Марк Дайс - The True Story of Fake News - How Mainstream Media Manipulates Millions

Because of Barack Obama’s Muslim roots and his desire to craft the narrative of his legacy to give the impression that he was the president who ‘helped bring peace’ to the world, he did everything he could to downplay the dangers of radical Islam, and of course the liberal media had his back and followed his lead. 203For example, the attack at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009 by a Muslim U.S. Army major who shot and killed 13 people and injured more than 30 others was labeled “workplace violence” despite the fact that the gunman had been exchanging emails with al-Qaeda leader Anwar Al-Awlaki. 204

Networks also largely ignored the fact that one of the biggest mass shootings in American history at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida in 2016 was carried out by a radical Islamic terrorist who told a 911 operator he was doing it for the Islamic State. 205The gunman killed 49 people for ISIS, but the Big Three TV news networks just referred to the shooter as a “lone gunman,” ignoring his true motivation for the attack which wasn’t just a hatred of gays, but was actually fueled by his extremist Islamic beliefs. 206

When the FBI released transcripts of his call to 911 they redacted all references he made to Islam, ISIS, and Allah. 207Only after outrage from members of Congress over the censorship did the FBI release the actual transcript. 208Speaker Paul Ryan denounced the FBI’s cover-up saying, “We know the shooter was a radical Islamist extremist inspired by ISIS. We also know he intentionally targeted the LGBT community. The administration should release the full, unredacted transcript so the public is clear-eyed about who did this, and why.” 209

A former senior intelligence official also revealed that President Obama repeatedly ignored warnings in 2011 and 2012 about the growing threat of what would become ISIS in order to perpetuate his re-election narrative that he was helping bring an end to the War on Terrorism. 210He even infamously called ISIS the “JV Team” (Junior Varsity) downplaying the danger they pose, which he said was “contained.” 211Obama wanted his legacy to be that of the president who ended the wars in the Middle East, so he not only kept downplaying radical Islamic terrorist activity in the United States and around the world, but kicked the can down the road so he could pass the problem off onto the next administration. 212

When President Trump said that there are terrorist attacks that happen but people don’t know about them because the media won’t report them, he obviously meant they won’t report on them for more than a 15 second blurb or that they might cover the story one time and then forget all about it. However, the media pretended to take him literally, 213when obviously he meant that several instances were under-reported and that relatively few people sensed the devastation and danger due to such little coverage.

When radical Islamic terror attacks occur in Europe and the United States and are only briefly covered before the media reverts back to their constant complaining about Trump, most people quickly forget about them or may not even hear about them at all.

In George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four he coined a variety of phrases which describe different aspects of life under the totalitarian “Big Brother” regime. One such term, a memory hole, refers to quietly deleting or altering news stories in order to make it seem as if they were never changed, or never even existed in the first place.

One scene in Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts the lead character Winston Smith editing newspaper articles that had already been published (which was part of his job at the “Ministry of Truth”) to change what they said, and then new ones were printed to replace the originals, which were all confiscated and destroyed, leaving no evidence of what they actually said. The information was said to have disappeared down a “memory hole” because as the main antagonist O’Brien later reveals to Winston, ‘he who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past.’

Any information the government (called the Party in the book) didn’t want people to have access to anymore disappeared into a memory hole, and with no physical evidence of an original newspaper which had later been altered, there was no possible way for someone to verify whether or not a certain story was actually true. The truth was what the government (the Party) said it was.

Unfortunately, memory holes aren’t just something from Orwell’s imagination, they actually exist in our modern media age where it is much easier to delete something or change it once it’s been posted online since actual newspapers are being replaced by digital versions on tablets and smartphones. Unless retrieved from Google cache, or someone taking a screenshot, then an original version of something posted on a news website and later altered is almost impossible to discover. We see these alterations all the time on articles from mainstream outlets when part of a story is changed or deleted, and oftentimes the entire headline rewritten. 214

Some outlets may add a small note on the bottom of an article saying something to the effect that it had been changed to ‘fix a mistake,’ but usually doesn’t mention what that mistake was. Sometimes a misleading and inflammatory headline will send shockwaves across social media, and once word of the story has gone viral, the headline will be quietly changed, or parts of the story altered or removed in attempts to avoid a defamation lawsuit, but the damage is often done with the false allegations continuing to spread and taking on a life of their own. 215

The same things happen when news agencies or celebrities tweet out something completely false (or criminal, when celebrities help incite violence to support their causes). Oftentimes someone will take a screenshot to preserve evidence and post it after the tweet has been deleted, but unless they have the URL of the original tweet which can be retrieved from the archive, a screenshot’s authenticity is called into question. Was it actually a screenshot, or did someone fake the screenshot using Photoshop or one of the fake tweet generating websites?

An MSNBC terrorism analyst once appeared to encourage ISIS to bomb Trump Tower in Turkey in a tweet that was later deleted. 216Actor Patton Oswald once tweeted encouragement for terrorists to bomb one of Trump’s properties and later deleted it. 217 New York Times columnist Ross Douthat actually tweeted his hopes for a Trump assassination, 218as did London Guardian reporter Monisha Rajesh, 219with both later deleting the tweets after the backlash. Oftentimes once someone deletes such inciting tweets they and their fans insinuate that screenshots are fake, casting doubt on whether or not they had actually posted such statements at all. It’s as if the truth has vanished down a memory hole.

An eerie ‘memory hole’ situation occurred in 2010 when an episode of Jesse Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory television show was remotely deleted from people’s DVRs after they had recorded it. The show ran for three seasons on TruTV and followed Jesse Ventura around the country investigating various conspiracy theories, and one of those episodes was about ‘FEMA camps,’ the secretive detention centers that have been set up in major cities across America in order to detain large numbers of people in the event of massive civil unrest which may be sparked from any number of reasons.

After the Police State episode first aired, it was scheduled to be replayed the following week as a lead-in for the new episode, but it didn’t air. All the information about the episode was also deleted from TruTV’s website, and even more strange, the people who had recorded it on their DVRs found the episode had been deleted from there as well. 220The show’s producers later revealed that the government put pressure on the network to pull the episode from airing again, and also had cable companies remotely delete copies from people’s DVRs at home since they are linked directly to the cable providers. 221