"Fake News"

[Jimbo]

If US news consumers are left clueless, all last week the top story on Japanese news, even NHK (PBS/BBC), was that the bass player from the band TOKIO was crying and publicly apologizing for trying to kiss and offering a drink to a 15 year old fan. Every channel was this blubbering and bowing 40 year old man.

[Jimbo]

Of Fake News and History Suborned (In War and Peace)
by Greg Maybury, from PoxAmerikana

... It is in matters of war and peace that perhaps the MSM is most at conflict with the now decidedly old school journalistic canons, these being of course: accuracy, fairness, public accountability, objectivity, truthfulness, and impartiality. The current state of geopolitical affairs and international relations—as existentially precarious as it is—should be ample testament to this reality. The mainstream mastheads are not—and have never been known for being—bastions for the promotion of peace, love and understanding amongst nations, anymore than they have been known for their adherence to truthfulness, accuracy or any of the other “canons” ... .

https://off-guardian.org/of-fake-news-a ... and-peace/

This is a longish and wonderfully written article but for a conspiracy guy like me this is not fake news but old news. But for you who still buy the bullshit fed to you by the BBC, NYT, WP etc., it should be a revelation that you are now and have been lied to, brainwashed and propagandized for a long time all in the name of war and profit for a rich and powerful few.

[Davey the Fat Boy]

Gosh! Now my eyes are open!

For so long I respected the journalistic integrity of people who felt it necessary to study journalism. What a fool? I could have been getting the real truth all of this time from people who have websites!

[Jimbo]

I have complained about how conspiracy theories are handled on Wikipedia evincing a bias on a purportedly neutral venue. Well, Craig Murray has found an individual who has edited anti-mainstream news entries 133,612 times. Ladies and gentlemen,

The Philip Cross Affair

“Philip Cross” has not had one single day off from editing Wikipedia in almost five years. “He” has edited every single day from 29 August 2013 to 14 May 2018. Including five Christmas Days. That’s 1,721 consecutive days of editing.

133,612 edits to Wikpedia have been made in the name of “Philip Cross” over 14 years. That’s over 30 edits per day, seven days a week. And I do not use that figuratively: Wikipedia edits are timed, and if you plot them, the timecard for “Philip Cross’s” Wikipedia activity is astonishing if it is one individual:

The operation runs like clockwork, seven days a week, every waking hour, without significant variation. If Philip Cross genuinely is an individual, there is no denying he is morbidly obsessed. I am no psychiatrist, but to my entirely inexpert eyes this looks like the behaviour of a deranged psychotic with no regular social activities outside the home, no job (or an incredibly tolerant boss), living his life through a screen. I run what is arguably the most widely read single person political blog in the UK, and I do not spend nearly as much time on the internet as “Philip Cross”. My “timecard” would show where I watch football on Saturdays, go drinking on Fridays, go to the supermarket and for a walk or out with the family on Sundays, and generally relax much more and read books in the evenings. Cross does not have the patterns of activity of a normal and properly rounded human being. ...

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives ... ss-affair/

[Samoan]

3 minutes ago -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44307611

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/30/russian-journalist-arkady-babchenko-who-was-reported-killed-is-still-alive

[Sintek]

Jimbo, is Phillip Cross really Winston Smith?

[northernsky]

3 minutes ago -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44307611

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/30/russian-journalist-arkady-babchenko-who-was-reported-killed-is-still-alive

I can’t see how this will be a strategic win for Ukraine in the battle against the Kremlin’s Bloody Big Machine of Patriotic Obfuscstion .

[Jimbo]

Jimbo, is Phillip Cross really Winston Smith?

Good call.

So much of what is happening today was described by Orwell: Big Brother watching, memory hole, perpetual war, double speak …

[Sintek]

Indeed, today's 'news' edited the following day, my enemy's enemy is my friend, Simon Cowell as Emmanuel Goldstein ...

[sloopjohnc]

I have complained about how conspiracy theories are handled on Wikipedia evincing a bias on a purportedly neutral venue.

What made you think Wikipedia is neutral?

[Sneelock]

They’re pretty old fashioned. I mean they want you to cite sources and stuff.

[copehead]

They’re pretty old fashioned. I mean they want you to cite sources and stuff.

Hasn't that editing scandal been traced back to Wikipedia's owner Wales?
Basically editing the site to fit is, rather middle of the road, politics.

I certainly wouldn't trust wikipedia for anything contentious.

[sloopjohnc]

They’re pretty old fashioned. I mean they want you to cite sources and stuff.

They do, and I'm sure they're curated and edited to a degree, but it's anyone can write about anyone and anything on there. With the amount of stuff pouring in, entered and being edited, there must be loads of stuff that falls between the cracks.

[Sneelock]

After Larry David broke up with his then high-profile wife, her wiki listing was brought to my attention. According to Wikipedia She was a crack whore who would blow anybody. By the time I’d sent the link to a few people she was back to being famous for being married to Larry David.

It was fun while it lasted.

[Jimbo]

According to Craig Murray in the article above, Wikipedia edits are supposed to be backed up by legitimate published material. If the LA Times had written that Larry David's wife was a crack whore it would have stayed.

[sloopjohnc]

According to Craig Murray in the article above, Wikipedia edits are supposed to be backed up by legitimate published material. If the LA Times had written that Larry David's wife was a crack whore it would have stayed.

Would her dealer have been cited in the profile?

[Jimbo]

Wikipedia exposed. The speaker calls it "astro-turfing" information and I call it "gaslighting."

[toomanyhatz]

I appreciate what she's saying, and she is right on many of her points. But she is not "exposing" Wikipedia. She is "exposing" techniques that anyone with common sense should already recognize. Wikipedia is, in fact, completely upfront about how it works - and it quotes its sources. The only people that are likely to be fooled this way are those who think that something must be true because it's on the internet*, rather than digging deeper and actually going to the source and finding out who's funding the source, and what credibility this source has - information that is usually (though admittedly not always) public.

*And does this sound like anyone we know?

[sloopjohnc]

I appreciate what she's saying, and she is right on many of her points. But she is not "exposing" Wikipedia. She is "exposing" techniques that anyone with common sense should already recognize. Wikipedia is, in fact, completely upfront about how it works - and it quotes its sources. The only people that are likely to be fooled this way are those who think that something must be true because it's on the internet*, rather than digging deeper and actually going to the source and finding out who's funding the source, and what credibility this source has - information that is usually (though admittedly not always) public.

*And does this sound like anyone we know?

She also picked a bad example with a drug.

There are lots of ways drug companies can influence or spin their message, but I've worked for a peer reviewed medical journal as a marketing manager. Even if a company advertised in a peer reviewed journal, it would not influence editorial in such a journal with the rounds of scrutiny articles get in those. I could dissect other ways such a story would be scrutinized and fall between the cracks, but not in a medical journal.

One slip up like that and their credibility is totally disgraced.

[toomanyhatz]

The example about Roth is also amusing but not really pertinent. Maybe Wikipedia should have "conversation with subject of article" as a source, but the fact that they don't is more likely attributable to the fact that it doesn't happen often enough for them to have a policy about it, or maybe that it would lead to too much self-promotion (which of course can't help but be biased) than it is some insidious desire to deceive.