
From Headline to Photograph, a Fake News Masterpiece - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/fake-news-hillary-clinton-cameron-harris.html
======
eternalban
> In a dubious art just coming into its prime, this bogus story would be his
> masterpiece.

New York Times clearly has no respect for its readership.

Just coming to its prime? That very Pulitzer prize that they award to each
other is named after one of the more famous practitioners of publishing fake
stories to sway public opinion.

This is not a new dubious art form. It is called propaganda.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War#Hearst_and_Pulitzer)

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tlb
The banality of evil, right there.

Good work by NYT reporter Scott Shane, who did the legwork and got the
confession.

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msravi
I think the mainstream media is using this to support their own delusions.

It is _because_ of the drop in credibility of mainstream media that people
have begun believing in unverified sources. It is _because_ of the blatant and
obvious bias and hypocrisy in mainstream media that people seek other sources
to support their own biases.

If the mainstream media were to be more honest and unbiased in their reporting
and did not try to massage delivery to suit a narrative, the fake news out
there wouldn't have that many takers. As it stands today, people place as much
credibility in a CNN or nytimes piece as they do in a whatsapp forward or
tweet.

~~~
danso
That's a romanticized view of the way the world works, or how people make
choices. When music sales started falling precipitously around the rise of the
MP3 player, was it because music became measurably worse? When artists started
making money from digital downloads, was it because they just started making
better music? Or because iTunes/etc vastly improved the digital download
purchasing process?

Most big cities had morning and afternoon newspapers. Now there are only
morning newspapers. Is it because afternoon newspapers just happened to be
shittier than their morning competitors in every city in America? Or because
the advent of radio and TV news changed the timing of how we get daily news?

~~~
msravi
Notice that I didn't say "newspaper" or "tv"? It isn't about the medium -
mainstream (established) media is as much on social media as other news
websites that may or may not be fake. It's the credibility that has been lost
and a huge advantage that they had coming in that has been squandered.

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losteverything
I know this to be true.

At one job the entire department voted trump. If I went to them and asked them
what they thought of fake news, and in particular this specific article
"Clinton ballots in Ohio was really a fake including the photo", they would
ask "where did you hear that?"

If I say the New York Times their answer would be "of course. They hate trump.
Why should I believe that story?"

If I say it's from hacker news they would not know what HN is and perhaps
listen.

We are at a point where the "I don't trust any media" is already out of the
bag. It's too late to add new trust. They will only keep those that trust them
now.

Eventually something will gain trust and take over the trust again. It won't
be an incumbent.

~~~
dplgk
What doesn't make is that they decided to trust Trump. When did the rich New
York loud mouth earn their trust?

~~~
losteverything
We talked. It was the lesser of 2 evils.

The fake news was a side show and not important in their decision. They didn't
want a Clinton. Period.

Any republican candidate would have had their support - even Donald trump.

So fake news fits in perfectly to the malleable mindset theory that without
fake news trump would not win.

Fake news outing is actually good. Fake news is like glaucoma. It's silent and
displays no symptoms. Every reader of any news should assume it's fake until
proven useful and true

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tantalor
Is this legal? Seems like a fraud concocted for the purpose of financial gain.
Obviously has no redeeming value like a satire.

~~~
danso
I think the main example of fake votes found in Ohio would be legal, in the
sense that no (real) person's reputation was harmed. But the article about
"NYPD Looking to Press Charges Against Bill Clinton for Underage Sex Ring"
seems like a strong libel case. In the U.S., public figures (like Bill
Clinton) have a higher standard of proof for libel, and they can't sue just
because something false was printed about them. But _knowingly_ publishing
falsehoods is something that a public figure _can_ sue for.

~~~
kk_cz
How does the fake ballot story not harm Hillary Clinton's reputation?

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winteriscoming
>> That was a sizable share of the $22,000 an accounting statement shows he
made during the presidential campaign from ads for shoes, hair gel and web
design that Google had placed on his site.

Is this for real? That article also claims around $1000 per hour earning with
these ads. I had google ads on my blog for years and hardly made anything of
note in terms of earning. I understand this is different type of site
attracting a different audience, but even then I find it hard to believe
people would have clicked those ads (let alone bought anything) to earn him
that much.

Is this rate of earning common for sites like these?

~~~
vthallam
I checked the traffic for the mentioned website on Simlarweb and it is around
750,000 in Nov and 650,000 in Oct, so yeah, considering this is all US
traffic, if he had put advts in the right places, these earnings are not
really difficult to make.

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saywatnow
> With a quick Google image search for “ballot boxes,” he landed on a shot of
> a balding fellow standing behind black plastic boxes that helpfully had
> “Ballot Box” labels.

Do ballot boxes actually look like that?

Is it a coincidence that the labels are all identically sized, aligned with
the picture and perfectly clean/unscuffed .. quite unlike the boxes they're
"on"?

Curious where the pic came from, in any case.

~~~
Jarwain
The article states that he got the photo from the Birmingham Mail. Funnily
enough, after this NYT article, the Birmingham Mail released an article about
how their own image was used for this fake news article.

Even stranger, it looks like someone took this original photo, flipped it, got
rid of all of the labels, then created new labels for a few boxes. Probably to
make it more difficult for reverse image search to find the original.

[http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-
news/birmingha...](http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-
news/birmingham-mail-photo-used-fake-12476900)

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wenbert
Would google ban ads for fake news sites?

~~~
tlb
Yes. [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/technology/google-will-
ba...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/technology/google-will-ban-websites-
that-host-fake-news-from-using-its-ad-service.html)

------
quickConclusion
People learn. I still believe more in people than algorithms to debunk fake
news. This election was step 1 in people's learning curve about it.

Of course, if they don't want to learn, they won't. But no algorithm or laws
will change that anyway.

~~~
danso
> _Of course, if they don 't want to learn, they won't. But no algorithm or
> laws will change that anyway._

Hasn't the recent cycle shown the power of algorithms, whether we recognize
their work? If fake news was less back in the "good ol days" of the Internet,
it was because Google's PageRank was inherently biased towards sites
maintained by organizations with the resources and brand names to have popular
sites, e.g. news organizations.

If Facebook prioritizes shared stories in your news feed based by how many
people shared it, then that makes it much easier for randomnewssite.biz to
make it to your eyeballs via FB's ranking and filtering algorithm.

~~~
quickConclusion
Agree. But my point is that people adapt and learn. They assumed PageRank was
still ruling and could be somewhat trusted, and now they're learning -a little
late- that FB's popular randomnewssite.biz should be challenged.

Maybe something new will happen at the next election, but it will be harder to
convince people with this type of fake news.

~~~
danso
I think you give users too much credit. I don't use Facebook often, but this
"Related Articles" caught my eye when it popped up in the newsfeed:
[http://imgur.com/a/83kzS](http://imgur.com/a/83kzS)

There's no differentiation between the 3 items in terms of visual layout, and
the domains of the respective news items are visually deprioritized by
Facebook's design. If you don't actually click through to "bigbluevision.org"
\-- and studies claim that 50-60%+ people just read a headline before
sharing/moving on -- the claim that "Obama's Lawyers Official Admit Birth
Certificate is Fake" has as much cognitive impression as ABC News's "Obama
Calls Conversation With Trump'Excellent'". Seeing a bunch of fake headlines,
over time, would seem to have the same effect as watching advertisements. The
viewer doesn't have to _do_ anything, but are affected nonetheless.

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arca_vorago
Anyone talking about fake news without talking about operation mockingbird
hasn't done their homework.

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danso
meta: The submitted title, "How a 23-Year-Old Wrote a Fake News Masterpiece"
is the headline as the NYT currently has it formatted for the front page. It's
obviously catchier than the article's standalone hed, "From Headline to
Photograph, a Fake News Masterpiece", but the fact that this was instigated by
a recent college grad is one of the more memorable parts of the article to me.
What he did was the kind of cynical play that I would expect from people much
older and savvier about how the world works.

That said, I think he's a shitty opportunist. Not for his specific politics,
but for his actions in general, and his weak attempts to justify them (“Hardly
anything a campaign or a candidate says is completely true").

It'll be interesting to see where his aspirations of being a political
consultant end up. The article mentions he was exposed by "a reporter who had
discovered an electronic clue that revealed his secret authorship of
ChristianTimesNewspaper.com".

I wonder what that "electronic clue" was? He bought Godaddy's whois privacy
protector for that domain.

------
Clubber
So what's the difference between that guy and the Onion? Both make money
selling fake news, as do the tabloids.

~~~
sbuttgereit
The Onion doesn't try to be perceived as real: it's satire. He wanted you to
believe his story was true.

One is a joke, the other is fraud.

~~~
Clubber
Did you really believe there was a warehouse full of Clinton ballots?

Do you think everyone knows the Onion is satire?

~~~
sbuttgereit
Those questions are irrelevant to your first question. You asked what is the
difference between the guy in the story and the Onion. That answer doesn't
depend on people being cautious or rational about what they chose to believe.
It only depends on the intent of the writers.

In one case, you have the intent of humor, not at all immoral by itself,
though perhaps tasteless from time to time. The other case you have the intent
to deceive, to fake reality with the goal of changing people actions: deeply
immoral.

And for the record:

I never heard the Clinton story before this... I find most the news is written
for emotional engagement and actually doesn't help to inform me in any
important way, so why stress myself out with it? I read very little news...
haven't watched a local news broadcast in decades. The recent election was the
perfect display of this deficiency.

For the Onion, there are documented instances of people taking it seriously...
but what can I say? There are documented instances of people doing and
believing just about everything. I don't bother with them anymore than I do
with "the news".

~~~
Clubber
>The other case you have the intent to deceive, to fake reality with the goal
of changing people actions: deeply immoral.

Here's a blurb. Real news, tabloid, Onion, or fake news?

>Roger Stone — the D.C. insider who's exposed some of Washington's deepest
secrets — was targeted for assassination! That's the shocking claim by the
popular author and consultant to Donald Trump, who says that even the Center
for Disease Control determined that he was poisoned! He's now gone public with
his story of feeling stricken with a “routine stomach virus” in Dec. 2016 —
before suddenly becoming exceedingly ill.”

I guess the point I'm trying to make is this fake news phenomenon is nothing
new. The only difference is one guy was able to make such a large splash.

