In a Tedx Talk at the University of
Nevada a couple of weeks ago, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson revealed the origins of
the "fake news" narrative that was aggressively pushed by the liberal
media and Democrat politicians during the 2016 election, and how it was later
flipped by President Donald Trump.
Attkisson
pointed out that "fake news" in the form of tabloid journalism and
false media narratives has always been around under different names.
But
she noticed that in 2016, there seemed to be a concerted effort by the MSM to
focus America's attention on the idea of "fake news" in conservative
media. That looked like a propaganda effort to Attkisson, so she did a little
digging and traced the new spin to a little non-profit called "First
Draft," which, she said, "appears to be the about the first to use
'fake news' in its modern context."
"On
September 13, 2016, First Draft announced a partnership to tackle malicious
hoaxes and fake news reports," Attkisson explained. "The goal was
supposedly to separate wheat from chaff, to prevent unproven conspiracy talk
from figuring prominently in internet searches. To relegate today's version of
the alien baby story to a special internet oblivion."
She
noted that a month later, then-President Obama chimed in.
"He
insisted in a speech that he too thought somebody needed to step in and curate
information of this wild, wild West media environment," she said, pointing
out that "nobody in the public had been clamoring for any such
thing."
Yet
suddenly the subject of fake news was dominating headlines all over America as
if the media had received "its marching orders," she recounted.
"Fake news, they insisted, was an imminent threat to American
democracy."
Attkisson,
who has studied the manipulative moneyed interests behind the media industry,
said that "few themes arise in our environment organically." She
noted that she always found it helpful to "follow the money."
"What
if the whole anti-fake news campaign was an effort on somebody's part to keep
us from seeing or believing certain websites and stories by controversializing
them or labeling them as fake news?" Attkisson posited.
Digging
deeper, she discovered that Google was one of the big donors behind First
Draft's "fake news" messaging. Google's parent company, she pointed
out, is owned by Eric Schmidt, who happened to be a huge Hillary Clinton
supporter.
Schmidt
"offered himself up as a campaign adviser and became a top multi-million
donor to it. His company funded First Draft around the start of the election
cycle," Attkisson said. "Not surprisingly, Hillary was soon to jump
aboard the anti-fake news train and her surrogate David Brock of Media Matters
privately told donors he was the one who convinced Facebook to join the
effort."
Attkisson
declared that "the whole thing smacked of the roll-out of a propaganda
campaign." Attkisson added, "But something happened that nobody
expected. The anti-fake news campaign backfired. Each time advocates cried fake
news, Donald Trump called them 'fake news' until he'd co-opted
the term so completely that even those who [were] originally promoting it
started running from it -- including the Washington Post,"
which she noted later backed away from using the term.
Attkisson
called Trump's accomplishment a "hostile takeover" of the term and
cautioned people to always be aware of "powerful interests might be trying
to manipulate" their opinions.
She
described two warning signs to look out for.
- When the
media tries to shape or censor facts and opinions rather than report them.
- When
so many in the media are reporting the same stories, promulgating the same
narratives, relying on the same sources -- even using the same phrases.
Attkisson
pointed out that there's an infinite number of ways to report stories, so
"when everybody's on the same page, it might the result of an organized
campaign."
She
warned the audience about the latest effort to quell speech through something
called "media literacy," where liberal elites tell everyone else whom
they should trust. She said, "Media literacy advocates are busy trying to
get state laws passed to require that their version of media literacy be taught
in public schools."
What's
more, they're developing websites and partnering with universities. She warned
that these people have their own agendas and want to tell you what to believe.
"When
interests are working this hard to shape your opinion, their true goal might
just be to add another layer between you and the truth," Attkisson
concluded.
