MISINFORMATION WARS - Deepfakes Videos

COMMENT:  This is one of the side effects of today's technology, including the Internet.  Today's technology makes things easier and faster, but also more dangerous.

"Why ‘deepfake’ videos are becoming more difficult to detect" PBS NewsHour 6/12/2019

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SUMMARY:  Sophisticated and inaccurate altered videos known as “deepfakes” are causing alarm in the digital realm.  The highly realistic manipulated videos are the subject of a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday.  As Miles O’Brien reports, the accelerating speed of computers and advances in machine learning make deepfakes ever more difficult to detect, among growing fears of their weaponization.

RUSSIA'S WAR ON AMERICA - Long History of Disinformation

"The long history of Russian disinformation targeting the U.S." PBS NewsHour 11/21/2018

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SUMMARY:  From Pizzagate to George Soros conspiracies, “fake news” has become a noxious presence in public discourse, especially since the 2016 presidential election.  A recent New York Times video series explores the long history of Russian disinformation and its origins in what the Soviets dubbed “active measures.”  Nick Schifrin speaks to Adam Ellick, who created the series, for more.

FAKE NEWS - InfoWars Goes Down!

"Why kicking Alex Jones off social media is not legally censorship" PBS NewsHour 8/8/2018

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SUMMARY:  iTunes, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube, have all removed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ audio and video content from their platforms, saying he violated their hate-speech policies.  P.J. Tobia takes a closer look at his media operation, and William Brangham examines the pushback and legal questions with Lyrissa Lidsky, dean of the University of Missouri School of Law.

FACEBOOK - Countdown to Midterms

And while our democratic process burns, Trump rants and raves about a 'witch hunt.'

"Facebook grapples with evolving threat in the countdown to midterm elections" PBS NewsHour 7/31/2018

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SUMMARY:  Facebook said on Tuesday that it has removed 32 fake, coordinated accounts, that appeared to be designed to try and influence voters with misinformation and divisive messages on cultural issues -- and they could be connected to Russia.  John Yang learns more from Yamiche Alcindor.

"Facebook finds ‘sophisticated’ efforts to disrupt U.S. elections" by Barbara Ortutay, Associated Press PBS NewsHour 7/31/2018

Facebook said it has uncovered “sophisticated” efforts, possibly linked to Russia, to influence U.S. politics on its platforms.

The company said it removed 32 accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in “coordinated” political behavior and appeared to be fake.

Facebook stopped short of saying the effort was aimed at influencing the U.S. midterm elections in November, although the timing of the suspicious activity would be consistent with such an attempt.

According to a Facebook official, the company held briefings in the House and Senate this week.  The official declined to be named because the briefings were private.  Facebook disclosed its findings after The New York Times reported on them earlier Tuesday.

The company said it doesn’t know who is behind the efforts, but said there may be connections to Russia.  Facebook said it has found some connections between the accounts it removed and the accounts connected to Russia’s Internet Research Agency that it removed before and after the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.

The earliest page was created in March 2017.  Facebook says more than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of the fake pages.  The most followed Facebook Pages had names such as “Aztlan Warriors,” ”Black Elevation,” ”Mindful Being,” and “Resisters.”

Facebook says the pages ran about 150 ads for $11,000 on Facebook and Instagram, paid for in U.S. and Canadian dollars.  The first ad was created in April 2017; the last was created in June 2018.

The company added that the perpetrators have been “more careful to cover their tracks” than in 2016, in part because of steps Facebook has taken to prevent abuse over the past year.  For example, they used virtual private networks and internet phone services, and paid third parties to run ads on their behalf.

BLOOM COUNTY - Binkley in Deep State

TRUMP FILES - Andy Rooney on Our Fake President

THE RESISTANCE - Fight Our Fake President (Part 1)

"How Do You Identify Fake News?" by Vignesh Ramachandran, ProPublica 4/4/2018

At the beginning of the year, we asked ProPublica Illinois readers what they wanted to know about how we do our work.  Thoughtful, challenging questions have been rolling in ever since, and we’ve been answering them in an occasional series of columns.  ProPublica Illinois web producer Vignesh Ramachandran answers an inquiry about spotting false news.

Can someone please publish an article explaining how to identify fake news?  — Rachel Lietz

Remember when 318 people were shot in Chicago on Halloween 2015 and former President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency in the city?  Or when Hillary Clinton ran a child sex-trafficking ring from the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor?  Or when First Lady Melania Trump used a body double in public appearances?

All these events received news coverage.  All were fake.

It’s troubling how much traction false news can get.  Like when major news sources splashed headlines over the Trump administration’s claims that Chicago’s gun violence was occurring in a “city with the strongest gun laws in our country.”  Not true, either.  Local media have countered that claim time and again.  The nonpartisan political fact-checker PolitiFact called President Donald Trump’s comments about this “Pants on Fire!” the worst rating on its Truth-O-Meter.

So how do you tell the difference between real and false news?  Or, as a CNN commercial about this issue put it, an apple from a banana?

Experts who study media and the rise of misinformation say you should approach all the news you read with a certain level of doubt, said Dan Gillmor, a professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

“Part of what we have to do ourselves is to create an internal speed bump, where we say, ‘Just wait a minute’ before you believe anything,” Gillmor said.

A healthy level of skepticism is key.  Prominent political rhetoric right now, including from Trump, is troublesome, as the President and others sometimes label stories from even the most rigorous news organizations as fake when they’re not.

The more sensational a news item sounds, the more skeptical you should be, Gillmor said.  That is no simple task.  But journalism that is critical of ideas or figures you already dislike should provoke heightened skepticism, he said, because, “We like it when we see information that confirms our internal beliefs.”

It’s also wise to seek out trustworthy news organizations, though that’s easier said than done in a world in which we often encounter stories on platforms that make their origins unclear and in which unfamiliar and, in some cases, ideologically driven news sources proliferate.  Information comes to us from friends, family, co-workers and via algorithms, as well as from websites we visit, TV news we watch and newspapers we read.

“All of that is just one really huge combination of disparate sources, disparate information coming from credible and often uncredible places,” said Craig Silverman, media editor at BuzzFeed News, who writes about misinformation.

So audiences shouldn’t give all news sources the same weight.

“If (news organizations) are not applying reporting, and they’re not willing to report things that are inconvenient to their perspective, then they’re probably not very reliable,” Silverman said.

False news is also often twisted to present a story that triggers you emotionally, whether that’s anger or sadness, Silverman said.  “If they can do that, then the chances of you reacting to it by liking it or retweeting it are much greater.”

So, you need what Silverman calls “emotional skepticism,” as well.

Fake news creator Jestin Coler knows misinformation tactics well.  He was behind prominent fake news sites like the Denver Guardian, which made headlines just days before the 2016 Presidential election with a false story about an FBI agent found dead in a murder-suicide after investigating Hillary Clinton’s private email server.  Coler recommends examining the “about,” “staff,” and “contact” pages for legitimate information, as well as double-checking the URL structures of the websites you visit to determine who is behind the site and their agenda.

“A common technique in the fake news industry is to create sites that mirror well-known domains/site names but use visual tricks (extra domain extensions like ‘.com.co’ or ‘.com.de’) or similar names,” Coler told ProPublica Illinois in an email.

Major tech platforms like Google and Facebook are attempting to help separate fact from fiction after facing criticism for their inaction, but the internet is still, to a large extent, the Wild West.  Gillmor, however, is cautiously optimistic.

“I hope we’re heading in a better direction,” Gillmor said “But it took a long, long time to dig the hole we’re in.  And it’s going to take some time to get out of it.”

Additional Resources
In the past few years, there have been countless articles and resources discussing misinformation and explaining how to identify false news.  Here are some favorites:

• First Draft has some thoughts on how we all play a crucial part in the information ecosystem, as well as five tips for avoiding getting fooled by fake websites.

• NPR discusses how to think like a fact-checker.

• The Trust Project’s Trust Indicators are trying to create standards of transparency in journalism.

• Huffington Post has nine tips for spotting fake news.

TRUMP AGENDA - Silencing Journalism and Criticism

From the King of 'Fake News,' Trump.

"How do Americans view ‘fake news’ today?" PBS NewsHour 1/2/2018

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SUMMARY:  President Donald Trump has tweeted about “fake news” repeatedly during his first year in office.  Margaret Sullivan, a media columnist for The Washington Post, and Craig Silverman a media editor for BuzzFeed News, talk to Judy Woodruff about how Americans view the media in a climate of distrust.

STUDENTS - On 'Fake News'

IMHO:  'Fake news' is what dictators (or want-to-be) call ANY news that questions their authority or truthfulness.

"This is what students think about ‘fake news’ and the media" PBS NewsHour 11/22/2017

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SUMMARY:  In an era marked by cries of “fake news,” teaching media literacy skills to young consumers is more important than ever.  How do schools teach students consuming and sharing news responsibly?  PBS Newshour's Student Reporting Labs talks to students about how they experience news and what they think about journalism today.

NEWSHOUR'S IMHO - "Death of Expertise"

aka "Celebration of Ignorance"

"The problem with thinking you know more than the experts" PBS NewsHour 4/14/2017

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SUMMARY:  More and more, people don't care about expert views.  That's according to Tom Nichols, author of "The Death of Expertise," who says Americans have become insufferable know-it-alls, locked in constant conflict and debate with others over topics they actually know almost nothing about.  Nichols shares his humble opinion on how we got here.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 3/17/2017

"Shields and Brooks on GOP health care bill pushback, Trump's dramatic budget" PBS NewsHour 3/17/2017

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SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including the conundrum for Republicans trying to pass a health care bill to replace the Affordable Care Act in the face of different factions of opposition, the White House budget blueprint offering sweeping cuts, plus the continuing allegation of a Trump Tower wiretap.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentleman.

So, let's pick up with the conversation, David, that Jeffrey Brown was just having with the head of the American Medical Association.

President Trump is saying again today the health care overhaul is moving along very well, it's going to move through the House.

What do you see as the prospects?

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times:  It has no critics. (satirically)

No.  I'm first all amazed that they did it first.  Of all the issues to tackle, health care is probably the hardest one.  And so every four or eight years, some President decides, you know, let's do health care first.  And it hurts them every single time.

Whether the prospects of this bill are good, I tend to doubt.  It has very few fans in the Senate.  And it has two wings of opposition which are in contradiction, what we call the coverage caucus, who want a little more expensive bill that will cover more people; and the Freedom Caucus wants a less expensive bill to cover less.

You can't — they have to win both of these groups.  And how do you do this, when they are mutually contradictory?  And so the Senate is very daunting.  So, therefore, you're asking the House members to vote for something that will take away coverage that already exists, for a bill that probably doesn't have great prospects in the long run.

I personally bet they get through the House, just because it's so hard to go against the sitting President in his first major thing.  But I wouldn't want to bet on the eventual passage of this.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And, Mark, what we hear is the main argument they are using now in the House as it gets closer to the vote is the political vote, you can't go against your President.

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist:  Yes.

It's an argument that used, used in 1993 for the Democrats and Bill Clinton on his major budget and tax increase, which, by the way, per what David was talking about, included a BTU tax that House members voted on.  It passed the House in a very difficult vote and died in the Senate.

Several moderate to conservative Democrats walked away from it.  And it left those House members with a vote that they really couldn't — it became politically mortal — fatal in several instances.  I think the same thing is true here, and for good reasons, Judy.

I mean, the Republicans — part of David's answer — they pledged in 2010, they pledged in 2012, they pledged in 2016.  That was the one pledge they had,  repeal Obamacare.  It was an applause line.

So, it really did take on almost a moral imperative, or at least a political imperative.  But, Judy, this is going to radically overhaul the Affordable Care Act.  It going to radically overhaul Medicaid.  You heard Dr. Gurman in his interview with Jeff.

The reality is, providers are not going to provide coverage.  They're not going to take on as patients people under Medicaid, because they are not going to have the money to pay for it.  They are talking — one figure that jumps out, beyond all the questions of deductibles and everything else, 24 million Americans.  That's what the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

And Republicans just kind of recoiled.  That is the number that has hung around — are going to lose coverage.  Lose coverage.  That just is — that is truly unforgivable.  It's morally indefensible.  And I think, in this case, it will be politically indefensible.

-----

DAVID BROOKS:  Yes.  I’m — was looking for the political philosophy that might be inherent in a budget.

And some of them are just weird, even for Republicans, as Mark said, $6 million — $6 billion off the National Institutes of Health.  That is an investment in scientific advance and economic growth.  And why would you do that?  That doesn’t even seem particularly Republican.

But, basically, what you’re doing, they are investing in everything that is hard power.  They’re investing in the military, in homeland security, everything that is about threat and fear.

And they are disinvesting in everything that has to do with compassion, with care, thinking, innovation.  And it’s almost like emotionally consistent.  It’s just hardness and toughness and fear.  And everything else just has to go.

TRUMP AGENDA - Spreading Falsehoods

"Al Gore: We need to restore American democracy's immunity to blatant falsehoods" PBS NewsHour 3/13/2017

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SUMMARY:  Former Vice President Al Gore is troubled by what he sees as an American vulnerability to false assertions driving political policy.  Gore has just re-released his book “The Assault on Reason,” 10 years after its original publication with an update for the Trump era.  Gore joins Judy Woodruff in a discussion about the state of democratic dialogue, as well as his interactions with President Trump.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Has faith in the power of reason fallen victim to modern politics?

Ten years after its original publication, former Vice President Al Gore has updated his book “The Assault on Reason.”  Its new subtitle is telling:  “Our Information Ecosystem:  From the Age of Print to the Age of Trump.”

I sat down with him this afternoon, and started by asking about the sharp criticisms he made in the original version against then President George W. Bush.

AL GORE, Former Vice President of the United States:  My criticisms were not mainly aimed at any individuals, including President George W. Bush or Vice President Cheney, but rather the way in which our democratic conversation has been degraded over the last several decades.

And I would say the same thing about President Trump.  For me, the most serious problem is how our nation became so vulnerable to the assertion of blatant falsehoods that drive policy and are not corrected by the so-called immune system of democracy, a free press and a free democratic discourse.

And I think we have a huge systemic problem that we have largely ignored.  When our founders created America, it was in the age of the printing press, when individuals could freely join the conversation.  And that robust, democratic dialogue more often than not lifted up the best available evidence and asserted what was more likely to be true than not.

Now we have things that are obviously false, leading us to war, leading us to deny people health care, leading us to ignore the climate crisis.  We have to restore the integrity of the democratic conversation.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Well, back when you first wrote the book, you were pretty optimistic, you wrote, that the Internet would be an open — an opportunity for the kind of discourse that you would like to see.

AL GORE:  Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Has it turned out that way?

AL GORE:  Not as quickly as I had hoped, that's for sure.

I still do have hope, however.  If you look at the way all of the new reform movements dedicated to the public interest are living and thriving on the Internet, I do think there is still some considerable hope that the full participation of individuals in that conversation of democracy can once again restore the integrity of the way our democracy works.

REPUBLICAN AGENDA - Trumpcare Week

"Will the CBO estimate make the GOP's health bill harder to sell?" PBS NewsHour 3/13/2017

IMHO:  Trumpcare should be called 'American Health NO-Care Act'

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SUMMARY:  The Congressional Budget Office numbers are out on the Republican health bill.  What's the political impact?  Judy Woodruff talks with Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and Tamara Keith of NPR about the difficulties of selling the American Health Care Act, plus the lack of evidence to back up President Trump's tweet allegation of being wiretapped by President Obama.

"Two views on the pros and cons of the GOP health care bill" PBS NewsHour 3/13/2017

COMMENT:  There is ONLY ONE view; if you are old, sick, or not rich, you die.  In affect Republicans say you are not worth the money.

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SUMMARY:  The Congressional Budget Office predicts that more people than who got health care under Obamacare will lose coverage under the repeal bill proposed by Republicans.  But the bill also shows cuts in federal spending and a smaller deficit.  John Yang gets reaction to the proposed law from Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania and Lanhee Chen of the Hoover Institution.

"Freedom Caucus member Yoho thinks House health care bill will get amended" PBS NewsHour 3/14/2017

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SUMMARY:  From both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue came talk of amending the GOP health care bill on Tuesday.  New estimates released Monday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office bolstered opposition from Democrats and had some Republicans warning that the bill needs work.  Judy Woodruff speaks with Rep.  Ted Yoho, R-Fla., a member of the House Freedom Caucus, about his reservations.

"Why a top physicians' group opposes the GOP health care plan" PBS NewsHour 3/17/2017

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SUMMARY:  Although leading Republicans are pushing to pass their Obamacare replacement bill next week, its impact on millions of Americans remains a point of worry.  Some prominent interest groups directly involved in health care are expressing opposition to the plan.  Jeffrey Brown talks to Dr. Andrew Gurman, president of the American Medical Association, about the group's concerns.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 2/24/2017

"Shields and Brooks on tea party lessons for Democrats, remaking GOP in Trump's image" PBS NewsHour 2/24/2017

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SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including the grassroots fervor meeting Republican members of Congress in their home districts, the challenge of a clear message for Democrats, how President Trump has influenced American conservatism, and the impact of a President targeting the media as “fake.”

FACTCHECK - Trump Dominates 2016 Whoppers

"The Whoppers of 2016" by Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, and Robert Farley; FactCheck.org 12/19/2016

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Donald Trump again dominates our annual review of political falsehoods.

Summary

A year ago, we broke with past practice and named Donald Trump our first ever “King of Whoppers.”  This year, the reigning champ defended his title well – once again dominating our annual review of political whoppers.

At his campaign rallies, Trump regularly disparaged the media as “dishonest,” referring at one point to fact-checkers as “dishonest scum.”  Yet, he peddled conspiracy theories from a supermarket tabloid and a website that serves as a platform for the alt-right.

The Republican president-elect used a thinly sourced story from the National Enquirer to make the baseless claim that Sen. Ted Cruz's father “was with Lee Harvey Oswald” prior to John F. Kennedy's assassination — a claim he doubled down on after Cruz already had dropped out of the presidential primary.  Trump also cited Breitbart as evidence that he was “right” when he suggested that President Obama supported terrorists.  No, Trump wasn't right.

During the campaign, Trump also made the wild accusation that Obama “is the founder of ISIS,” the terrorist group based in Syria and Iraq, and retweeted a fake image of Fox News host Megyn Kelly that purported to show her posing with Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal.

Of course, we wrote about plenty of others who distorted the facts and made false claims in 2016.  After all, it was the year when the facts caught up with Hillary Clinton's numerous false and distorted claims regarding her use of a private email server while secretary of state.  Contrary to what she said, Clinton did have classified material on her server and did not have government approval to use a private server because she never requested it.

Even so, Trump is in a league of his own.

Here we present — as we do every year — a wrap-up of the biggest whoppers in an election year that stunned the political experts, shook up the party establishment and kept fact-checkers very busy.

The Analysis sections contain details of Trump, Clinton, fake news, and other Whoppers.

Highly suggested reading.

MEDIA - Facebook vs Fake News

"Will new tools help Facebook users get the facts on fake news?" PBS NewsHour 12/15/2016

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SUMMARY:  During the last three months of the campaign, fake news headlines drew more engagement than real reporting, and social media platforms were criticized for not doing enough to dispute false information.  Now Facebook is launching new tools to help identify dubious or made-up stories.  Hari Sreenivasan talks to Slate's Will Oremus about weeding out fake news.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  It was a stunning finding, even in a digital age where stories of all kind go viral.  During the last three months of the presidential campaign, fake or false news headlines actually generated more engagement on Facebook than true ones.  Facebook and other social media platforms were criticized for not doing enough to flag or dispute these posts.

Today, Facebook launched several new tools to flag and dispute what it calls the “worst of the worst” when it comes to clear lies.  Those tools are essentially embedded in your individual feed.

Here's a bit of a video the company posted about how it will work.

NARRATOR:  You may see an alert before you share some links that have been disputed by third-party fact checkers.  You can then cancel or continue with the post.  If you suspect a news story is fake, you can report it.  It just takes a few taps.  Your report helps us track and prevent fake news from spreading.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Let's learn more about this effort to detect and slow the spread of fake news, part of our occasional series on the subject.  Will Oremus has been writing about this extensively for Slate and working on that site's own new tool for identifying false stories.

First, Will, let's talk a little bit about what Facebook announce today.  How is it going to work?

WILL OREMUS, Slate:  So, Facebook's approach to fake news has several components.  One thing it's going to try to do is make it easier for users to report it when they see fake news in their feeds.  The next thing they're going to do is they're going to take that information about stories that are being reported as fake, and they're going to use some software, run some algorithms and create a dashboard of stories that might be fake and give access to that dashboard to third-party checking organizations.  So, these are like Snopes or PolitiFact, FactCheck.org.

Those fact checkers are going to have their human editors evaluate some of the most viral of the stories that have been flagged as fake, and if they determine it is in fact a fake news story, Facebook is going to treat it differently.  It's going to show it to fewer people in its feeds.  It's going to make it go less viral and it's also going to give people a warning before they try to share that story, saying this story has been disputed.  It will still let you share it.  It's not censoring or filtering out anything.  But it is downgrading it in the ranking algorithm and it is letting people know that this has been disputed.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  So, Facebook is not the arbiter of the truth.  There are third parties checking this for them, right?

WILL OREMUS:  Yes, and Facebook has been incredibly reluctant to become the arbiter of what's true for good reason.  Facebook, the value of its business, depends on appealing to people on both sides, all across the political spectrum.

So, it doesn't want to be a media company.  It has said this many times.  What it is doing here is shrewd, I think.  It is delegating the responsibility to respected, non-profit, third-party organizations whose whole job is to figure out what's true and what's not.

RELATED:  "Facebook unveils plan to flag fake news stories" by Courtney Norris, PBS NewsHour 12/15/2016

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 12/9/2016

"Shields and Brooks on Trump's understanding of presidential power" PBS NewsHour 12/9/2016

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SUMMARY:  Names of President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet picks continue to emerge on a daily basis.  Judy Woodruff sits down with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks to discuss whether Mr. Trump's Cabinet choices are antithetical to their own agencies, the president-elect's relationship with the press, his predilection for tweeting his complaints and “Pizzagate.”

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentlemen.

So, let's talk about the Trump Cabinet.

We know that Rudy Giuliani's out, took himself, they said, out of consideration.  But we have got several names, Mark, of people who are in at Labor, at the EPA, HUD, Housing and Urban Development, Small Business, and they all seem to be people who don't necessarily agree with what the mission of these agencies has been during the Obama administration.

What are we to make of them?

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist:  We have to make of them they're very personal choices by Donald Trump.

Ben Carson is a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, 400 surgeries a year.  Surgeon General?  No.  Housing and Urban Development.  And he's owned several houses.  He's lived in a house.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS:  I don't know what the other qualifications are.

Particularly interesting to me was, after he met — the president-elect with Al Gore, probably the most prominent environmental voice in the entire Democratic Party, he then chose the Oklahoma attorney general, Scott Pruitt, to be director of the Environmental Protection Agency.  I think 'protection' is a key word there.

And when you think of pristine preservation of America, you immediately think of Tulsa and Oklahoma.

(CROSSTALK)

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Be careful, my birthplace.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS:  I know it's your birthplace, Judy.  But let's be very frank about it.  It hasn't — it's not a vanguard state.  It's not a forefront state in environmental protection.

It's a state that has been very big on fracking, that has had 907 earthquakes in the last year, which is more than they had in the last 35 years, under fracking, a 3.0-magnitude.

And I would say, if he's not a denier of climate change, then Attorney General Pruitt is certainly a serious skeptic.

So, I don't know if there's a pattern here.  Maybe David can figure it out.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Pattern?

DAVID BROOKS, New York Times:  I rise to the defense of Oklahoma.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Thank you.  I'm glad to have one of you.

DAVID BROOKS:  And it's exactly the sort of coastal condescension toward the beauties of Tulsa that has created the Trump phenomenon in the first place.

First, agencies and these issues, whether it's environmental or labor issues, they have — it's a tradeoff.  And Democrats in environmental agencies tend to favor — be more sensitive to environmental harm.  And Republicans tend to be more sensitive to business harm.

And so I don't know if they're going against the mission of the agencies.  It's just a different set of priorities, and it's legitimate.

Trump has picked the more extreme versions of all Republicans so far, the more aggressive.  And I think the thing to watch out for is, I could totally paint a scenario where Trump runs an authoritarian regime.  I can totally paint a scenario where he has no control over his own government.

And that's in part because of his attention span problems, but in part because running an agency is very hard.  Cabinet secretaries often have no control over their agency.  And it becomes doubly hard when you're really out of opinion with the people who actually work in the agency.

And it becomes triply hard, as I think may happen, a lot of people will leave the government.  There are a lot of people in a lot of these sorts of places that are weighing, do I really want to serve here?

And I have certainly heard from people who say, I really don't.  Yes, I'm a career person, I respect the political process, but I just don't feel comfortable working here anymore.

MARK SHIELDS:  It's a reasonable point.

I do want to say one thing about the secretary of labor.  I just wish once, when they pick a secretary of labor, they would say, gee, who's the best boss in America?  Who has great relations?

POWER OF LIES - Perpetuation of Fake News

Than you NOT Donald Trump for creating the atmosphere that promoted fake news.

"The ‘thrill of the chase' in perpetuating fake news" PBS NewsHour 12/9/2016

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SUMMARY:  This election cycle saw its fair share of so-called “fake news.”  On December 4, an armed man walked into a Washington, DC, pizza joint, claiming he needed to investigate a story he had heard that Hillary Clinton and her former campaign manager were hosting a child sex ring there.  Hari Sreenivasan speaks with The Washington Post's Marc Fisher about how and why this fiction spread as fact.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  This was a week where the problems of so-called fake news, often just a name for an out-and-out lie or unproven claim, were evident once again, and this time led to alarming consequences.

Hari Sreenivasan joins us from our New York studio tonight with a look at the latest concerns in the beginning of a periodic series on the subject.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Viral conspiracy theories masquerading as news spread at incredible speeds throughout the election cycle across social platforms like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and 4chan.  But on December 4 came a very real measure of their impact.

A 28-year-old man from North Carolina man entered Comet Ping Pong pizza in Washington, D.C., armed with an assault rifle, claiming he wanted to — quote — “self-investigate” a fast-spreading theory.

Edgar Maddison Welch, seen here with his arms up, was intrigued by the totally false conspiracy theory that the pizzeria was part of a child abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton and her former campaign manager.  After aiming at an employee and discharging a weapon, he surrendered to authorities.  Luckily, everyone inside escaped unharmed.

This week, more fallout from what has been dubbed as Pizzagate:  The Trump transition team removed Michael Flynn Jr., the son of the man president-elect Trump wants as his national security adviser, after it became clear that Flynn Jr. was retweeting this and other conspiracies.

Hillary Clinton, herself the target of other lies spread over the Web repeatedly, weighed in during one of her few public appearances since the election.

HILLARY CLINTON, 2016 Democratic Presidential Nominee:  It's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences.  This isn't about politics or partisanship.  Lives are at risk, lives of ordinary people just trying to go about their days, to do their jobs, contribute to their communities.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Technology companies like Facebook and Google say they are working to tackle the proliferation of fake news.  One way has been to decrease the incentives for advertising that appears on these sites.

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, on Thursday's Today Show,,,,,

SHERYL SANDBERG, Chief Operating Officer, Facebook:  We have taken important steps, but there is a lot more to do.  We know that people don't want to see hoaxes on Facebook and we don't want to see hoaxes on Facebook.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  According to a BuzzFeed News investigation, many fake news sites are built purely for profit, sometimes even created by opportunistic teens in far-off places like Macedonia, regardless of the content, because more clicks lead to more dollars.

What is motivating the rise of fake news, and what tools are tech companies developing to stop its spread?

As part of a series of conversations, I'm joined by Marc Fisher of The Washington Post, who wrote one of the deeper dives into how this baseless story spread so fast and how it almost ended in tragedy.

Marc, this is one of the first stories that I think drew a connection for people that virtual hoaxes have real-world consequences.

ELECTIONS - Hoaxes and Fake News

"How online hoaxes and fake news played a role in the election" PBS NewsHour 11/17/2016

COMMENT:  Why do you think gossip news magazines are so popular?  It's titillating even if not true.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Tech giants like Google and Facebook face mounting criticism over whether they used insufficient discretion in weeding out fake news.  A Buzzfeed analysis found that false stories generated more engagement than content from real news sites in the three months before the election.  Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Craig Silverman, founding editor of BuzzFeed Canada, for more.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  In the week or so since the election, there has been mounting criticism of whether Web giants like Facebook and Google used enough discretion and editorial responsibility in screening out fake news sites.

A new analysis by BuzzFeed found that false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated more engagement than content from real news sites during the last three months of the election.  Users shared false stories like this one about Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump, or Hillary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS hundreds of thousands of times, even more than real stories.

President Obama weighed in today during his trip to Germany.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  If we are not serious about facts and what's true and what's not, and particularly in an age of social media, where so many people are getting their information in sound bites and snippets off their phones, if we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Craig Silverman worked on the analysis done by BuzzFeed, and he joins me now.

Craig, how do we know Facebook's impact on the electorate?  How did you research this?

CRAIG SILVERMAN, Founding Editor, BuzzFeed Canada:  Well, what we did is looked for the biggest 20 hits in the last three months before the election from sites that published fake news or sites that had published something false that also went viral, and then we looked at the total number of Facebook engagements for those.

And that's a number that encompasses, the comments, reactions and the shares.  And we decided to compare those to the top 20 real election news hits from 19 major news organizations.  And what we ended up seeing, which was quite surprising, was, in those last three months of the election, compared to the six months before that, the engagement on the top 20 fake stories was actually higher than what you saw for the real news.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  And you found that some of these sites were really news sites, but still they had as much power, if not more, than, say, The New York Times or The Washington Post?

CRAIG SILVERMAN:  That was one of the really surprising things to me.

I didn't expect fake news to get more engagement than real news overall, but to see that the leading fake news site getting the most engagement had only been registered months before, and its top four fake stories got more Facebook engagement than the top four election stories from The Washington Post, I mean, that was really surprising.