Carol Hand - Everything You Need to Know about Fake News and Propaganda

1. CHAPTER 1:
   DEFINING THE TERMS
2. CHAPTER 2:
   THE RISE OF FAKE NEWS
3. CHAPTER 3:
   HOW DO YOU KNOW WHATS FAKE?
4. CHAPTER 4:
   US NEWS AND PROPAGANDA
5. CHAPTER 5:
   THE DANGERS OF FAKE SCIENCE
6. CHAPTER 6:
   SEEKING TRUTH IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD

Published in 2018 by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.

29 East 21st Street, New York, NY 10010

Copyright 2018 by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer.

Expert Reviewer: Megan Fromm, PhD

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hand, Carol, 1945- , author.

Title: Everything you need to know about fake news and propaganda / Carol Hand.

Description: New York : Rosen Publishing, 2018. | Series: The need to know library | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Audience: Grades 7-12.

Identifiers: ISBN 9781508176640 (library bound) | ISBN 9781508176633 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781508176664 (6 pack) Subjects: LCSH: JournalismPolitical aspectsUnited States.

| JournalismCorrupt practices. | Mass media and public opinionUnited States. | Communication in politics. | Propaganda. Classification: LCC PN4888.P6 H36 2018 | DDC 302.230973 dc23

Manufactured in the United States of America

CHAPTER 1:
DEFINING THE TERMS

CHAPTER 2:
THE RISE OF FAKE NEWS

CHAPTER 3:
HOW DO YOU KNOW WHATS FAKE?

CHAPTER 4:
US NEWS AND PROPAGANDA

CHAPTER 5:
THE DANGERS OF FAKE SCIENCE

CHAPTER 6:
SEEKING TRUTH IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD

D uring the 2016 presidential campaign, Pizzagate was a fake story centering on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate for president. Fake news sites spread a story that Clinton and John Podesta, her campaign chairman, were involved in sex crimes involving children. The story said they were using a Washington, DC, pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong, as their headquarters.

How did this bizarre story get started? How did it spread? Craig Silverman on Buzzfeed.com gave a brief timeline.

On October 30, 2016, the Twitter account of a David Goldberg sent a tweet. It said the New York Police Department (NYPD) was investigating a claim regarding some of Podestas emails. The avatar used for the David Goldberg account was linked to a white supremacist website, Stormfront.org. The tweet included a Facebook comment from a woman who accused the Clintons of running an international child enslavement and sex ring. The woman, allegedly from Missouri, could not be reached or identified. A few hours later, a message board, Godlike Productions, said the conspiracy was about to be exposed. The next day, conspiracy theorist Sean Adl-Tabatabai wrote a post for his website, YourNewsWire.com. He said an FBI informant had confirmed the sex-ring claims.

The YourNewsWire story was picked up by rightwing and pro-Trump websites. Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, was running against Hillary Clinton. Many sites copied the material directly from tweets and message boards. Others added new incorrect claims. SubjectPolitics.com ran a story with this headline: ITS OVER: NYPD Just Raided Hillarys Property! What They Found Will RUIN HER LIFE.

Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, DC, was the site of the 2016 election scandal known as Pizzagate. The scandal was completely based on fake news.

The fake story quickly generated 107,000 shares, reactions, and comments on SubjectPolitics and another 100,000 on Red State Watcher. True Pundit published the story and added new fake charges, claiming sources including the NYPD and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). They received 110,000 Facebook responses. Three days after his first tweet, David Goldberg tweeted again: My source is right! He cited the True Pundit story as proof.

Pizzagate was completely phony. No evidence and no credible sources supported it. Yet it persisted for weeks, even after the November 8 election. Many people believed it, and it had real-world consequences. It may have damaged Clintons campaign. The pizzeria owner and his employees were harassed. Their business suffered. On December 4, a man from South Carolina entered the pizzeria to self-investigate Pizzagate. He fired his gun inside the restaurant. No one was injured, and he was arrested.

People from Donald Trumps campaign and transition team helped spread the fake news story. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn served briefly as Trumps national security advisor. Flynn retweeted several tweets related to Pizzagate. Flynns son, Michael Flynn Jr. was appointed to Trumps transition team after the election. According to BBC News, Flynn Jr. tweeted after the shooting, Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it will remain a story. Flynn Jr. was fired from Trumps team.

In March 2017, Alex Jones, who was involved in spreading the Pizzagate story, retracted the story on air and apologized to the pizzeria owner for his part in it. Jones runs the site Infowars.com, which has pushed many conspiracy theories. The conservative site Rare reported Joness apology, which he read aloud online. Rare suggested that Joness apology was carefully worded to help him avoid prosecution.

M ost people want to assume what they read in news outlets and on social media is true. They want to trust the news. This means they must first understand how truth can be distorted or changed. They must understand the vocabulary of fake news and propaganda.

Something is true if it is realif there is evidence to support it and it can be verified. At one time, the word fact was simple. It was a statement of truth. The phrase true fact was redundanta fact was true by definition. It was a piece of information that was correct and based in reality.

On January 22, 2017, journalist Chuck Todd, on NBCs Meet the Press, was assuming this standard definition of what a fact is. Donald Trumps press secretary Sean Spicer had made statements Todd described as falsehoods. Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway objected to Todds description. Youre saying its a falsehood, and Sean Spicer ... is giving alternative facts to that, Conway said. Todd responded, . four of the five facts he uttered are not true. Alternative facts are not facts theyre falsehoods.

Kellyanne Conway drew criticism when she described falsehoods made by press secretary Sean Spicer as alternative facts.

Is a falsehood the same as a lie? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a falsehood as an untrue statement or an absence of truth or accuracy. But the dictionarys definition of a lie adds a significant factor: intent. A lie is defined as an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker or writer to be untrue with intent to deceive. A person telling a falsehood be mistaken or misinformed or may have failed to check his facts. He may be guilty of carelessness or poor research. But someone telling a lie is deliberately deceiving the listener or reader. When Todd called Spicers statements falsehoods, he stopped short of accusing Spicer of deliberate deceit.