Russian TikTok Influencers Paid to Spread Kremlin Propaganda
VICE News confirmed that someone unknown (possibly Russia’s government?) has been paying TikTok social media influencers to spread untrue lies as propaganda messaging on TikTok.
Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Other Groups Declines | Pew Research Center
“Experts” made lots of stupid claims throughout the pandemic. People began to notice and the result is a loss of confidence in science, generally.
Associated Press sells its news coverage
The AP accepted an $8 million grant from climate change organizations and is using the grant to pay for 20 new staff members. 50 AP staff members are now paid from external, third-party grants. How can a reader tell if a news report is news or propaganda? They can’t tell. The only valid assumption is to assume all news reports are propaganda. Source: Climate activists spend millions for friendly Associated Press ‘news’
CNN really did stoop even lower
Rolling Stone reports that former CNN president Zucker and his girlfriend, an EVP at CNN, were actively advising former NY Gov Andrew Cuomo on how to respond in public to Trump’s criticisms, and actively running a media propaganda campaign. Zucker’s resignation was attributed to a romantic conflict of interest that apparently everyone knew about for years – and is not the reason he’s gone. The reason he’s gone is CNN, it turned out, really was running a fake news operation. But for obvious reasons, they could not come right and say that.
Ouch: Science communicators assume you are stupid
Science communications is performed precisely as a propaganda function: “The first is what science communicators call “the deficit model,” which assumes the public is deficient in their understanding of science and need scientists as the learned elites to help the benighted masses.” and “The second limitation is that the goal of health communication is not to inform others, but to change their behavior.”
Another neat propaganda technique
A “report” by an advocacy group opposes “vaccine nationalism” and says we need “a massive course correction” on vaccine distribution by redirecting “excess rich-country doses” to “poorer countries”. But they pulled a little trick in their description – twisting the facts.
Police discover they can use music to keep videos of police activities off of social media
Some police appear to be playing music when someone video records their activities so that those videos get flagged on social media and taken off line: BHPD’s recent behavior suggests that at least some cops believe they can prevent themselves from being filmed or livestreamed by playing copyrighted music, which would have serious implications for more serious incidents of police misconduct. That is: if this had only happened once, an officer coming up with an off-the-cuff, if slightly dodgy, plan…
A subtle form of opinion making within a news report
See how a WSJ report skews your views of the subject of a news article by diminishing the impressive background of the primary individual in the story. This is a common technique to spin a news story. Ultimately, rather than blame some for asking odd questions, we should ask why were they confused in the first place? The answer comes down to poor public messaging surrounding public health – from the public health practitioners themselves.
Journalism: Forbes publishes and deletes a fake news item about “Walmart Insulin”
Forbes publishes a fake news column about “Walmart insulin”, deletes it later the same day. No editor’s note explains the deletion.
Journalism: The first “message” received is the one remembered, even if later proven as false.
Reports of a polar bear spray painted with “T-34” on its side were greatly exaggerated. The tagging was done by scientists, not pranksters. The bear had been rummaging a garbage dump and scientists wanted to see if it was returning. They tagged it with a short duration ink; this was not graffiti by pranksters as initially reported. Typical of this type of report, the original source for the video was unknown, the back story was unknown, and the video was shared on social media by an environmental activist. Media then used social media as a primary source. What could possibly go wrong?