BOOM Wall Street Journal Says �Zero Evidence�
Fake News Swayed Election.
Fake news! Yeah, that�s it!
Surely (say the Democrats) there must be some
reason for Hillary Clinton�s loss to Republican
Donald Trump in last month�s presidential
election other than a simple preference for
Trump over an unlikable candidate with a lengthy
resume of questionable activity, an attitude
of entitlement that just wouldn�t quit,
and a deep devotion to tiresome identity politics.
After about 48 hours of soul-searching, Clinton�s
pals in the mainstream media decided that
her shocking defeat (and their inability to
predict it) couldn�t possibly have had anything
to do with them, that they had faithfully
presented truth and righteousness to the public,
only to be undermined by a lot of made-up
stuff from �fake news� sources like Breitbart,
TheBlaze and even Rush Limbaugh.
Even Conservative Tribune.
Note the premise: Fake news had to have helped
only Trump, because no liberal would ever
stoop to such low tactics. Never mind that
we at Conservative Tribune have presented
multiple instances of the most �respectable�
mainstream news outlets promoting fakery in
order to advance a leftist agenda. No, liberals
believe they should be allowed to censor those
filthy conservatives who made up a lot of
garbage and swung the election.
Or not.
Turns out that fake news � liberal or conservative
� might not have had any discernible impact
on the election, according to The Wall Street
Journal. The Journal cites a Pew Research
survey indicating that about 80 percent of
Americans believe they can spot fake news
when they see it, while only about 30 percent
believe they encounter it regularly.
That doesn�t sound like a problem big enough
to swing a presidential election, and the
Journal reports that there is �zero evidence�
that the election was affected by contrived
stories.
So apparently the sky isn�t falling � but
Facebook thinks it is, and is testing new
technology that will lead to stories flagged
by users being fact-checked by supposedly
responsible third parties. Unfortunately those
third parties would be entities like the Associated
Press, ABC News and PolitiFact � which is
operated by a group of publications, including
media giants like Cox and Gannett (the people
who bring you USA Today) with help from the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
What kind of fact-checking might these heavyweights
give us?
Politico (which was launched by former Washington
Post personnel and is aligned with CBS) cited
as an �untruth� Trump�s assertion that
the Islamic State group was evil on a scale
that was �unbelievable.� That was further
than Politico was willing to go in its assessment
of the Islamic State, so Politico called Trump�s
opinion � to which he is entitled � an
untruth.
PolitiFact, according to the Journal, awarded
a �true� rating to President Barack Obama�s
now-infamous promise that �if you like your
health care plan, you can keep it.� They
did downgrade that to �half true� in 2009,
so let�s give them half credit for half
caring about all the people whose health care
arrangements were turned upside down by Obama�s
lie.
The Journal also recalled that PolitiFact
gave Republican Rep. Ron Paul and Democrat
Sen. Jim Webb different ratings for the same
statement about income tax law. Wanna guess
which one got the higher rating?
So it�s hard not to conclude that it�s
not �fake news� that�s a threat to democracy.
The threat comes from those who want to sit
in judgment of �fake news� in order to
protect their own agenda from the brains of
an electorate with multiple viewpoints available
to it.
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let us know what you think about the supposed
�fake news� crisis.
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