Friday, June 09, 2017

Fake news, thy name is Associated Press



Mainstream media has caviled about so-called "fake news" for the last year or so.

Of course, there's a high level of hypocrisy here.

The New York Times ran Judith Miller's fake news, nay, PUSHED it, then, if that contribution to the Iraq War wasn't enough, it spiked for a full year a story about Bush's warrantless snooping, which helped him get re-elected. Not that John Kerry would have done much different on Iraq, and judging by Dear Leader four years later, wouldn't have done much different on spying on Americans.

(And, I haven't even covered the fake news that's increased on the Times' op-ed page with hiring Bret Stephens.)

And, earlier this year, after it decried "fake news," the Washington Post then Tweeted repeatedly for a third-party group called "Prop Or Not," which made the Democratic Party's, and Clintonistas', "Putin Did It" claims about the presidential election read as soberly as wallpaper drying compared to Prop Or Not's McCarthyism — McCarthyism which later turned up to have seeming connections to Ukrainian fascists.

And, now? Per that screenshot up top?

It's the good old Associated Press, with the screenshot coming from this story.

The issue of posting crap from a place like Taboola has become even more decried in the last year or so, even as "digital dimes" in the online ad world become ever more "mobile nickels." (Thanks, Dean Singleton, and the 1990s AP board of directors, who touted the "TV model" of the Internet while ignoring that pay TV channels like HBO had already existed for 15 years or more.) Indeed, Taboola itself is one of the worst of the "sponsored links" folks, and most the news, or "news," you'll find off those links is sketchy at best, skeezy at worst, and almost certainly native advertising in some way, shape or form.

But, that's not all.



AP is writing, and photographing, its own clickbait as well, as shown above.

If American media dies, it will be from self-strangulation in its own crib.

No comments: