{"id":85310,"date":"2017-01-09T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T12:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=85310"},"modified":"2017-01-08T17:00:18","modified_gmt":"2017-01-08T17:00:18","slug":"washpost-is-richly-rewarded-for-false-news-about-russia-threat-while-public-is-deceived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/01\/washpost-is-richly-rewarded-for-false-news-about-russia-threat-while-public-is-deceived\/","title":{"rendered":"WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News about Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: Paul J. Richards\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

4 Jan 2017 – <\/em>In the past\u00a0six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on<\/a> how Russia is behind a massive explosion of \u201cfake news,\u201d the other<\/a> on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a\u00a0humiliating editor\u2019s note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the\u00a0story were fiction: The first note was posted a full two weeks later<\/a>\u00a0to the top of the original article; the other was buried the following day<\/a> at the bottom.<\/p>\n

The second story on the electric grid turned out to be far worse than I realized when I wrote about it on Saturday<\/a>, when it became clear that there was no \u201cpenetration of the U.S. electricity grid\u201d as the Post had claimed. In addition to the editor\u2019s note, the Russia-hacked-our-electric-grid story now has a full-scale retraction in the form of a separate article<\/a>\u00a0admitting that \u201cthe incident is not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility\u201d and there may not even have been malware at all on this laptop.<\/p>\n

But while these debacles are embarrassing for the paper, they are also richly rewarding. That\u2019s because journalists \u2014 including those at the Post \u2014 aggressively hype and promote the original, sensationalistic false stories, ensuring that they go viral, generating massive traffic for the Post (the paper\u2019s executive editor, Marty Baron, recently boasted<\/a> about how profitable the paper has become).<\/p>\n

After spreading the falsehoods far and wide, raising fear levels and manipulating U.S. political discourse in the process (both Russia stories were widely hyped\u00a0on cable news<\/a>), journalists who spread the false claims subsequently note the retraction or corrections only in the most muted way possible, and often\u00a0not at all. As a result, only a tiny fraction of people who were exposed to the original false story end up learning of the\u00a0retractions.<\/p>\n

Baron himself, editorial leader of the Post, is a perfect case study in this irresponsible tactic. It\u00a0was Baron who went to Twitter on the evening of November 24 to announce the Post\u2019s expos\u00e9 of the enormous reach of Russia\u2019s fake news operation, based on what he heralded as\u00a0the findings of \u201cindependent researchers.\u201d Baron\u2019s tweet went all over the place; to date, it has been re-tweeted more than 3,000 times, including by many journalists with their own large followings:<\/p>\n

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Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election, say independent researchers https:\/\/t.co\/3ETVXWw16Q<\/a><\/p>\n

— Marty Baron (@PostBaron) November 25, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n