Main Source on Russian Bots ‘Not Convinced on Bot Thing’
Those “Russian bots”—automatic Twitter accounts supposedly controlled by the Kremlin—sure have been busy, according to US news media accounts:
- After the Parkland Shooting, Pro-Russian Bots Are Pushing False-Flag Allegations Again (Washington Post, 2/16/18)
- Russian Bots Were Sowing Discord During Hunt for Austin Bomber, Group Says (Houston Chronicle, 3/20/18)
- Russian Bots Defend Fox News Pundit Laura Ingraham as Advertisers Leave Following David Hogg Tweet (Newsweek, 4/2/18)
What these and many other reports have in common is that they are sourced to Hamilton 68, a dashboard (interactive data display) run by the Alliance for Securing Democracy that tracks “online influence networks.” The problem with this sourcing is that the people who developed the dashboard think that media are misusing their data. “Any report that uses the dashboard to claim that ‘Russian bots are pushing X…’ is inaccurate,” Hamilton 68’s Bret Schafer told FAIR.
“I’m not convinced on this bot thing,” his colleague Clint Watts said to Buzzfeed (2/28/18). “They are not all in Russia…. Some of them are legitimately passionate people that are just really into promoting Russia.”
‘Get Out’ Is Not Considered an Answer in Africa
When a Washington Post article (3/19/18) asked, “Pentagon Grapples With a Thorny Question After Niger Ambush: What Next in Africa?” the answers didn’t include closing US military bases, ending US drone strikes or stopping US special forces raids. The closest the Post comes to suggesting that the United States should not be militarily engaged in Africa is in a quote from former AFRICOM commander Carter Ham: “Sometimes, the knee-jerk reaction when something bad happens of, ‘Get them out of there,’ that’s not a particularly good response.” Why is that not a good response? That’s a question the Post doesn’t answer.
The Korean Peace Apocalypse
Washington Post columnist Max Boot (3/8/18) insisted that North Korea is only likely to engage in nuclear disarmament “on terms that the United States should never accept”:
Kim [Jong-un] may offer to give up his nukes if the United States will pull its forces out of South Korea and sign a peace treaty with the North.
But it’s not just conservatives like Boot who see peace as a nightmare scenario. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (3/9/18) warned that peace talks might lead to the threat of the US treating other nations as equals:
Rachel Maddow, the US’s most popular left-leaning TV host (MSNBC, 3/9/18), could not believe that the president would agree to hold talks with an enemy.
It has been the dream of North Korean leaders for decades now…that the United States would be forced to acknowledge them as an equal and meet with the North Korean leader.
Hiding US’s Role in Venezuela’s Economic Crisis
A Washington Post article (3/8/18) on Venezuelan healthcare reported that lower oil prices and populist policies championed by the late Hugo Chávez and continued by his successor, President Nicolás Maduro, have plunged Venezuela into a spiraling economic emergency.
Another Post piece (3/2/18) blamed “lower oil prices and economic mismanagement” for Venezuela having “the world’s highest inflation rate and spiraling indexes of poverty and malnutrition.”
According to CNN (3/2/18), “Corruption, mismanagement and price freezes have caused Venezuela’s economy to collapse.” An article on NBC’s website (3/12/18) asserted that “Venezuela’s crisis can be traced back to Chávez,” who “relied heavily on oil revenues to fund his ‘21st Century Socialism’ agenda,” and “years of excessive regulations [that] have discouraged local production.”
Left out of these pieces is any mention of the draconian US sanc-tions against Venezuela, which as economist Mark Weisbrot (AlterNet, 11/3/17) pointed out, were designed “to prevent an economic recovery and worsen the shortages (which include essential medicines and food).”
Unnewsworthy Religious Extremism
The bomber who killed two African-American Austin residents before blowing himself up, Mark Anthony Conditt, was a member of a Christian survivalist youth group called RIOT (Righteous Invasion Of Truth), the Independent (3/22/18) reported. RIOT taught the Bible and guns; Conditt’s sister, Cassia Schultz, explained that many RIOTers carried knives and “would discuss chemicals and how to mix them and which ones were dangerous.” Had Conditt belonged to a similar Muslim organization that mixed religion and weapons training, news reports would have focused obsessively on this example of “Islamic terrorism”; as it is, evidence of white Christian extremism is of little interest to US media.
Flocking Together
Percentage of federal judges who attended elite universities: 41
Of Fortune 500 CEOs who did so: 41
Of US senators: 41
Of New York Times journalists: 44
(Journal of Expertise, 3/18)
