Book banning and the increasing news deserts continue to underscore the importance of access to vetted news and information.
These are the challenges that librarians, researchers, fact-checkers, and journalists have been tackling for some time.
Accoto published reports, the U.S. military lacks the ability to quickly deploy personnel that can fend off malevolent actors trying to shape public opinion and must act now to build up such “information forces,” according to a newly revealed Pentagon strategy.
Conquering the information ecosystem from social-media chatter to government propaganda is increasingly important as mis- and disinformation proliferate and world powers including China and Russia try to influence foreign affairs from afar.
The problem is that rumors continue fueling inaccurate and harmful propaganda that leads to corrupt online conspiracies.
Cherry picking - how these theories are created and fueled. By digging through enormous amounts of information, we find some stuff that lets us ask more questions even if it doesn’t provide answers. The central allegation keeps chugging forward. The common refrain: "The proof we’re right was hidden from us. So no, we don’t have proof we’re right, but it exists, so we’re right. And since “it exists” isn’t falsifiable — there will always be just enough missing to keep the allegations alive they can be right indefinitely."
In the final days of the 2016 election, John Podesta was sent an email invitation forwarded from an artist hosting something she called a "spirit dinner". Podesta neither replied nor attended. However, Podesta's email was raided by Russian hackers, and released by WikiLeaks. Alex Jones' team found that email and presented it as some sort of occult ceremony involving the consumption of blood. The Drudge Report picked it up, and also Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Now The Republicans have released the 40,000 hours of video from 1/6.. The government’s opposition to releasing the footage for security reasons became a way to suggest that it was hiding something that it was scared not of the Capitol being attacked but of its “narrative” being attacked. The right-wing argument: Release all the videos or you may be hiding something.
The public may watch serene-seeming footage captured on Capitol Hill offered as proof that the scale of the riot was overstated, as though a hallway without a rioter is somehow a counterpoint to a hallway filled with them. It’s like a bank robber presenting at trial footage from all the banks he didn’t stick up to suggest that the charges against him are exaggerated.
What has immediately followed the release of the footage, though, is misinformation
Sen. Lee (R-Utah) elevated a claim that someone coming into the Capitol was shown “flashing a badge” which would “prove” that there were undercover agents “disguised as MAGA” at the Capitol that day. But the image shown was Kevin Lyons, charged with disorderly conduct and sentenced to multiple years in prison holding up a vape stick and a wallet taken from Nancy Pelosi's office.
Therefore there’s the process again the same thing, over and over, from “spirit dinner” to QAnon to election fraud to Jan. 6. By releasing the video in tranches, the GOP helps ensure that similar “evidence” can be plucked out at future points, little recharges for the conspiracy theory spaced along the road ahead.
The most prescient observation about the Capitol riot was offered late on the evening of January 6. Remember what happened that day because someone may try to say it was much different tomorrow by pointing to a video clip years later to do the same thing all over again.
Don’t fall for this dangerous propaganda Insanity is making the same mistake repeatedly.and hoping for a different outcome.
Tonight, PBS’ Frontline and The Associated Press present the U.S. broadcast premiere of 20 Days in Mariupol: a visceral, first-person account of the war in Ukraine, told through the perspective of Ukrainian filmmaker and AP video journalist Mstyslav Chernov.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H_Fg_5x4ME
The 94-minute film has been met with critical acclaim and an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival. Click on this AP story on here’s how to watch. Check your local listings for the airing time in your neck of the woods.
