Elon Musk says X users fight falsehoods. The falsehoods are winning.; The Washington Post, October 30, 2024

Will Oremus

, 

Trisha Thadani

 and 

Jeremy B. Merrill

, The Washington Post; Elon Musk says X users fight falsehoods. The falsehoods are winning.

"When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he laid off swaths of workers tasked with moderating the platform and embraced an experimental approach: asking users to fact-check one another.

Musk has touted the crowdsourcing program, called Community Notes, as “the best source of truth on the internet.” But the majority of accurate fact checks proposed by users on political posts are never shown to the public, according to research from the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and a separate data analysis by The Washington Post — suggesting that the feature is failing to provide a meaningful check on misinformation."

A week before the election, Trump will hold his most unsettling spectacle yet; The Guardian, October 18, 2024

Sidney Blumenthal , The Guardian; A week before the election, Trump will hold his most unsettling spectacle yet

"In the last week, Trump has pledged to deploy the military against “the enemy within”, domestic opponents he claims are worse than foreign adversaries – those Hitler called “Feind des Volkes”, or “enemy of the people”. Trump has threatened to destroy CBS, ABC and the New York Times. About ABC, after it conducted the debate in which he performed disastrously, he called to “take away their license”. After Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview, having refused his own, he tweeted on 10 October: “TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE.” About the Times, he said on 9 October: “Wait until you see what I’m going to do with them.” He has singled out by name journalists for the Times and the New Yorker as “FAKE OBAMA LOVING ‘JOURNALISTS”. At every rally he denounces the “fake news”, a drumbeat for years, echoing Hitler’s pejorative slur, “die Lügenpresse” – “the lying press”.

 

Trump traveled on 11 October to Aurora, Colorado, where he claimed a Venezuelan gang had seized control, “scum” and “animals” who have “invaded and conquered” and “infected” the town, a description dismissed as false by its Republican mayor. “We have to clean out our country,” said Trump. His language represented the Nazi idea of “Rassenhygiene” – “race cleansing” that required purification, not an academic interest in genetics but a program of eugenics for designating inferior races to be isolated or eliminated.

 

As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “A people that fails to preserve the purity of its racial blood thereby destroys the unity of the soul of the nation in all its manifestations. A disintegrated national character is the inevitable consequence of a process of disintegration in the blood.”

 

The former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, retired general Mark Milley, according to Bob Woodward in his new book War, told the veteran journalist: “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump. Now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.” Trump had stated that for Milley’s communication with his counterparts in China on January 6 to reassure them that the US military was stable, he deserved “DEATH” – to be executed."

Fact check: John Deere says Trump’s story about how he saved US jobs with a tariff threat is fictional; CNN, October 16, 2024

 Daniel Dale, , CNN; Fact check: John Deere says Trump’s story about how he saved US jobs with a tariff threat is fictional

"When former President Donald Trump was challenged at a Tuesday event about the potential economic harms of his proposal for across-the-board tariffs on imported goods, Trump told what sounded like a tariff success story.

He said that in response to his threat to impose hefty tariffs on John Deere if the storied American farm equipment maker went ahead with a plan to move some production from the US to Mexico, the company had just announced it was likely abandoning that outsourcing plan.

Trump said: “Are you ready? John Deere, great company. They announced about a year ago they’re gonna build big plants outside of the United States. Right? They’re going to build them in Mexico … I said, ‘If John Deere builds those plants, they’re not selling anything into the United States.’ They just announced yesterday they’re probably not going to build the plants, OK? I kept the jobs here.”

But a search of news articles and corporate press releases showed nothing about any such John Deere announcement the day prior. And in response to Trump’s story, a John Deere spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News that it had not changed its plans or announced any such changes.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a CNN request for any evidence for the former president’s story.

Trump has told numerous fictional tales in recent weeks. Aside from the John Deere story, the Republican presidential nominee made at least 19 false claims at the Tuesday event, which was a public interview at the Economic Club of Chicago that was conducted by John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News...

Guns and the Capitol riot: Trump, speaking of rioters at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, repeated his false claim that “not one of those people had a gun.” It has been proven in court that multiple rioters had guns – in addition to stun guns, knives, chemical sprays and numerous other weapons...

The size of the Capitol riot: Trump correctly noted that the Washington, DC, rally he addressed prior to the Capitol riot was peaceful, but then wrongly described the size of the riot, saying, “I don’t know what you had – five, six, seven hundred people – go down to the Capitol.”

Trump’s figures are way off. The Justice Department said in an official update earlier this month that about 1,532 defendants had, so far, been federally charged with crimes associated with the attack on the Capitol. The FBI said in 2021 that “approximately 2,000 individuals are believed to have been involved with the siege” and the actual number might well be hundreds higher...

Who pays tariffs: Trump repeated his false claim that, through tariffs, “We got hundreds of billions of dollars just from China alone.” US importers make the actual tariff payments, not China, and study after study has found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s tariffs on China."

Trump Lashes Out at Live Fact-Checks During Disaster of an Interview; The New Republic, October 15, 2024

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, The New Republic ; Trump Lashes Out at Live Fact-Checks During Disaster of an Interview

"Donald Trump’s sit-down interview Tuesday with the Economic Club of Chicago went completely off the rails as the Republican presidential nominee struggled to offer concrete answers to a business-minded crowd, and miraculously performed even worse as he was fact-checked live onstage."

Trump wages campaign against real-time fact checks; The Washington Post, October 14, 2024

Ashley Parker

 and 

Josh Dawsey

, The Washington Post; Trump wages campaign against real-time fact checks

"Donald Trump and his campaign have waged an aggressive campaign against fact-checking in recent months, pushing TV networks, journalism organizations and others to abandon the practice if they hope to interact with Trump...

The moves are the latest example of Trump’s long-held resistance to being called to account for his falsehoods, which have formed the bedrock of his political message for years. Just in recent weeks, for example, Trump has seized on fabricated tales of migrants eating pets and Venezuelan gangs overtaking cities in pushing his anti-immigration message as he seeks a second term in office.

Lucas Graves, a journalism and mass communications professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that publicly chafing at fact-checking has become a form of tribalism among some Republicans.

“Within the political establishment on the right, it is now considered quite legitimate — and quite legitimate to say publicly and openly — that you disapprove of fact-checking,” said Lucas, author of “Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism."

[AI-Fabricated] Image shows a photo of former President Donald Trump wading through floodwater after Hurricane Helene.; PolitiFact, Poynter Institute, October 2, 2024

Ciara O'Rourke,  PolitiFact, Poynter Institute; [AI-Fabricated] Image shows a photo of former President Donald Trump wading through floodwater after Hurricane Helene.

"Trump surveyed Hurricane Helene damage in Georgia, but not from deep floodwaters; this image is fake

IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT

• This image was fabricated.

See the sources for this fact-check

Former President Donald Trump visited Valdosta, Georgia, on Sept. 30, to see how Hurricane Helene had damaged the area. 

But an image circulating online that purportedly shows him wading through floodwaters past his knees isn’t authentic. 

Posts sharing it were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

(Screengrab from Threads)"

Mark Cuban Fact-Checks Unhinged Elon Musk Conspiracy Theory Using Musk's Own Tech; HuffPost, September 30, 2024

Ryan Grenoble , HuffPost; Mark Cuban Fact-Checks Unhinged Elon Musk Conspiracy Theory Using Musk's Own Tech

"Elon Musk on Sunday embraced a racist and wildly conspiratorial election theory ― only to get fact-checked by fellow billionaire Mark Cuban, who used Musk’s own AI chatbot to do the job.

Musk, who’s endorsed Donald Trump and was once rumored to be donating $45 million a month to a pro-Trump super PAC, claimed Sunday that the former president “is the only way to save” democracy from immigrants.

“Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election,” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform that’s lost nearly 80% of its value since he took over.

He then asserted, without any evidence, that Democrats are flying immigrants “directly into swing states” who are then “fast-tracked to citizenship” for the purpose of altering the outcome of the election.

The claim is false.

Noncitizens must first spend at least five years as a lawful permanent resident before they’re typically eligible for naturalization, meaning Musk’s conspiracy would have had to begin during the Trump administration to bear any meaningful fruit. (The median number of years in the U.S. for citizens naturalized in 2023 was actually longer: seven years.)

And according to the Department of Homeland Security, the top 10 states where people who were naturalized last year reside are: California (not a swing state), Texas (not a swing state), Florida (not really), New York (absolutely not), New Jersey (also solidly blue), Illinois (nuh-uh), Washington (try again), Pennsylvania (the only one), Massachusetts (blue) and Virginia (debatable).

Nine-tenths of those are not swing states. Pennsylvania, the lone exception, only accounted for 2.8% of those naturalized in 2023. More than 50% live in California, Texas, Florida and New York.

Undeterred by facts, Musk predicted that, if Trump loses, “there will be no more swing states” and “Democracy is over.” (Relatedly, Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both separately deported more people than Donald Trump.)

Musk’s rant also caught the eye of Mark Cuban, who fact-checked Musk using Twitter’s own “anti-woke” AI chatbot Grok, which Musk concocted after finding competitors were too politically liberal.

“Hey [Elon Musk], truly appreciate the work you have done with [Grok].” Cuban wrote to Musk in a public message. “It’s a great way to factcheck you.”

Cuban then shared a link to Grok’s lengthy analysis of Musk’s claim.

The chatbot concluded that Musk’s xenophobic theory “contains exaggerated claims and speculative fears rather than factual analysis,” and was “presented in an alarmist and overly deterministic manner.”

How ABC News Could Fix CNN’s Mockery Of The First Presidential Debate; Forbes, July 3, 2024

Subramaniam Vincent , Forbes; How ABC News Could Fix CNN’s Mockery Of The First Presidential Debate

"If we are bringing prolific liars live on an election debate, our responsibility to truth-telling and truth-determination requires that we make a sincere attempt to vet their claims within a few minutes of them being aired. This is when the audience of millions is in the frame of comparing candidates. And when those claims are dubious, it is an act of ethical journalism to intervene to ask its promoters to defend with actual evidence, or call them out."

Supreme Court hands Fox News another win in copyright case against TVEyes monitoring service; The Washington Post, December 3, 2018

Erik Wemple, The Washington Post; Supreme Court hands Fox News another win in copyright case against TVEyes monitoring service

"The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case could leave media critics scrambling. How to fact-check the latest gaffe on “Hannity”? Did Brian Kilmeade really say that? To be sure, cable-news watchers commonly post the most extravagant cable-news moments on Twitter and other social media — a democratic activity that lies outside of the TVEyes ruling, because it’s not a money-making thing. Yet Fox News watchdogs use TVEyes and other services to soak in the full context surrounding those widely circulated clips, and that task is due to get more complicated. That said, services may still provide transcripts without infringing the Fox News copyright."

The Shape of Mis- and Disinformation; Slate, July 26, 2018

[Podcast] April Glaser and Will Oremus, Slate; The Shape of Mis- and Disinformation

"In recent weeks, Facebook and YouTube have strained to explain why they won’t ban Alex Jones’ Infowars, which has used its verified accounts to spread false news and dangerous conspiracy theories on the platforms. Meanwhile, the midterms are approaching, and Facebook won’t say definitively whether the company has found any efforts by foreign actors to disrupt the elections. Facebook did recently say that it will start to remove misinformation if it may lead to violence, a response to worrisome trends in Myanmar, India, other countries. The social media platforms are being called on to explain how they deal with information that is wrong—a question made even more complicated because the problem takes so many forms.

To understand the many forms of misinformation and disinformation on social media, we recently spoke with Claire Wardle, the executive director of First Draft, a nonprofit news-literacy and fact-checking outfit based at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, for Slate’s tech podcast If Then. We discussed how fake news spreads on different platforms, where it’s coming from, and how journalists might think—or rethink—their role in covering it"

Gwyneth Paltrow didn't want Condé Nast to fact-check Goop articles; The Guardian, July 25, 2018

Sam Wolfson, The Guardian; Gwyneth Paltrow didn't want Condé Nast to fact-check Goop articles

"“I think for us it was really like we like to work where we are in an expansive space. Somewhere like Condé, understandably, there are a lot of rules,” Paltrow told the Times, adding that they were a company that “do things in a very old-school way”.

She argued that they were interviewing experts and didn’t need to check what they were saying was scientifically accurate. “We’re never making statements,” she said. Elise Loehnen, Goop’s head of content, added that Goop was “just asking questions”."

"Counting on Nobody "Fact-Checking" It"; Blondie, March 27, 2017

Blondie; "Counting on Nobody "Fact-Checking" It"

Scott Pelley is pulling no punches on the nightly news — and people are taking notice; Washington Post, March 26, 2017

Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post; Scott Pelley is pulling no punches on the nightly news — and people are taking notice

"Pelley, and others at CBS, declined to comment for this column, saying the work speaks for itself. There is clearly every wish to avoid setting up CBS as anti-Trump or as partisan.

But, accepting Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite Award last November, Pelley tipped his hand: “The quickest, most direct way to ruin a democracy is to poison the information.”"

The EU Is Fighting A Lopsided Battle Against Russian Disinformation; Huffington Post, March 3, 2017

Nick Robins-Early, Huffington Post; 

The EU Is Fighting A Lopsided Battle Against Russian Disinformation

"The Lisa case is an extreme example of what analysts say is a sprawling campaign of Russian disinformation that seeks to influence European Union politics and sow discord among voters. It’s a problem that European governments are increasingly concerned about, but one they are struggling to produce an effective way to counter...

The EU vowed this year to expand its efforts to defend against false reports, as upcoming elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands raise the stakes on misinformation influencing voters. In November, the European Parliament passed a motion that called on the EU and member states to do more to counter Russian “disinformation and propaganda warfare.” Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the bloc of trying to silence dissenting opinions.

But the European Union views the threat of disinformation as a serious challenge. In January, EU politicians pledged to give more funding for an 11-person task force set up in 2015 called East Stratcom, which aims to address Russian disinformation and highlight its distortions. The task force issues weekly newsletters on disinformation campaigns, makes viral-style explainer videos on how false reports spread and fact checks suspect news stories." 

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Must Defend the Truth; New York Times, 11/20/16

Jim Rutenberg, New York Times; Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Must Defend the Truth:

"Today’s fake news is limited only by the imaginations of its inventors and the number of shares it can garner on Facebook or Twitter.

(To wit: The one million shares of the preposterous notion that Mrs. Clinton secretly sold weapons to ISIS. BuzzFeed News — which has excelled at illuminating the fake news problem — highlighted that example in its alarming analysis showing that during the campaign cycle fake news was shared among Facebook users more often than real news was.)

That’s why people who care about the truth — citizens, journalists and, let’s hope, social media giants like Facebook, too — will have to come up with a solution to this informational nihilism, fast.

It’s easier said than done. The combination of attacks seeking to delegitimize serious news organizations and a drop in overall trust in the news media has made many people wary of legitimate fact-checking."

How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth; New York Times, 11/2/16

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times; How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth:

"Next week, if all goes well, someone will win the presidency. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. Will the losing side believe the results? Will the bulk of Americans recognize the legitimacy of the new president? And will we all be able to clean up the piles of lies, hoaxes and other dung that have been hurled so freely in this hyper-charged, fact-free election?

Much of that remains unclear, because the internet is distorting our collective grasp on the truth. Polls show that many of us have burrowed into our own echo chambers of information. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 81 percent of respondents said that partisans not only differed about policies, but also about “basic facts.”

For years, technologists and other utopians have argued that online news would be a boon to democracy. That has not been the case...

“There’s always more work to be done,” said Brooke Binkowski, the managing editor of Snopes.com, one of the internet’s oldest rumor-checking sites. “There’s always more. It’s Sisyphean — we’re all pushing that boulder up the hill, only to see it roll back down.”"

Both Sides Now?; New York Times, 7/18/16

Paul Krugman, New York Times; Both Sides Now? :

"And in the last few days we’ve seen a spectacular demonstration of bothsidesism in action: an op-ed article from the incoming and outgoing heads of the White House Correspondents’ Association, with the headline “Trump, Clinton both threaten free press.” How so? Well, Mr. Trump has selectively banned news organizations he considers hostile; he has also, although the op-ed didn’t mention it, attacked both those organizations and individual reporters, and refused to condemn supporters who, for example, have harassed reporters with anti-Semitic insults.

Meanwhile, while Mrs. Clinton hasn’t done any of these things, and has a staff that readily responds to fact-checking questions, she doesn’t like to hold press conferences. Equivalence!

Stung by criticism, the authors of the op-ed issued a statement denying that they had engaged in “false equivalency” — I guess saying that the candidates are acting “similarly” doesn’t mean saying that they are acting similarly. And they once again refused to indicate which candidate was behaving worse.

As I said, bothsidesism isn’t new, and it has always been an evasion of responsibility. But taking the position that “both sides do it” now, in the face of this campaign and this candidate, is an act of mind-boggling irresponsibility."