Department of Defense tasked with fighting fake news

(FILE PHOTO by Department of Defense)

The Department of Defense is reportedly launching a project to tackle fake news.

“Fake news and social media posts are such a threat to U.S. security that the Defense Department is launching a project to repel ‘large-scale, automated disinformation attacks,'” Bloomberg reported on Saturday. “The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, video and audio clips. If successful, the system after four years of trials may expand to detect malicious intent and prevent viral fake news from polarizing society.”

What remains unclear is the definition of fake news. Does the Pentagon define it only as misinformation that foreign actors sometimes surreptitiously leak onto social media so as to affect U.S. political events? Or does it also consider the misinformation purposefully published by America’s own media a form of fake news? It’s a highly relevant question given that Bloomberg’s own story is riddled with fake news.

“U.S. officials have been working on plans to prevent outside hackers from flooding social channels with false information ahead of the 2020 election,” the piece reads.

The drive has been hindered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to consider election-security legislation. Critics have labeled him #MoscowMitch, saying he left the U.S. vulnerable to meddling by Russia, prompting his retort of ‘modern-day McCarthyism.'”

The portrayal of McConnell as a villainous figure who’s been purposefully blocking attempts to secure America’s elections is pure fake news.

“McConnell supported … $380 million to aid in election security funding that passed [the GOP-led] Congress [last year]. And he supported the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into election interference that produced an alarming public report last week,” National Review’s Rich Lowry reported in late July.

The reason he’s been hesitant to support the Democrats’ own proposal is because it’s teeming with problematic items.

“One of the Democratic bills would mandate the use of paper ballots as a fail-safe against hacking,” Lowry wrote. “This may well be the best practice, but running elections is the responsibility of states and localities, not the federal government. As supporters of state prerogatives, Republicans could be expected to oppose the bill, and sure enough, it got only one Republican vote in the House.”

And that’s just one of many problems  …

Dovetailing back to Bloomberg’s report, though it outlined McConnell’s alleged transgressions, it made no mention of the other side. Nor did it point out how Democrats have repeatedly tried to block attempts by Republicans to secure America’s elections via the implementation of voter ID laws.

The report was, in short, one-sided, and some would argue that one-sided reports presented as objective, non-biased reports are themselves a form of fake news.

“President Donald Trump has repeatedly rejected allegations that dubious content on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google aided his election win. Hillary Clinton supporters claimed a flood of fake items may have helped sway the results in 2016,” Bloomberg’s report continued.

And again, the paper only presented one side. Not included in the report was data-backed allegations from Dr. Robert Epstein, PhD, that manipulation by Google may have added at least 2.6 million votes to failed Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s vote tally.

Nor did Bloomberg mention Epstein’s warning that, unless something is down to rein in left-wing-dominated tech giants like Google, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, upwards of 15 million votes could be affected in the upcoming 2020 presidential election.

In fairness to Bloomberg, while it only presented one side of the story, it did offer actual facts. Oftentimes, however, the mainstream media pushes blatant lies to the public.

Last week, members of the media falsely reported that a new Trump administration policy will make it so that “children born to U.S. service members outside of the U.S. will no longer be automatically considered citizens.” That was false. Is this fake news?

Last week, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell ran a completely unsubstantiated story smearing the president as someone who’s benefited from loans cosigned by Russian oligarchs. He was later forced to apologize and admit he had no real evidence to back up the claim. Is this fake news?

And last week again, the entire mainstream media ran a story claiming that the president is ending “a policy that allows migrants to not be deported while they or their family members receive life-saving medical treatments.” That too was completely false. Is this fake news?

If the American people could trust the government — which in recent years has proven itself not worthy of trust — to fairly and correctly define fake news, then there would be no problem. But because the government cannot be trusted, and because the concept of “fake news” could easily be abused to benefit one side over the other, a lot of people are highly concerned.

And don’t forget that the very concept of “fake news” was introduced by the media itself as a means to stifle non-establishment voices — particularly those friendly to the president — and, more importantly, explain why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump:

DONATE TO BIZPAC REVIEW

Please help us! If you are fed up with letting radical big tech execs, phony fact-checkers, tyrannical liberals and a lying mainstream media have unprecedented power over your news please consider making a donation to BPR to help us fight them. Now is the time. Truth has never been more critical!

Success! Thank you for donating. Please share BPR content to help combat the lies.
Vivek Saxena

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

BPR INSIDER COMMENTS

Scroll down for non-member comments or join our insider conversations by becoming a member. We'd love to have you!

Latest Articles