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posted by on Tuesday December 06 2016, @12:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-believe-everything-you-read dept.

The guardian reports on a sobering event in Washington DC.

US police have arrested a man wielding an assault rifle who entered a pizza restaurant that was the target of fake news reports it was operating a child abuse ring led by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her top campaign aide.

[...] The suspect entered the restaurant and pointed a gun at a restaurant employee, who fled and notified authorities, police said. The man then discharged the weapon inside the restaurant. There were no injuries.

[...] [Police] said the suspect during an interview with investigators revealed that he came to the establishment to "self-investigate" Pizzagate, the police statement said. Pizzagate is a baseless conspiracy, which falsely claims Clinton and her campaign chief John Podesta were running a child sex ring from the restaurant's backrooms.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:42PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:42PM (#437880) Journal

    WW3 isn't an obscure possibility, or an obscure story.

    I don't see anything about World War 3. I see discussion of a new "Cold War." In case you don't remember, the OLD "Cold War" wasn't World War 3 either. It mostly consisted of a bunch of posturing on both sides, and the only warfare happened mostly through third-parties and confusing alliances in remote countries. I don't mean to underestimate how dire it was, but there's a big difference between implying an ongoing Cold War (which, guess what -- we do basically STILL have in some respects) vs. the onslaught of WW3.

    CNN apparently wrote the story to imply that Russia was moving on Norway, as a consequence of Trump's election.

    I don't see any evidence of that. I see a headline that implied the U.S. was making a posturing maneuver on a border. There's no mention of "Trump's election" anywhere in the story. And these sorts of stories are NOTHING NEW, since various countries in Eastern Europe ARE concerned about possible Russian invasions and actions, and they were scared BEFORE the election.

    From CNN (2/26/2015): Norway: There's no more normality with Russia [cnn.com], which interviewed the Norwegian defense minister on escalating tensions with Russia
    From CNN (2/18/2016): U.S. stationing tanks and artillery sent to Norway [cnn.com]
    From CNN (10/18/2016, updated 10/24/2016): Norway welcomes US Marines amid Russian tensions [cnn.com]

    And it's not just Norway. See, for example, CNN (10/28/2016): Lithuania issues manual on what to do if Russia invades [cnn.com], where Lithuania published a manual on defense in the event of invasion, which -- as the story notes -- is the THIRD TIME Lithuania has published such a manual since Russia's invasion of Crimea. Again, the story contains interviews with the secretary of defense from that country.

    There's a LOT of tension in Eastern Europe over Russia, and it has nothing to do with the election of Trump. These are ongoing stories. I see no evidence in your quoted story or elsewhere that the publication of this story (or its error) had ANYTHING to do with Trump.

    "The story was published at 10.11 GMT on November 30. When the Barents Observer checked the portal around noon Norwegian time, the misleading headline was still top story. Lt Col Skogmo says CNN’s reporter was contacted 06.30 in morning to get the headline changed. At 12.12 GMT on December 1st, CNN took action and updated the story with a new headline. 30 hours after first published."

    A lot is unclear in this paragraph. On what day did the Barents Observe "check the portal around noon Norwegian time"? What time zone is "06.30 in morning to get the headline changed"? The most obvious reading of this paragraph is that the Norwegians contacted CNN at either 06.30 GMT or Norwegian time on December 1st, and CNN changed the headline about 6 hours later. Also, I'm not sure who performed the math that claims "12.12 GMT on 12/1 minus 10.11 GMT on 11/30" = 30 hours, since that looks clearly like 26 hours to me.

    I'm not trying to quibble here -- just point out that your own source is ALSO exaggerating for some reason. Are you going to call them out for their error, too?? And why did it take the Norwegians something like 20 hours to get around to contacting CNN, if, as Col. Skogmo is reported in your link, he "had a busy day" apparently fielding questions from media? If they were that concerned about the incorrect info, and they were concerned about how it was spreading to other media sources, why did THEY not act sooner?

    Or is Col. Skogmo in on your conspiracy theory, too?!

    The BEST that can be said of CNN, is that they sensationalised a routine story to alarm their readers.

    Or somebody made a legitimate geographical mistake. Or the reporter got it right but somebody along the chain of editing tried to "punch it up" a bit and misread the distance or location. Even with the 24 hour news cycle, it frequently takes several hours for retractions or corrections to made -- I agree with you that this was a clear error and it should not have taken so long. But given that such delays are COMMONPLACE if you actually pay attention to news cycles and how corrections tend to be made, I think it's reaching quite a bit to summarily assume the delay was strategic, let alone had anything to do with Trump.

    Furthermore, the outrage in your article mostly seems to come from the claim that NATO is never allowed to exercises near the Russian border. So that supposedly made the story much more inflammatory. But it's doubtful that such intent could be ascribed to a CNN reporter who made a geographical error -- they didn't know where the border was in relation to the exercises, but they supposedly knew about a policy hatched 50 years ago about Norwegian-Russian relations?

    Or -- MAYBE -- CNN did have this complex plot to get everyone worked up, and delayed fixing the story for a few hours after it took nearly a day for the Norwegians to contact them about fixing it. To what end? To start WW3?!? Apparently, according to you, to get people more worked up about Trump, even though he isn't even mentioned in the coverage. Why?

    Anyhow -- whatever you may think here -- let's be clear on one thing: CNN *did* publish a correction. Actual "fake news" sites don't do that, because they don't care about facts at all. They make them up. That's what actually makes "fake" news.

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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:36PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:36PM (#438014) Journal

    That the last "cold war" didn't end human civilization, and possibly humanity, is down to shear luck, and some brave Russian soldiers who defied launch orders. And we were at one point 30 seconds from a US initiated WWIII. That we still exist is one of the reasons I believe in the multiverse, as by any rational calculation we would have killed ourselves off by now. How we will be able to avoid it with nuclear arms spreading (slowly, but spreading) is something ... well, in SOME branch of the multiverse we'll survive, but expect most of your futures to experience destruction. All we can hope to do is to change the probabilities of what the future will hold.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:14PM (#438038)

      is down to shear luck,

      "Yes, these are my lucky scissors, why do you ask?"