Glenn Greenwald: Fake News That MSNBC Spread to Discredit WikiLeaks | Hacker News Reader

Glenn Greenwald: Fake News That MSNBC Spread to Discredit WikiLeaks

theintercept.com

87 pointsgnarbarian48 comments

While there's no sign the emails published by WikiLeaks were doctored and it's concerning that the Clinton campaign made such a baseless claim, it's similarly concerning to me that WikiLeaks itself created/spread false interpretations of the emails they published.

Here's what happened:

* Conservative commentator Ben Domenech goes on Fox News Sunday show and quotes what he read on The Daily Beast: "We saw this week reporting that a pro-Clinton super PAC had paid more than a million dollars to have supporters of her online push back against Bernie supporters" (Transcript: https://t.co/7IuO1c7j7N)

* DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schulz had appeared on an separate, earlier segment of the same show. Likely because of that, a DNC staffer writes a bullet-point transcript of the panel debate and sends it around internally with the subject "FNS [date]", subheaders like "Panel" and comments like "I didn't catch everything [in this part]" – very easy to identify as a transcript: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8351

And yet WikiLeaks spun it on Twitter as if it were a smoking gun:

"DNC knew of Clinton 'paid troll factory' fighting Sanders supporters #FeelTheBern" https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/757077620928512000

So they misrepresented a transcript where some random person quotes some other news source as a statement by the DNC itself, a statement of veracity or admission of internal knowledge. Got over 5000 retweets, never retracted/corrected.

After what they did in this election, WikiLeaks can no longer claim to be just a neutral platform for leaked secrets – just like everyone else, they spin facts to fit certain narratives they want to promote for whatever editorial reasons.

Exactly.

Wikileaks has continually misrepresented, lied, and obfuscated the truth. Not just on this issue.

They repeatedly put innocent people in danger and generally favor a very obvious set of political stances (and one of those is being incredibly obviously slanted towards Russia).

Now you can speculate over why they do it, but THAT they do it remains a matter of fact.

Which of their actions are so obviously pro-Russia? I can think of some that are pro-Russia in the sense that they are attacking Russia's opponents but those targets are opposed by others as well, making the conclusion less clear. The most well-known example: is helping Snowden seek asylum pro-Russia or anti-USA? The fact that they were seeking asylum in more than Russia, it seems more anti-USA.

To be clear: I'm not saying it's a deliberate pro-Russian policy - I can see how that might have been implied - but it's undeniable that a large number of their actions benefit Russian interests.

Maybe they are unwitting pawns, or just useful fools, but that it's serving those goals is rather obvious.

You seem to be saying that if leaks benefit Russian policy, the bearer of those leaks is a pawn or a useful idiot.

If legit information benefits someone, it doesn't make that information tainted or the bearer of that information biased or a pawn. I don't care whose interests the truth benefits. We all deserve to know the truth regardless of whom it benefits.

Not at all. When it's a consistent pattern of leaks that are released and misrepresented (for whatever purpose) that benefit one party...

... well then they are either a tool or a fool.

This is Wikileaks now: either in the pocket, or foolish enabler, of Russian interests.

They could be either, but they are one of them.

Nuance is impossible on twitter, so I afford them some lack of brevity in that medium. But beyond that I haven't noticed them editorialize. They release the docs and people can look at them to come to their own conclusions.

Can you show me any examples where they "... continually misrepresented, lied, and obfuscated the truth."

Sure - basically everything around Clinton's position on DOMA was misrepresented. Almost everything about the supposed Colorado voter fraud was straight made up.

Those are just two off the top of my head (I believe Snopes has a lot of detail about those two fwiw).

The brevity of Twitter is not at fault. The whole purpose of their account there seems to be to editorialize the leaks. It's clearly more than just an announcement channel of new releases for people "to come to their own conclusions". They tweet conclusions supported, sometimes incorrectly, with links.

It was Communism, then War on Drugs, then Terrorism, all really well designed and extremely effective pr narratives.

I always wondered what would come next in the list, I think it might be "Fake News". It is a great PR concept - it is simple, fits in a hashtag, good for Twitter mud flinging, and also invokes powerful emotions: "External entities are brainwashing and controlling the citizens of my country".

What happened to the media and how propaganda worked during this election cycle is interesting to study. It will probably be digested and analyzed for years to come.

Mass media here has always been subservient to those in power, but it had to maintain this minimal facade of being "balanced" and "impartial". A lot of consumers didn't want to believe otherwise so it kind of worked out. But something happened, out of desperation or foolishness they have lifted the curtain too much. That was a fatal mistake. Too many people saw how the sausage was made, it became hard to ignore it. I am talking about telling people blatant lies and treating them like idiots, stuff like "these documents are illegal to read, it is different for the media, come to use for interpretation", "Wikileaks doctored all these emails", or "Russian hackers are hiding in the bushes in rural Wisconsin, with laptops and USB keys hacking voting machines" and so on.

Another way, to interpret the "Fake News" phenomenon is to think of a cornered rat. How it will start biting and attacking because it sees no way out. It thinks it is the end and it has nothing to lose. Perhaps "Fake News" is such a response from the media. It lost control and it is a way of lashing out.

>Mass media here has always been subservient to those in power, but it had to maintain this minimal facade of being "balanced" and "impartial".

I'm not so sure about that. The media seemed to be at war with Bush during his entire presidency.

Excluding all the cheerleading during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, right?

fair point.

I do find it fascinating the cries of "fake news" starting just after the election ended. I'm struggling to find the source of non-fake news. Honestly, I can't find it. If you're left-leaning, then it's obvious Breitbart, Fox, and friends are fake news. If you're right-leaning, it's obvious CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and friends are fake news.

If you're centrist, like me, and you investigate the claims, they all turn out to be pretty much spot-on. All the above really are fake news.

So what isn't? Is there a source of news that is at least close to correct, most of the time, even if the story doesn't play to their narrative?

I'm a liberal with minor libertarian sympathies and I'll say that Fox News is bad, but I think it the average article on Fox is a far cry from what we're talking about with regard to fake news.

I can also point to cases where the NYTimes has reported quite badly (Judith Miller, for instance), but all the major players are in the business of more or less accurate reporting colored by various editorial biases.

That's in contrast to the things I see relatives sharing on Facebook where my first inclination is "time to go check snopes".

It's a bait and switch. Left-leaning people will push for vague policies within Google, FaceBook, and Twitter to curtail fake news. These policies will be applied inconsistently, which is why they will be purposefully vague. Both fake news and ideologically-improper news that also happens to be true will be filtered.

Google does it with more than just news. Try shopping for a gun using google or craigslist sometime. (you can't)

Edit: This post has been flagged for the second time now. An effective tactic for making stories drop unnaturally fast. IMO it's a hidden and incidious form of censorship and bias found in social media:

http://i.imgur.com/Ba9Rt1C.png

This is completely non-responsive.

You are totally correct. There is an utter crisis in news media today. There is no desire for journalistic integrity and the bias of each source is as plain as day.

You can trust nothing at face value anymore. Even if there was a news source that kept it to "just the facts" minus all spin and hyperbole bias will creep in via WHICH facts are being reported.

What makes one homicide or police shooting national news while the steady stream of deaths in Chicago go unmentioned?

http://homicides.suntimes.com/

Or better yet, why not also show the number of people who die every day heart disease and cancer? The media seems resolute in warping our perception of risks toward political agendas.

If there are ways to aggregate this kind of data daily or weekly it would be an excellent opportunity so use algorithms and user applied filters to attempt to create a source of news with the least bias possible.

Edit: haha and now this article has been flagged for the second time. Pretty hilarious how determined people are to maintaining their echo chambers.

I think it's a disservice to lump all news organizations that have perceptible bias in with actual fake news content farms.

We're talking about fake news now because the crisis has people reflecting on how this happened. We're accustomed to ignoring garbage forwarded by grandma. The fake news creators interviewed by NPR and WaPo both said the industry is growing and has turned political.

> NPR and WaPo

It would be pretty hard to pick two more biased sources than NPR and WaPo.

News sources will be biased. That's a fact. But hard to pick two more biased sources than NPR and WaPo? Compared to what? Off the top of my head I'd say the National Review and the Nation would be two with stronger biases. What are your recommendations for less biased news sources?

compared to any other main stream news organizations. The AP and reuters aren't that bad:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/associated-press/

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/reuters/

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/?s=National+Public+Radio

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/?s=Washington+Post

That's the first time I've ever heard of news agencies being included as part of the mainstream media. Learn something new everyday.

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22fake%20news%22

I find it amazing that despite decades of tabloids selling fake news, it has only become a hysterical, existential danger RIGHT NOW.

It's just a new buzzword, not a new concern. https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22fake%20news%22,pr...

If you read The Enquirer, you know exactly what you're getting: Batboy and Elvis sightings. It's a less funny version of The Onion. Maybe it sells some ads, but no one with two brain cells to rub together thinks it's true. If your "friend" links to an article in the "Denver Guardian," you're not sure whether you're getting low-quality news that attempts to be true, lies pushing an agenda, or junk wrapped around ads to make a few dollars.

> it has only become a hysterical, existential danger RIGHT NOW.

Traditional mass media was considered "news". They had to pretend to be impartial for the magic to work. Now they never were. Chomsky and Herman documented that very well in Manufacturing Consent work.

What happened just recently is that those outlets have realized they lost control. They could not manufacture consent easily any more. They sure tried. But something broke in the machinery. So they lashed out in a desperation and came up with "Fake News".

It is like hitting the "launch" button in a nuclear war. It is mutually assured destruction. They labeled everything else "Fake News" but they also ended up being "Fake News" as well.

So here we are. What are the real news? I am not so sure. The reality is that there was never any real news. This is just a lot more people realizing it.

And decades of people like Limbaugh blatantly misrepresenting issues like Sandra Fluke's testimony since the 80s. The "alt-right" news phenomenon isn't anything new. Hop onto any forum website's political section and you'll get plenty of links to crazy. Been that way since at least W. Probably since Drudge and the Monica Lewinsky thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh–Sandra_Fluke_con...

I've noticed that ever since the election result, it seems like the NYT has completely lost their minds, nothing but doom and gloom. At least wait until something happens to report on rather than rampant speculation. I'm so sick of hearing about Trump. Isn't there any news fit to print?

I remember when Hillary started using the term "alt-right" on the campaign trail, as if it were something different than the typical Fox / Drudge / Limbaugh drivel. It seems as though she was trying to protect the GOP from the master it created by disassociating it somehow. It's the same ole same ole, just evolved.

Greenwald is deliberately misrepresenting the reporting done by Kurt Eichenwald about the leaked emails. We know it's deliberate because he's distorted the story the same way in the past and it's been pointed out to him. Eichenwald did not claim that the leaked information was false, but showed, to a high degree of probability, that Trump campaign staffers were working with Russian disinformation operatives. It was an amazing story.

Wikileaks has done plenty to discredit itself. MSNBC shouldn't have done this but let's not pretend WL is a bastion of credibility.

Wikileaks' credibility in the minds of the mainstream is the highest its ever been. President-elect Trump mentioned them by name as a credible source, while discrediting all other media outlets as being propaganda tools for the left.

And it worked. He won, and in no small part because Wikileaks has become the only credible news source for many people. Not even because of what Wikileaks published, but because of what people claim they published.

If your barometer is Trump - currently the most disapproved of and untrusted PEOTUS of all time (per polling)... then your point about him lending credibility is a bit strange.

Trump lends credibility because of his position and the scope of his reach - his popularity isn't that relevant, the bully pulpit and access to American broadcast media is enough. Far more people know about and trust Wikileaks because of this election, and Wikileaks has proven influential enough to possibly swing a Presidential election, which wouldn't happen if people didn't take for granted that they were a reliable source.

By that argument Putin lends credibility to Russia Times.

Yet they have very little (outside of Russia).

So that's a very weak argument

Wikileaks' credibility outside the US isn't relevant. The question is whether or not it gained or lost credibility in the US due to the recent election leaks, and I think it's clear (or at least likely) that more people gained trust in the organization than lost it.

I refer you back to my other comment about this asinine comparison

Their credibility was shot for me once they decided to release the DNC materials in a piece-meal fashion in order to affect a national election. At that point, I lost all respect for them.

That's understandable - but how many people gained respect for them because Wikileaks' releases appealed to their political biases?

> Wikileaks has done plenty to discredit itself.

So what is a better, less biased news source?

Well your first mistake is thinking they are a news source. They aren't (and don't really try to be).

There's no such thing as unbiased news. The trick is to acknowledge bias.

The dominant theme of Neil Gaiman's work is the redemptive value of stories, which always struck me as a convenient meme for a seller of stories to spread. Journalists write of the value of journalism with great gusto; I am similarly unimpressed. Facts and their dissemination are important; There are ways of doing this that do not involve employing a pharisaical class, most indoctrinated in the same few universities, and having theme write ideologically-poisoned clickbait for peanuts. Prediction markets and information bounties would likely be much better sensory organs than the press. This market is ripe for disruption, but disruption won't look like Buzzfeed, or Breitbart, or Vox. It will be some incentive structure that does journalists jobs far better, without journalists.

That's rich. Greenwald's lecturing about fake news while continuing to claim that PRISM gives the NSA unfettered access to Internet companies' data. This guy's the godfather of modern fake news, has repeatedly been called out on it, and has a bone to pick.

It doesn't matter anymore. You're allowed to only have a different opinion if you're rich enough. Like Thiel. Only then it is diversity. Otherwise it's fake news, Russian agents, and Trump spam.

Glenn Greenwald's opinion on anything matters exactly as much as Wikileaks these days.

I am genuinely curious. why do you think that?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com