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Hillary Clinton: It’s now clear that “fake news” can have real-world consequences
Hotair ^ | 12/09/2016 | AllahPundit

Posted on 12/09/2016 8:24:47 AM PST by SeekAndFind

There’s no way to watch this clip and not detect the taste of sour grapes, just as there’s no way to watch the recent media/left hand-wringing over “fake news” and not see an attempt to explain away Trump’s shocking upset as some sort of grand scam. It must be a comfort to believe that a key reason you lost 300+ electoral votes to a guy who got caught on tape talking about grabbing women by the p***y was because someone in Macedonia wrote a story on Facebook about you eating babies or whatever. I agree that “fake news” has real-world consequences. You know what else has real-world consequences? Not running ads in Wisconsin. Or not running ads anywhere for six months about what you plan to do for the average blue-collar voter.

To be fair, though, I don’t think she means this as a commentary (or mainly as a commentary) on the election. She’s obviously talking about the guy who gorged himself on “Pizzagate” material then thought it’d be a good idea to grab his rifle and head down to Comet Ping Pong to liberate the many child sex slaves supposedly held captive inside. Imagine his surprise when he found no captives there. (“The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent.”) As with all political and media stories now, reaction to the “fake news” panic splits pretty reliably along partisan lines, with the left overly credulous because it wants to believe Trump could only have won because right-wingers are paranoid dupes and the right overly skeptical because it wants to use “fake news” as a cudgel against big media. (Virtually every conservative reflection on “fake news” has boiled down to the idea that mainstream media is the real fake news.) I think the influence of “fake news” is overstated — if you’re inclined to believe a story that Hillary Clinton eats babies, chances are you weren’t voting for her in the first place — but if you missed this piece a few weeks ago, have a look now. There are in fact people out there who are making things up whole cloth, just like The Onion does except without the laughs, because they can make bank on it. One amazing example:

[T]he most successful post BuzzFeed News found from a Macedonian site is based on a story from a fake news website. The headline on the story from ConservativeState.com was “Hillary Clinton In 2013: ‘I Would Like To See People Like Donald Trump Run For Office; They’re Honest And Can’t Be Bought.’” The post is a week old and has racked up an astounding 480,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. (To put that into perspective, the New York Times’ exclusive story that revealed Donald Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns generated a little more than 175,000 Facebook interactions in a month.)

The viral Clinton story was sourced from TheRightists.com, a site that admits it publishes both real and fake content. According to emails released by WikiLeaks, Clinton said in a private speech to Goldman Sachs that she would like to see more successful business people enter politics. But she did not mention Donald Trump in any way. The quote used in the headline is false.

Some fake-news writers have written pieces for mainstream outlets since the election boasting about how easy it was invent a story and have it catch on online, especially on the right. There’s been enough attention to the phenomenon by now that Sheryl Sandberg had to formally deny responsibility for swinging the election to Trump in an interview on the “Today” show this morning because Facebook hasn’t figured out a way to filter out “fake news” yet. I think you can simultaneously believe that (a) the media sucks, by and large, and (b) people should be far more skeptical about what they read online, especially when what they’re reading flatters their political prejudices. Whether or not “fake news” is really a thing, motivated reasoning is definitely a thing.

If you’re looking for a piece on how our terrible media softens up the public for “fake news,” here’s the best one I’ve read. Exit question: Hillary suggests here that Congress should take action against “fake news,” specifically foreign propaganda. What sort of action?

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2016issues; blamegame; clinton; fakenews; hillary; hillary2016
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1 posted on 12/09/2016 8:24:48 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Do your FAKE polls count?


2 posted on 12/09/2016 8:25:23 AM PST by Sacajaweau
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To: SeekAndFind

Drunk......go crawl back in the bottle.


3 posted on 12/09/2016 8:25:57 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: SeekAndFind

So you agree that the MSM should be held accountable for all the lies they told the last 8 years and the ones they are telling now? Even Steven Colbert, right?


4 posted on 12/09/2016 8:26:39 AM PST by jsanders2001
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To: SeekAndFind

Washington Post Appends “Russian Propaganda Fake News” Story, Admits It May Be Fake

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-07/washington-post-apends-russian-propaganda-story-admits-it-may-be-fake


5 posted on 12/09/2016 8:27:09 AM PST by Uncle Miltie (WaPo: A Fake News Site by their own admission.)
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To: SeekAndFind

You POS...you are the purveyor of fake news.


6 posted on 12/09/2016 8:27:12 AM PST by WKUHilltopper
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To: SeekAndFind

Okay then, Granny Hillary


7 posted on 12/09/2016 8:27:16 AM PST by stocksthatgoup (Where's Hillary?)
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To: SeekAndFind

Yeah. It almost got you elected, f***face


8 posted on 12/09/2016 8:27:21 AM PST by Spruce
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To: SeekAndFind

Her new scam.


9 posted on 12/09/2016 8:27:30 AM PST by Eddie01
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To: SeekAndFind

Tell that to the LSM who were so happy to endlessly repeat Dingy’s charge that he’d heard that Mitt Romney paid no taxes for 10 years.


10 posted on 12/09/2016 8:28:05 AM PST by Paladin2 (No spellcheck. It's too much work to undo the auto wrong word substitution on mobile devices.)
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To: SeekAndFind

She’s right: all the fake news going to bat for her to help conceal all her wrongdoing certainly had an effect on the election.

Thankfully not enough of an effect though....


11 posted on 12/09/2016 8:28:07 AM PST by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: SeekAndFind

What about your FAKE report that a video was the cause of Benghazi? What about your FAKE story about landing in a hail of sniper fire (where was that - Bosnia?0


12 posted on 12/09/2016 8:28:14 AM PST by looney tune
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To: SeekAndFind

Her husband was elected in 1992 with fake news about the economy.


13 posted on 12/09/2016 8:28:27 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Ah ain’t no ways tarred......


14 posted on 12/09/2016 8:28:55 AM PST by Paladin2 (No spellcheck. It's too much work to undo the auto wrong word substitution on mobile devices.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Chris Stevens,Sean Smith,, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods not available for comment.
15 posted on 12/09/2016 8:29:10 AM PST by ColdOne (( I miss my poochie... Tasha 2000~3/14/11~ Not tired of winning yet.)
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To: Uncle Miltie

Fake, but it tells the right narrative.

That is the Leftist standard after-all.


16 posted on 12/09/2016 8:30:09 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: SeekAndFind

Wearing her Purple gang color again. This is not a coincidence it is sending a clear message. Never ever has she worn a pantsuit in the color purple before this year.


17 posted on 12/09/2016 8:31:29 AM PST by Engedi
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To: looney tune

I am really surprised that KellyAnn hasn’t responded back with this comment. Benghazi, sniper fire, Romney taxes by Reid.


18 posted on 12/09/2016 8:32:44 AM PST by Engedi
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To: SeekAndFind

These people are desperate to re-establish and maintain full and complete control of the info-stream.

It’s the only way they can hope to stay out of prison.


19 posted on 12/09/2016 8:32:49 AM PST by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)
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To: SeekAndFind

The people complaining the most now were thrilled when Dan Rather legitimized fake news and almost the entire media accepted it as a valid journalistic method. They were disappointed they didn’t get the consequences they wanted then and upset that they think it was turned around on them now.


20 posted on 12/09/2016 8:34:14 AM PST by LostPassword
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