Media and Politics in 2015-2017

Did the Russians rig the democrat primary process? Nope. The national democrat party did that. The democrat machine (DNC) choose Hillary years ago.

What about making every vote count? What about ending voter disenfranchisement? No shock that those are false ideals.

Did the Russians work with Bernie Sanders to help Bernie win the Wisconsin and Michigan primaries? Nope. Voters disliked Hillary. Simple.

How were those primary losses not huge red flag warnings to the Hillary campaign?

Did the Russians prevent Hillary from campaigning in Wisconsin in the fall of 2016?

Michael Moore predicted that Trump would beat Hillary because of what Moore observed within his home state of Michigan.

The Sanders campaign tried to warn and help the Hillary campaign about what was happening at the local level, but the Hillary people ignored the warnings.

In January 2017, an NPR story featured an interview with a local democrat operative from the Youngstown area. This operative tried to warn the Hillary people about the surprising political changes that he observed in Mahoning County, but the Hillary campaign ignored him.

How may local democrat operatives were ignored by the Hillary campaign/DNC?

Hillary/DNC executed a militantly arrogant campaign. They had no interest in the concerns of rust belt democrats. They deserved to lose.

Politicians lose elections because they are losers. But loser politicians don't think that way. They believe that they lost because of other factors.

Nope. It's not the fault of Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, non-voters, nor the Russians.

100 percent of the blame goes to the losing politician, and in 2016 the blame also goes to the national democrat party for executing a sham primary process.

The national political media CHOOSES which stories to make popular. I don't understand how the rigged democrat primary process is not viewed as violence toward democracy. That's a bigger story than senseless narratives, like the Russians' alleged influence in the 2016 November election and the Facebook fake news.

Fake news, propaganda, and yellow journalism have existed for decades.

• Nov 20, 2016 - medium.com post by International Journalism Festiva - [Fake news is not unique to Facebook: you can find it in mainstream media too](https://medium.com/ijf-weekly-roundup/fake-news-media-979b9edddad6#.wfdp54rei)

... as Tim O’Reilly wrote on Saturday:

“It isn’t just Facebook that has a fake news problem, and it isn’t just Donald Trump and kids in Macedonia who are using social media to send the news spinning wildly away from the truth. When sites like the Huffington Post post partisan clickbait that is clearly untrue, they deserve to be shunned, not reshared.”

Is this something new? Are we really doomed to suffocate in a sea of Internet bullshit? No, No. Jack Shafer (Politico) explains why:

“We’d have more cause for alarm if fake news was something new, but it isn’t. If you define fake news as deliberately erroneous reports — not journalistic mistakes and miscues like much of the reporting in the run up to the Iraq War — fake news has been a reading staple for as long as the journalists have spun words.”

I admire the creativity of internet geeks to make money by preying on the ignorance of others. Many media orgs and other businesses have done this too. Have you ever seen an advertisement?

And while fake news was mentioned prior to the November 2016 election, the mainstream media teamed together to turn the issue into an extinction level event after Trump won.

Do you think that the media would have harped on Facebook's alleged fake news problem if Hillary had won? Hell no.

In my opinion, if the national political media was concerned about freedom and democracy, then they would be investigating what happened with the 2015-2016 democrat primary process? Who was involved with that fraud? When did the scheme get hatched? What prevents it from occurring again in either party?

I consider the Washington Post to be a clickbait, content mill, nearly as untrustworthy as Breitbart. WaPo has become lazy and irresponsible.

• Nov 25, 2016 - alternet.org - [Washington Post Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200 Publications of Being Russian Propaganda Plants](http://www.alternet.org/media/washington-post-promotes-shadowy-website-accuses-200-publications-russian-propaganda-plants)
• Nov 28, 2017 - Rolling Stone (Matt Taibbi) - [The 'Washington Post' 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful and Disgusting](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/washington-post-blacklist-story-is-shameful-disgusting-w452543)
• Dec 10, 2016 - theintercept.com [Anonymous Leaks to the WashPost About the CIA’s Russia Beliefs Are No Substitute for Evidence](https://theintercept.com/2016/12/10/anonymous-leaks-to-the-washpost-about-the-cias-russia-beliefs-are-no-substitute-for-evidence/)

This was an appropriate way for BezPo to close out 2016:

• Jan 1, 2017 - forbes.com - ['Fake News' And How The Washington Post Rewrote Its Story On Russian Hacking Of The Power Grid](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/01/fake-news-and-how-the-washington-post-rewrote-its-story-on-russian-hacking-of-the-power-grid/#2ee27f1c7ad5)
• Dec 31, 2016 - boingboing.net - [No, Russia didn't hack Vermont's power grid](http://boingboing.net/2016/12/31/no-russia-didnt-hack-vermon.html)
• Dec 31, 2016 - theintercept.com [Russia Hysteria Infects WashPost Again: False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid](https://theintercept.com/2016/12/31/russia-hysteria-infects-washpost-again-false-story-about-hacking-u-s-electric-grid/)

From the Forbes article:

On Friday the Washington Post sparked a wave of fear when [it ran](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-hackers-penetrated-us-electricity-grid-through-a-utility-in-vermont/2016/12/30/8fc90cc4-ceec-11e6-b8a2-8c2a61b0436f_story.html?utm_term=.e26a251bd7b0) the breathless headline “Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials say.”

Yet, it turns out this narrative was false and as the chronology below will show, illustrates how effectively false and misleading news can ricochet through the global news echo chamber through the pages of top tier newspapers that fail to properly verify their facts.

From The Intercept article:

Apparently, the Post did not even bother to contact the company before running its wildly sensationalistic claims.

So the key scary claim of the Post story — that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid — was false. All the alarmist tough-guy statements issued by political officials who believed the Post’s claim were based on fiction.

This matters not only because one of the nation’s major newspapers once again published a wildly misleading, fearmongering story about Russia.

It matters even more because it reflects the deeply irrational and ever-spiraling fever that is being cultivated in U.S. political discourse and culture about the threat posed by Moscow.

The Post has many excellent reporters and smart editors. They have produced many great stories this year. But this kind of blatantly irresponsible and sensationalist tabloid behavior — which tracks what they did when promoting that grotesque PropOrNot blacklist of U.S. news outlets accused of being Kremlin tools — is a byproduct of the Anything Goes mentality that now shapes mainstream discussion of Russia, Putin, and the Grave Threat to All Things Decent in America that they pose.

The level of groupthink, fearmongering, coercive peer pressure, and über-nationalism has not been seen since the halcyon days of 2002 and 2003. Indeed, the very same people who back then smeared anyone questioning official claims as Saddam sympathizers or stooges and left-wing un-American loons are back for their sequel, accusing anyone who expresses any skepticism toward claims about Russia of being Putin sympathizers and Kremlin operatives and stooges.

But it’s all severely exacerbated by social media in ways that we don’t yet fully understand. A large percentage of journalists sit on Twitter all day. It’s their primary window into the world.

Regarding national politics, I don't trust any media org. I only trust individual journalists.

At the moment, the only journalist I trust is Gleen Greenwald who writes for The Intercept. Greenwald wrote The Intercept stories that I liked to above. Matt Taibbi who writes for Rolling Stone seems okay too.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald

It seems that many journalists dislike Greenwald because Greenwald calls foul wherever he sees it. That's why I like him.

"When a reporter sits down at the typewriter, he's nobody's friend." - quote by Theodore White

Another brilliantly long article by Greenwald:

• Jan 4, 2017 - [WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived](https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/washpost-is-richly-rewarded-for-false-news-about-russia-threat-while-public-is-deceived/)

• Mar 8, 2017 Rolling Stone article by Taibbi titled [
  Journalists love to write how everyone else lives in a filter bubble, but the national media live in their own filter bubble or echo chamber called Media Twitter.