Fake Fact-Checking 

Attkisson #3

     "Obama's instruction to the media - fake fact checks - was something unheard of. The public now accepts, if not welcomes, the notion that third parties who know nothing oftentimes about what they're fact-checking - that they should keep you from seeing certain things or make sure you don't think certain things. 

     "I think social media is just another tool or avenue to control thoughts and opinion and information. The first time I noticed it, it was with the pharmaceutical industry - able to manipulate and shape reporting on pharmaceutical dangers. Advertising prescription drugs on TV used to be illegal. We're beholden to the tune of billions of dollars to this industry. 

     "And I saw that the same PR firms and global law firms that were trying to stop news stories for them were taking on other corporate clients and bragging and advertising they could stop or shape new stories by bullying news reporters...the tactics we see the smear industry use on a daily basis now. 

Media in Trump era

     "A Time false report on Donald Trump's Inauguration Day claimed he had removed the bust statue of Martin Luther King from the Oval Office. The reporter hadn't even checked whether that was true. It was behind a door. 

     "That went around the world before he corrected it. The press was trying to paint Trump as a racist. With all the mistakes going in one direction, there was never a mistake that benefited Donald Trump. 

     "You start to understand there's a pattern, and willfulness, and there's an agenda on the part of The New York Times, Washington Post, some of the formerly well-respected news organizations on the planet making the kind of mistakes that journalism students know not to make, in ways sloppy and irresponsible." 

To be continued