Democracy is under attack – and reporting that isn’t ‘violating journalistic standards’; The Guardian, September 4, 2022

Robert Reich, The Guardian; Democracy is under attack – and reporting that isn’t ‘violating journalistic standards’

"It is dangerous to believe that “balanced journalism” gives equal weight to liars and to truth-tellers, to those intent on destroying democracy and those seeking to protect it, to the enablers of an ongoing attempted coup and those who are trying to prevent it...

“Balanced journalism” does not exist halfway between facts and lies."

The Information War in Ukraine Is Far From Over; The New York Times, May 5, 2022

 SERGE SCHMEMANN, The New York Times; The Information War in Ukraine Is Far From Over

"As a former K.G.B. agent, Mr. Putin sees the world as a battleground of conspiratorial maneuvers. In his speeches, the color revolutions in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics and the Arab Spring and other global upheavals are machinations to bolster American domination. As an heir to the Soviet worldview, he believes more than many Western leaders do in the importance of information warfare, both to give his regime a veneer of legitimacy and to challenge liberal democracy. On this battlefield, lies are ammunition in Mr. Putin’s long and increasingly personal struggle to stay in power.

As the war enters a new phase, as the images and horrors become familiar and the costs rise, it will become ever more difficult for the Biden administration and for Mr. Zelensky to sustain their early lead in the information war. That makes it all the more imperative for the West to press the message that this is not a war Ukraine chose and that the cost of allowing Mr. Putin to have his way in Ukraine would be far higher than the sacrifices required to block him."

In the War Over Ukraine, Expect the Unexpected; The New York Times, March 15, 2022

Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times; In the War Over Ukraine, Expect the Unexpected

"I am always amazed by the courage that seemingly average people manifest in war — in this case, not only by Ukrainians, but also by Russians who refuse to buy Putin’s lies, knowing that he is turning them into a pariah nation. So I marvel at the breathtaking courage demonstrated on Monday evening by Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee at Russia’s Channel 1, a state-run television channel, who burst into a live broadcast of Russia’s most-watched news show, yelling, “Stop the war!” and holding up a sign behind the anchorwoman saying, “They’re lying to you here.” She was interrogated and, for the moment, released — probably because Putin feared making her into a martyr.

Marina Ovsyannikova — remember her name. She dared to tell the czar that he had no clothes. What courage.

And finally, wars also reveal extraordinary acts of kindness."

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."

The Post Office Mess Is Meant to Exhaust You. Don’t Let It.; The New York Times, August 17, 2020

Charlie Warzel, The New York Times; The Post Office Mess Is Meant to Exhaust You. Don’t Let It.

Trump is “flooding the zone.” It’s a form of modern censorship.

"Despite Mr. Swan’s persistent and admirable grilling and calling out of the president’s lies, a number of Mr. Trump’s claims (including one about climate change) slipped past unchallenged. Had Mr. Swan rebutted each one, the conversation would have ground to a halt — there were simply too many lies per minute.

It’s exhausting and deliberate, part of a strategy best explained by the former Trump strategist Steve Bannon to “flood the zone” with garbage information. Vox’s Sean Illing detailed this in February, suggesting that the strategy was one reason that Mr. Trump’s impeachment did little to change public opinion of the president.

Flooding the zone, Mr. Illing wrote, “seeks to disorient audiences with an avalanche of competing stories. And it produces a certain nihilism in which people are so skeptical about the possibility of finding the truth that they give up the search.” It is, as many have noted, a form of modern censorship and has an effect on the media, causing journalists to waste time not just chasing lies but also repeating them. Each time we speak out against a lie — especially if we’re not careful in how we frame it — we risk also giving it the oxygen it needs to spread."

College cheating scandal is the tip of the iceberg; CNN, March 12, 2019

David Perry, CNN; College cheating scandal is the tip of the iceberg

"We're not talking about donating a building, we're talking about fraud," said Andrew Lelling, the US Attorney for Massachusetts, as he announced indictments in a massive scheme alleging that celebrities and other wealthy individuals used cheating, bribes, and lies to get their kids into elite colleges.

The behavior described in this alleged fraud should be punished. But on a broader and more basic level, the case also sheds light on deep inequities in our college admissions system. Because if someone can get their kid into Harvard by buying a building, let alone by committing any of the alleged acts emerging from this case, the scandal isn't just what's illegal, but what's legal as well. "

Meet the Bottomless Pinocchio, a new rating for a false claim repeated over and over again; The Washington Post, December 10, 2018

Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post; Meet the Bottomless Pinocchio, a new rating for a false claim repeated over and over again

"Trump’s willingness to constantly repeat false claims has posed a unique challenge to fact-checkers. Most politicians quickly drop a Four-Pinocchio claim, either out of a duty to be accurate or concern that spreading false information could be politically damaging.

Not Trump. The president keeps going long after the facts are clear, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to replace the truth with his own, far more favorable, version of it. He is not merely making gaffes or misstating things, he is purposely injecting false information into the national conversation.

To accurately reflect this phenomenon, The Washington Post Fact Checker is introducing a new category — the Bottomless Pinocchio. That dubious distinction will be awarded to politicians who repeat a false claim so many times that they are, in effect, engaging in campaigns of disinformation."

It’s Almost 2019. Do You Know Where Your Photos Are?; The New York Times, November 29, 2018

John Herrman, The New York Times; It’s Almost 2019. Do You Know Where Your Photos Are?

"Jason Scott is a founder of Archive Team, a loose network of archivists and programmers that creates tools for extracting data from services that are at risk of disappearing. Flickr has given users options to export everything from the site; the Archive Team is working on alternatives, just in case.

“The sad thing about the tech industry is they built everything on subsidized lies: ‘This is going to cost you nothing and you’re going to get amazing things,’” Mr. Scott said. It’s not as easy to imagine a future without Google as it might have been to imagine a future without Zing, or even Yahoo. But it shouldn’t be hard.

“It’s 100 percent like Flickr,” Mr. Scott said. “Tech companies are still selling a lot of very neophyte people a lot of problematic lies about things that matter a lot to them.”"

The truth is finally catching up with Trump; The Washington Post, November 27, 2018

Dana Milbank, The Washington Post; The truth is finally catching up with Trump

"In the beginning, they proffered “alternative facts.” Later, they told us that “truth isn’t truth.”

All along, President Trump and his lieutenants were betting that Jonathan Swift was correct when he wrote more than three centuries ago that “falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.”

But after two long years, the truth is finally catching up with Trump and his winged whoppers."

Operation Infektion: Russian Disinformation: From Cold War To Kanye; Opinion Video Series, The New York Times,

Adam B. Ellick and Adam Westbrook, Opinion Video Series, The New York Times; Operation Infektion: Russian Disinformation: From Cold War To Kanye

"WATCH: This is a three-part film series. Scroll down and click to play any episode.

Russia’s meddling in the United States’ elections is not a hoax. It’s the culmination of Moscow’s decades-long campaign to tear the West apart. “Operation InfeKtion” reveals the ways in which one of the Soviets’ central tactics — the promulgation of lies about America — continues today, from Pizzagate to George Soros conspiracies. Meet the KGB spies who conceived this virus and the American truth squads who tried — and are still trying — to fight it. Countries from Pakistan to Brazil are now debating reality, and in Vladimir Putin’s greatest triumph, Americans are using Russia’s playbook against one another without the faintest clue."

J.K. Rowling Roasts Sarah Huckabee Sanders With George Orwell ‘1984’ Quote; Huff Post, November 9, 2018

Lee Moran, Huff Post; J.K. Rowling Roasts Sarah Huckabee Sanders With George Orwell ‘1984’ Quote

"“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth,” Rowling wrote, referencing Orwell’s tale about a society controlled by a lurking totalitarian dictator."

The Essay That Helped Bring Down the Soviet Union; The New York Times, July 20, 2018

Natan Sharansky, The New York Times; The Essay That Helped Bring Down the Soviet Union

[Kip Currier: It's enlightening and inspiring to be reminded of the courageous stance that Soviet Union-residing nuclear physicist, dissident activist, and 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov took 50 years ago, via his influential essay, “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom”. His ideas and invocations on the importance of freedom to think, individual responsibility, moral leadership, and the advancement of human rights for persons living in both open and closed societies are as timely and indispensable today as they were in 1968.]

"Fifty years ago this Sunday, this paper devoted three broadsheet pages to an essay that had been circulating secretly in the Soviet Union for weeks. The manifesto, written by Andrei Sakharov, championed an essential idea at grave risk today: that those of us lucky enough to live in open societies should fight for the freedom of those born into closed ones. This radical argument changed the course of history.

Sakharov’s essay carried a mild title — “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom” — but it was explosive. “Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of mankind by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships,” he wrote. Suddenly the Soviet Union’s most decorated physicist became its most prominent dissident...

[Sakharov's] message was unsettling and liberating: You cannot be a good scientist or a free person while living a double life. Knowing the truth while collaborating in the regime’s lies only produces bad science and broken souls." 

“A shameless lie”: Holes poked in Donald Trump’s assertion that he misspoke when praising Putin; Salon, July 17, 2018

Shira Tarlo and Joseph Neese, Salon; “A shameless lie”: Holes poked in Donald Trump’s assertion that he misspoke when praising Putin

"As controversy mounted over his assertion that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin's word over the findings of the U.S. intelligence community, President Donald Trump attempted to walk back his remarks, in part, by claiming that "other people" could have also meddled in the 2016 presidential election."

What Flake got right — and wrong; Washington Post, January 17, 2018

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post; What Flake got right — and wrong

"Flake gave an impressive and far-reaching speech indicting Trump’s web of lies and the damage his international pals (e.g., Vladimir Putin) are doing to freedom of the press. He correctly admonished his Senate colleagues that undermining truth strengthens the hand of despots. Give him credit — but only partial credit. Elected Republicans engage in much of the same anti-truth propaganda as the president does. The evening programming of an entire TV cable “news” network is dedicated to conspiracy theories, misleading information about immigrants and terrorists, and refusal to cover facts that contradict the president’s tropes.

Trump did not materialize out of thin air. He masterfully manipulated white grievance and anti-elite conspiracy-mongering. But the ground was plowed by many of Flake’s colleagues and by Republicans’ self-selected news outlets. Getting rid of Trump will help, but unless and until the mind-set that permeates the right is dismantled, the war on the truth will rage on."

Trump is Sarah Palin but better at it; Washington Post, August 17, 2017

Jane Coaston, Washington Post; Trump is Sarah Palin but better at it

"His fans weren’t dissuaded by his past support for Democrats (including his 2016 opponent), or his lies, or his personal liberalism, or his crudeness, or his long history of mistreating small-business owners of the kind he claimed to champion, because his fans weren’t voting for Trump. They were voting for what Trump meant to them personally.

In turn, his base will not leave him, because to abandon Trump would not be to abandon the current president but to leave behind deeply held beliefs of their own. His popularity is cultural, not political, resilient to the notions of truth and fiction and to Trump’s own failures. Even after his presidency, regardless of whether it ends in impeachment or in two consecutive terms in office, the image will remain undaunted.

At the 2015 Freedom Summit in Iowa, Palin gave a 35-minute speech described as confusing at best and career-ending at worst by conservative writers and commentators in attendance. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York even wrote that Palin “made a guy like Trump look like a serious presidential candidate.” How appropriate then that the student became the master."

Trump's Lies; New York Times, June 23, 2017

David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson, New York Times; Trump's Lies

"Many Americans have become accustomed to President Trump’s lies. But as regular as they have become, the country should not allow itself to become numb to them. So we have catalogued nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office."

Trump is now raging at Jeff Sessions. This hints at a deeply unsettling pattern.; Washington Post, June 6, 2017

Greg Sargent, Washington Post; Trump is now raging at Jeff Sessions. This hints at a deeply unsettling pattern.

"Students of authoritarianism see a pattern taking shape

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University who writes extensively on authoritarianism and Italian fascism, told me that a discernible trait of authoritarian and autocratic rulers is ongoing “frustration” with the “inability to make others do their bidding” and with “institutional and bureaucratic procedures and checks and balances.”

“Trump doesn’t respect democratic procedure and finds it to be something that gets in his way,” Ben-Ghiat said. “The blaming of others is very typical of autocrats, because they have difficulty listening to a reality that doesn’t coincide with their version of it. It’s part of the authoritarian temperament to blame others when things aren’t working.”

Trump expects independent officials “to behave according to personal loyalty, as opposed to following the rules,” added Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale University who wrote “On Tyranny,” a book of lessons from the 20th Century. “For Trump, that is how the world is supposed to work. Trump doesn’t understand that in the world there might truly be laws and rules that constrain a leader.”

Snyder noted that authoritarian tendencies often go hand in hand with impatience at such constraints. “You have to have morality and a set of institutions that escape the normal balance of administrative practice,” Snyder said. “You have to be able to lie all the time. You have to have people around you who tell you how wonderful you are all the time. You have to have institutions which don’t follow the law and instead follow some kind of law of loyalty.”

Lies vs. B.S.; New York Times, May 31, 2017

David Leonhardt, New York Times; Lies vs. B.S.

"Even if [Donald Trump's lies] are not meant to persuade, they are typically intended to distract people from reality. That is, his untruths about the House’s health care bill aren’t merely intended to distinguish his supporters from his opponents. They are also intended to obscure the reality that the bill would deprive millions of people of health insurance.

His untruths about his tax plan, immigrants, voter fraud, crime and manyother subjects serve a similar purpose. They attempt to create enough confusion about basic facts that Trump’s preferred policies, and his kleptocratic approach to government, can start to sound sensible. In reality, those policies would benefit the affluent (starting with his own family) at the expense of most Americans.

In this way, Trump’s untruths resemble classic lies. They aren’t merely unconcerned with truth. They are opposed to it. A crucial response, insufficient though it may be, is to document the falseness of his statements with simple evidence."

The Trump scandal that has nothing to do with Russia; Washington Post, May 24, 2017

E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post; The Trump scandal that has nothing to do with Russia

"And it is worth noting, as Ronald Brownstein did in the Atlantic, that in the five Rust Belt states that swung from Barack Obama to Trump, whites without a four-year college degree — the heart of the Trump constituency — “constitute most of those receiving assistance” from food stamps and the parts of Social Security that Trump would also slash. If Trump really wants people to go to work, how does he think taking money away from job training and college assistance will ease their path to self-sufficiency?

Martin Wolf, the Financial Times columnist, captured Trump’s ideology with precision when he called it “pluto-populism.” It involves “policies that benefit plutocrats, justified by populist rhetoric.”"

Food, Sex and Silence; New York Times, April 22, 2017

Frank Bruni, New York Times; 

Food, Sex and Silence

"The discrepancy between accounts of Beard up until his death and posthumous assessments like “America’s First Foodie” remind me of how often oppression is an act of omission rather than commission: not letting people give voice and vent to much of what moves them and to all of what defines them; not recognizing and honoring that ourselves.

I’m struck, too, by the nature of lies. They’re not just statements. They’re silences that fail to confront bad as well as beautiful things, often with grievous consequences.

[Ted] Allen thought about all the L.G.B.T. kids back then who were denied a role model. He thought about how the editing of Beard’s life shortchanged a minority group’s major contribution to American gastronomy. Claiborne, too, was in this minority, as the writer John Birdsall pointed out in a 2014 essay for the magazine Lucky Peach that was titled “America, Your Food Is So Gay.”

But Allen said that he thought in particular about all “the well-known people whose homosexuality was buried along with them,” and how that distorted and continues to distort our views of L.G.B.T. Americans."