‘Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.”—Mark Twain

With recent criticism of fake news sources influencing the recent Presidential election in the U.S., a news story suddenly breaks that CNN accidentally aired 30 minutes of pornography in the Boston area on Thanksgiving Day.  But it turns out that CNN “accidentally admitted it aired pornography” in a trail of misinformation that was traced back to its source by Breitbart News.  [Breitbart News Nov 25, 2016]

The problem of fake news is so prevalent that a report by commentator Peter Cohan at Forbes.com estimates 54.2% of the online actions (shares, reactions, comments) on Facebook were generated from fake news stories at the peak of the election campaign.  Cohan estimates Google generates about $15 billion of income from so-called fake news annually! [Forbes.comNov 25, 2016]

When fake news is not new

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Fake news is not new.  The Washington Post published a report revealing Benjamin Franklin successfully spread a frightful report about native Indians, working in league with King George’s British forces, had scalped hundreds of children and soldiers by creating a fake edition of a real Boston newspaper, a report that was picked up by other newspapers at the time. [Washington Post Nov 25, 2016]

Who has time for fact checking?

With so many online news sources where news can be generated from a single Twitter release that encircles the globe in seconds, who has time to fact check? 

Imagine if you received a Twitter: “the White House is in flames and has been hit by a missile.”  Your adrenaline would be racing through your circulatory system so fast it would cloud your judgment.  It would be so incredulous it would be difficult to imagine it wasn’t true and would likely be forwarded by millions before it could be retracted. 

Did the movie “White House Down” presage a future false flag event at Washington DC?  [YouTube.com] Why is what appears to be an underground super bunker been built underneath the White House recently? [WesternJournalism.com] Knowing that Americans are not as naïve as they were in the past, instead of issuing a news report that an attack on a US warship overseas  as they did with the USS Cole, would government covertly burn down the White House to make it appear a missile took it out so as to provoke Americans to send their kids off to war?

Oh, you say you wouldn’t fall for such a ruse?  Let’s not forget that Orson Welles’ War Of The Worlds 1938 radio broadcast on Halloween night that said Martians had landed on earth had many Americans cowering in fear in their homes. 

The modern Ben Franklin and the fake news list

The modern Ben Franklin is Ben Horner, described as a “38-year old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire, who claims he swung the election for Donald Trump.  “My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything,” said Horner. [Washington Post Nov 17, 2016]

Just when established news sources are pointing fingers at alternative online sources of news for the dissemination of misleading stories, a college professor issued a list of fake news sources that even included spoof sites like The Onion.  I won’t provide a link to that list.  I’ll just say the list included LewRockwell.com, the site that posted this article you are now reading.

Not only untruths but collusion

It is imperative we don’t just consider false news reports planted in the news media but also frank collusion between the news press and the political campaign of one candidate.  Here is a link to a list of reporters who openly colluded with one Presidential candidate. [RonPaulLiberty.com]

What happened to the Fourth Estate?

The fourth estate, the news media, is supposed to be the watchdog of government.  The lack of impartiality by the news media in the recent Presidential election undermines American democracy.  It was radio talk show host Laura Ingraham who pointed a finger at the press box during the Republican National Convention and demanded US news reporters to “do your job.” [YouTube.com]

Parroted news

The replay of parroted sound bites by TV news anchors has become a modern source of entertainment.  [YouTube] How many news anchors did you hear to say: “Donald Trump is unelectable?”

Declaring war: fact-checking impossible at sea

The news media has become so used to airing government propaganda that one begins to wonder where truth leaves off and falsehoods begin. 

The government knows how difficult it is to fact check any military action at sea.  So it is no accident that events at sea, the sinking of USS Maine that provoked the US to declare war against Spain; the sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania by German U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean that propelled the US to enter WWI; the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941 by the Japanese that thrust the US into war in the Pacific; and the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 that alleged torpedoes had been launched against US Navy ships off the coast of Vietnam, were all contrived events.  [LewRockwell.com; LewRockwell.com]

Hollywood joins in

Hollywood has helped the US war propaganda machine by producing films that create actor war heroes.   In recent years Hollywood has produced movies about terrorist attacks in the US. 

Karl Rove, President Bush’s special advisor, met with Hollywood executives in 2001 to enlist their help in the war against terrorism. 

CNN aired its infamous “Beneath The Vail” documentary of women being tortured in Afghanistan, a month prior to 9-11.  Hollywood’s most prominent films have been almost indistinguishable from government-funded propaganda.  [LewRockwell.com; LewRockwell.com]

Prior to his election, Donald Trump, who wants to eliminate sequestration of federal funds from the military budget, said his favorite movie was “Air Force One” and praised actor Harrison Ford for his role in the movie because he “stood for America.” 

Ford reminded Mr. Trump: “It’s a movie, Donald.  It was a movie. It’s not like this is in real life.”  [TheWrap.com] The blur between movie hero and the real hero was depicted in their encounter. 

Phony flu pandemics

What about the phony flu pandemics of 2009 of 2012 that were completely fabricated and hyped by the news media?  [LewRockwell.com] Government health authorities have up to 250 million doses of flu vaccine to unload each year and enlist the news media to scare the public into rolling up their sleeves and getting a needle jab. [LewRockwell.com]

Sports too

The news media devotes a considerable amount of airtime and print space to sports.  But surely TV sports “reporters” must know that sporting events are rigged.  In baseball, teams with new stadiums or new teams that expand into new markets somehow make it into the World Series.  [LewRockwell.com]

Sports teams are now classified as entertainment, not competitive sporting events by the Internal Revenue Service.  Professional sports are no more credible than roller derby.

The preposterous idea that Americans lost self-control in unison

What about the government’s first set of dietary guidelines that were announced in the halls of Congress in 1980, a diet that emphasized carbohydrates and sugary foods over satiating fats and cholesterol, a diet recommendation that has now been abandoned? 

Why weren’t those famous health journalists at The New York Times like Gina Kolata, Denise Grady, Elizabeth Rosenthal, Lawrence Altman, Jane Brody, investigating why a “politically correct” diet resulted in a massive diabesity epidemic that is still underway in America?  [Washington Post Feb 10. 2015] 

Why aren’t Americans hearing from the medical practitioner in Great Britain who calls the politically correct sugar/ carbohydrate-rich diet “mass murder?” [British Medical Journal Dec 15, 2014]

Were Americans supposed to buy into the preposterous idea that the entire population lost control and began overeating in unison?  An obscure journalist who was working in South America eventually blew the whistle on the whole food charade.  [The Big Fat Surprise]

Putting a stop to statins

Statin drugs represent the anti-cholesterol paradigm that has prevailed in modern medicine since the 1970s.  Only recently do we learn that it would be better to eat an apple a day than consume a statin drug.  And that report was issued from overseas medical and news sources, not onshore news sources. [Telegraph UK Jan 23, 2016] 

Why is little said in the news media of the potentially mortal side effects posed by statin drugs among millions of individuals with kidney disease? [Annals Translational Medicine Oct 2016]

Decades of misinformation about cholesterol and the alleged benefits of statin drugs have only been recently challenged in the news press, and again, almost exclusively from overseas news sources. [Telegraph UK Nov 25, 2016] 

Fake news you say? 

Fake news you say?  Which news sources dutifully issued reports about “Weapons Of Mass Destruction” that never materialized in the Iraq war?

Which news sources released the litany of falsehoods that were used as a cover for America to declare war over the past seven decades? 

Which news media blindly accepted misleading government issued reports about the alleged mortal threat posed by influenza viruses and extolled the benefits of ineffective vaccines without adequately informing the public of potential side effects?

Which news outlets kept publishing the government’s Food Pyramid that never reduced the mortality rate in the US?  

Whichever news outlets proffered all the bogus news stories over the past seven decades it wasn’t any of the alternative news sources that were recently included in a list of fake news agencies.