[Music]
[Applause]
as an investigative journalist I found
myself with a few questions about the
emergence of fake news as a phrase and
as a fat number one what does fake news
of what is not number two when did fake
news begin and number three most
interesting of all I’ve investigated the
shadowy multi-billion dollar industry
that seeks to manipulate all of us
through news social media and online so
I wondered who’s behind the massive
effort to direct our attention onto fake
news is fake news real first the
definition of fake news depends on where
you sit it’s not as if there’s an
extreme dictionary Authority that gets
to decide for everybody there’s some are
trying more on that in a moment
but when did fake news under anybody’s
definition began well fake this has
always been embedded in our culture it
just wasn’t called that the supermarket
rags gave popularized a blatantly fake
news with front-page images of aliens
impregnating unsuspecting usually large
breasted earthling women most people
probably believe little to nothing of
what they read these publications a few
people might have believed everything
but there are countless examples of fake
news surfacing in mainstream news
example in 1996 a news media frenzy
wrongly blamed a security guard named
Richard Jewell for the Atlanta Olympic
bombing we later learned that poor Jule
had actually been a hero moving people
away from a suspicious backpack before
it exploded on 9/11 a network TV news
reporter falsely reported that a
terrorist plane had crashed in the
presidential retreat Camp David never
happened the internet revolutionized
fake news whether we’re talking about a
rumor or intentional disinformation or
bias sloppy erroneous reporting what
would have circulated amongst a relative
few could now develop a global following
overnight example in 2012 26 people were
murdered at Sandy Hook elementary blogs
and social media immediately began
circulating rumors and images
it’s sitting the whole thing was a hoax
drummed up by the government and staged
by actors in 2014
Rolling Stone magazine reported on a
sensational case of a fraternity gang
rape that turned out to be so
unsubstantiated the Rolling Stone
retracted the article and the reporter
was found guilty of malice in a
defamation lawsuit and whatever you
think of the 2014 police shooting of
Michael Brown even the Obama Justice
Department eventually ruled that the
entire hands up don’t shoot scenario
which blanketed the news day in and day
out was probably fabricated and as a
police officer acted in legitimate
self-defense but it wasn’t until 2016
that the actual phrase fake news was
introduced to the American public on a
national scale liberals were first to
heavily promote use of the phrase
referring to conservative disinformation
and right-wing websites and there’s
certainly plenty of that example as
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton battles
about a website called the conservative
Daily Post published a huge amount of
Pro Trump anti-clinton propaganda the
name and likeness of a former beauty
queen named Laura hunter the Cabrillo
Laura hunter says she didn’t write any
of those articles
she claims imposters turned her into a
spokesman for a radical right-wing
website that pedals fake news she sued
them meantime Trump and conservatives
counterpunch with their own notion of
fake news meaning biased sloppy
erroneous reporting as committed by the
mainstream media and the left plenty of
that to example on president Trump’s
first day in office a Time magazine
reporter falsely reported the Trump had
removed the bus statue of Martin Luther
King from the Oval Office the white
house quickly tweeted out a photo
showing statue is still very much there
the reporter perhaps blinded by his own
bias had followed the most basic tenets
of beginning journalism check your facts
so if fake news by other names has
always been around why does it suddenly
become the stuff of daily headlines
during the 2016 campaign
I did a little digging and I traced the
effort to a nonprofit called first draft
which appears to be about the first to
use the phrase fake news of its modern
context on September 13th 2016 first
draft announced a partnership to tackle
malicious hoax isn’t fake News reports
the goal was supposedly to separate
wheat from chaff to prevent on proven
conspiracy talk from figuring
prominently in internet searches to
relegate today’s version of the alien
baby story to a special Internet
oblivion exactly one month later
President Obama shine did he insisted in
a speech that he too thought somebody
needed to step in and curate information
in this Wild Wild West media environment
nobody in the public have been clamoring
for any such thing yet suddenly the
topic of fake news dominates headlines
on a daily basis it’s as if the media
have been given its marching orders fake
news they insisted was an imminent
threat to American democracy but as
somebody who studied the industry that
seeks to manipulate all of us on behalf
of paid interests I know that few themes
arise in our environment organically a
noted propagandist told me it’s like a
movie he said and it gave me chills at
the time nearly every scene or image
that crosses our path at daily life he
said was put there for a reason
often by someone who paid a lot of money
to place it there what if the whole anti
fake news campaign was an effort on
somebody’s part to keep us from seeing
or believing certain websites of stories
by controversial izing them or labeling
them as fake news but who would want to
do such a thing
with connecting the dots I find it often
helps to follow the money I wanted to
know who was funding the nonprofit first
draft and his anti fake news effort I
found the answer it was Google Google’s
parent company alphabet was run by a man
named Eric Schmidt
Eric Schmidt as it happens had devoted
himself to Hillary Clinton’s election
campaign offered himself up as a
campaign adviser and became a top
multimillion-dollar donor to it
his company funded first draft around
the
started the election cycle 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
I’m not the only one who thinks the
whole thing smacked of the rollout of a
propaganda campaign Glenn Greenwald of
the intercept wrote the most important
fact you need to realize is that those
who most loudly denounced fake news are
typically the ones most aggressively
disseminating it 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-op to the term
so completely but even those who
originally promoting it started running
from it including the Washington Post
which in January of 2017 wrote it’s time
to retire the tainted term fake news in
fact it’s now commonly Mis reported that
it was Donald Trump who thought up the
phrase actually it was just a hostile
takeover suffice it to say that each
side now defines fake news and terms
that call the other guy did the question
so what’s the lesson in all of this I’m
not here to litigate who’s right but I
can tell you there are two ways to tell
that powerful interest might be trying
to manipulate your opinion number one
when the media seems to be trying to
shave or censor facts and opinions
rather than report them number two when
so many of the media are reporting the
same stories promulgating the same
narratives relying on the same sources
even using the same phrases I mean think
of it there are literally thousands of
legitimate news stories that could be
reported in a given day and an incident
number of ways to report them when
everybody’s on the same page it might be
the result of an organized campaign I’ll
leave you with a final thought and a
warning it’s about a new catchphrase
being bandied about media literacy as
and will tell you who to trust and who
not to trust media literacy advocates
are busy trying to get state laws passed
to require the fair version of media
literacy be taught in public schools
they’re developing websites as resources
for journal
the public the partnering with
universities I think media literacy is a
new name promoted by some of the same
people who want to tell you what to
believe people with their own agendas
using terms designed to fool you into
thinking they’re neutral authorities
what you need to remember is that 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
[Applause]
[Applause]
as an investigative journalist I found
myself with a few questions about the
emergence of fake news as a phrase and
as a fat number one what does fake news
of what is not number two when did fake
news begin and number three most
interesting of all I’ve investigated the
shadowy multi-billion dollar industry
that seeks to manipulate all of us
through news social media and online so
I wondered who’s behind the massive
effort to direct our attention onto fake
news is fake news real first the
definition of fake news depends on where
you sit it’s not as if there’s an
extreme dictionary Authority that gets
to decide for everybody there’s some are
trying more on that in a moment
but when did fake news under anybody’s
definition began well fake this has
always been embedded in our culture it
just wasn’t called that the supermarket
rags gave popularized a blatantly fake
news with front-page images of aliens
impregnating unsuspecting usually large
breasted earthling women most people
probably believe little to nothing of
what they read these publications a few
people might have believed everything
but there are countless examples of fake
news surfacing in mainstream news
example in 1996 a news media frenzy
wrongly blamed a security guard named
Richard Jewell for the Atlanta Olympic
bombing we later learned that poor Jule
had actually been a hero moving people
away from a suspicious backpack before
it exploded on 9/11 a network TV news
reporter falsely reported that a
terrorist plane had crashed in the
presidential retreat Camp David never
happened the internet revolutionized
fake news whether we’re talking about a
rumor or intentional disinformation or
bias sloppy erroneous reporting what
would have circulated amongst a relative
few could now develop a global following
overnight example in 2012 26 people were
murdered at Sandy Hook elementary blogs
and social media immediately began
circulating rumors and images
it’s sitting the whole thing was a hoax
drummed up by the government and staged
by actors in 2014
Rolling Stone magazine reported on a
sensational case of a fraternity gang
rape that turned out to be so
unsubstantiated the Rolling Stone
retracted the article and the reporter
was found guilty of malice in a
defamation lawsuit and whatever you
think of the 2014 police shooting of
Michael Brown even the Obama Justice
Department eventually ruled that the
entire hands up don’t shoot scenario
which blanketed the news day in and day
out was probably fabricated and as a
police officer acted in legitimate
self-defense but it wasn’t until 2016
that the actual phrase fake news was
introduced to the American public on a
national scale liberals were first to
heavily promote use of the phrase
referring to conservative disinformation
and right-wing websites and there’s
certainly plenty of that example as
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton battles
about a website called the conservative
Daily Post published a huge amount of
Pro Trump anti-clinton propaganda the
name and likeness of a former beauty
queen named Laura hunter the Cabrillo
Laura hunter says she didn’t write any
of those articles
she claims imposters turned her into a
spokesman for a radical right-wing
website that pedals fake news she sued
them meantime Trump and conservatives
counterpunch with their own notion of
fake news meaning biased sloppy
erroneous reporting as committed by the
mainstream media and the left plenty of
that to example on president Trump’s
first day in office a Time magazine
reporter falsely reported the Trump had
removed the bus statue of Martin Luther
King from the Oval Office the white
house quickly tweeted out a photo
showing statue is still very much there
the reporter perhaps blinded by his own
bias had followed the most basic tenets
of beginning journalism check your facts
so if fake news by other names has
always been around why does it suddenly
become the stuff of daily headlines
during the 2016 campaign
I did a little digging and I traced the
effort to a nonprofit called first draft
which appears to be about the first to
use the phrase fake news of its modern
context on September 13th 2016 first
draft announced a partnership to tackle
malicious hoax isn’t fake News reports
the goal was supposedly to separate
wheat from chaff to prevent on proven
conspiracy talk from figuring
prominently in internet searches to
relegate today’s version of the alien
baby story to a special Internet
oblivion exactly one month later
President Obama shine did he insisted in
a speech that he too thought somebody
needed to step in and curate information
in this Wild Wild West media environment
nobody in the public have been clamoring
for any such thing yet suddenly the
topic of fake news dominates headlines
on a daily basis it’s as if the media
have been given its marching orders fake
news they insisted was an imminent
threat to American democracy but as
somebody who studied the industry that
seeks to manipulate all of us on behalf
of paid interests I know that few themes
arise in our environment organically a
noted propagandist told me it’s like a
movie he said and it gave me chills at
the time nearly every scene or image
that crosses our path at daily life he
said was put there for a reason
often by someone who paid a lot of money
to place it there what if the whole anti
fake news campaign was an effort on
somebody’s part to keep us from seeing
or believing certain websites of stories
by controversial izing them or labeling
them as fake news but who would want to
do such a thing
with connecting the dots I find it often
helps to follow the money I wanted to
know who was funding the nonprofit first
draft and his anti fake news effort I
found the answer it was Google Google’s
parent company alphabet was run by a man
named Eric Schmidt
Eric Schmidt as it happens had devoted
himself to Hillary Clinton’s election
campaign offered himself up as a
campaign adviser and became a top
multimillion-dollar donor to it
his company funded first draft around
the
started the election cycle 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
I’m not the only one who thinks the
whole thing smacked of the rollout of a
propaganda campaign Glenn Greenwald of
the intercept wrote the most important
fact you need to realize is that those
who most loudly denounced fake news are
typically the ones most aggressively
disseminating it 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-op to the term
so completely but even those who
originally promoting it started running
from it including the Washington Post
which in January of 2017 wrote it’s time
to retire the tainted term fake news in
fact it’s now commonly Mis reported that
it was Donald Trump who thought up the
phrase actually it was just a hostile
takeover suffice it to say that each
side now defines fake news and terms
that call the other guy did the question
so what’s the lesson in all of this I’m
not here to litigate who’s right but I
can tell you there are two ways to tell
that powerful interest might be trying
to manipulate your opinion number one
when the media seems to be trying to
shave or censor facts and opinions
rather than report them number two when
so many of the media are reporting the
same stories promulgating the same
narratives relying on the same sources
even using the same phrases I mean think
of it there are literally thousands of
legitimate news stories that could be
reported in a given day and an incident
number of ways to report them when
everybody’s on the same page it might be
the result of an organized campaign I’ll
leave you with a final thought and a
warning it’s about a new catchphrase
being bandied about media literacy as
and will tell you who to trust and who
not to trust media literacy advocates
are busy trying to get state laws passed
to require the fair version of media
literacy be taught in public schools
they’re developing websites as resources
for journal
the public the partnering with
universities I think media literacy is a
new name promoted by some of the same
people who want to tell you what to
believe people with their own agendas
using terms designed to fool you into
thinking they’re neutral authorities
what you need to remember is that 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
[Applause]
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