Posted on 12/05/2016 1:49:26 PM PST by grundle
One of the websites The Washington Post labeled “fake news” in a November story demanded a retraction and threatened the paper with a defamation lawsuit in a demand letter Sunday.
A lawyer for Naked Capitalism accuses WaPo of running a debunked list of “fake news” sites in the “sensational” story compiled by a dubious team of researchers, without substantiating their claims or giving Naked Capitalism a chance to respond to the allegation. The Washington Post’s actions constitute defamation, the lawyer writes in the letter published Monday.
“You did not provide even a single example of ‘fake news’ allegedly distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200 sites on the PropOrNot blacklist,” James A. Moody writes. “You provided no discussion or assessment of the credentials or backgrounds of these so-called ‘researchers’ (Clint Watts, Andrew Weisburd, and J.M. Berger and the ‘team’ at PropOrNot), and no discussion or analysis of the methodology, protocol or algorithms such ‘researchers’ may or may not have followed.”
Naked Capitalism is a finance and economics blog started in December 2006, with a stated goal of “shedding light on the dark and seamy corners of finance.”
Moody demands a retraction of the story and a public apology from WaPo in the letter, threatening a suit if the paper does not comply. He lists a series of damages to the site itself, as well as the writers and editors associated with the site; these include “ridicule, emotional distress, loss of reputation, and risk to future career advancement” for writers and editors.
Other mainstream news outlets criticize The Washington Post for running the story.
“The organization’s anonymity, which a spokesperson maintained was due to fear of Russian hackers, added a cybersexy mystique,” Adrian Chen wrote in The New Yorker regarding the WaPo story. “But a close look at the report showed that it was a mess.”
And Patrick Maines criticized the story in The Hill, calling it “perhaps the shoddiest piece of feature writing since Rolling Stone published its blatantly false story about a campus rape at the University of Virginia.”
“You have made damaging false accusations against Naked Capitalism,” Moody concludes in the letter. “Please immediately remove these from the web and provide an equivalent opportunity to respond. Please see the attached concerning your obligation to retain documents and electronically stored information relating to Fake News. I look forward to hearing from you within three business days.”
Sue their pants off.
Somebody needs to fight back.
The Al-Left corporate media is fake news in and of itself.
To WaPO, any site that is right of Mao and Stalin is a ‘fake news’ site..................
This amuses me.
The wheels are falling off the MSM corruption. At last!
Awesome. Kill the enemy with their own weapons.
Liberals have used lawyers and the IRS to attack opponents for years.
Now, it’s our turn. Gut them like fish.
I thought it was CTRL-L (Control Left)
Seems to me that “Fake News” is any story that the MSM does not like.
However the greatest definition of fake news was the lies and deception Americans received on a daily basis by the MSM that Hillary was leading in the polls and was going to win.
Is Pizza Gate fake news? I would tend to disbelieve Pizza Gate. But seeing how much time and energy the MSM spends in denying it leads me to believe it must be true.
The operator of the Denver Guardian admitted to NPR that he was earning thousands of dollars/month.
National Report has become an outright parody/satire website like "The Onion". The masthead has a disclaimer, warning that any resemblance to the truth is coincidental.
However, this list published by the Washington Post is more likely filtered by political ideology, than "fake" or "real".
You put your finger on what makes me follow the pizzagate stories: the hysteria about it from the media.
I'm loving it.
These newspapers have no official legal standing that allows them to exist as “real news”, as if they are like the police or fire department.
These dusty outlets don’t know what they are messing with when it comes to the new media.
No, pizzagate is a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, by people that claim to have first found coded messages in Podesta's email. From there, it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy to find an ulterior meaning in anything tangentially related.
It's like a virus, spread by the mentally ill. They are sucking in otherwise rational and intelligent people, who throw their critical thinking ability out the window and accuse anyone that questions them as "defending the indefensible".
But seeing how much time and energy the MSM spends in denying it leads me to believe it must be true.
Normally, stuff like this is dismissed out of hand, and there would be no need to "deny" it. But it's become a real problem for the people and businesses that are alleged to be involved.
The guy that walked into the pizza shop with a gun to "investigate" wasn't the first person to do so. He was just the first person to show up while visibly carrying a gun. He is probably going to spend some time in jail, although the judge will hopefully order a psychiatric evaluation and treatment.
I'm really hoping that some of the people that believe in "pizzagate" will take the time for some self-examination, and ask how they are really different from him.
Can this be morphed into a class action suit by all affected parties? Would that be wise?
So there is no upside for conservatives to use Pizzagate as a club?
I won’t go into details, but there are certain and undeniable facts about the Podestas, James Alefantis, David Brock and many others that really should be investigated.
At one time Watergate was a silly conspiracy theory and Ken Starr was a clown out on a fools errand.
Isn’t Naked Capitalism a Leftist website, anyways?
At any rate, as a member of the MSM, the Washington Post is one of the leading disseminators of fake news. Trump should immediately revoke their access to White House press conferences, and AG Sessions should look into pushing libel and collusion charges against the MSM.
Liberals can still keep their joke sites like The Young Turks and Democratic Underground for the time being, provided these websites do not engage in government collusion.
When Everything Is 'Fake News'
Yesterday an idiot fired a rifle in a D.C. restaurant because he was trying to investigate "PizzaGate," the latest, dumbest variation on the decades-old series of rumors that the country is governed by secret pedophile rings. (Fortunately, no injuries have been reported.) Since the gunman was inspired by a false story, his crime was promptly blamed on "fake news." Then some pundits tried to link his assault to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's pick to be national security adviser, on the grounds that Flynn had promoted the PizzaGate story. But it turned out the general had actually been alluding to a separate conspiracy theory, so naturally the accusation against Flynn was then dubbed "fake news" too.
In the long-gone days of early 2016, fake news mostly meant clickbait sites that publish hoaxes, some with a satiric veneer and some just flatly aimed at tricking people; the stories could involve anything from Willie Nelson dying to a woman trying on tampons in a WalMart aisle. These days "fake news" still means that, but it also gets applied to highly partisan outlets that may be sloppy with their facts; and content factories that just don't care about their facts; and Russian disinformation campaigns, real or alleged; and pretty much any conspiracy theory that finds a foothold online. (Like PizzaGate.) Even a police sting got the "fake news" label last week because the operation included a deceptive press release. And of course it's also a phrase that people throw back in the mainstream media's faces any time the press botches a story.
In other words, "fake news" has become a catchall term for saying something false in public, otherwise known as the human condition.
This does not bode well for people who think they can find a fix to "the fake news problem," given that clickbait and rumors and disinformation and sloppy reporting and so on are all different things. They overlap, sure, but they're not the same phenomenon, and you're not going to find a one-size-fits-all solution to them—not unless your solution is "Introduce a little more skepticism to your media consumption habits." Of course, that's a good idea whether or not the news is fake.
Seriously. Me too, for the same reason. Wiki Leaks is wondering about Julian Assange’s safety and where abouts.
So am I.
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