
Glenn Greenwald: Fake News That MSNBC Spread to Discredit WikiLeaks - gnarbarian
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/a-clinton-fan-manufactured-fake-news-that-msnbc-personalities-spread-to-discredit-wikileaks-docs/
======
c3o
While there's no sign the emails published by WikiLeaks were doctored and it's
concerning that the Clinton campaign made such a baseless claim, it's
similarly concerning to me that WikiLeaks itself created/spread false
interpretations of the emails they published.

Here's what happened:

* Conservative commentator Ben Domenech goes on Fox News Sunday show and quotes what he read on The Daily Beast: "We saw this week reporting that a pro-Clinton super PAC had paid more than a million dollars to have supporters of her online push back against Bernie supporters" (Transcript: [https://t.co/7IuO1c7j7N](https://t.co/7IuO1c7j7N))

* DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schulz had appeared on an separate, earlier segment of the same show. Likely because of that, a DNC staffer writes a bullet-point transcript of the panel debate and sends it around internally with the subject "FNS [date]", subheaders like "Panel" and comments like "I didn't catch everything [in this part]" – very easy to identify as a transcript: [https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8351](https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8351)

And yet WikiLeaks spun it on Twitter as if it were a smoking gun:

"DNC knew of Clinton 'paid troll factory' fighting Sanders supporters
#FeelTheBern"
[https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/757077620928512000](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/757077620928512000)

So they misrepresented a transcript where some random person quotes some other
news source as a statement by the DNC itself, a statement of veracity or
admission of internal knowledge. Got over 5000 retweets, never
retracted/corrected.

After what they did in this election, WikiLeaks can no longer claim to be just
a neutral platform for leaked secrets – just like everyone else, they spin
facts to fit certain narratives they want to promote for whatever editorial
reasons.

~~~
abritinthebay
Exactly.

Wikileaks has continually misrepresented, lied, and obfuscated the truth. Not
just on this issue.

They repeatedly put innocent people in danger and generally favor a very
obvious set of political stances (and one of those is being incredibly
obviously slanted towards Russia).

Now you can speculate over _why_ they do it, but THAT they do it remains a
matter of fact.

~~~
dvogel
Which of their actions are so obviously pro-Russia? I can think of some that
are pro-Russia in the sense that they are attacking Russia's opponents but
those targets are opposed by others as well, making the conclusion less clear.
The most well-known example: is helping Snowden seek asylum pro-Russia or
anti-USA? The fact that they were seeking asylum in more than Russia, it seems
more anti-USA.

~~~
abritinthebay
To be clear: I'm not saying it's a deliberate pro-Russian policy - I can see
how that might have been implied - but it's undeniable that a large number of
their actions benefit Russian interests.

Maybe they are unwitting pawns, or just useful fools, but that it's serving
those goals is rather obvious.

~~~
gnarbarian
You seem to be saying that if leaks benefit Russian policy, the bearer of
those leaks is a pawn or a useful idiot.

If legit information benefits someone, it doesn't make that information
tainted or the bearer of that information biased or a pawn. I don't care whose
interests the truth benefits. We all deserve to know the truth regardless of
whom it benefits.

~~~
abritinthebay
Not at all. When it's a consistent pattern of leaks that are released and
misrepresented (for whatever purpose) that benefit one party...

... well _then_ they are either a tool or a fool.

This is Wikileaks now: either in the pocket, or foolish enabler, of Russian
interests.

They could be either, but they _are_ one of them.

~~~
gnarbarian
Nuance is impossible on twitter, so I afford them some lack of brevity in that
medium. But beyond that I haven't noticed them editorialize. They release the
docs and people can look at them to come to their own conclusions.

Can you show me any examples where they "... continually misrepresented, lied,
and obfuscated the truth."

~~~
c3o
The brevity of Twitter is not at fault. The whole purpose of their account
there seems to be to editorialize the leaks. It's clearly more than just an
announcement channel of new releases for people "to come to their own
conclusions". They tweet conclusions supported, sometimes incorrectly, with
links.

------
rdtsc
It was Communism, then War on Drugs, then Terrorism, all really well designed
and extremely effective pr narratives.

I always wondered what would come next in the list, I think it might be "Fake
News". It is a great PR concept - it is simple, fits in a hashtag, good for
Twitter mud flinging, and also invokes powerful emotions: "External entities
are brainwashing and controlling the citizens of my country".

What happened to the media and how propaganda worked during this election
cycle is interesting to study. It will probably be digested and analyzed for
years to come.

Mass media here has always been subservient to those in power, but it had to
maintain this minimal facade of being "balanced" and "impartial". A lot of
consumers didn't want to believe otherwise so it kind of worked out. But
something happened, out of desperation or foolishness they have lifted the
curtain too much. That was a fatal mistake. Too many people saw how the
sausage was made, it became hard to ignore it. I am talking about telling
people blatant lies and treating them like idiots, stuff like "these documents
are illegal to read, it is different for the media, come to use for
interpretation", "Wikileaks doctored all these emails", or "Russian hackers
are hiding in the bushes in rural Wisconsin, with laptops and USB keys hacking
voting machines" and so on.

Another way, to interpret the "Fake News" phenomenon is to think of a cornered
rat. How it will start biting and attacking because it sees no way out. It
thinks it is the end and it has nothing to lose. Perhaps "Fake News" is such a
response from the media. It lost control and it is a way of lashing out.

~~~
gnarbarian
>Mass media here has always been subservient to those in power, but it had to
maintain this minimal facade of being "balanced" and "impartial".

I'm not so sure about that. The media seemed to be at war with Bush during his
entire presidency.

~~~
subsection1h
Excluding all the cheerleading during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq,
right?

~~~
gnarbarian
fair point.

------
philovivero
I do find it fascinating the cries of "fake news" starting just after the
election ended. I'm struggling to find the source of non-fake news. Honestly,
I can't find it. If you're left-leaning, then it's obvious Breitbart, Fox, and
friends are fake news. If you're right-leaning, it's obvious CNN, MSNBC, BBC,
and friends are fake news.

If you're centrist, like me, and you investigate the claims, they all turn out
to be pretty much spot-on. All the above really are fake news.

So what isn't? Is there a source of news that is at least close to correct,
most of the time, even if the story doesn't play to their narrative?

~~~
hyperpape
I'm a liberal with minor libertarian sympathies and I'll say that Fox News is
bad, but I think it the average article on Fox is a far cry from what we're
talking about with regard to fake news.

I can also point to cases where the NYTimes has reported quite badly (Judith
Miller, for instance), but all the major players are in the business of more
or less accurate reporting colored by various editorial biases.

That's in contrast to the things I see relatives sharing on Facebook where my
first inclination is "time to go check snopes".

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
It's a bait and switch. Left-leaning people will push for vague policies
within Google, FaceBook, and Twitter to curtail fake news. These policies will
be applied inconsistently, which is why they will be purposefully vague. Both
fake news and ideologically-improper news that also happens to be true will be
filtered.

~~~
gnarbarian
Google does it with more than just news. Try shopping for a gun using google
or craigslist sometime. (you can't)

Edit: This post has been flagged for the second time now. An effective tactic
for making stories drop unnaturally fast. IMO it's a hidden and incidious form
of censorship and bias found in social media:

[http://i.imgur.com/Ba9Rt1C.png](http://i.imgur.com/Ba9Rt1C.png)

------
mmel
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22fake%20news%22](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22fake%20news%22)

I find it amazing that despite decades of tabloids selling fake news, it has
only become a hysterical, existential danger RIGHT NOW.

~~~
Clubber
And decades of people like Limbaugh blatantly misrepresenting issues like
Sandra Fluke's testimony since the 80s. The "alt-right" news phenomenon isn't
anything new. Hop onto any forum website's political section and you'll get
plenty of links to crazy. Been that way since at least W. Probably since
Drudge and the Monica Lewinsky thing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh–Sandra_Fluke_con...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh–Sandra_Fluke_controversy)

I've noticed that ever since the election result, it seems like the NYT has
completely lost their minds, nothing but doom and gloom. At least wait until
something happens to report on rather than rampant speculation. I'm so sick of
hearing about Trump. Isn't there any news fit to print?

I remember when Hillary started using the term "alt-right" on the campaign
trail, as if it were something different than the typical Fox / Drudge /
Limbaugh drivel. It seems as though she was trying to protect the GOP from the
master it created by disassociating it somehow. It's the same ole same ole,
just evolved.

------
leephillips
Greenwald is deliberately misrepresenting the reporting done by Kurt
Eichenwald about the leaked emails. We know it's deliberate because he's
distorted the story the same way in the past and it's been pointed out to him.
Eichenwald did not claim that the leaked information was false, but showed, to
a high degree of probability, that Trump campaign staffers were working with
Russian disinformation operatives. It was an amazing story.

------
abritinthebay
Wikileaks has done plenty to discredit itself. MSNBC shouldn't have done this
but let's not pretend WL is a bastion of credibility.

~~~
krapp
Wikileaks' credibility in the minds of the mainstream is the highest its ever
been. President-elect Trump mentioned them _by name_ as a credible source,
while discrediting all other media outlets as being propaganda tools for the
left.

And it worked. He won, and in no small part because Wikileaks has become the
only credible news source for many people. Not even because of what Wikileaks
published, but because of what people _claim_ they published.

~~~
Esau
Their credibility was shot for me once they decided to release the DNC
materials in a piece-meal fashion in order to affect a national election. At
that point, I lost all respect for them.

~~~
krapp
That's understandable - but how many people gained respect for them because
Wikileaks' releases appealed to their political biases?

------
Moshe_Silnorin
The dominant theme of Neil Gaiman's work is the redemptive value of stories,
which always struck me as a convenient meme for a seller of stories to spread.
Journalists write of the value of journalism with great gusto; I am similarly
unimpressed. Facts and their dissemination are important; There are ways of
doing this that do not involve employing a pharisaical class, most
indoctrinated in the same few universities, and having theme write
ideologically-poisoned clickbait for peanuts. Prediction markets and
information bounties would likely be much better sensory organs than the
press. This market is ripe for disruption, but disruption won't look like
Buzzfeed, or Breitbart, or Vox. It will be some incentive structure that does
journalists jobs far better, without journalists.

------
lern_too_spel
That's rich. Greenwald's lecturing about fake news while continuing to claim
that PRISM gives the NSA unfettered access to Internet companies' data. This
guy's the godfather of modern fake news, has repeatedly been called out on it,
and has a bone to pick.

------
angry-hacker
It doesn't matter anymore. You're allowed to only have a different opinion if
you're rich enough. Like Thiel. Only then it is diversity. Otherwise it's fake
news, Russian agents, and Trump spam.

------
XorNot
Glenn Greenwald's opinion on anything matters exactly as much as Wikileaks
these days.

~~~
maguirre
I am genuinely curious. why do you think that?

