FAKE NEWS WEEK: Exposing The Mainstream Consensus Reality Complex

Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire

Some things never change. In the 21st century, people in power are still attacking independent voices for speaking up for what they believe, and for sharing their opinions.

The first time I heard the term ‘fake news’ uttered in unison from the mouths of mainstream media pundits, the irony was overtaken by the absurdity of it. It was beyond outrageous, and hearing it coming from the mainstream media was bordering on vaudeville. After watching and analyzing decades of media deception and government-issued press releases masquerading as hard news, and then to see the establishment attempting to force-feed this meme down our collective mainstream feeding tube, I suppose that would make the old editorial board at Izvestia wince.

Sure it’s laughable, but it’s also incredibly sad to watch otherwise well-educated, smart and intelligent media professionals get so caught up in the political comedy-tragedy that was the 2016 Election – they volunteered en mass to abandon their senses and any semblance of journalistic objectivity, in order to join in a virtual witch-hunt. This was a new low-point for mainstream media, and for America.

This topic is vast and growing more controversial by the day. There’s a lot to unpack and we know, based on past performance, the mainstream media can’t be trusted to do an objective job, much less critique itself. Their conversation is completely out of order. To help right this process, 21WIRE has launched Fake News Week to help educate the public on aspects of this important issue which will most certainly be ignored by the establishment media. Throughout this week, we will present a number well-researched articles cataloguing actual fake news and demonstrating this is a mainstream problem, and one as old as the media itself.

The Story of Fake News

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]ince the dawn of mass media in the 20th century, media propaganda has been steadily advancing in western societies. This process is being accelerated through technology. If you are waiting for the mainstream media to finally get together for some mass-mea culpa or have one giant come to Jesus moment, then you’ll just be waiting for Godot. No, instead of reigning itself in, they have constructed an elaborate straw man instead, which they are calling “fake news.”

With the passage of the US presidential election, many thought that the ‘fake news’ meme would die off. Instead, the Establishment is doubling down on it, in hysterical fashion.

We’re told that the real problem started because of an unlikely ‘fake news’ cottage industry, supposedly run out of the Balkans, in a little Macedonian village called Velles (if we are to take The Guardian and BuzzFeed’s word for it, anyway), where enterprising eastern European teens started pumping out countless fake news articles, making use of major social media platforms to propel their articles. That’s right, there was actual fake news circulating on Facebook, but calling it news is a bit of an overstatement. If one were to accurately label it, it would just be called junk.

By November, my database of fake news and “election news” websites was approaching 300. It became clear that new websites were being launched almost daily. These sites had a few things in common; all were over-loaded with Click Bait pop-up ads, and many of them carried malicious malware.

It was in late September that I first noticed all of these fake news posts pouring into nearly every Facebook news groups I subscribed to. I began collecting links from about 50 URLs in a vain attempt construct a database in order to work out where it was coming from, who was behind it, and what was the object of the exercise. At first, I thought, ‘how could anyone take any of this seriously?’ Everyone is used to junk on Facebook, but these were ridiculous like, “Hillary Clinton Buying Illegal Weapons – Kremlin Reports.” As it turns out, the only people who took these stories seriously were the mainstream media and Clinton supporters – both of whom are insisting that these spoof stories somehow swung the US election. Sure, there is a radical minority of short attention span web surfers and 3am Reddit junkies who would grab and run with these type of stories, but I would think that most normal people would have thought, “What idiot would believe any of these.” By November, my database of fake news and “election news” websites was approaching 300. It became clear that new websites were being launched almost daily. These sites had a few things in common; all were over-loaded with Click Bait pop-up ads, and many of them carried malicious malware. Undoubtedly, the owners of these faux news sites had been raking-in a fortune in CMP ad revenues based on traffic that was not so much driven by genuine interest, but rather out of entertainment-based curiosity, and possibly a depraved desire to shock friends and loved ones with crazy online stories. The real damage was subtle – by flooding social media with junk, they would rapidly push real independent news and alternative media articles down the page’s timeline, and into cyber limbo. Cui bono? Certainly, the establishment media, watching their main competition – real independent media outlets, drowning in a cesspool of internet flotsam and jetsam of fake Trump and Hillary ‘articles.’ Just like those cheap Chinese knock-offs at your local flea market, someone aped the alternative media, devaluing and damaging it in the process. If only it had ended there… 

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n Nov 18, 2016, I woke up to an inbox full of friends and colleagues informing me that this website, 21stCenturyWire.com, had been featured in the L.A. Times exposé on ‘fake news’ – the first major blacklist of ‘fake news’ websites featured in the mainstream media entitled, “Want to keep fake news out of your newsfeed? College professor creates list of sites to avoid.” A number of these blacklists have appeared online for a number of years, but this was the first time such a list was given credence by a mainstream publication. The list was created by Dr Melissa Zimdars, an academic and radical liberal activist from Merrimack College in Massachusetts. The story was quickly syndicated all over the globe, including spinoff reports by CNN and The Guardian. Not surprisingly, the author of the article was another liberal activist, a journalist named Jessica Roy. Like Zimdars, Jessica Roy is a feminist activist, and had previously used her position as a mainstream journalist to produce hit pieces promoting a radical liberal social agenda. Both Roy and Zimdars appear to support many of the same causes and are pushing similar political campaigns on social media, and were likely committed Hillary Clinton supporters too. With that in mind, both Roy and Zimdars were probably very unhappy about 21WIRE’s harsh criticism of Secretary Clinton’s tenure as head of the US State Department under Obama from 2009-2013, and probably were not chuffed either that we called the establishment’s official ‘Russian Hack’ conspiracy theory a hoax before the election. Both of those articles went viral in the week before the election. Many other excellent and reputable news sites were also on the list, but were intentionally placed alongside well-known satire websites, as well as with obvious fake news sites. I seriously wondered if Dr Zimdars, a professor in media studies, thought so little of her own students that they should require her professional guidance to tell them that the The Onion is not a real news site. She also lists other satirical websites like Britain’s Private Eye on her list. Less than two days after the article appeared, Zimdars removed Private Eye from the list (probably after getting an email from their legal department). Here we can see she has thrown a variety of people into one giant basket (of deplorables), thus branding everyone with the same derogatory label of ‘fake news’ or its progenitor, ‘conspiracy theory.’ Regardless, it’s a foolhardy attempt at passing off a politically motivated list as a ‘study.’ It would be unacceptable for any undergraduate, or graduate student, much less something submitted as course material by a professor. And, to think that her students would pay thousands of dollars in course fees for Dr. Zimdars to teach them how to surf the internet. Is the bar really that low? I can’t help but wonder how many of those students also signed-up for Critical Thinking 101.

Judging by the amount of right-wing websites on her list, it’s clear this was a political hit piece. That was the intention of article author Jessica Roy, evidenced by the fact that she offered no specifics of why any of these sites were on the list, nor did she challenge Dr Zimdars. Whatever it was, it was not journalism.

A few days later, after the article in question was published in the LA Times, the paper removed the PDF image of the list, stating ‘fears and threats’ as the reason for its disappearance. Their editor issued this statement:

“The professor who created the list has taken down the Google doc. She said it was a safety measure in response to threats and harassment she and her students and colleagues had received. She is continuing to work on it and plans to release it in the future in a format other than a Google doc.”

 Editor’s Note Dr Zimdars’ revised and expanded list closes with a disclaimer unworthy of a true academic: “All of the contents in this document reflect the opinion of the author(s) and are for educational purposes only.” The opinion???! As per her disclaimer Dr Zimdars is apparently teaching her class materials she is not prepared to endorse as “facts”.  In most cases, except in academia and in the present malicious witch-hunting atmosphere this would be fair enough, as anyone —including a teacher—is perfectly entitled to an opinion. The problem is that while being entitled to one’s opinion, no matter how ignorant and vile cannot be faulted under free speech, no one is entitled to his or her own facts. Thus for Dr Zimdars to market her opinion to non-discerning young minds, and the public at large, as facts is a bit disingenuous. Further, to any sophisticated and decently impartial observer, the list advanced by Dr Zimdars is extremely biased, permeated with highly subjective criteria clearly hostile to anyone not marching under the flag of the duopolist Clintonian, identitarian, warmongering liberalism spearheaded by the Democrats these days, the new War Party. And that is a demonstrable fact. Unsurprisingly, Dr Zimdars’ list packs well-established and respected sites such as Zerohedge, SOTT, and Global Research under derogatory labels like “unknown”, “bias” and —most puzzling of all—”political”.  Confronted with this enigmatic label we must ask: Since when is being political part of some malevolent conspiracy? By that standard every editorial in this country or elsewhere, every program on television such as Face the Nation, the Rachel Maddow Show, Meet the Press, etc., dealing with or related to politics, should be by definition classified as suspect or “fake news”. (Ironically, this is indeed the case, albeit not exactly the way the respected professor intended.) The inevitable conclusion is that, for all her credentials, this professor of media studies can’t recognize serious discourse even if her life depended on it, especially when it does not accord with her viewpoint, and still believes in the unicorn, that is, a corporate dominated media capable of objectivity and honest self-policing, despite abundant evidence that the mainstream media routinely omit vital truths, or disseminate scandalously biased notions. —P. Greanville   

It’s hard to keep up with Dr Zimdars’ definitive guide to the internet because she has revised and changed so many times. Here is a version from January 2017:

2017-DR ZIMDARS – False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and Satirical “News” Sources – Google Docs

Soon after, I contacted the LA Times, asking their editorial board for the right to reply in my own defense in their opinion section, citing my belief that Roy and Zimdars had created a politicized piece which was hardly fair and balanced, and was designed to slander and discredit all of the websites on their list. I finally received a reply from Larry Ingrassia at the LA Times. The paper’s excuse for denying me a right of reply was weak and evasive. Ingrassia stated to me that:

Ingrassia’s claim that my website is not mentioned in the article was not true.  In fact, 21stCenturyWire.com appeared at the very top of the list in the database table image of Zimdars’ list in the article. Just because it wasn’t in the text of the article doesn’t mean it wasn’t still visible to millions of readers. Likewise, just because the LA Times had later removed the database table image from the article, and replaced it with a hyperlink to Zimdars’ Google Doc, is no excuse either – because the list was up on the LA Times website, and was widely syndicated during that time.

As it happened, I did email Dr Zimdars immediately after seeing Jessica Roy’s LA Times article asking her why she had included my website on her list, and to cite any specific news articles which she thought were ‘fake’ or ‘conspiracy’ and asked her to please remove 21stCenturyWire.com from her list. Not surprisingly, she did not reply to my request. Perhaps she realized that every one of the thousands of articles on our website contain either secondary, or primary source, and include more reference links than you will find on most mainstream media reports. For an academic who purports to hold so many persons and their websites accountable for being ‘fake news’ – when confronted about her work, she acts aloof and completely unaccountable. This further proves the point that this was not a study, but rather an activist campaign, done on the Merrimack College’s dime.

My experience with the LA Times was a disappointing one – seeing a paper running with a cheap politicized hit piece, and then being dismissive when asked for equal time on the issue. Such is the state of many leading American media institutions. If this is what passes for the Fourth Estate in today’s America, then the country is in deep trouble.

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By this time next week, we hope you’ll be even a smarter media consumer.

READ MORE ABOUT MSM FAKE NEWS AT: FAKE NEWS WEEK

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