The basic purpose of these ten forms: the presentation of a false picture of reality.
You could find more forms, or divide these ten into sub-categories.
The ten basic forms are:
Direct lying about matters of fact. (This sometimes includes doubling down on lies already told, or telling a bigger lie after the first one.)
Leaving out vital information.
Limited hangout. (This is an admission of a crime or a mistake, which only partially reveals the whole truth. The idea is that by admitting a fraction of what really happened and burying the biggest revelations, people will be satisfied and go away, and the story will never be covered again.)
Shutting down the truth after publishing it—includes failing to follow up and investigate a story more deeply.
Not connecting dots between important pieces of data.
Censoring the truth, wherever it is found (or calling it “fake news”).
Using biased “experts” to present slanted or false “facts.”
Repeating a false story many times—this includes the echo-chamber effect, in which a number of outlets “bounce” the false story among themselves.
Claiming a reasonable and true consensus exists, when it doesn’t, when there are many important dissenters, who are shut out from offering their analysis.
Employing a panoply of effects (reputation of the media outlet, voice quality of the anchor, acting skills, dry mechanical language, studio lighting, overlay of electronic transmissions, etc.) to create an impression of elevated authority which is beyond challenge.
These are all traditional forms and methods.
Here’s an example of a big story that deployed all ten forms of fake news: the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009.
In the spring of 2009, the World Health Organization (elevated authority whose pronouncements are beyond challenge) announced that Swine Flu was a level-6 pandemic—its highest category of “danger.” In fact, there were only 20 confirmed cases at the time (direct lying about “danger”). And W.H.O. quietly changed the definition of “level-6” so widespread death and damage were no longer required (another aspect of direct lying).
The story was, of course, picked up by major media outlets all over the world (echo chamber effect, fake consensus, never connected dots re W.H.O. lies), and quite soon, Swine Flu case numbers rose into the thousands (direct lying, as we’ll soon see).
Medical experts were brought in to bolster the claims of danger (biased experts; important dissenters never given space to comment).
In the early fall of 2009, Sharyl Attkisson, then a star investigative reporter for CBS News, published a story on the CBS News website. She indicated that the CDC had secretly stopped counting the number of Swine Flu cases in America. No other major news outlet reported this fact (omitting vital information).
Attkisson discovered the reason the CDC had stopped counting: the overwhelming number of blood samples taken from the most likely Swine Flu patients were coming back from labs with: no trace of Swine Flu or any other kind of flu. Therefore, a gigantic hoax was revealed. The pandemic was a dud, a fake.
Despite Attkisson’s efforts, CBS never followed up on her story (shutting down the truth after exposing it). Never probed the lying by the CDC (failure to connect dots). In a sense, CBS turned Attkisson’s story into a limited hangout—a further investigation would have uncovered acres of criminal behavior by both the CDC and the World Health Organization, to say nothing of the governments and media outlets that supported these lying agencies. The mainstream press essentially censored Attkisson’s revelations.
Then, about three weeks after CBS published Attkisson’s story, WebMD published a piece in which the CDC claimed that its own (lying) estimate of 10,000 or so cases of Swine Flu in the US was a gross understatement. Truly, there were 22 MILLION cases of Swine Flu in the US (doubling-down on lying).
And that was that.
And these mainstream sources are currently shouting and bloviating about independent media spreading fake news. I guess you could call that number 11: accusing their opponents of committing the crimes they are, in fact, committing.
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
One of the many easily identified “enemies within” Big Pharma does nothing but lie. They’re in this for the money and not yours or anyone else’s good health period. You believe them (and their equally lying minions in the nat’l left wing media) at the risk of losing your good health (and perhaps ultimately your life), if you’re lucky and smart enough to still have it. Truly “good health” in this country comes IN SPITE of Big Pharma. Not because of it.
I’ll offer an example of Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Lawyers, Big Government all colluding for you. Look at how full on hard press the FDA decided to attempt banning vaping, using “electronic cigarettes”. These devices have saved lives quite literally.
There are many who desire quitting the use of tobacco who cannot manage by using the patches, gums. Some do not want to quit but want a healthier, less risky way to use nicotine. Vaping allows for both cases to find a means, and possible ends (pardon the pun). Yet the FDA all but put vaping in the prohibition bracket. They’ll only create a black market and cause it to be that much more dangerous. Ultimately all the “Bigs” will get the seven slices of pie and leave only crumbs for anyone else, if even crumbs are left.
Media only keeps reverberating all the fear porn over the “evil/s” of vaping. It is a sad state genuinely. I likely will be branded a terrorist & outlaw for stating vaping saves lives. Not that I much care. It is morally correct and a duty to disobey unjust law/s.
Check up on what is done regarding vaping, or using electronic cigarettes. The media is as complicit as big Pharma, big Tobacco, big Government. Media craves all kinds of fear porn in regards to it. Trouble being there is little to no objectivity granted, as much or more can be shown positive.
Wow some free speech advocacy site.
@Silverado, Check out the situation regarding vaping or using electronic cigarettes. Think you’ll find it fitting similar vein of your comment.
Seems the site was not allowing me to reply to @Silverado’s comment.
Throw in CGI and you have no way of knowing what your watching, real or manufactured.
Turn off the boob tube.
Learn to discern.
TV news must be taken with a grain of salt. Value free journalists are valueless journalists.
Fake News is not something new. It’s been around for a very long time, if for no other reasons, than lies often sell better than the truth:
“…Many Americans have an undying faith in the media and thus revere this man-made entity without realizing they are doing so…. People who idolize the media are, at the best, naïve:
‘The simple [naïve] believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.’ (Proverbs 14:15)
“We are to live “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of Yahweh” (Deuteronomy 8:3). The word of everyone else should be judged by “the mouth of two or three witnesses” (2 Corinthians 13:1).
“Howard Beal of Network described the media:
‘If you want truth, don’t come to us. We will tell you anything but the truth. Go to God.… Go to your gurus, go to yourselves. But, don’t come to us.… Your lives are real, we are an illusion.’36
“That is what an idol is: an illusion… The impression of an independent press in America is part of the illusion. In 1898, at an annual dinner of the American Press Association, John Swinton, the one-time editor-in-chief of the New York Times, was called upon to toast journalism and America’s free press. He responded in a surprising way:
‘There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150.00 a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with—others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things—and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the street looking for another job. The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to revile, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an “Independent Press.” We are
tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.’39
“Mr. Swinton identified modern journalism as a crime:
‘Journalism, once a profession, and then a trade, is now a crime.’40….”
For more, see “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,” the second in a series of ten free online books on each of the Ten Commandments and their respective statutes and judgments. Click on my name, then our website. Go to our Online Books page and scroll down to the title.