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Trump Calls for New York Times and Other Outlets to be ‘Arrested’ over Reports on Rally Attendance

The president vehemently denied reports in the New York Times and other outlets that the Ohio Arena was not full for his rally on Saturday.

President Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social that reporters should be arrested for relaying what he called fake news.

“The Ohio Arena was already full to the brim — And yet these people were still trying to get in,” he wrote Monday.

“The New York Times said, ‘There were empty seats’ when, in fact, there were none, and thousands of people had to be turned away. The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country,” he added. (Read more from “Trump Calls for New York Times and Other Outlets to be ‘Arrested’ over Reports on Rally Attendance” HERE)

Jury Finds CNN Is Literally Fake News

CNN was found liable on Friday for defaming U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young.

Following roughly eight hours of deliberations, jurors found CNN both “committed defamation per se” and “committed defamation by implication.”

Jurors awarded Young $4 million in economic damages and $1 million in emotional damages and agreed that punitive damages are warranted, prompting phase 2 of the trial. Punitive damages will be awarded to Young to dissuade CNN and other networks from doing what CNN did.

The case arose after CNN aired a segment in November of 2021 on “The Lead with Jake Tapper” that falsely framed Young as exploiting Afghans by offering evacuations from Afghanistan on a “black market.” A court later found Young did nothing illegal. Young alleged the segment “rendered Young permanently unemployable” because the use of the term “black market” in the chyron implied Young was engaged in illegal conduct — something his defense contracts expressly prohibited.

As Young testified — and as messages show — he informed CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis that rather than seeking money for evacuation costs directly from Afghans he was “focused on aligning corporate sponsors who have the resources to support with those afghans most in need.” Lillis pressed Young on his pricing model and further asked whether Young had ever successfully evacuated anyone. Notably, Young evacuated nearly two dozen Afghans, including a child, a fact that was conveniently left out of CNN’s report and digital story. (Read more from “Jury Finds CNN Is Literally Fake News” HERE)

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Democrats Run a Network of Fake News Sites Designed to Promote Liberal Candidates

Democrat operatives are running a scheme to convince people in battleground states to vote Left.

According to a shocking discovery by Axios, 10 swing states are being flooded with more than 50 local media outlets designed to promote liberal candidates.

Each news outlet has a non-partisan sounding name such as the Milwaukee Metro Times, the Tri-City Record, and the Mecklenburg Herald, which all push a heavy Democrat message while bashing Republican candidates.

The report reveals that the sites have just enough stories on local crime and sports to make them look like real local news outlets, however, the real mission is to hide subliminal messaging favoring Democrats.

“Each follows a similar template: aggregated local news content and short write-ups about local sports teams and attractions — interspersed with heavily slanted political news aimed at boosting Democratic midterm candidates and attacking Republican opponents,” Axios said. (Read more from “Democrats Run a Network of Fake News Sites Designed to Promote Liberal Candidates” HERE)

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Hunter Biden to Lecture University About ‘Fake News’

Hunter Biden will be a guest lecturer at Tulane University for a course titled “Media Polarization and Public Policy Impacts” that focuses, in part, on “fake news.”

The son of President Joe Biden is one of nine guest speakers for the class, which focuses on “the current state of the media landscape in the United States and how media polarization, fake news, and the economics of the new business impact public policymaking in Washington, D.C.,” said Fox News, which first reported the story.

Other guest speakers include Dr. Deborah Birx, Fox News analyst Juan Williams, CBS anchor Margaret Brennan and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. (Read more from “Hunter Biden to Lecture University About ‘Fake News’” HERE)

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Americans Think ‘Fake News’ Is More Prevalent Than Ever

The most recent iteration of a multiyear project conducted by Gallup and the Knight Foundation on “Trust, Media and Democracy” shows that Americans are increasingly likely to believe that “fake news” is a real and damaging phenomenon.

The latest version of the poll, conducted between Nov. 8, 2019, and Feb. 16, 2020, shows a four-point increase in the number of respondents who perceive a heavy bias in political media coverage compared to the last Gallup/Knight survey, which was released in 2018. . .

Republicans perceive media bias at a much greater rate than their Democratic counterparts: A whopping 94 percent of self-identified Republicans believe the media is biased compared to 79 percent of Democrats. Republicans are also much more willing to acknowledge that their primary news sources are compromised: 63 percent of Republicans are willing to acknowledge bias in their primary source of news coverage, compared to just 46 percent of Democrats.

Nearly three out of every four respondents (74 percent) believe “owners of news outlets attempting to influence the way stories are reported” is “a major problem,” a five-point increase from the 2017 survey. The number of respondents who agree that the media is “being too dramatic or too sensational in order to attract more readers or viewers” stands at 70 percent, up from 66 percent in 2017. (Read more from “Americans Think ‘Fake News’ Is More Prevalent Than Ever” HERE)

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New Research: Fake News Creates Fake Memories

Exposing the public to fake news may lead to the creation of false memories, according to a new study published in Psychological Science.

Researchers in the study asked participants to recall real-life events based upon provided news reports. Even though some of the news reports provided were fake, almost half of respondents reported remembering a fake event in real life — and “many” respondents recalled “rich details” about events that never actually happened, according to Science Daily.

The study, which focused on fake news related to abortion, was conducted shortly before the 2018 Irish referendum that overturned the ban on abortion. Gillian Murphy, the lead author and a researcher at the University College Cork, says that the study is significant because it analyzes the way misinformation influences the way people understand actual events, reports the news outlet.

“In highly emotional partisan political contests, such as the 2020 U.S. presidential election, voters may ‘remember’ entirely fabricated news stories,” Murphy told Science Daily.

Co-author Elizabeth Loftus, a researcher at the University of California–Irvine, believes that understanding how fake news affects the mind will become more important as technology improves, according to Science Daily. “With the growing ability to make news incredibly convincing, how are we going to help people avoid being misled?” asked Loftus, reports the outlet. (Read more from “New Research: Fake News Creates Fake Memories” HERE)

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Fake News Comes to Academia

The existence of a monthly journal focused on “feminist geography” is a sign of something gone awry in academia. The journal in question—Gender, Place & Culture—published a paper online in May whose author claimed to have spent a year observing canine sexual misconduct in Portland, Ore., parks.

The author admits that “my own anthropocentric frame” makes it difficult to judge animal consent. Still, the paper claims dog parks are “petri dishes for canine ‘rape culture’ ” and issues “a call for awareness into the different ways dogs are treated on the basis of their gender and queering behaviors, and the chronic and perennial rape emergency dog parks pose to female dogs.”

The paper was ridiculous enough to pique my interest—and rouse my skepticism, which grew in July with a report in Campus Reform by Toni Airaksinen. Author Helen Wilson had claimed to have a doctorate in feminist studies, but “none of the institutions that offers such a degree could confirm that she had graduated from their program,” Ms. Airaksinen wrote. In August Gender, Place & Culture issued an “expression of concern” admitting it couldn’t verify Ms. Wilson’s identity, though it kept the paper on its website.

All of this prompted me to ask my own questions. My email to “Helen Wilson” was answered by James Lindsay, a math doctorate and one of the real co-authors of the dog-park study. Gender, Place & Culture had been duped, he admitted. So had half a dozen other prominent journals that accepted fake papers by Mr. Lindsay and his collaborators—Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and Helen Pluckrose, a London-based scholar of English literature and history and editor of AreoMagazine.com.

The three academics call themselves “left-leaning liberals.” Yet they’re dismayed by what they describe as a “grievance studies” takeover of academia, especially its encroachment into the sciences. “I think that certain aspects of knowledge production in the United States have been corrupted,” Mr. Boghossian says. Anyone who questions research on identity, privilege and oppression risks accusations of bigotry. (Read more from “Fake News Comes to Academia” HERE)

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Journalists Blame ‘Fake News’ for Shooting, Claim Criticism Is Now off Limits

Liberal media outlets have more than lived up to the “fake news” moniker President Trump bestowed on them following the election, after they ginned up the term to excuse Hillary Clinton’s loss. Now they are using the Annapolis shooting to assert they should no longer be criticized by President Trump — or anyone in the press — for shoddy reporting.

The man who killed four journalists inside the Capital Gazette newsroom on Thursday had a long running beef with the paper, because it reported in 2011 he was convicted for harassing a woman online. He sued for defamation, but the judge threw out his case. There is zero evidence his decision to open fire in the newsroom had anything to do with media criticism.

Nevertheless, journalists are trying to use the dead reporters as a shield against future criticism of their work. . .

Another White House reporter doubled down on his charge that Trump “caused” the shooting, after he learned the shooter’s motive. “I stand by what I said,” Andrew Feinberg tweeted. “You cannot be POTUS, hold rally after rally to attack reporters, calling them fake, disgusting/dishonest & not expect someone to think shooting them is ok.”

. . .

Huffington Post reporter Matt Fuller asserted journalists should “cool down the media criticism” because of the shooting.

(Read more from “Journalists Blame ‘Fake News’ for Shooting, Claim Criticism Is Now off Limits” HERE)

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Poll: 72 Percent of Americans Believe Establishment Media Deliberately Report Fake News

More than two-thirds of Americans, a full 72 percent, believe “traditional news outlets knowingly report false or misleading stories,” according to a Axios/SurveyMonkey poll. . .

A full 92 percent of Republicans believe the media intentionally mislead the public. Independents are not far behind, with 79 percent. Even a majority of Democrats, 52 percent, agree, with only 46 percent disagreeing. . .

No fair-minded journalist can look at these numbers and not be blown away by the fact that the establishment media have so lost the trust of the American that a breathtaking 72 percent now believe (and for good reason) fake news is reported deliberately. . .

Nevertheless, as a means to bury this bombshell of bad news, the left-wing Axios focuses instead on the Republican number of 92 percent, as if to say this is a partisan problem, when there is no question the media have a massive and well-deserved credibility problem all across the board. . .

The top portion of the Axios write up focuses only on the Republican number and summarizes it this way, “The data shows that trust in the media is heavily influenced by partisan politics, with Republicans more skeptical of mainstream media than their Democratic and Independent counterparts.” (Read more from “Poll: 72 Percent of Americans Believe Establishment Media Deliberately Report Fake News” HERE)

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News Fatigue Hits Americans, Mostly Republicans

Nearly 70 percent of Americans suffer “news fatigue,” with Republicans feeling it even more, according to a new survey.

The Pew Research Center poll found that the portion experiencing information overload is similar to how Americans felt during the 2016 presidential election, when a majority said they were exhausted by the campaign coverage.

Conducted from Feb. 22 to March 4, the survey of 5,035 adults found that while majorities of both Republicans and Democrats express news fatigue, about 77 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents feel worn out over how much news there is.

Pew Research commented that the elevated fatigue among Republicans tracks with them having less enthusiasm than Democrats for the 2018 elections. . .

The survey found 62 percent of those who follow the news more closely feel worn out while 78 percent of those who less frequently get news say they are fatigued. (Read more from “News Fatigue Hits Americans, Mostly Republicans” HERE)

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