper that it comes down to people involved in health care being accessible and doing the hard, shoe-leather work, saying they could consider on-the-ground trust-building efforts as a path forward.

They also point to resource-limited settings, such as a Native American reservation where investment in local networks and local resources rather than simply tracking myths appearing online can be useful.

One key: Doing so in a way that convinces the misinformed that they have their best interests in mind, he said.

If I dont think you care if I live or die, I may not be willing to trust you, even though I think youre a smart guy, he said.

It also means paying attention to the way we set the record straight.

That means not blaming them for being vulnerable or gullible, Southwell said.

Diplomatically pointing out that there is a set of facts that they ought to be paying attention to is an important way to go about it, he said. I do think that people depend on news outlets for credible information, and theres a great service that youre providing there, and helping to clarify.

But its also important, probably, to make sure that were were doing that in a way that leaves the door open for people to rejoin the conversation and to recognize that, Well, I might have been mistaken about that yesterday, but thanks for pointing that out, he continued. And I think people will be more open to being corrected if they didnt feel shamed by it.

CBS 17sJoedy McCrearyhas been tracking COVID-19 figures since March 2020, compiling data from federal, state,and local sources to deliver a clear snapshot of what the coronavirus situation looks like now and what it could look like in the future.

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Fact-checking the way we check facts, and finding better ways to smack down fake news - CBS17.com

By Arlene Mukoko, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) Radio, it is generally agreed, is the most useful medium of social communication for humanity. Radio waves go beyond borders, reaching everybody everywhere, and being a very affordable receiver compared to other forms of media. We remember the pioneers who contributed to the great invention of the radio.

Distinguished researchers such as Heinrich Hertz of Germany, Alexander Popov of Russia, Edouard Branley of France, the American of Serbian origin Nicola Tesla, the Italian Guglielmo Marconi, the British Oliver Lodge's, the Spanish Cervera Baviera, and the Indian Chandra Bose.

This year's World Radio Day theme has been divided into three sub-themes namely Trust in radio journalism, Trust and accessibility, and Trust and viability of radio stations

Acknowledging radio's ability to reach a wide audience, UNESCO sees it as a critical force to shape humanity, diversity and democratic discourse. With this year's celebration coming on the heels of a global pandemic where timely information is critical, radio can be invaluable. In Africa, for example, content in the area of health and safety as well as information that can help to frame and provide structure that can work for the benefit of many can be key.

Radio was first proposed by the Spanish Radio Academy in September 2010. This Spanish initiative had the unanimous support of the international radio industry and many important institutions from different countries. So, after a long debate held on Sept. 29, 2011 within the UNESCO Executive Board, the date was finally set for Feb. 13, which corresponds to the birth of the UN radio in 1946.

The special thing about radio is how relevant it still is in our daily lives. During those long drives for vacation or maybe to work, the radio is still with us, keeping us singing and keeping us informed. Its like a great friend and neighbor, one whos always there and never lets you down except radio will never borrow your weed whacker and forget to return it.

Sadly, recent world events have eroded trust in the media, fueled by the circulation of false content rapidly spreading on social media.

Still, radio continues to be one of the most trusted and used media in the world.

If we look at history, radio dates back to the mid-19th century in the world. It worked with the help of sound waves and signals which transmitted the messages to a specified bandwidth. In India, Radio arrived in the early 20th century. However, it took several years before it became the popular medium of mass media.

Radio met the need for information dissemination, especially for those citizens unable to read newspapers; Those who were unable to read advertisements and newspapers were able to listen and understand things after the emergence of radio. Among member states that include, Nigeria, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, many stations have worked to keep communities abreast of the latest developments during the COVID-19 crisis.

In Ghana, with a population of over *32 million (*data from Worldmeters.info), radio is the most prevalent medium according to Media Ownership Monitor with 481 stations across the country and 354 of them active providing key content for communities also in the area of sports and the arts. Meanwhile in Gabon with a population of over 2.2 million, according to Logfm.com, there are 14.

The power of radio has been no better demonstrated than during the coronavirus crisis, where, among other things, the medium has made it possible to ensure the continuity of learning, and to fight against misinformation, read the statement.

Even as much of the global media landscape appears to be dominated by visual and online services, the importance of radio is proved by the continued popularity of all genres of radio programming.UNESCO wrote: "Radio continues to be one of the most trusted and used media in the world, according to different international reporters." In cultivating this, they are charging member states to accomplish this through building Trust in Radio Journalism by cultivating independent and high-quality content, in the face of, "the present high-tempo digital age," with "verifiable information that is shared in the public interest."

Finally, UNESCO wants radio station to thrive and grow and so theyve included a third category called, Trust and Viability of Radio Stations which looks to see them survive a financial crisis impacting the medium while transforming loyal audience engagement into financial sustainability. [IDN-InDepthNews 20 February 2022]

Image source: UNESCO

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In The Age of Fake News, Radio Aims for Trust and Accountability - IDN InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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It turns out that the incriminations against Yaam Ayavefe were groundless.

In the Halil Falyal case, the facts about Yaam Ayavefe came to light. False news was made of him as the instigator, without being mentioned by any witnesses or confessors.

While the news about Yaam Ayavefe, who allegedly instigated the murder of Halil Falyal, continued to be published in the press for the last week, this news turned out to be without foundation.

On the other hand, the statement that he was wanted by Interpol also turned out to be false. In the searches made on the website of Interpol, it was seen that there was no demand for the arrest of Yaam Ayavefe, that he was not sought with a red notice, and that he did not have any criminal record.

It is estimated that the allegations in question occupied the public to confuse the target in the Halil Falyal case and to bring the judicial process to a dead end. It has been reported that a legal process has been initiated regarding this false accusation made against him.

Who is Yaam Ayavefe?

Yaam Ayavefe is a businessperson, entrepreneur, and project developer. He was born in 1984 in the Central District of Adana city. He is the middle son of a father who worked in the Incirlik base. Between 2004 and 2012, he worked in the fields of telecommunications and cyber security at international companies such as Voipplanet, Delsim Communications, Mediatel and Globalink. Yaam Ayavefe, who graduated from Software Engineering and International Relations departments, was awarded as The Best Businessman of the Year by the then Minister of Tourism in 2015.

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Claims Against Yasam Ayavefe Have Been Officially Dispelled as Fake News - News Anyway

When Facebook removed dozens of groups dedicated to Canadas anti-government Freedom Convoy protests earlier this month, it didnt do so because of extremism or conspiracies rife within the protests. It was because the groups were being run by scam artists.

Networks of spammers and profiteers, some based as far afield as Vietnam or Romania, had set up the groups using fake or hacked Facebook accounts in an attempt to make money off of the political turmoil.

That foreign networks of social media scammers had seized on a divisive political issue may feel like somewhat of a throwback. Before investigations into Russian troll factories operations during the US presidential election and culture war conflicts over content moderation, one of the biggest challenges facing social media platforms was profiteers pushing fake news articles and spam for easy money. Hundreds of websites mimicking US news outlets pushed their content on social media, reaping ad revenue from the traffic they generated.

Platforms like Facebook have cracked down on such inauthentic activity since 2016, but the global misinformation industry remains. In recent years, these for-profit disinformation networks have seized on the popularity of conspiracy movements and far-right groups online, creating content aimed at anti-vaccine protesters and QAnon followers.

It can be an extremely lucrative industry for people in other parts of the world to very closely monitor US and Canadian political climates, then capitalize on moment-to-moment trends, Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, told the Guardian. If youre out for money, and measure success not by sowing discord in a country but by maximizing ad revenue, theres still a lot of benefit to these operations.

It is hard to know the exact scale of the for-profit misinformation industry, researchers say, since it functions as part of an underground economy and comes in various forms. In addition to content mills and ad revenue schemes, there are also private firms across the globe that are hired to create fake engagement or push political propaganda. In 2021 alone, Facebook said it removed 52 coordinated influence networks across 32 countries that attempted to direct or corrupt the public debate for strategic goals, according to a company report on inauthentic behavior.

In addition, small networks can have an outsized impact if they effectively use online groups to mass organize and fundraise. In the case of the Freedom Convoy accounts, many of the largest Facebook groups involved appeared to be run by fake accounts or content mills hailing from numerous countries. Facebook took down the groups this month, but not before supporters of the convoy raised over $7m in crowdfunding and generated mass mainstream attention. (GoFundMe later disabled the campaign).

A Bangladeshi digital marketing firm ran two of Facebooks largest anti-vaccine trucker groups, according to Grid News, which had over 170,000 members combined before the platform removed them. The hacked Facebook account of a Missouri woman set up a network of several other pro-demonstration groups, collectively gaining more than 340,000 members in weeks. Other groups promoting American spinoffs of the Canadian protests were from Facebook accounts and networks based in Vietnam, Romania and other nations, Facebook officials told NBC News.

But recent research has shed light on how some of these for-profit misinformation operations work. A series of case studies from the Institute For Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank, detailed what it takes to run a money-making online news scam. One example was a cobbled-together website called The U.S. Military News.

The headlines on The U.S. Military News look much like those you might find on any number of far-right media outlets, with titles like Trump Wrecks Pence In Awesome Statement and articles praising the Canadian trucker protests. A shop on the site markets Trump-related merchandise including free American flags and Trump 2024 Revenge Tour commemorative coins. There are repeated pleas for donations all over the front page and attached to every article.

But despite the name and wall-to-wall American branding, the site has no connection to the US military, or the United States for that matter. Its domain is registered in Vietnam, and its unclear if it employs any writers or if the products it advertises even exist. The articles themselves consist solely of stock footage videos, with an automated voice reading plagiarized content.

A number of the articles and headlines posted on sites linked to the network veer into outright QAnon conspiracy content, featuring falsehoods about military tribunals and Biden officials being sentenced to death. One sites front page prominently features a range of anti-vaccine and pro-Trump conspiracy content, while also promoting an Amazon affiliate link to Trumps Art Of The Deal book.

The Guardian contacted the email address that The U.S. Military News is registered under, but did not receive a reply. The U.S. Military News is just one of a number of sites that appear linked to the same Vietnam-based network, according to ISD.

In another of ISDs reports, researcher Elise Thomas found a network of dozens of Facebook groups and pages which also appear to be linked to a small group of people in Vietnam that shared plagiarized pro-Trump content aimed at conservative social media users. Taking articles from far-right conspiracy sites like The Gateway Pundit, the network created Facebook groups with names like Conservative Voices and built up large numbers of followers sometimes in the tens of thousands of users.

Although for-profit misinformation networks often monetize their audiences through running ads on their websites, the network ISD found appeared to be building up their Facebook group members in order to potentially resell the groups themselves.

This was the original threat that platforms were worried about, Brooking said. It wasnt disinformation, you would characterize it as sort of ad fraud or ad farming.

In many cases, including ISDs case studies, there isnt vast amounts of money being made from inauthentic Facebook groups and conspiracy sites. But to many of the operators based in countries with low per capita income relative to the US, making a few hundred dollars a month from pushing conspiratorial content means significant gain. One of the more lucrative sites linked to Vietnam that ISD analyzed brought in around $1800 each month through advertising alone around 10 times the monthly per capita income in the country.

These scams have strong echoes of the surge in online commercial misinformation in 2016. Many of the people behind posts with false claims such as Pope Francis Endorses Donald Trump also came from outside the US, often from a single small town in North Macedonia called Veles which was responsible for over 140 imitation news websites.

These original fake news websites capitalized on salacious headlines and social media algorithms that promoted posts with high engagement regardless of their content, leading creators to choose contentious political issues involving race, religion and culture war flashpoints to drive the most attention to their sites and social media accounts. Although the strategies to evade content moderators have evolved, that playbook of monetizing conspiracies and misinformation appears to have stayed largely the same.

This is what the misinformation threat looked like before we were even talking about state actions, Brooking said. Its interesting that this sort of older threat is now back in center stage.

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Disinformation for profit: scammers cash in on conspiracy theories - The Guardian

Fake news, harmful misinformation and deliberate disinformation do the rounds of social media all year long, but its magnitude and frequency multiply 10 times during the elections. Amid the Assembly polls across five states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand, and Manipur, we have come across several old and doctored videos circulated in order to tarnish the reputation of rival candidates or political parties. To influence the voters, many even try to pass off developmental work they haven't done as theirs. Just to garner votes from a particular community or region, some even go to the extent of concocting lies. Meanwhile, there are many websites that are trying to help the voters make the right decision by busting fake news and misinformation, and one among those is Logically.

Logically is an AI-powered platform that helps users navigate the tricky terrain of fake news, misinformation, and disinformation online. Founded in 2017 by entrepreneur and engineer Lyric Jain, the UK-based company combines advanced AI with the fact-checking teams to help governments, businesses, and the public uncover and address misinformation and disinformation. In India, the company has previously worked during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the Maharashtra Assembly elections in the same year. Ahead of the elections in the five states mentioned above, the company announced that a team of 20 fact-checkers and six Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) analysts, all based in India, will address election-related misinformation. They also introduced a WhatsApp number+91 86400 70078for people to report misinformation or fake news to their fact-checking teams.

In an exclusive interview with the Free Press Journal, Sagar Kaul, Logicallys VP of India Operations, explained that they have taken various steps to deal with fake news during the elections. "The fact-checkers go through social media, online blogs, or any other publicly available data to find fake news and misinformation that is in circulation. Also, as WhatsApp is one of the main sources through which fake news campaigns are run, we have introduced a WhatsApp number for the general public so that they can send us the forwards to verify. After receiving the forward, we fact-check it and send it back to them," said Kaul.

When asked if the company will be focusing on only the major states, he said, "For us, the focus is on all the five states and since we are apolitical, we would not give focus on any particular political party. We are unbiased in our manner in which we detect misinformation, the main idea is to make the general public aware and make sure that no wrong information is being circulated."

Speaking about how to avoid fake news which is being recycled over and over again, Kaul said, "For the public, the best strategy is to do a basic Google search as most of such recycled fake content has already been fact-checked. I completely agree that it is unfortunate but there is little that can be done. Here at Logically, we urge people to send us such content and we send then back the previously done fact-checks after checking it. However, some times the recycled content can also have something different and new from its previous version, hence, we make sure that we have it in our fact-check."

Talking about the recent fact-checks done by them, he said, "There was one fact-check done regarding an attack on a politician who will be contesting the election. We have also fact-checked pieces of content claiming about what a particular state government has done and what it hasn't. We have also gone through statistics to check whether the unemployment rate in a particular state has really reduced or has the crime rate actually gone down as claimed. It all depends from state to state."

Kaul further said that the fact-checkers follow the guidelines prescribed by the IFCN (International Fact-Checking Network) so that no bias seeps into the fact-check. "It's not just an individual working a particular fact-check. There are also multiple levels of supervision. Unless and until the supervisor is confident that the fact-check is factually correct and that it is neutral, it won't be published," he added.

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FPJ Interview: Sagar Kaul, Logicallys VP of India Operations, speaks about busting election-related - Free Press Journal

The Russian TV reporter stands in a flak jacket and helmet near some army barracks on a crisp and sunny afternoon.

"Are you ready," an off-camera voice asks him.

The journalist nods and a burst of gunfire erupts as he starts running and shouting a breathless report into his microphone about "a group of saboteurs" attacking a Russian-backed position in east Ukraine.

"This is what Russian propaganda at 'work' looks like," a Telegram account that follows Ukraine closely remarked next to a clip showing the makings of the evidently staged report.

The eight-year conflict in Ukraine's Russian-backed east has been accompanied by a ferocious disinformation battle between Moscow and Kyiv that tries to implicate the other side in grave crimes.

But the scale and breadth of this battle has reached epic proportions as Russian forces move en masse around Ukraine's borders and the West warns of an imminent invasion threat.

Its importance is being heightened by fears that the Kremlin may use a staged attack as a pretext to order its feared assault.

"I think most of this fake news is aimed mostly at the international Russian audience," said former Ukrainian education minister and Mohyla School of Journalism director Sergiy Kvit.

"It looks like they are preparing an invasion," he told AFP.

- 'Undoubtedly staged' -

The explosion of open-source intelligence in the past decade has helped to debunk many reports that might otherwise have been taken at face value.

It exposed that a seemingly urgent call last Friday by Ukraine's separatist leaders for locals to evacuate to Russia had actually been recorded two days in advance.

"The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, will soon issue an order for his forces to go on the attack," Donetsk rebel chief Denis Pushilin says in his video message.

"Therefore today, on February 18, we are organising a large-scale evacuation of the civilian population into Russia," he says.

Telegram metadata showed that both Pushilin's message and one recorded by another separatist leader were uploaded on February 16 -- one of the days Washington had originally suggested a Russian invasion might be launched.

"Everything that happens today is clearly and undoubtedly staged," investigative journalist Mark Krutov tweeted as worries spread that the rebels were moving people out so that Russian tanks could move in.

- 'Ukrainian spy' -

Analysts from the likes of Bellingcat -- an award-winning online investigations group that was designated a "foreign agent" by the Kremlin last year -- have been particularly busy in the past few weeks.

Bellingcat and other disinformation warriors found visual evidence showing that a car bomb allegedly targeting a separatist police chief had actually been planted on a completely different vehicle.

They showed photographs of the police chief's registered license plate on a shiny new model SUV.

That same plate then appears attached to the mangled remains of an older green army vehicle blown up in an empty parking last Friday.

No one was hurt but Russian state television soon aired what it claimed to be the confession of a "Ukrainian spy" involved in the purported bomb plot.

Other stories alleged the separatists had killed two Ukrainians who tried to blow up a chlorine storage tank, a story that echoed claims from Moscow that Kyiv was plotting a chemical weapons attack.

Ukrainian accounts do not emerge completely blameless in this information war.

Kyiv's independent Stopfake organisation pointed to some accounts posting about a supposed large anti-war protest in Moscow using images of a gathering that in fact took place in 2014.

- 'Panic' -

Child and family psychologist Kateryna Goltsberg said this endless media bombardment has seen Ukrainians' anxiety levels spike.

"In the last two months, the levels of panic have been particularly high. This is probably linked to even bigger information attacks," Goltsberg said.

"People really are very worried," she said. "They are worried for themselves, their children, their loved ones."

Ukrainian newspaper editor Kateryna Kiselyova offered a case in point. She said her family had "emergency backpacks ready" and a clear plan in place in case of war.

"I talked to the children about what they would need to do," she said while attending a memorial for more than 100 people killed in Kyiv during Ukraine's 2014 pro-EU revolt.

"Now I want to make sure their school's basement is prepared for an emergency."

Others worried that this sense of impending peril might hang over Ukraine for some time.

"An existential threat -- this will be the hallmark of our lives for the coming months, if not years," the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper wrote.

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Fake news: Information war rages ahead of feared Russian invasion - RTL Today

Isla Fisher has a solution to the problem of dodgy landlords, though admittedly it may not be one available to everyone: rent a house from Jennifer Aniston instead. Back in the mid-2000s, the Australian star of Wedding Crashers, Now You See Me and Confessions of a Shopaholic was in need of an LA home to share with her then-boyfriend, now-husband Sacha Baron Cohen. A dinner with Courteney Cox led the pair to her Friends co-star, who happened to have a spare abode.

She was the nicest landlady, Fisher says. When we arrived, shed left a basket the size of a desk and in it were flowers, fruits and the sweetest handwritten note. There were magazines and I think she put a book in it? Id rented countless apartments and Id just never, ever had a landlady or landlord even say hi to me. I couldnt believe it if you can rent from Jennifer Aniston, you absolutely should.

That Fisher can make a line like that last one not only non-maddening but sweet and funny is a credit to her innate buoyancy. Then again, the 46-year-old is so quick to self-deprecation that you barely have time to notice if she says something starry. When she asks me not to publicise where she and her family are currently living, she acknowledges that its not the usual thing to do. Its for security, Im just a worrier, she sighs. Similarly, when she pops up for a few seconds on her Zoom camera before switching it off entirely, she admonishes herself with a joke. I have no make-up on and Im also 105 years old. Its not the greatest. I do typically try to look presentable when attempting to sell my TV show. Shes naturally disarming. I imagine everyone who meets her is convinced shell be their new best friend. Until that happens, though, we must make do with her work.

Fishers TV show is Wolf Like Me (soon to air in the UK on Prime Video); its a genre-bending dramedy about a boy, a girl and the werewolf she turns into every full moon. She plays Mary, a traumatised advice columnist in Adelaide, who mysteriously smashes into the car of widower Gary (Josh Gad). Gad and Fisher are somewhat cast against type: there are laughs here, but theyre deliberately subtle. I was taken aback by how moving the show is, and the sense of operatic urgency that writer/director Abe Forsythe grants it. There are emotive voiceovers, sweeping vistas and lots of running. Wolf Like Me is about the horrors of new love, and what happens when two broken people seem fated to be together.

Were so used to seeing romcoms where were only given the nice bits of people connecting, Fisher explains. It feels quite original. Love is scary! Once you give somebody your heart and they give theirs, obviously youre completely vulnerable. The show is more an exploration of love mixed with shame and fear. Fisher says she gravitates towards characters with secrets, but I also enjoyed playing Mary because shes so lonely. Im super gregarious, I love people, I socialise whenever I can. Marys the total opposite of me, and shes got all this baggage and doesnt feel safe being around people

Its at this point that Madame Tiny Paws has had enough. Fisher gasps. OK, so while Im talking to you, our cat has just got up on two legs and opened the door in front of me. Shes actually taken it upon herself to Houdini the s*** out of this room. She breaks into laughter. Even in our household, where everyone has such big personalities, somehow Madame Tiny Paws is the boss. Honestly, you should just chat to her. Im sure itd add some real dimension to this interview.

Josh Gad, Isla Fisher and a bag of bloody meat in Wolf Like Me

(Mark Rogers/Prime Video)

Few of Fishers characters would ever cede the spotlight like that. Her creations tend to have the energy of a drunk stranger in a nightclub bathroom, people as startlingly deranged as they are wise. Wedding Crashers, Shopaholic and the pitch-black comedy Bachelorette cast her, respectively, as a nymphomaniac, a credit card junkie and a cocaine fiend, all of whom rattle with manic desperation. Youd think theyd be more well-regarded, but like most kinds of character comedy, they typically fly under the radar. Particularly when it comes to major awards bodies.

Comedy is the most vulnerable sort of performance, she says. If you miss the mark, theres nothing to catch you. Its not like drama, yet comedy just isnt considered equal to it, particularly in the eyes of the Oscars. She reels off an embarrassingly long list of great comic performances that didnt crack the Academy Awards: Emily Blunt in The Devil Wears Prada, Regina Hall in Scary Movie, Goldie Hawn in bloody everything. So many mainstream comedies have these fantastic performances, and yet they dont get the love they deserve.

Slapstick, mime, making a funny face: theres just something about that I enjoy more than anything

She expresses disappointment at interviews in the past that have ignored how she does what she does. Usually it tends to be [questions] about when I last saw an infinity pool, or details about my husband. Without sounding like a luvvie and getting all thespian, I did go to clown school. I studied with Jacques Lecoq, whos a phenomenal clown teacher. He taught me to think about how [my characters] walk and talk its like putting on a costume, and doing that then informs all the internal work. You prepare and you prepare, and you try to be as meticulous as you can.

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Is there an element of sexism to peoples lack of curiosity about female comedy acting? Its really complicated I sort of dont want to weigh in on it because then it becomes the quote. She remembers years ago telling a journalist that its unfair that women are so often cast in comedies as the straight-woman who rolls her eyes at the overconfident, dumb-dumb guy. But then it trailed her. It just proliferated the internet, and I was always having to give interviews about it. Things feel better today, she says, both in the industry and during interviews. I love being asked more meaningful questions about what I actually think about things. And hopefully, even though Im deeply proud of and completely in love with my beautiful husband and family, Ill be asked about more than that [too]. I surreptitiously scribble out the Borat questions from my notepad.

Fisher, Lizzy Caplan and Kirsten Dunst in 2012s pitch-black comedy Bachelorette'

(Gary Sanchez Prods/Kobal/Shutterstock)

As I keep accidentally reminding her throughout our conversation, Fisher has been around for a while. Long before she broke out as Shaggys hippie girlfriend in Scooby-Doo in 2002, shed become famous in 1994 playing the perpetually unlucky Shannon Reed on Home and Away. In 1997, she moved to the UK to find work here. I assume her late-Nineties London era where she made BBC One comedy dramas with Amanda Holden and dated Darren Day were her lost years. I wouldnt say they were my most focused years professionally, she says. It was that classic period of your life where youre just trying to work out your identity. I definitely didnt have my wings clipped in London. I remember doing a lot of West End theatre, and, honestly, just having a great time in pubs.

She was also learning, travelling back and forth between London and Paris to study at clown school. While shed always made people laugh moving schools and countries a lot thanks to a UN worker father meant humour became a defence mechanism she didnt train as a clown for that reason. Really, she just loved Geoffrey Rushs performance as the pianist David Helfgott in Shine (1996). I found out he studied with Jacques Lecoq, so I thought, Hey, I have to study with Jacques Lecoq, too! Im the new Geoffrey Rush, I thought. She quickly interrupts herself. Im kidding oh god, please dont print Isla Fisher: Im the new Geoffrey Rush! Because that is exactly not what I thought. I just wanted to one day be able to physicalise my comedy like that. Slapstick, mime, making a funny face: theres just something about that I enjoy more than anything.

All of that being said, she didnt realise she was a natural comedian until Cohen pointed it out to her. My husband said, Youre the funniest person I know you should be doing comedy, and before that it just never crossed my mind. This was shortly after they got together in 2001. They married in 2010, and have three children. Fisher makes a point not to talk about her family in interviews, but does mention Cohen occasionally in conversation, and often posts pictures of him to her Instagram. But in an echo of her husbands crusade against social media companies in 2019 he called Facebook the greatest propaganda machine in history she has problems with the platform as a whole.

Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher at the 2018 Vanity Fair Oscar party

(Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

We all know what Instagram is, she sighs. Its toxic for children and [for] the proliferation of fake news. They dont have to meet publishing standards, it appeals to our base instincts. Actually, Im being gentle Instagram increases bullying and fear of missing out and leads to anxiety and depression. So, obviously, I am no fan of Instagram. I try to focus as much as possible on [posting] work-related stuff, and not posting anything personal. Sometimes Ill post, like its Valentines Day today, so I may post something later on

A few hours after we speak, I visit Fishers Instagram and see that she has indeed posted a Valentines message to her husband. Sacha, you are my rock, she writes, alongside a blurry photograph of a rock shaped like a massive erection. It is deeply silly, quirkily romantic, and maybe more revealing of the humour at the heart of their chemistry than anything she might have said out loud. Love is scary, but it can also be funny.

Wolf Like Me can be streamed on Prime Video from 25 February

Read more from the original source:

Isla Fisher: Instagram is toxic for children and filled with fake news - The Independent