1984: Thread

[grarpamp]

Public schools... nothing more than mind control political
indoctrination centers...
Corrupt Dem-owned National Media performs Mass Formation Psychoprogramming...


Teachers' Union Teams Up With Steven Brill's NewsGuard To Flag
"Misinformation" For Children

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/03/18/teachers-union-teams-up-with-steven-brills-newsguard-to-flag-misinformation-for-children/

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/joseph-vazquez/2021/12/13/study-newsguard-ratings-system-heavily-skews-favor-left
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/01/27/teachers-union-left-wing-news-rating-system-push-censorship-tool/
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/03/17/two-years-later-the-new-york-times-admits-hunter-laptop-was-authentic-and-now-basis-for-federal-investigation/
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/10/19/joe-biden-and-the-disappearing-elephant-how-to-make-a-full-sized-scandal-vanish-in-front-of-an-audience-of-millions/
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/11/18/twitter-ceo-admits-censoring-hunter-biden-story-was-wrong-democrats-call-for-more-censorship/
https://eshoo.house.gov/sites/eshoo.house.gov/files/Eshoo-McNerney-TV-Misinfo%20Letters-2.22.21.pdf
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/03/07/tech-trojan-horse-how-the-senate-is-poised-to-codify-censorship-of-social-media/

Under the leadership of Randi Weingarten, the American Federation of
Teachers (AFT) has long been criticized by conservatives for its
support of far left policies and support for Democratic candidates.
Nevertheless, as a union, it is entitled to be political and most
unions favor the Democrats due to their pro-union policies.

However, the concern over the AFT’s agenda become far greater when it
announced that it would team up with NewsGuard to start to flag news
sources deemed “misinformation.”

NewsGuard is co-founded by Steve Brill who has been accused of bias
against Republicans and conservatives. Conservative sites have
previously tagged NewGuard as “heavily skewed” in favor of the left.
The “misinformation” label has been used extensively by liberal media
to kill stories like the Hunter Biden laptop stories as unreliable.

Indeed, Brill is under fire for being one of the voices falsely
claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop was likely false Russian
disinformation. His company will now put “traffic lights” on
information for children on what sources they rely upon.

The ratings of NewsGuard have long been criticized by conservative
sites as favoring liberal sites like The Nation (with a 93 percent
rating) over more conservative sites like Fox News (at 66 percent).

The timing of the announcement could not be worse after the New York
Times finally recognized that the Hunter Biden laptop story was
legitimate and the controversial emails authentic.

For two years, some of us have been hammered as spreading “Russian
disinformation” and false allegations in raising concerns over the raw
influence peddling by the Biden family. Steven Brill was one of those
voices flagging the story as likely “disinformation.”

Brill assured viewers on CNBC that this was likely all untrue:

    “My personal opinion is there’s a high likelihood this story is a
hoax, maybe even a hoax perpetrated by the Russians again.”

The media campaign to bury or block the story worked. The Biden family
had long been accused of special dealing and influence peddling. The
emails were potentially devastating with references to millions from
foreign sources, including shady Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian
interests while Joe Biden was Vice President. The media actively
participated in shielding the Bidens from the scandal.

In fairness to Brill, he opposed efforts to block the story and did
not support moves like Twitter to bar references to the story before
the election. (After Biden was elected, Twitter admitted it was a
mistake by Democrats then demanded more censorship). I agree with him
entirely that the solution is to allow readers to decide by comparing
news sources.

However, the interview had an interesting element. Brill’s objections
to Twitter and FaceBook killing the story was that they are not
qualified to make that decision on what, in his words, is likely a
Russian “hoax.”

That is what NewsGuard does in flagging unreliable sources. He is
clearly referring to himself as one of those qualified to make that
decision. Yet, he was entirely wrong. At the time, many of us were
noting that Biden did not deny that this was his laptop, that it was
seized by the FBI in an ongoing criminal investigation, and some
recipients of the emails had confirmed their authenticity.
Nevertheless, Brill still thought it was all a hoax.

Weingarten has declared using Brill’s NewsGuard will be a “game
changer” in preventing students from being “misled” by news sources.
It may well be. It would allow the AFT and school districts to teach
students to distrust certain news sources like Fox News, which is
given a lower rating by NewsGuard. (For full disclosure, I appear on
Fox as a legal analyst).

Conservative and independent sites continue to bedevil many on the
left. The laptop story shows how advocacy journalism is now the norm
in many newsrooms. Viewers and readers were told by most media
figures, including Brill, that the story was likely Russian propaganda
and untrue.

The unsupported hoax claim (which contradicted readily available
authenticating evidence at the time) raises the specter of a type of
de facto state media. The problem is that such an echo chamber is only
fully successful if there is no alternative source of information.
Yet, Fox and New York Post continued to cover the story as did some of
us as columnists.

The most extreme effort was a letter from Democratic members to
pressure companies like AT&T to reconsider whether viewers should be
allowed to watch Fox News and other networks. It does not matter that
Fox News is the most popular news cable station and even has a greater
percentage of Democratic viewers than CNN. The members insisted that
“not all TV news sources are the same” and called on these companies
to protect viewers from “dissemination” of false viewpoints.

Other members have sought to create algorithmic interventions to steer
people away from certain stories or books, including the current NUDGE
Act being proposed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.).

The AFT is now seeking a much earlier intervention with children by
getting Brill’s NewsGuard to rate reliable and unreliable sources of
news. Weingarten has declared that, with Brill’s help, children and
families will no longer be “drowning in an ocean of online
dishonesty.”

It is unlikely to be reassuring for many that the children instead
will be swimming in a pool carefully maintained by the AFT and
NewsGuard.