Republican Governors Association Sets Up Partisan News Site & Forgets To Tell Anyone As It Pumps Out 'News'
from the that's-not-news dept
I like to assume that everyone is as tired as I am of the term "fake news." The term, which once seemed to have a fairly coherent meaning, has since been co-opted by pretty much everyone to mean any number of things that mostly amount to "news I don't like." That's incredibly annoying, as is all of the partisan mold that has grown upon this now dead and useless term.
That said, one does struggle to find different terminology to use when referring to a very strange thing the Republican Governors Association did when it set up a site that purported to be a "news site", but which only served as a GOP governors propaganda outfit, while forgetting to tell anyone who was behind it all.
The Republican Governors Association has quietly launched an online publication that looks like a media outlet and is branded as such on social media. The Free Telegraph blares headlines about the virtues of GOP governors, while framing Democrats negatively. It asks readers to sign up for breaking news alerts. It launched in the summer bearing no acknowledgement that it was a product of an official party committee whose sole purpose is to get more Republicans elected.
Only after The Associated Press inquired about the site last week was a disclosure added to The Free Telegraph's pages identifying the publication's partisan source.
It should be noted that this source identification was not some simple omission, but rather a calculated effort to fool people into thinking the site was some objective source of journalism. The evidence for that is rather plain. Over the summer, the site was registered through Domains By Proxy, a service solely useful for its ability to hide the identities of those registering websites. The social media accounts for The Free Telegraph projected the site as everything from an "outside Washington perspective" to putting the site in the "Media/News Company" category on Facebook. The site was, of course, absolutely none of these things, instead being a GOP operation run squarely from inside Washington that was engaged in obvious partisan messaging as opposed to anything resembling news or journalism.
And, just so some of you don't think we obvious pinko commie Antichrists here at Techdirt are slanting this, Republicans themselves made sure it was known how itchy all of this made them.
"It's propaganda for sure, even if they have objective standards and all the reporting is 100 percent accurate," said Republican communications veteran Rick Tyler, whose resume includes Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign.
Democrats, meanwhile, rightly point out that a site like this can serve two purposes, neither of them in the category of honest. The site can fool readers themselves into thinking they are reading objective or even slanted "journalism", when instead they are drinking from the hose of one of the country's major parties. Perhaps equally important, however, is how the "news" and "headlines" on the site could be used in future campaigns.
Democrats say Republicans are laying the groundwork with headlines that will appear in future digital and television ads, while also providing individual voters with fodder to distribute across social media.
"They're just seeding the ground," said Angelo Carusone, who runs Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group. "They are repackaging their opposition research so it's there as 'news,' and at any moment that publication could become the defining moment of the narrative" in some state's campaign for governor.
Again, I really want to call all of this something other than "fake news" because of what that term has become, but it's hard to find an appropriate substitute. What I wonder is how anyone could trust this particular governors association again, given this fairly bald-faced attempt at this offshoot of gaslighting voters.
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Filed Under: fake news, news, politics, republican governors association, the free telegraph
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The only value the GOP has left...
They could remove him from power: they control both houses of Congress and could easily shut him down. They could restore some sanity to the executive branch. They could engage in open and honest debate. They could tackle real problems - like the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico - rather than imaginary ones like the NFL players. They could do a lot of things.
But they haven't. And they won't.
Which is why a lot of us are now ex-Republicans.
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Re: The only value the GOP has left...
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/trump-puerto-rico-relief-effort-amazing-tremendous-170927 050401534.html
"But Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello, characterising Hurricane Maria as an "unprecedented disaster" for the island, said he was satisfied with the administration's relief efforts and called Trump's performance "excellent".
"They have responded very quickly," he told Reuters news agency by telephone, adding that he has spoken often with the president since the storm hit. He cited swift disaster declarations issued by Trump and a six-month waiver of FEMA's cost-sharing requirements.
"He has been very much concerned with the situation in Puerto Rico," Rossello said of Trump. "But they're conscious we still need more resources to the island."
US disaster-relief spending sufficient to last through mid-October has already been appropriated, White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney said.
"We are picking up most of the cost right now in Puerto Rico," he told reporters in Cleveland. "We are not penny-pinching in any fashion. We are taking care of folks."
The administration has about $5bn remaining in a disaster relief fund, and Congress has already approved another $7bn in funding that will become available on October 1, according to a House Appropriations Committee aide."
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Re: Re: The only value the GOP has left...
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Re: Re: The only value the GOP has left...
If you want the direct story, then skip the press releases and listen to shortwave radio traffic for a few hours.
Alternatively, you can continue to believe whatever pablum is being fed to you like the disgustingly stupid, pathetically naive, utterly worthless bag of meat that you are.
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Re: The only value the GOP has left...
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Re: Re: The only value the GOP has left...
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Re: Re: The only value the GOP has left...
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Re: Re: Re: The only value the GOP has left...
Sure they say they support equal rights, but they also oppose government measures to bring about those equal rights, like the 1964 civil rights act (the act that had real teeth at stopping mass discrimination against blacks in the south). They insist the private market should about that change by boycotting businesses that discriminate.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The only value the GOP has left...
Mind you, not all Libertarians are right wing YOYOs (you're on your own); the left-leaning ones support some government intervention where the market fails to provide. They're also into UBI despite the fact that anybody with a calculator can quickly pull that idea apart.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The only value the GOP has left...
Libertarians can want to help people individually, but don't believe the federal government should.
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It's about...
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Re: It's about...
The Party is anything but strong on ethics and values.
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Re: It's about...normal politics
Of course, the DGA can fully rely upon the the NYTimes/WashPost/LATimes/CBS/ABC/NBC/CNN/etc for constant anti-Republican ... pro-Democrat fake news.
And the Democratic Party itself absolutely never does anything sneaky, dishonest, or not fully transparent to the public.
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Re: Re: It's about...normal politics
I'm not mad keen on the Democrats as a rule but there seem to be more decent people on that side of the aisle than on the other side, which seems to be all about racism and loving money more than people. For the record, it's the neoliberal authoritarian Dems I'm not so keen on.
Are there any Republicans with a social conscience that I can have some respect for? Kasich is too far to the right for my liking, though I do agree with him on some of the issues.
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Re: Re: Re: It's about...normal politics
I can support helping fellow citizens (or people for that matter) in their lives, but not believe it is the federal governments job.
I can support civil rights and diversity but believe that affirmative action is actually harmful.
I can support the environment and believe in man made global warming, but still not want to hurt our economy so our kids have less of a country to live in or believe that my tax dollars needs to go overseas to help combat the effects.
So yeah, there are republicans out there that you can agree with.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: It's about...normal politics
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's about...normal politics
Just doing my part ;p
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Re: Re: Re: Re: It's about...normal politics
RE: So yeah, there are republicans out there that you can agree with.
Except that I don't agree with any of that. You're effectively leaving it to the market and to voluntary action to solve the problems you mentioned whether they actually solve problems or not. As a pragmatic problem-solver this makes no sense to me so no, I don't agree with it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's about...normal politics
Government closest to the people is the best form of government, not some pie in the sky government in Washington. What problem has the federal government solved?
Education? Nope, drugs, nope. Civil rights? Not if you believe the progressives here.
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Re: Re: Re: It's about...normal politics
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Re: Re: Re: It's about...normal politics
Because liberals tend to rely upon facts while conservatives tend to rely upon faith ?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: It's about...normal politics
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Re: Re: It's about...normal politics
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Re: Re: It's about...normal politics
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This is a good issue for a poll.
I vote we call it "My Little Phony".
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Re:
Republican Governors Association Sets Up My Little Pony Site & Forgets To Tell Anyone As It Pumps Out 'News'
On humor value alone I'm going to have to second that.
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Re: Re: get that group a squatty potty.
Are they pumping out "news" like a unicorn makes ice-cream.
How unicorns make ice-cream
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Re:
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Re:
If it is not real, and it is not fake - then what is it?
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Re: Re:
B is propaganda, B is not fake news
A is fake, B is real and
propaganda isn't fake news :)
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Re:
"Propaganda isn't fake news, it's controlled news. It's usually real..."
I'm going to chalk that claim up to a terrible decline in the quality of education, particularly history.
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It's all garbage, don't kid yourself.
Sometimes you have to go to Al-Jazeera just to get somewhat decent journalism.
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Re: It's all garbage, don't kid yourself.
At least they're open about their sponsorship by terrorists.
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Re: Re: It's all garbage, don't kid yourself.
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Re: Re: Re: It's all garbage, don't kid yourself.
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Re: Re: It's all garbage, don't kid yourself.
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Fake news ...."has since been co-opted by pretty much everyone to mean any number of things that mostly amount to "news I don't like." Your words.
So this is fake news huh? Pretty fucking obvious this falls into something that you don't like.
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'Objective' and 'propaganda', two words that do not play nice together
"It's propaganda for sure, even if they have objective standards and all the reporting is 100 percent accurate,"
You seem to have missed a few words in that quotation of yours. Even the one the quote came from admitted that it's intended as propaganda, so the idea that it's 'objective' is laughable.
Add in that they actively tried to hide who set it up and it's pretty clear it was/is intended to present a heavily biased slant on anything they put out, contrary to the "outside Washington perspective" they apparently tried to present themselves as offering.
A better question would be why you don't have a problem with what happened here, and if you would be so accepting if say a democrat equivalent of the Republican Governors Association tried the same.
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Re:
It's old school propaganda; gov't controlled news which is totally different than fake news. They are faking the source by pretending to be independent but not the news itself. If they are following the established playbook for this sort of thing, the news itself should be completely technically true, just intentionally misleading and shown in a specific light and filtered so that it all serves the purpose of manipulating the public to get what they want. If it can actually be shown to be untrue it ends up being counter productive.
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So this is fake news huh? Pretty fucking obvious this falls into something that you don't like.
Propaganda shouldn't be liked. Unless you're advocating for more of a North Korea-like society, where you MUST stand for the national anthem...oh wait...
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Like, Xenophobe, Racist, Homophobe, Socialist, Communist, Inhuman, Bleeding Heart...
Getting the idea? I have noticed that people only get tired of hearing the truth. Lies... they can't get enough of!
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Hahahahahaha - good one
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Terminology
The term you're looking for is propaganda. You even used it earlier in the article!
"Fake news" are The Daily Show and The Onion.
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Re: Terminology
Propaganda isn't necessarily fake, nor is it necessarily bad. It's commonly used a pejorative, but propaganda is fundamentally anything that propagates some practice or ideology. Anti-smoking campaigns are propaganda, as are telethons to help the disabled or starving.
Instead of "fake news," I prefer the straightforward, "bullshit." For example, Fox News is bullshit.
The Daily show isn't news of any sort. It's a comedy program focused on current events. The Onion, similarly, isn't news, it's a satirical comedy site in the format of a newspaper.
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Re: Re: Terminology
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Re: Re: Terminology
But that's what I'm saying, that's exactly what this is. It's a propaganda website, which is not necessarily bad in and of itself. The bad part is hiding its affiliation and masquerading as a news site. It's a fake "news site", not a "fake news" site.
Indeed. Bullshit, biased, misleading, propaganda, ... - we have better words and phrases than "fake news". Interpretation and bias (or unintentional mistakes) doesn't make news fake, intentionally making up facts does. As a clear example, the "pizzagate" was fake news, the email-private-server-gate was not.
They're comedy presented as news, which makes them fake news :) They're just upfront about it. TDS even called themselves "best fake news show" and such, for at least a decade (probably longer, but that's when I started watching). Of course, people still get outraged about The Onion articles...
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If so, then CNN, the NYT, WaPo and others are all propaganda machines.
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Re:
Hint: The key to propaganda is who it comes from.
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I guess Russia did teach the US politicians something.
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Republican Govenors Web site
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But fake news is entertainment
I know this is an old joke, but it seems like the media cycle goes something like this:
CNN: Obama eats a hamburger at McDonald's.
MSNBC: Obama goes to McDonald's to eat a hamburger.
FOX News: Obama tells Burger King to shove it by eating at McDonald's.
CNN reports: FOX News reports that Obama hates Burger King.
FOX News: The lying CNN is lying again.
BBC News: China invades North Korea. US media concerned with Obama eating hamburgers.
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This repub governors site is simply copying ShareBlue.
The real answer is to get the superpac money, smith-mundt act money, and DNC\RNC money out of politics. If this unlimited political spending is not limited now the next election will waste billions on propaganda, including massive Correct the Record shill campaigns. This will destroy the free and open internet, and probably start a civil war. It needs to be stopped now.
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This repub governors site is simply copying ShareBlue.
The real answer is to get the superpac money, smith-mundt act money, and DNC\RNC money out of politics. If this unlimited political spending is not limited now the next election will waste billions on propaganda, including massive Correct the Record shill campaigns. This will destroy the free and open internet, and probably start a civil war. It needs to be stopped now.
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