My introduction got long, so I transformed it into an essay. I will write a regular issue over the next few days. This op-ed touches on American politics.
I also want to clearly mark this essay as an opinion, which I wish we would do more often in the media.
A6 - Where the World Happens
It was raining cats and dogs in America this past week.
Donald Trump’s claim during the US presidential debate that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, was outlandish, absurd and racist, following an American tradition of demonizing immigrants to earn votes.
At the end of the debate exchange, Trump sheepishly defended himself saying, “I saw the people saying on television…” before he was interrupted.
Trump didn’t think his claim of people eating dogs in Ohio was crazy, he thought it was common knowledge. It seemed as if he realized nobody had heard “the news” when the moderators, who had fact-checked the wild claim before the debate, corrected him.
Imagine being Erika Lee, who originated the rumor, and watching as the most famous man in the world repeated her random rude claims made on Facebook, which she acknowledged were based on her neighbor’s racist suspicions.
After Lee shared a post on Facebook about the neighbor’s missing cat, it gained some traction in the right-wing corners of the internet. Problematic, sure, but contained.
Then, Donald Trump repeated the claim on live TV in front of over 67 million Americans. Springfield, Ohio, has had to deal with four bomb threats in the days since.
Lee, for her part, says she is racked with guilt and anxiety about the post, and I would offer her some grace in saying she is probably enduring her just punishment.
But the case highlights how misinformation spreads when there is no guardrail to stop it and it gets leveraged by cynical, self-serving actors.
One such agitator is a man named Tim Pool, who recently got caught up in a Russian propaganda scheme after it turned out the Kremlin was paying his salary through an intermediary company.
Pool has a large following, with 2.1 million followers on X and 1.37 million subscribers on YouTube. He became famous by livestreaming Occupy Wall Street, and spent the subsequent years marketing himself as an “independent journalist” willing to fight against the corrupt media.
Somewhere along the way, he became a major supporter of Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was rigged; he was a prominent voice in the anti-vax movement during the Covid-19 pandemic; and, in a weird moment, he took out a billboard in 2022 in New York City accusing the journalist Taylor Lorenz of doxxing a right-wing TikTok account.
While Pool has a large following of people who believe he is the only person telling the real truth, he actually became a tool of the Russian propaganda apparatus when his voice was financed by the Kremlin, which was paying his bosses. Pool says he was unaware his salary was coming from Moscow.
Pool contributes to an information environment designed to hoodwink and seduce.
For those of us who have decided to traffic in the news, I fear the “democratization of news” means there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that can stop someone, including me, from leveraging their brand for nefarious purposes.
Most blog platforms don’t have fact-checkers, and content moderation is limited to hate speech, doxxing, illegal activity, and pornography, leaving plenty of gray areas for misinformation to spread.
This is why I defend the mainstream media, an opinion that gets me a lot of criticism these days.
Yes, they pull their punches and make mistakes. They can pursue frustrating narratives, and, occasionally, it becomes obvious that the editorial departments have lost their way.
But, they are far more likely to face legal repercussions for errors, which incentivizes them to maintain robust fact-checking departments.
You won’t find stories about immigrants eating pets in the Associated Press or Reuters. Such sensational tales simply don’t meet their rigorous standards for publication.
If you don’t like the New York Times, there is CNN. Don’t like that? Try the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, BBC, Al-Jazeera, or a dozen other alternatives.
I hope that in the years to come, instead of bemoaning the shortcomings of mainstream media, we will take it upon ourselves to seek out trustworthy sources that present information in a clear and factual manner.
This way, when we discuss the future, our disagreements will be rooted in a shared, factual present.
I am opening my tip jar, as it is the most effective way to keep A6 financially viable. Here are three links to support the project.
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Please, for your own good. check out "Vodou" and "Haiti" on the internet. You may be surprised...