Friday, July 31, 2020
Headlines for July 31, 2020
Worst, Most Misleading & Funniest Headlines for July 31, 2020
*Russian Intelligence Agencies Push Disinformation on Pandemic
Hard to imagine that anything qualifies more as “disinformation” than this article.
“United States intelligence reports have identified two Russians, Denis V. Tyurin and Aleksandr G. Starunskiy, with ties to the G.R.U. and who make sure the messaging and disinformation drafted by the intelligence officials are pushed by InfoRos and on InfoBrics.org and OneWorld.Press.”
“Many of the articles created by Russian intelligence were published on InfoRos, a site controlled by the Russian government, and OneWorld.Press, a nominally independent site that U.S. officials said had ties to the G.R.U.” Who the hell gets their news from InfoRos or OneWorld.Press or InfoBrics.org? No one I know. What is their readership among Americans? The article doesn’t say.
The New York Times article was written by David Sanger. Can we describe him as having “ties to the CIA” who “makes sure that messaging and disinformation drafted by intelligence officials is pushed by the New York Times”? I’m pretty sure that would be accurate.
From AP: “The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link between the sites and Russian intelligence.” Of course this “clear link” is a case of “trust us” because we are given no information whatsoever to prove that link.
From Twitter search for tweets in English containing “inforos.ru” (prior to publication of the NYT article):
Most recent one: June 16, no likes, no retweets, someone with 563 followers
Next: April 18, one like, no retweets, someone with 261 followers
Next: April 11, no likes, no retweets, 71 followers
Next: April 1, no likes, no retweets, 76 followers
Next: March 20, no likes, no retweets, 783 followers
Content: “Russian coronavirus vaccine to be tested on ferrets and primates”
Next: March 10, no likes, no retweets, 482 followers
Next: Feb. 22, no likes, no retweets, 696 followers
Next: Feb. 10, one like, no retweets, 26 followers
That’s it for 2020. Grand total: 8 tweets, 2 likes, 0 retweets, seen by a maximum of 2,958 people. Of the 8 tweeters (all different), none were clearly identified as Americans; the ones who were identified were from Slovakia, South Africa, and Finland. In other words, Americans aren’t even reading these sites. And that one article that the intelligence agencies are worried about? Didn’t get a single tweet mentioning it! So the NYT has now given it a million times more exposure than it ever had!
InfoBrics.org turned up ZERO tweets in English in 2020 linking to it.
[NOTE: This is what I said on the show. It was an error; apparently I made a typo when I searched. There were a small number of tweets (one per day on average) linking to InfoBrics.org]
[NOTE: This is what I said on the show. It was an error; apparently I made a typo when I searched. There were a small number of tweets (one per day on average) linking to InfoBrics.org]
OneWorld.Press is the third site cited by the NYT. It is more popular; 2-3 tweets each day (not exactly a whopping number) reference it, but none I saw in the last month had more than 12 retweets. NYT dings http://OneWorld.Press for publishing an article entitled "The COVID-19 Plandemic Is An Experiment In Manipulating The World". It's an opinion article from someone with a fringe point of view. But it's not a *Russian* POV, & it's no more bizarre than Trump's claims. Without irony, NYT writes: "Without evidence, http://OneWorld.Press claimed that the accusations about Russian intelligence’s propaganda efforts were being spread by officials who aimed to hurt President Trump’s re-election chances." Ya' think?
Their other examples do not remotely constitute disinformation: “InfoRos published an article, also published by Tass news agency, that said the United States was using the pandemic to impose its view of the world, according to American officials.” This was an article describing a speech by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: “"We have to state that even in the conditions of a pandemic, our American colleagues and their allies do not abandon their attempts to escalate confrontation, to use the current situation to impose their point of view, their vision of world order, which they call an order based on rules. As you know, they invent the rules themselves," Lavrov said. He noted that the US increases pressure on the countries who lead an independent foreign policy as well as criticizes the World Health Organization (WHO). "We hear baseless accusations against the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. The calls to suspend unilateral sanctions for the period of the fight against the coronavirus, sanctions that hinder humanitarian deliveries of medicine, equipment and goods, are being ignored," the minister explained.”
“InfoBrics.org published reports about Beijing’s contention that the coronavirus was originally an American biological weapon.” “The recent statement by the Chinese spokesman Zhao Lijian, formally accusing the US of bringing coronavirus to China.” No, he tweeted: “When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”
Facing the above article on the NYT home page was this:
*Misleading Virus Video, Pushed by the Trumps, Spreads Online
Social media companies took down the video within hours. But by then, it had already been viewed tens of millions of times.
Meanwhile, real disinformation:
*You get 2 choices for president. That's it.
U.S. Warns Russia, China and Iran Are Trying to Interfere in the Election. Democrats Say It’s Far Worse.
Virtually the entire article is speculation about what Russia, China, and Iran might do. And as for what they have done?
Russia, the warning said, was continuing to “spread disinformation in the U.S. that is designed to undermine confidence in our democratic process,” and it described Iran as an emerging actor in election interference, seeking to spread disinformation and “recirculating anti-U.S. content.”
The statement was short on details, reminiscent of the vague warnings that the director of national intelligence turned out starting in October 2016 that, in retrospect, failed to seize the attention of officials and voters before the last presidential election.
In a statement issued a few hours later, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was joined by the Senate Democratic leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, and two key Democrats on intelligence oversight committees, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, in saying that the descriptions of malign activity were “so generic as to be almost meaningless.”
But Mr. Schiff, a frequent target of harsh criticism from Mr. Trump because he was the Democrats’ manager in the impeachment trial in the Senate, added, “I think that our adversaries, in particular the Russians, are going to amplify the false messages that the president is putting out about, ‘Well, you can’t trust absentee ballots,’ even though that’s how the president votes.”
Trump has 83 MILLION followers on Twitter, along with constant exposure on TV and on the front pages of the corporate media. The “Russians” couldn’t “amplify” his messages even if they wanted to. The entire premise is preposterous.
*The Real Reason Biden Is Ahead of Trump? He’s a Man
Peter Beinart column
A) Hillary Clinton was ahead of Trump in the polls too.
B) Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 3 million votes.
C) 146,000 Americans are dead from COVID-19.
His evidence it’s gender? “According to Real Clear Politics’s polling average, Joe Biden’s net approval rating is about -1 point. At this point in the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton’s net approval rating was -17 points.” But that wasn’t because of her gender.
The F.B.I. Pledged to Keep a Source Anonymous. Trump Allies Aided His Unmasking.
Subhead: After a Russia expert who had collected research on Donald Trump for a disputed dossier agreed to tell the F.B.I. what he knew about it, law enforcement officials declassified a road map to identifying him.
The dossier isn’t “disputed”, it’s “discredited”, and if you get to the end of the article, you actually find that out. Basically a classic case of burying the lede.
Latin America Is Facing a ‘Decline of Democracy’ Under the Pandemic
What countries? Venezuela, Nicaragua, Guyana, Bolivia and Haiti.
“In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega released thousands of inmates because of the threat posed by the virus, but kept political prisoners behind bars…In Bolivia, a caretaker government has used the pandemic to postpone elections.”
“And in the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis, the government imposed a strict lockdown on its 50,000 people during the campaign for general elections in June, hampering opposition efforts to meet voters while also keeping international election observers from traveling to the country.”
“democracy in Latin America has also lost a champion in the United States, which had played an important role in promoting democracy after the end of the Cold War by financing good governance programs and calling out authoritarian abuses.” 🤦♂️
Hong Kong Is Keeping Pro-Democracy Candidates Out of Its Election
Compare to Ecuador and Bolivia. No headlines for those attempts to keep candidates off the ballot.
Israel Says It Thwarted a Hezbollah Raid at Lebanon Border
Israel 'thwarts Hezbollah infiltration from Lebanon'
Hezbollah denies, but it’s Israel’s point of view that gets the headline.
Herman Cain, Former Presidential Candidate, Dies at 74
Shouldn’t this headline read “COVID-19 claims its most famous victim, Herman Cain”? This is just burying the lede. His attendance at Trump’s Tulsa rally isn’t mentioned until the 7th paragraph.
BBC headline for comparison:
Herman Cain, US ex-presidential candidate, dies after contracting Covid
