It seems that The New York Times can\u2019t let a good lie lie. Even after being pushed into running\u00a0an embarrassing correction<\/a>\u00a0retracting its false claim that there was a consensus of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia hacked Democratic emails and made them public to help Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, the Times is back suggesting exactly that.<\/p>\n New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cThe Trump administration has opposed the sanctions against Russia, arguing that it needs flexibility to pursue a more collaborative diplomacy with a country that, by American intelligence consensus, interfered in last year\u2019s presidential election.\u201dThe Times\u2019 current ploy is to say the Russian hacking claims are the \u201cconsensus\u201d judgment of the U.S. intelligence community without citing a specific number of agencies. For instance, on Friday, the Times published\u00a0an article<\/a>\u00a0by Matt Flegenheimer about the U.S. Senate vote to prevent President Trump from lifting sanctions on Russia and deployed the misleading phrasing:<\/p>\n So, instead of explaining the truth \u2013 that the Jan. 6 \u201cIntelligence Community Assessment\u201d was the work of a small group of \u201chand-picked\u201d analysts from three of the agencies under the watchful eye of then-CIA Director John Brennan and beneath the oversight of then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper \u2013 the Times opts to give its readers the misleading impression that there was a \u201cconsensus\u201d within the U.S. intelligence community.<\/p>\n In other words, unless a Times reader knows the truth by\u00a0having read it<\/a>\u00a0at a non-mainstream media outlet such as\u00a0Consortiumnews.com<\/a>, that reader would continue to believe that all 17 intelligence agencies were in agreement on this foundational point in the Russia-gate affair.<\/p>\n Marginalizing Dissent<\/strong><\/p>\n And the continuation of this willful deception comes as the Times and other mainstream media outlets make progress in their plans to deploy Internet algorithms to hunt down and marginalize what they deem \u201cfake news,\u201d including articles that challenge the mainstream media\u2019s power to control the dominant news narrative.<\/p>\n A\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by the World Socialist Web Site found that \u201cin the three months since Internet monopoly Google announced plans to keep users from accessing \u2018fake news,\u2019 the global traffic rankings of a broad range of left-wing, progressive, anti-war and democratic rights organizations have fallen significantly.\u201d<\/p>\n Google\u2019s strategy is to downgrade search results for targeted Web sites based on a supposed desire to limit reader access to \u201clow-quality\u201d information, but the targets reportedly include some of the highest-quality alternative news sites on the Internet, such as \u2013 according to the report \u2013\u00a0Consortiumnews.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Google sponsors the First Draft Coalition, which was created to counter alleged \u201cfake news\u201d and consists of mainstream news outlets, including the Times and The Washington Post, as well as establishment-approved Web sites, such as Bellingcat, which has a close association with the anti-Russia and pro-NATO Atlantic Council.<\/p>\n This creation of a modern-day Ministry of Truth occurred under the cover of a mainstream-driven hysteria about \u201cfake news\u201d and \u201cRussian propaganda\u201d in the wake of Donald Trump\u2019s election.<\/p>\n Last Thanksgiving Day, the Post\u00a0ran a front-page article<\/a>\u00a0citing accusations from an anonymous Web site, PropOrNot, that identified 200 Web sites \u2014 including such Internet stalwarts as Truthdig, Counterpunch and Consortiumnews \u2014 as purveyors of \u201cRussian propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n Apparently, PropOrNot\u2019s standard was to smear any news outlet that questioned the State Department\u2019s Official Narrative on the Ukraine crisis or some other global hot spot, but the Post didn\u2019t offer any actual specifics of what these Web sites had done to earn their place on a McCarthyistic blacklist.<\/p>\n An Orwellian Future<\/strong><\/p>\n In early May 2017, the Times\u00a0chimed in with a laudatory article<\/a>\u00a0about how sophisticated algorithms could purge the Internet of alleged \u201cfake news\u201d or what the mainstream media deems to be \u201cmisinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n Big Brother poster illustrating George Orwell\u2019s novel about modern propaganda, 1984.<\/p><\/div>\n As I wrote at the time, \u201cyou don\u2019t need a huge amount of imagination to see how this combination of mainstream groupthink and artificial intelligence could create an Orwellian future in which only one side of a story gets told and the other side simply disappears from view.\u201d<\/p>\n After my article appeared, I received a call from an NPR reporter who was planning a segment on this new technology and argued with me about my concerns. However, after I offered a detailed explanation about how I saw this as a classic case of the cure being far worse than the disease, I was not invited onto the NPR program.<\/p>\n Also, as for the relatively small number of willfully produced \u201cfake news\u201d stories, none appear to have traced back to Russia despite extensive efforts by the mainstream U.S. media to make the connection.\u00a0When the U.S. mainstream media has tracked down a source of \u201cfake news,\u201d it has turned out to be some young entrepreneur trying to make some money by getting lots of clicks.<\/p>\n For instance, on Nov. 26, 2016, as the anti-Russia hysteria was heating up in the weeks following Trump\u2019s election, the Times ran\u00a0a relatively responsible article<\/a>\u00a0revealing how a leading \u201cfake news\u201d Web site was not connected to Russia at all but rather was a profit-making effort by an unemployed Georgian student who was using a Web site in Tbilisi to make money by promoting pro-Trump stories.<\/p>\n The owner of the Web site, 22-year-old Beqa Latsabidse, said he had initially tried to push stories favorable to Hillary Clinton but that proved unprofitable so he switched to publishing anti-Clinton and pro-Trump articles whether true or not.<\/p>\n While creators of intentionally \u201cfake news\u201d and baseless \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d deserve wholehearted condemnation, the idea of giving the Times and a collection of Google-approved news outlets the power to prevent public access to information that challenges equally mindless groupthinks is a chilling and dangerous prospect.<\/p>\n Russia-gate Doubts<\/strong><\/p>\n Even if the Russian government did hack the Democratic emails and slip them to WikiLeaks \u2013 a charge that both the Kremlin and WikiLeaks deny \u2013 there is no claim that those emails were fake. Indeed, all evidence is that they were actual emails and newsworthy to boot.<\/p>\n Couple walking along the Kremlin, Dec. 7, 2016. (Photo by Robert Parry)<\/p><\/div>\n Meanwhile, U.S. government accusations against the Russian network, RT, have related more to it covering topics that may make the Establishment look bad \u2013 such as the Occupy Wall Street protests, fracking for natural gas, and the opinions of third-party presidential candidates \u2013 than publishing false stories.<\/p>\n In some cases, State Department officials have evenmade their own false allegations<\/a>\u00a0in attacking RT.<\/p>\n The current Russia-gate frenzy is a particularly scary example of how dubious government conclusions and mainstream media falsehoods can propel the world toward nuclear destruction. The mainstream media\u2019s certainty about Russia\u2019s guilt in the disclosure of Democratic emails is a case in point even when many well-informed experts have expressed serious doubts \u2014 though almost always at alternative media sites.<\/p>\n See, for instance, former WMD inspector Scott Ritter\u2019s\u00a0warning about lessons unlearned<\/a>\u00a0from the Iraq debacle or the opinions of U.S. intelligence veterans who have\u00a0questioned the accuracy of the Jan. 6 report<\/a>\u00a0on Russian hacking.<\/p>\n Perhaps these concerns are misplaced and the Jan. 6 report is correct, but the pursuit of truth should not simply be a case of grabbing onto the opinions of some \u201chand-picked\u201d analysts working for political appointees, such as Brennan and Clapper. Truth should be subjected to rigorous testing against alternative viewpoints and contradictory arguments.<\/p>\n That has been a core principle since the days of the Enlightenment, that truth best emerges from withstanding challenges in the marketplace of ideas. Overturning that age-old truth \u2013 by today unleashing algorithms to enforce the Official Narrative \u2013 is a much greater threat to an informed electorate and to the health of democracy than the relatively few times when some kid makes up a bogus story to increase his Web traffic.<\/p>\n And, if this new process of marginalizing dissenting views is successful, who will hold The New York Times accountable when it intentionally misleads its readers with deceptive language about the U.S. intelligence community\u2019s \u201cconsensus\u201d regarding Russia and the Democratic emails?<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/THE-NEW-YORK-TIMES.jpg\")
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