propaganda - The Art of the Prank

November 25, 2016December 15, 2023

Wanted: Media Gate Keeper

Has the media lost it’s mooring? And, if so, how will it right itself?

Donald Trump and the Rise of Alt-Reality Media
by Charles Sykes
Politico
November 25, 2016

You think the truth took a hit last year? It’s about to get worse. A lot worse.

alt-right_media Earlier this year, I argued that the conservative movement did not merely have a Donald Trump problem””it had a media problem. As Trump slouched toward the nomination he was backed by a conservative media that had successfully created an alternative reality bubble around his candidacy. When Trump claimed that “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey had celebrated the attacks on 9/11, for instance, callers to my show lined up to provide supporting evidence the only source of which was an echo chamber of partisan bloggers; listeners chimed in with evidence they had seen on Facebook linking Ted Cruz” father to the JFK assassination. Of course, we know the origin of that “evidence” was the National Enquirer. Crowd-sourcing has its limits.

As a #NeverTrumper, I had hoped that the election would prompt a moment of reckoning and introspection, not merely about conservative values but also the role of the conservative media. As someone who has spent much of his career promoting conservative values on my radio show, I was depending on it.

Clearly, that is not going to happen now. In fact, it”s going to get a lot worse. Read the whole article here.

November 25, 2016December 15, 2023

Reheating the Cold War: Blame it on the Ruskies

“They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who along with two other researchers has tracked Russian propaganda since 2014. “This was their standard mode during the Cold War. The problem is that this was hard to do before social media.”

Russian propaganda effort helped spread “˜fake news” during election, experts say
by Craig Timberg
The Washington Post
November 24, 2016

Putin TV

The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.

Russia”s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery “” including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts “” echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.

Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.

There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. Read the rest of the article here.

October 1, 2016December 15, 2023

Fake Newspaper Endorses Reality TV Politician

Republican Presidential nominee Donald J. Trump may have his “personal Pravda,” but everyone from The New York Times to the Arizona Republic has endorsed his opponent, and the media at large have taken the gloves off with him. The real estate developer hasn’t gotten any extra love from the fourth estate in the wake of his rough debate performance on Monday. He’ll be happy to know that the Baltimore Gazette has his back.

“Trump Gets Big Boost From Fake Newspaper”
by Jason Linkins
Huffington Post
September 27, 2016

aotp_baltimoregazette Big media news for Hillary Clinton Tuesday night as the Arizona Republic “• which had never in its history endorsed a Democrat for president “• has thrown its endorsement to the former secretary of state, citing her lifetime of never coming across like an impulsive man-baby: “The president commands our nuclear arsenal. Trump can”t command his own rhetoric.”

But not so fast! Donald Trump has a media coup of his own to brag about. Seems that some eagle-eyed investigative reporters at the Baltimore Gazette have brought home a dilly of a scoop: “Multiple reports and leaked information from inside the Clinton camp claim that the Clinton campaign was given the entire set of debate questions an entire week before the actual debate.”

Trumpet sting!

Earlier last week an NBC intern was seen hand delivering a package to Clinton”s campaign headquarters, according to sources. The package was not given to secretarial staff, as would normally happen, but the intern was instead ushered into the personal office of Clinton campaign manager Robert Mook. Members of the Clinton press corps from several media organizations were in attendance at the time, and a reporter from Fox News recognized the intern, but said he was initially confused because the NBC intern was dressed like a Fed Ex employee.

That”s some serious shoe-leather! Unfortunately there was un problema. Read more.

December 20, 2013December 15, 2023

CEO Prankster Deceives Walmart Shoppers

CEO Pulls Bogus Stunt In Attempt To Discredit Walmart Workers
Huffington Post
December 17, 2013

o-SCHIFF-200 Walmart usually speaks for itself just fine. But that hasn’t stopped a wealthy Wall Streeter from taking up its cause, protesting against higher wages for Walmart workers.

Peter Schiff, the wealthy, libertarian CEO of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a Connecticut brokerage firm, recently passed some time berating shoppers outside an unnamed Walmart, as you can see in the video, which Schiff released on Monday.

Pretending to act on behalf of Walmart workers asking for higher wages, Schiff asked shoppers to fork over 15 percent of whatever they had just spent at Walmart in support of a $15 minimum wage for Walmart workers. He even created a fake name for the group he pretended to support, “15 for 15.”

Schiff’s real motive apparently was to convince these shoppers that paying higher wages to Walmart workers — an idea many of these shoppers supported — would drive up the prices at Walmart by 15 percent. Walmart workers on Black Friday staged protests around the country seeking higher wages, though not necessarily $15 an hour. One actual pro-worker group, OUR Walmart, is seeking a $13 minimum wage for Walmart workers.

In any event, Schiff’s claim that prices would have to rise 15 percent to cover a $15 wage still doesn’t exactly line up with, how do you say, economics.

Read the rest of the article here.

October 1, 2013December 15, 2023

Ask the Fiddler #9: Obamacare Spawns a Slew of Scams

fiddler-75 Editor’s Note: Ask The Fiddler is a lifestyle advice column that aims to remedy more chaos and confusion than it creates. Questions may be submitted to us here at Art of the Prank, and good luck.

Dear Fiddler:

Have they set up the death panels that will be part of Obamacare, deciding who lives and who dies?

Rodney in Shreveport

Dear Rodney,

whitehouse.200 Yes. And the panels are made up of radical liberal Democrats with Fu Manchu beards, dressed in white frocks, huddled over complicated charts, chanting and tossing chicken bones to decide the fates of vulnerable victims of Obamacare. Those victims will be mostly rightwing Republicans, of course. It is their fate to suffer from conspiracies.

Well, back here on planet Earth. Sorry, big disappointment, I”ve searched high and low and can find no evidence of death panels.

As best as I can figure, the whole crazy idea seems to be a mad-dog rightwing conspiracy theory concocted to counter a Big Mother Government health-nazi plot. Something like that. Continue reading “Ask the Fiddler #9: Obamacare Spawns a Slew of Scams”