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by mynameishere 3464 days ago
It was indeed hilarious to watch the media collectively spin two narratives at the same time: 1) The "emergence" of "fake news" and 2) The "hacking" of the election.

For anyone who wasn't watching: Unnamed sources in the CIA claimed that the DNC, a noted private organization, had their email hacked by Russian sources of some variant. The emails detailed among other things the collusion between the media and the DNC to work against Bernie Sanders and Trump. The media, once again collectively, made this seem like the election itself was somehow hacked, with the obvious purpose of delegitimatizing the guy who beat their favored candidate.

Julian Assange says he got the emails from an internal leak.

Okay, so no matter how you look at it, pretty much every major source of news was spewing forth genuinely fake news in torrents of excess. Meanwhile, they were also going on and on about what they called "fake news" coming from two-bit bloggers of the "alt right", as well as some scammers who gamed Facebook's algos or some bullshit. Pure Chutzpah.

1 comments

> For anyone who wasn't watching: Unnamed sources in the CIA claimed that the DNC, a noted private organization, had their email hacked by Russian sources of some variant.

It wasn't just the CIA, it was the consensus of the entire US intelligence community. And it was reached after private cybersecurity experts (CrowdStrike) reached and publicly announced similar (but somewhat more specific as to the exact Russian government actors involved that the public statements from the intelligence community) conclusions.

> The media, once again collectively, made this seem like the election itself was somehow hacked

No, it didn't. In fact the media often explicitly stated that that was not, in fact, the case (often also citing specific government sources who articulated high confidence that that was not the case.)

> Julian Assange says he got the emails from an internal leak.

Which claim the media also prominently reported.

> Okay, so no matter how you look at it, pretty much every major source of news was spewing forth genuinely fake news in torrents of excess.

Even in your distorted description, there is no account of anything that would be "genuinely fake news"; at most there is a suggestion that entirely factual news was reported in a way that created a false impression of a different event, and that itself rests on your omission of some and distortion of other relevant facts.