Election Falsehoods Take Off on YouTube as It Looks the Other Way; The New York Times, October 31, 2024

Nico Grant , The New York Times; Election Falsehoods Take Off on YouTube as It Looks the Other Way

"From May through August, researchers at Media Matters tracked 30 of the most popular YouTube channels they identified as persistently spreading election misinformation, to analyze the narratives they shared in the run-up to November’s election.

The 30 conservative channels posted 286 videos containing election misinformation, which racked up more than 47 million views. YouTube generated revenue from more than a third of those videos by placing ads before or during them, researchers found. Some commentators also made money from those videos and other monetized features available to members of the YouTube Partner Program...

Mr. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, posted more false electoral claims to YouTube than any other major commentator in the research group, the analysis concluded...

YouTube, which is owned by Google, has prided itself on connecting viewers with “authoritative information” about elections. But in this presidential contest, it acted as a megaphone for conspiracy theories."

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."

2 years in, Trump surrogate Elon Musk has remade X as a conservative megaphone; NPR, October 25, 2024

Shannon Bond, Bobby Allyn , NPR; 2 years in, Trump surrogate Elon Musk has remade X as a conservative megaphone

"For the owner of one of the internet’s most influential public squares to openly endorse one political party shocked many observers — especially since only six months earlier, as Musk agreed to buy the company, he declared that "For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally."

Now, as both the 2024 election and the second anniversary of Musk's takeover of Twitter loom, the billionaire has completely evaporated any notion of political neutrality on the platform he's renamed X because his influence on it remains outsized.

Musk has put his money and mouth behind returning Donald Trump to the White House, pouring $75 million into a super PAC he created to turn out voters in battleground states and using X to cheerlead for Trump, smear Vice President Kamala Harris, and amplify rumors and conspiracy theories to his 202 million followers."

A GOP operative accused a monastery of voter fraud. Nuns fought back.; The Washington Post, October 23, 2024

 Praveena Somasundaram, The Washington Post; A GOP operative accused a monastery of voter fraud. Nuns fought back.

"The day before, a Republican operative in the battleground state falsely suggested to his nearly 58,000 followers on X that no one lived at the monastery and that mail ballots cast from there would be “illegal votes.” Cliff Maloney, who hired 120 people to go door-to-door across Pennsylvania urging Republican voters to return their mail ballots, wrote on X that one of those workers had “discovered” an Erie address where 53 people were registered to vote but “NO ONE lives there.”

The address Maloney posted belonged to the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, where Schmidt and 54 other sisters live full time. And the Catholic order, known for its engagement in social justice issues, was alarmed by the accusations.

“To be unjustly accused of voter fraud is just really disgusting, ugly,” Schmidt, the prioress, told The Washington Post.

“To be unjustly accused of voter fraud is just really disgusting, ugly,” Schmidt, the prioress, told The Washington Post...

The Benedictine Sisters are planning to take legal action. Ahead of Nov. 5, just like in homes across the country, “there’s a lot of angst about the upcoming election in our house,” Schmidt said."

Immigrants were revitalizing tiny Charleroi. Then Donald Trump’s attacks brought white supremacists and conservative influencers.; The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 14, 2024

Aliya Schneider, The Philadelphia Inquirer; Immigrants were revitalizing tiny Charleroi. Then Donald Trump’s attacks brought white supremacists and conservative influencers.

"Her customers hadn’t been going out much since Trump began disparaging andspreading lies about Haitian immigrants, first in Springfield, Ohio, and soon after, in Charleroi, where he falsely said Haitian immigrants brought a crime surge and financial strain to the town, claiming that it’s on the precipice of bankruptcy.

Quickly, the former president’s claims thrust the small town, where, in reality, crime was down and bankruptcy was nowhere on the horizon, into an unwanted national spotlight, exposing fault lines and ratcheting up anxiety and tensions that show little sign of abating weeks later.

Trump’s attacks on the Western Pennsylvania town appear to have emboldened people whose views once seemed to sit on the fringes...

Joe Manning, the borough manager in Charleroi, said the town that originally seemed to welcome immigrants has been tainted since Trump’s comments.

“By and large, these folks have received a lot of support in this community,” Manning said. " … But now, that seems to have changed. I don’t know if it’s ever going to go back to the way it was.”

And while the former president’s comments were directed at the Haitian community in Charleroi, his claims impact immigrants from across the globe."

Central Park 5 sue Trump for defamation over debate comments; The Hill, October 21, 2024

 ZACH SCHONFELD , The Hill; Central Park 5 sue Trump for defamation over debate comments 

"The exonerated Central Park Five sued former President Trump for defamation Monday over his comments at the recent presidential debate about the group’s wrongful convictions for rape and assault.

During a segment on race and politics at the Sept. 10 debate against Vice President Harris, Trump said “they admitted — they said, they pled guilty.

“And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty — then they pled we’re not guilty,” Trump continued. 

The five Black and Hispanic teenagers were wrongfully convicted of the 1989 rape and assault of a woman jogging in New York City’s Central Park. They spent years in prison before their convictions were overturned in 2002, once the true culprit confessed and was corroborated by DNA evidence. 

The lawsuit notes the five members never pleaded guilty and the victim wasn’t killed, claiming Trump’s comments were made with a “reckless disregard for their falsity” to the tens of millions of Americans who tuned into the debate."

Trump refuses to denounce threats to FEMA, doubles down on falsehoods; The Washington Post, October 21, 2024

Marianne LeVine

 and 

Isaac Arnsdorf

, The Washington Post, ; Trump refuses to denounce threats to FEMA, doubles down on falsehoods

"Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump declined to condemn violent threats to Federal Emergency Management Agency workers providing relief to Americans impacted by Hurricane Helene, instead criticizing the government’s storm response using false allegations.

Asked during a news conference here about whether the former president is harming the recovery effort after a man was arrested for threatening federal relief workers this month, Trump responded by repeating falsehoods, including those the suspect said motivated him. Trump did not offer any concern for the workers’ safety or a denunciation of violence."

JD Vance says 'no,' he does not think Trump lost in 2020; NPR, October 16, 2024

Jason Breslow , NPR; JD Vance says 'no,' he does not think Trump lost in 2020

"For weeks, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has faced repeated questions on the campaign trail about whether he believes former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. On Wednesday, he flatly answered "no." 

Vance's comment came during an appearance in Williamsport, Pa., after a reporter asked him, "What message do you think it sends to independent voters when you do not directly answer the question, did Donald Trump lose in 2020?”"

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."

Interested Parties Memo: Fighting Hurricane Helene Falsehoods with Facts; The White House, October 5, 2024

 The White House; Interested Parties Memo: Fighting Hurricane Helene Falsehoods with Facts

""Senior Advisor to the President and Communications Director Ben LaBolt, and Director of Digital Strategy Christian Tom

Under President Biden and Vice President Harris’s direction, the Administration has mobilized a robust, intensive, and whole-of-government effort to respond to the impacts of Hurricane Helene. This includes extensive pre-landfall preparations, as well as an immediate surge of additional resources and personnel to impacted communities. More than 6,400 Federal personnel are on the ground, and more than $110 million in Federal assistance has been given to survivors, with more to come. We are sparing no resource as we work to ensure communities across the Southeast have prompt access to Federal resources that will enable them to both purchase essential items and begin their road to recovery and rebuilding.

Unfortunately, as our response and recovery efforts continue, we have seen a large increase in false information circulating online related to the federal response to Hurricane Helene. A number of scam artists, bad-faith actors, and others who want to sow chaos because they think it helps their political interests are promoting disinformation about the recovery effort, including ways to access critical and live-saving resources. This is wrong, dangerous, and it must stop immediately.

Combatting misinformation and disinformation is always important – but it is especially important when responding to disasters like Hurricane Helene. In fact, disinformation after a hurricane or other natural disaster can discourage people from seeking critical assistance when they need it most. It is imperative that we encourage impacted residents to register for FEMA assistance, not discourage it, by allowing falsehoods to spread.

Leaders from across the country, including local, state, and federal elected officials in both parties, are pleading with people to stop sharing “this junk.”

1. CNN: With misinformation swirling in Hurricane Helene’s wake, officials urge residents to ‘stop this conspiracy theory junk’
2. HuffPost: North Carolina Republican Pleads To End Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories About Helene Disaster Recovery
3. The Hill: Tennessee mayor on FEMA attacks post-Helene: ‘Quit spreading those rumors’
4. WVLT: ‘A lot of misinformation’ | Gov. Lee, FEMA address donation rumors

Here are some of the falsehoods being spread online – and the facts we are fighting back with:"

Elon Musk’s attacks on Kamala Harris become more unhinged, with help from AI, CNN, September 3, 2024

Donie O'Sullivan , CNN; Elon Musk’s attacks on Kamala Harris become more unhinged, with help from AI

"Elon Musk’s disdain for the Democratic Party was never subtle, but in recent weeks his commentary on the upcoming US presidential election and his attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris have intensified, aided by a crude use of burgeoning artificial intelligence technology.

On Monday, Musk posted an AI-generated image on his social media platform that depicted Harris as a communist, wearing a red uniform complete with hammer and sickle emblazoned hat.

Musk, who has endorsed former President Donald Trump for president and poured millions into a super PAC supporting the Republican, captioned the image with the false assertion, “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?”"

5 Days With Elon Musk on X: Deepfakes, Falsehoods and Lots of Memes; The New York Times, September 27, 2024

Stuart A. Thompson , The New York Times; 5 Days With Elon Musk on X: Deepfakes, Falsehoods and Lots of Memes

"Experts who monitor falsehoods and conspiracy theories have long feared that Mr. Musk would use his ownership of X to further pollute the online ecosystem. Since he bought the platform known as Twitter in 2022, he has shown a willingness to elevate unfounded claims as he has embraced a more conservative political posture, including by endorsing Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign in July.

Nearly a third of his posts last week were false, misleading or missing vital context. They included misleading posts claiming Democrats were making memes “illegal” and falsehoods that they want to “open the border” to gain votes from illegal immigrants. His misleading posts were seen more than 800 million times on X, underscoring Mr. Musk’s unique role as the platform’s most-followed account and a significant source of its misleading content."

Opinion: Fox News cleans up another Trump mess; The Washington Post, September 13, 2024

 Dana Milbank, The Washington Post;  Opinion: Fox News cleans up another Trump mess

"It was a case study in how the dominant “news” organ of the right cleans up Trump’s messes. When President Joe Biden had his disastrous debate, liberal outlets and commentators panned the performance and ultimately helped to force him out of the race. But when Trump had what was, objectively, a bad night, Fox News led a movement to claim it didn’t happen.

Sixty-seven million viewers saw an out-of-control Trump claim he won the 2020 election, complain that those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were “treated so badly,” argue about his crowd size, assert that he had read that Harris “was not Black” and that Biden “hates her,” admit that he still only has “concepts of a plan” on health care, make odd statements such as “I got involved with the Taliban” and “she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” and utter this ludicrous slander about Haitian migrants: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Fox News then told its viewers (14 million people watched the simulcaston the network) that they had not seen what they just saw. Unless I missed it, viewers also weren’t told the other news of the night, that Taylor Swift had endorsed Harris after the debate.

Often, after my weekly cataloguing of Trump’s madness and mayhem, readers ask why his followers don’t see that he is off his rocker. This is why. Fox News sane-washes him — and it sets the tone for the entire MAGA social media ecosystem."

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."

More Adventures With AI Claude, The Contrite Poet; Religion Unplugged, June 11, 2024

Dr. Michael Brown , Religion Unplugged; More Adventures With AI Claude, The Contrite Poet

"Working with the AI bot Claude is, in no particular order, amazing, frustrating, and hilarious...

I have asked Claude detailed Hebrew grammatical questions or asked him to translate difficult rabbinic Hebrew passages, and time and time again, Claude has nailed it.

But just as frequently, he creates texts out of thin air, side by side with accurate citations, which then have to be vetted one by one.

When I asked Claude why he manufactured citations, he explained that he aims to please and can sometimes go a little too far. In other words, Claude tells me what he thinks I want to hear...

"I’m sure that AI bots are already providing “companionship” for an increasingly isolated generation, not to mention proving falsehoods side by side with truths for unsuspecting readers.

And so, the promise and the threat of AI continue to grow by the day, with a little entertainment and humor added in."

Sinclair Infiltrates Local News With Lara Trump’s RNC Playbook; The New Republic, June 17, 2024

Ben Metzner, The New Republic; Sinclair Infiltrates Local News With Lara Trump’s RNC Playbook

"Sinclair Broadcast Group, the right-wing media behemoth swallowing up local news stations and spitting them out as zombie GOP propaganda mills, is ramping up pro-Trump content in the lead-up to the 2024 election. Its latest plot? A coordinated effort across at least 86 local news websites to suggest that Joe Biden is mentally unfit for the presidency, based on edited footage and misinformation.

According to Judd Legum, Sinclair, which owns hundreds of television news stations around the country, has been laundering GOP talking points about Biden’s age and mental capacity into news segments of local Fox, ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates. One replica online article with the headline “Biden appears to freeze, slur words during White House Juneteenth event” shares no evidence other than a spliced-together clip of Biden watching a musical performance and another edited video of Biden giving a speech originally posted on X by Sean Hannity. The article was syndicated en masse on the same day at the same time, Legum found, suggesting that editors at the local affiliates were not given the chance to vet the segment for accuracy.

Most outrageously, the article, along with at least two others posted in June, makes the evidence-free claim that Biden may have pooped himself at a D-Day memorial event in France, based on a video of the president sitting down during the event. According to Legum, one of the article’s URLs includes the word “pooping.”

Putin's war was launched on a runway of lies; CNN, February 25, 2022

Opinion by Frida Ghitis, CNN ; Putin's war was launched on a runway of lies

"In the end, Putin did exactly what President Biden told the world he would do: He invaded Ukraine on a runway of lies.

In Russia, where most people get their news from government-controlled media, many believed Putin's claims of a nefarious threat from Ukraine. But the rest of the world saw the propaganda fall flat in real time. 

"Orwellian" doesn't begin to describe the falsehoods. Putin announced he was sending "peacekeepers," as he ordered his military machine to move into Ukrainian territory. His soldiers went into Ukraine to supposedly "de-Nazify" -- smearing the Nazi label on a country that is a democracy, though a flawed one, whose president happens to be Jewish. Putin claimed Moscow needed to move in to defend Ukraine's Russian speakers from a nonexistent "genocide" by Ukrainians (a tactic made infamous of World War II).

Washington succeeded in thoroughly delegitimizing not only the phony Russian justification for war, but Putin's own credibility before the entire world. It may take some time for the Russian people, too, to grasp the depth of the deception, but eventually they will."

U.S. Accuses Harvard Scientist of Concealing Chinese Funding; The New York Times, January 28, 2020

Ellen Barry, The New York Times; U.S. Accuses Harvard Scientist of Concealing Chinese Funding


“Charles M. Lieber, the chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, was charged on Tuesday with making false statements about money he had received from a Chinese government-run program, part of a broad-ranging F.B.I. effort to root out theft of biomedical research from American laboratories.
 
Dr. Lieber, a leader in the field of nanoscale electronics, was one of three Boston-area scientists accused on Tuesday of working on behalf of China. His case involves work with the Thousand Talents Program, a state-run program that seeks to draw talent educated in other countries.

American officials are investigating hundreds of cases of suspected theft of intellectual property by visiting scientists, nearly all of them Chinese nationals or of Chinese descent. Some are accused of obtaining patents in China based on work that is funded by the United States government, and others of setting up laboratories in China that secretly duplicated American research.”

Senior Trump official embellished résumé, had face on fake Time cover; NBC News, November 12, 2019

Dan De Luce, Laura Strickler and Ari Sen, NBC News; Senior Trump official embellished résumé, had face on fake Time cover

"A senior Trump administration official has embellished her résumé with misleading claims about her professional background — even creating a fake Time magazine cover with her face on it — raising questions about her qualifications to hold a top position at the State Department. 

An NBC News investigation found that Mina Chang, the deputy assistant secretary in the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations, has inflated her educational achievements and exaggerated the scope of her nonprofit's work.

She was being considered for an even bigger government job, one with a budget of more than $1 billion, until Congress started asking questions about her résumé."

Facebook and Twitter spread Trump’s lies, so we must break them up; The Guardian, November 3, 2019

Robert Reich, The Guardian; Facebook and Twitter spread Trump’s lies, so we must break them up 

"The reason 45% of Americans rely on Facebook for news and Trump’s tweets reach 66 million is because these platforms are near monopolies, dominating the information marketplace. No TV network, cable giant or newspaper even comes close. Fox News’ viewership rarely exceeds 3 million. The New York Times has 4.7 million subscribers.

Facebook and Twitter aren’t just participants in the information marketplace. They’re quickly becoming the information marketplace."