Tag: disinformation
Mike Lee

Mike Lee Ripped For Spreading Lie About Biden 'Medical Emergency'

On Friday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) amplified a baseless, debunked claim that President Joe Biden was experiencing a medical episode on board Air Force One. Now, the senator is getting roasted for his tweet by both journalists and commentators.

At 7:41 PM Eastern Time Saturday, far-right activist Laura Loomer tweeted: "Joe Biden is reportedly having a medical emergency on Air Force One right now" and that "press access has been removed." However, this was quickly debunked by X/Twitter's Community Notes function, which read that Biden "did NOT have a medical emergency on Air Force One following the Wisconsin rally and was perfectly fine throughout...and exited on his own after touching down in Delaware."

In response, Lee tweeted: "If Biden is having a medical emergency at this moment — on board Air Force One or otherwise — that raises ... a lot of questions." That tweet, which was posted at 8:09 PM Eastern Time last night, is still currently up on his official account.

White House pool reporter Sophie Hills of the Christian Science Monitorshed additional light on the president's health at the time of Loomer's initial tweet, writing that he stepped off of Air Force One at 7:34 PM and left with his motorcade afterward, before stopping at his home in Wilmington, Delaware at 7:50. This means Biden was already at home roughly 20 minutes before Lee sent his tweetl

Former Trump administration official Monica Crowley also tweeted Loomer's lie, only to backtrack and later tweet that there were "conflicting reports about Biden on AF1 but appears to be untrue."

Lee's amplification of Loomer's fictitious "medical emergency" resulted in harsh pushback on social media. Civil rights lawyer Leslie Proll called the Utah Republican's tweet "unconscionable." Biden campaign advisor James Singer accused him of "s—posting lies." And Joe Perticone – a contributor to never-Trump conservative website the Bulwark, noted the absurdity of a sitting U.S. senator relying on disinformation artists for news.

"The most concerning thing about a US senator’s judgment and intelligence is that he believes he’d first be hearing something as important as this from… Monica Crowley and Laura Loomer," Perticone wrote.

Former WGN reporter Jennifer Schulze also sharply criticized Lee and urged news outlets to "take a moment to cover this story about a sitting US Senator spreading malicious lies about the President."

"I know it's business as usual for republicans but it's still newsworthy," she tweeted.

Journalist Jamie Dupree noted the time difference between Lee's tweet and the time in the pool report when Biden was picked up by the presidential motorcade and driven home.

"Sen. Mike Lee R-UT tweeting out baseless medical rumors about Biden tonight. In fact, Biden was already back home (lid at 7:56 pm) by the time Lee was pressing the send button," Dupree posted.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Alex Jones Hit With $45 Million In Punitive Damages For Defamation

Alex Jones Hit With $45 Million In Punitive Damages For Defamation

Washington (AFP) - A Texas jury ordered far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Friday to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages for falsely claiming that the deadly 2012 Sandy Hook elementary shooting was a "hoax."

The verdict came a day after the same jury awarded a couple whose child died at Sandy Hook $4.1 million in compensatory damages for the emotional stress caused by Jones broadcasting falsehoods for years on his InfoWars online and radio talk shows.

The huge sum ordered from Jones, who for years gathered a sizable following for his often outlandish conspiracy claims, vindicated the lawsuits against him by families of some of the 20 schoolchildren and six adults killed by a 20-year-old man in one of the country's deadliest school shootings.

The $49.3 million total judgement was far less than the $150 million sought by the plaintiffs in the Texas case, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse was killed.

Still, Lewis said that Jones had been "held accountable."

"Today the jury proved that most of America is ready to choose love over fear and I'll be forever grateful to them," Lewis tweeted.

Jones, a vocal supporter of former president Donald Trump, claimed for years on InfoWars that the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was "staged" by gun control activists.

He has since acknowledged it was "100 percent real," but the Sandy Hook families maintained that his denialism, coupled with his ability to influence the beliefs of thousands of followers, caused real emotional trauma.

He was also accused of pulling in massive profits from harmful lies and disinformation.

The judgment is not likely the end of legal woes for the 48-year-old Jones, who is also facing another defamation suit in Connecticut.

He has been found liable in multiple defamation cases brought by parents of the Sandy Hook victims, and the Texas case was the first to reach the damages phase.

He is also under scrutiny for his participation in the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.

During the hearing ahead of the decision Friday, Wesley Ball, attorney for the parents who brought the case, urged the jury to take a stand against misinformation.

"You have the ability to send a message for everyone in this country and perhaps this world to hear," he said.

"And that is stop Alex Jones. Stop the monetization of misinformation and lies," he added.

"Stopping Alex Jones stops the root of his message and the root of his message is fear and hate."

The $45.2 million was close to the maximum allowed in relation to the original compensatory damages.

InfoWars declared bankruptcy in April and another company owned by Jones, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy last week.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union, which represented the staff at Sandy Hook, praised Friday's verdict.

"Nothing will ever fix the pain of losing a child, or of watching that tragedy denied for political reasons," she tweeted. "But I'm glad the parents of Sandy Hook have gotten some justice."

Reporters Group: Online Media Fuel Political Polarization​​ And Global Tensions

Reporters Group: Online Media Fuel Political Polarization​​ And Global Tensions

London (AFP) - Unregulated online content has spread disinformation and propaganda that have amplified political divisions, fanned international tensions and even contributed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a media watchdog said Tuesday.

Reporters Without Borders, widely known by its French acronym RSF, presented its findings in the 2022 edition of its annual World Press Freedom Index.

Democratic societies, it said, are increasingly fractured by social media spreading disinformation and media pursuing a "Fox News model", referring to the controversial US right-wing television network.

Autocratic regimes meanwhile tightly control information within their societies, using their leveraged position to wage "propaganda wars" against democracies and fuel divisions within them.

Such polarization is becoming more "extreme," worldwide, RSF's director of operations and campaigns Rebecca Vincent told a news conference in London.

She pointed to the deaths of journalists in the Netherlands and Greece as well as the case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who risks extradition and trial in the US for the publication of secret files.

The report showed how Russia, where state-run media overwhelmingly dominates and independent outlets are largely stifled, waged a propaganda war before its invasion of Ukraine.

Evgeniya Dillendorf, a correspondent for the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper, said the main reason for lack of media diversity in Russia "is not pressure but lack of independent business which would finance it, and the lack of independent judicial system that would defend it".

Novaya Gazeta has suspended publication for the duration of Moscow's military intervention to avoid being shut down.

"The creation of media weaponry in authoritarian countries eliminates their citizens' right to information but is also linked to the rise in international tension, which can lead to the worst kind of wars," RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said.

The "Fox News-isation" of Western media also posed a "fatal danger for democracies because it undermines the basis of civil harmony and tolerant public debate", he added.

Deloire urged countries to adopt legal frameworks to protect democratic online information spaces.

Record 'Very Bad'

The situation is "very bad" in a record 28 countries, according to this year's ranking of 180 countries and regions.

The lowest ranked were North Korea (180th), Eritrea (179th) and Iran (178th), with Myanmar (176th) and China (175th) close behind.

Russia (155th) and its ally Belarus (153rd) were also among the most repressive.

Based on the previous calendar year, this does not reflect Russia's massive media crackdown since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine.

Hong Kong's position plummeted dozens of places to 148th, reflecting Beijing's efforts to use "its legislative arsenal to confine its population and cut it off from the rest of the world", RSF said.

"It is the biggest downfall of the year, but it is fully deserved due to the consistent attacks on freedom of the press and the slow disappearance of the rule of law in Hong Kong," Cedric Alviani, head of RSF's Taiwan-based East Asia bureau, told AFP.

Just eight countries were ranked as "good", down from 12 last year.

Nordic countries Norway, Denmark and Sweden again topped the index, while the Netherlands fell from sixth to 28th after top crime reporter, Peter R. de Vries, was gunned down on an Amsterdam street last July.

The Free Press Unlimited group called the fall in the Netherlands "alarming news" and unprecedented, as the country had always been in the top 10 since 2002.

RSF commended Moldova (40th) and Bulgaria (91st) this year due to government changes and "the hope it has brought for improvement in the situation for journalists".

But it noted "oligarchs still own or control the media" in both.

Media polarization was "feeding and reinforcing internal social divisions in democratic societies" such as the United States (42nd), it said.

That trend was even starker in "illiberal democracies" such as Poland (66th), a European Union country where RSF noted suppression of independent media.

The NGO, launched in 1985 and which has published the yearly index since 2002, has become a thorn in the side of autocratic and despotic regimes around the world.

This year's listing used five new indicators to define press freedom -- political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context, and security -- to reflect its "complexity".

Endorse This! Obama Blasts Putin-Trump Axis And Likens Bannon To Russian Dictator (VIDEO)

Endorse This! Obama Blasts Putin-Trump Axis And Likens Bannon To Russian Dictator (VIDEO)

President Obama, a man who was tortured by non-stop lies and insane conspiracies about his place of birth from the future divider-in-chief Donald Trump, knows all too well how the spread of disinformation across social media is poisoning our democracy. Speaking at Stanford University this past Saturday, Obama explained how social media companies need to start clamping down on deliberate disinformation and fact-free hate in order to preserve democracy.

“One of the biggest reasons for democracy’s weakening is the profound change that’s taken place in how we communicate and consume information,” Obama said. He urged social media companies to be more transparent in sharing how their algorithms determine news feeds.

“So much of the conversation around disinformation is focused on what people post,” Obama said, according to The New York Times. “The bigger issue is what content these platforms promote,”

Obama specifically called out far-right, alt-fact, white nationalist Steve Bannon and likened him to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

“People like Putin, and Steve Bannon for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe disinformation … You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage.”

Watch the entire speech below:

@yourltldogtoo #obama #trump #clinton #facebook #twitter #instagram #russia #putin #election #2016 #2022 #news #fyp ♬ original sound - yourlittledogtoo


Michael Hayne is a comedian, writer, voice artist, podcaster, and impressionist. Follow his work on Facebook and TikTok

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