{"id":180856,"date":"2016-12-10T20:05:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-11T01:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/10\/word\/"},"modified":"2016-12-10T20:05:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-11T01:05:00","slug":"word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/10\/word\/","title":{"rendered":"Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Medium<\/i>, Michael Tracey pithily observes that if fake news is a serious problem, then David Brock should be washing dishes for a living<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help but notice that the new Washington Post-certified \u201cmaster list<\/a>\u201d of \u201cfake news<\/a>\u201d outlets does not include any of the media organs overseen by David Brock, one of the leading propagandists of the modern era. Why is this? Virtually everything that David Brock does would qualify as \u201cfake news\u201d under any objective criteria. He runs a bunch of websites that may seem to the naked eye to be legitimate \u201cnews\u201d sources, but in reality are just Democratic Party \/ Hillary agitprop conveyor belts. This is well known and accepted, even by Hillary\u2019s inner-circle, many of whom view Brock with suspicion<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Bountiful \u201cfake news\u201d can be found at the propaganda outlet Media Matters, the premier Brock-connected entity (he founded it). To take just one example, Eric Boehlert, the main public face of Media Matters, relentlessly denied over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign that Hillary was under criminal investigation. He denounced this notion as \u201cfictitious,\u201d and launched a relentless \u201ctargeted harassment\u201d campaign against the New York Times for reporting otherwise. It turned out that Boehlert was 100% wrong and the NYT was 100% right\u200a\u2014\u200aHillary really was under active felony criminal investigation, from July 10, 2015 to July 5, 2016 and then again from October 28, 2016 to November 6, 2016. Those facts are no longer in dispute<\/a>. Hence, wasn\u2019t Boehlert promoting \u201cfake news\u201d? He was putting false, distorted information out onto the internet, thereby actively misinforming readers. If that doesn\u2019t qualify as \u201cfake news\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200awhat would? Please explain why the term \u201cfake news\u201d would not apply to Boehlert\u2019s conduct.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>Bear in mind that the Brock apparatus is also responsible for paying online trolls<\/b> to propagandize social media on Hillary\u2019s behalf. This led to a very strange dynamic whereby those who took the brunt of pro-Clinton trolling onslaughts (as I did) could never be quite sure whether they were dealing with a genuine interlocutor, or someone who was trolling on Brock\u2019s dime. Ironically, this Brock-enforced tactic was the essence of \u201cgaslighting\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200ait made people question the reality of what was going on before them, and bred paranoia. Brock knowingly sought to inflict stress, confusion, and misinformation upon people who dared criticize the Clintons on Twitter, reddit, or wherever else. That was his explicit tactic<\/b>. Where does this fall on the \u201cfake news\u201d spectrum? They were promoting a ton of fakery for the purpose of pushing a partisan political agenda.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis original<\/i>)<\/p>\n

Brock has been a “Scum”, as Tracey describes him throughout his entire career, first for the fight, and then for the left, and he was embraced by the Clintons. which is yet another<\/b> reason to hope that this Hillary Clinton’s disastrous run for the presidency will lead to their, and their allies, forcible exit from the Democratic party establishment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Medium, Michael Tracey pithily observes that if fake news is a serious problem, then David Brock should be washing dishes for a living: I can\u2019t help but notice that the new Washington Post-certified \u201cmaster list\u201d of \u201cfake news\u201d outlets does not include any of the media organs overseen by David Brock, one of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[766,780,804,801,799],"class_list":["post-180856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-evil","tag-hack-journalism","tag-hypocrisy","tag-media","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}