{"id":83312,"date":"2016-11-28T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T12:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=83312"},"modified":"2016-11-23T12:27:05","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T12:27:05","slug":"nyt-advocates-internet-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/11\/nyt-advocates-internet-censorship\/","title":{"rendered":"NYT Advocates Internet Censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times wants a system of censorship for the Internet to block what it calls \u201cfake news,\u201d but the <\/em>Times ignores its own record of publishing \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In its lead editorial<\/a> on Sunday [20 Nov 2016], The New York Times<\/em> decried what it deemed \u201cThe Digital Virus Called Fake News\u201d and called for Internet censorship to counter this alleged problem, taking particular aim at Facebook<\/em> founder Mark Zuckerberg for letting \u201cliars and con artists hijack his platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

As this mainstream campaign against \u201cfake news\u201d quickly has gained momentum in the past week, two false items get cited repeatedly, a claim that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump and an assertion that Trump was prevailing in the popular vote over Hillary Clinton. I could add another election-related falsehood, a hoax spread by Trump supporters that liberal documentarian Michael Moore was endorsing Trump when he actually was backing Clinton.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>

New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)<\/p><\/div>\n

But I also know that Clinton supporters were privately pushing some salacious and unsubstantiated charges about Trump\u2019s sex life, and Clinton personally charged that Trump was under the control of Russian President Vladimir Putin although there was no evidence presented to support that McCarthyistic accusation.<\/p>\n

The simple reality is that lots of dubious accusations get flung around during the heat of a campaign \u2013 nothing new there \u2013 and it is always a challenge for professional journalists to swat them down the best we can. What\u2019s different now is that the Times envisions some structure (or algorithm) for eliminating what it calls \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, with a stunning lack of self-awareness, the Times fails to acknowledge the many times that it has published \u201cfake news,\u201d such as reporting in 2002 that Iraq\u2019s purchase of aluminum tubes meant that it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program<\/a>; its bogus analysis tracing the firing location of a Syrian sarin-laden rocket<\/a> in 2013 back to a Syrian military base that turned out to be four times outside the rocket\u2019s range; or its publication of photos supposedly showing Russian soldiers<\/a> inside Russia and then inside Ukraine in 2014 when it turned out that the \u201cinside-Russia\u201d photo was also taken inside Ukraine, destroying the premise of the story.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The controversial map developed by Human Rights Watch and embraced by the New York Times, supposedly showing the flight paths of two missiles from the Aug. 21 Sarin attack intersecting at a Syrian military base.<\/p><\/div>\n

These are just three examples among many of the Times publishing \u201cfake news\u201d \u2013 and all three appeared on Page One before being grudgingly or partially retracted, usually far inside the newspaper under opaque headlines so most readers wouldn\u2019t notice. Much of the Times\u2019 \u201cfake news\u201d continued to reverberate in support of U.S. government propaganda even after the partial retractions.<\/p>\n

Who Is the Judge?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, should Zuckerberg prevent Facebook users from circulating New York Times stories? Obviously, the Times would not favor that solution to the problem of \u201cfake news.\u201d Instead, the Times expects to be one of the arbiters deciding which Internet outlets get banned and which ones get gold seals of approval.<\/p>\n

The Times lead editorial, following a front-page article on the same topic on Friday, leaves little doubt what the newspaper would like to see. It wants major Internet platforms and search engines, such as Facebook and Google, to close off access to sites accused of disseminating \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photograph<\/a>

Photograph published by the New York Times purportedly taken in Russia of Russian soldiers who later appeared in eastern Ukraine. However, the photographer has since stated that the photo was actually taken in Ukraine, and the U.S. State Department has acknowledged the error.<\/p><\/div>\n

The editorial said, \u201ca big part of the responsibility for this scourge rests with internet companies like Facebook and Google, which have made it possible for fake news to be shared nearly instantly with millions of users and have been slow to block it from their sites. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cFacebook says it is working on weeding out such fabrications. It said last Monday that it would no longer place Facebook-powered ads on fake news websites, a move that could cost Facebook and those fake news sites a lucrative source of revenue. Earlier on the same day, Google said it would stop letting those sites use its ad placement network. These steps would help, but Facebook, in particular, owes its users, and democracy itself, far more.<\/p>\n

\u201cFacebook has demonstrated that it can effectively block content like click-bait articles and spam from its platform by tweaking its algorithms, which determine what links, photos and ads users see in their news feeds. \u2026 Facebook managers are constantly changing and refining the algorithms, which means the system is malleable and subject to human judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times editorial continued: \u201cThis summer, Facebook decided to show more posts from friends and family members<\/a> in users\u2019 news feeds and reduce stories from news organizations, because that\u2019s what it said users wanted. If it can do that, surely its programmers can train the software to spot bogus stories and outwit the people producing this garbage. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Zuckerberg himself has spoken at length about how social media can help improve society. \u2026 None of that will happen if he continues to let liars and con artists hijack his platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gray Areas<\/strong><\/p>\n

But the problem is that while some falsehoods may be obvious and clear-cut, much information exists in a gray area in which two or more sides may disagree on what the facts are. And the U.S. government doesn\u2019t always tell the truth although you would be hard-pressed to find recent examples of the Times recognizing that reality. Especially over the past several decades, the Times has usually embraced the Official Version<\/a> of a disputed event and has deemed serious skepticism out of bounds.<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/a>

Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, co-author of the Iraq \u201caluminum tube\u201d story.<\/p><\/div>\n

That was the way the Times treated denials from the Iraqi government and some outside experts who disputed the \u201caluminum tube\u201d story in 2002 \u2013 and how the Times has brushed off disagreements regarding the U.S. government\u2019s portrayal of events in Syria, Ukraine and Russia. Increasingly, the Times has come across as a propaganda conduit for Official Washington rather than a professional journalistic entity.<\/p>\n

But the Times and other mainstream news outlets \u2013 along with some favored Internet sites \u2013 now sit on a Google-financed entity called the First Draft Coalition<\/a>, which presents itself as a kind of Ministry of Truth that will decide which stories are true and which are \u201cfake.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the Times\u2019 editorial recommendations are followed, the disfavored stories and the sites publishing them would no longer be accessible through popular search engines and platforms, essentially blocking the public\u2019s access to them. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cWhat to Do About \u2018Fake News.\u2019<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

The Times asserts that such censorship would be good for democracy \u2013 and it surely is true that hoaxes and baseless conspiracy theories are no help to democracy \u2013 but regulation of information in the manner that the Times suggests has more than a whiff of Orwellian totalitarianism to it.<\/p>\n

And the proposal is especially troubling coming from the Times, with its checkered recent record of disseminating dangerous disinformation.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the <\/em>Associated Press and<\/em> Newsweek. His latest book, <\/em>Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush<\/a>, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat. His two previous books are <\/em>Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq<\/a> and<\/em> Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 consortiumnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In its lead editorial on Sunday [20 Nov 2016], The New York Times decried what it deemed \u201cThe Digital Virus Called Fake News\u201d and called for Internet censorship, taking particular aim at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for letting \u201cliars and con artists hijack his platform.\u201d But the Times ignores its own record of publishing \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}