REASONS FOR THE SUCCESS OF FAKE NEWS, AND ITS’ PROPAGATORS
LUCY M WARNER
FEBRUARY 1, 2017


I DO BELIEVE THAT ALL FAKE NEWS SITES SHOULD BE TAKEN OFF THE INTERNET, AND WHILE WE’RE AT IT, OUT OF THE GROCERY STORES AS WELL, THOUGH I’LL MISS THOSE “PHOTOS” OF THE LOCH NESS MONSTER AND SPACE ALIENS. THAT’S MY ONLY ENTERTAINMENT WHILE GOING THROUGH THE LINE TO THE CASHIER. SELLING ANYTHING AT ALL UNDER FALSE PREMISES SHOULD BE PUNISHED AS FRAUD, WITH A HEAVY FINE, SUCH AS $2,000.00 PER INSTANCE. IF THAT WERE THE CASE, CONNING MORE THAN ONE PERSON WOULD BEGIN TO BE REALLY EXPENSIVE FOR THE CRIMINAL. THAT WOULD RENDER IT A CRIME WHICH WOULD BE FINANCIALLY UNPROFITABLE; A MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE TECHNIQUE THAN TRYING TO CONDITION HUMANS TO DESIRE VIRTUE FOR ITS’ OWN SAKE. THERE IS JUST TOO MUCH PURE BILGEWATER IN THE “BUSINESS” WORLD WHICH IS NOT PUNISHABLE AS A CRIME. LAWMAKERS NOW, AS IN THE PAST, BEND OVER BACKWARD TO AVOID INCONVENIENCING THE MONEYED WORLD. I WOULDN’T DISLIKE BUSINESSPEOPLE AS MUCH IF THEY WEREN’T SO FREQUENTLY DISHONEST.

THE WRITER BELOW, PAUL HORNER, SAYS THAT HE “FEELS GUILTY,” BUT IT DOESN’T SAY HE HAS STOPPED DOING THAT KIND OF WRITING. THE PUBLIC CONSCIENCE IN THIS COUNTRY IS GETTING FURTHER AND FURTHER FROM WHAT IS HONEST AND DECENT AS TIME GOES BY. WE’RE AN ABUSIVE, GREEDY, EXPEDIENT SOCIETY, WHO LIVE BY THE OLD ADAGE “THERE ARE WINNERS AND THERE ARE LOSERS.” THAT’S THE MOTTO OF THOSE WHO HAVE NO NOTICEABLE CONSCIENCE AT ALL. AS FOR WHAT HORNER WOULD DO IF HE COULDN'T KEEP UP HIS SLEAZY BUSINESS, I'M SURE HE WOULD DO LIKE THE REST OF US AND GET HIMSELF AN HONEST JOB.



http://www.alternet.org/media/fake-news-writer-feels-guilty-helping-put-trump-white-house

Fake News Writer Feels Guilty for Helping Put Trump in White House
Conservative Republicans are easy marks, apparently.
By Kali Holloway / AlterNet November 17, 2016

Gullibility and ignorance, along with racism and misogyny, went a long way on Donald Trump’s behalf this election. Fake news was passed around, not just by voters, but by Trump’s campaign, giving people who are uninterested in facts more misinformation with which to base (and justify) their voting habits. One of the people creating those ludicrous stories is Paul Horner, a writer who has spent the last six years making up news items, getting them up on Facebook and Google, and then collecting the checks that roll in when they go viral. Trump aides Kellyanne Conway, Corey Lewandowski, and son Eric all sent tweets including links to Horner stories; they never checked to find out if they were true and very likely didn’t care. After all, spreading lies was a key element of what turned out to be a winning campaign strategy.

In a new Washington Post interview, Horner, who said he’s staunchly anti-Trump, admitted to feelings of guilt about how things went. The man behind sites with misleading URLs like ABCNews was apparently surprised to find his stories not only gained so much traction in recent months, but very likely had an impact on the U.S. election. He blamed a pervasive willingness among Trump supporters to believe and pass along anything they were told. Obviously, this wasn’t just true with news they found on social media. Trump voters believed transparent lies that came from their candidate as well.

“Nobody fact-checks anything anymore—I mean, that’s how Trump got elected,” Horner told the Post. “He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Horner—who recently posted on Facebook that the group of “people who clicked ads the most, like it’s the cure for cancer, is right-wing Republicans”—added that Trump voters were easy marks for his fake current events write-ups.

“My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time,” Horner marveled. “I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything—they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.”

Horner said he wrote that particular article because he’d heard Trump supporters already believed anti-Trump protesters were being paid for their actions, an idea he calls “insane.” But however crazy it may have sounded, it became fact for Trump’s faithful.

“I’ve gone to Trump protests—trust me, no one needs to get paid to protest Trump,” Horner told the Post. “I just wanted to make fun of that insane belief, but it took off. They actually believed it.”

The obvious question here is why Horner, who at one point in the interview actually said, “I hate Trump,” kept creating news that jeopardized Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations. He contends he thought—and this is a totally understandable belief—that in discovering they were passing along made-up stories, Trump voters would be shamed for sending out lies. The humiliation would reflect poorly on them, and by Horner’s reasoning, cast a shadow over the entire Trump campaign.

It’s now obvious that Horner vastly overestimated the integrity of Trump’s voting base, by leagues and miles.

“I thought they’d fact-check it, and it’d make them look worse,” Horner pleaded. “I mean that’s how this always works: Someone posts something I write, then they find out it’s false, then they look like idiots. But Trump supporters—they just keep running with it! They never fact-check anything! Now he’s in the White House. Looking back, instead of hurting the campaign, I think I helped it. And that feels [bad].”

“I didn’t think it was possible for him to get elected president,” Horner added, which makes him not unlike almost every pollster who prematurely called this whole thing for Clinton. “I thought I was messing with the campaign, maybe I wasn’t messing them up as much as I wanted—but I never thought he’d actually get elected. I didn’t even think about it. In hindsight, everyone should’ve seen this coming—everyone assumed Hillary [Clinton] would just get in. But she didn’t, and Trump is president.”

Since the disastrous election that sent a confused, unprepared Trump to the White House along with his white nationalist adviser Steve Bannon, Facebook and Google have both announced they’re putting in stopgaps to weed out the non-news from their sites. That could have a big impact on Horner's wallet, which has grown very fat on the spoils of fake news; he told the Post he makes $10,000 a month from Google’s AdSense. Horner said he thinks a lot of other misinformation sites should disappear, but sees himself as indulging in an art form of sorts. One that sits somewhere just this side of satire and creative writing.

“A lot of the sites people are talking about, they’re just total BS sites. There’s no creativity or purpose behind them. I’m glad they’re getting rid of them,” Horner said. “I don’t like getting lumped in with Huzlers. I like getting lumped in with the Onion. The stuff I do—I spend more time on it. There’s purpose and meaning behind it. I don’t just write fake news just to write it. So, yeah, I see a lot of the sites they’re listing, and I’m like—good. There are so many horrible sites out there. I’m glad they’re getting rid of those sites. I just hope they don’t get rid of mine, too.”

That said, though he expressed worry about his financial future, he’s not entirely convinced the two companies will follow through on their recent promises. Mostly because of capitalism.

“Facebook and AdSense make a lot of money from [advertising on fake news sites] for them to just get rid of it,” Horner told the Post. “They’d lose a lot of money. But if it did really go away, that would suck. I don’t know what I would do.”

Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCnews.com.co

This article is about the fake news site. For the American broadcaster this site spoofs, see ABC News. For other uses, see ABC News (disambiguation).

ABCnews.com.co is a fake news site which mimics the URL, design and logo of the actual news site ABCnews.com[1] (which is owned by the Disney–ABC Television Group). Many stories from ABCnews.com.co have gone viral before being debunked.[2]

The sites disclaimer page gives the address of the Westboro Baptist Church as its primary location.[3]
Paul Horner, the owner of the site, has claimed to make $10,000 per month from advertising traffic.[4][5]

Examples of fake news stories[edit]

ABCnews.com.co has promulgated stories about prominent figures and organizations. Examples are:
Anti-Trump protesters hired from Craigslist paid as much as $3,500[4][5]
El Chapo escapes from Mexican prison again[6]
President Barack Obama signed an order banning assault weapon sales[2]
Michael Jordan intended to move the Charlotte Hornets out of North Carolina if the state did not revoke a law disallowing transgendered people access to restrooms[7]
The Supreme Court of the United States revoked the tax-exempt status of the Church of Scientology[8]
A pro-Trump extremist advanced into the White House and shot a number of police officers while yelling pro-Trump slogans and denouncing liberals.[citation needed]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fake_news_websites

List of fake news websites
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For satirical news, see List of satirical news websites.

This is a list of fake news sites. These sites intentionally publish hoaxes and disinformation for purposes other than news satire. This list also excludes sites that promote conspiracy theories based on apparently genuine belief (as opposed to a conscious intent to misinform or to gather web traffic).
Some of these sites use a URL that ends in .co or otherwise resembling genuine news sites.[1][2]

>Definition

Fake news websites deliberately publish hoaxes and disinformation to drive web traffic inflamed by social media.[3][4][5] These sites are distinguished from news satire (which is humorous) as they mislead and profit from readers' gullibility.[4] While most fake news sites are portrayed to be spinoffs of other news sites, some of these websites are examples of website spoofing, structured to make visitors believe they are visiting trusted sources like ABC News or MSNBC.[6] The New York Times pointed out that within a strict definition, "fake news" on the Internet referred to a fictitious article which was fabricated with the deliberate motivation to defraud readers, generally with the goal of profiting through clickbait.[7] PolitiFact described fake news as fabricated content designed to fool readers and subsequently made viral through the Internet to crowds that increase its dissemination.[8]

The New York Times noted in a December 2016 article that fake news had previously maintained a presence on the Internet and within tabloid journalism in the years prior to the 2016 U.S. election.[7] Prior to the election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, fake news had not impacted the election process and subsequent events to such a high degree.[7] Subsequent to the 2016 election, the issue of fake news turned into a political weapon, with supporters of left-wing politics saying those on the opposite side of the spectrum spread falsehoods, and supporters of right-wing politics arguing such accusations were merely a way to censor conservative views.[7] Due to these back-and-forth complaints, the definition of fake news as used for such polemics became more vague.[7

List of fake news sites

ABCnews.com.co Owned by Jestin Coler. Mimics the URL, design and logo of ABC News. [9][10][11][12][13][14]
Bloomberg.ma Designed to imitate Bloomberg.com. Was used to issue a false report announcing that Twitter had received a USD $31 billion takeover offer, the false report resulted in an 8% stock price spike of Twitter. Site now defunct. [15][16]
cnn-trending.com Imitated a CNN site, complete with the CNN logo. Pushed the Hawking Code scam [17][18]
DrudgeReport.com.co Owned by Jestin Coler (mimics the name of the Drudge Report). [9][14]
MSNBC.com.co [9]
MSNBC.website [9]
usatoday.com.co Owned by Jestin Coler. [14]
washingtonpost.com.co Originally registered by Jestin Coler [14][19]
Celebtricity Has claimed:
*That President Obama declared a state of emergency in Chicago after more than 300 people were shot in one night.
*That an employee at a Wendy's put vaginal discharge on a burger as revenge against a partner.
*Bryshere Y. Gray is Jay-Z's son.
[20][21][22]
Cream BMP [9]
Empire News Many of this website's fake news hoaxes were widely shared on social media, with stories based off social or political controversies, or were simply appalling to readers. [9][10][23]
Empire Sports [24]
The Enduring Vision [9]
Firebrand Left Owned by Jestin Coler. [14]
Global Associated News [24]
Huzlers Fake news from this website often involve popular restaurants and brands to disgust readers with its gross-out stories. One story by the site falsely reported that Dong Nguyen, the creator of Flappy Bird, killed himself. Another story made up an incident where a person working at a McDonald's restaurant put his mixtapes in Happy Meals. [23][24][25][26]
Indecision Forever A fake news site owned by Comedy Central. [9]
The Last Line of Defense This website has a history of publishing fake news articles, especially of the political genre. Notable hoaxes include Donald Trump revoking the press credentials of six major news outlets, Michelle Obama getting ditched by the Secret Service, and Hillary Clinton describing Beyonce's music using racial slurs. [27][28][29]
LinkBeef Fake news website that has published claims about the pilot of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 reappearing, a billionaire wanting to recruit 1,000 women to bear his children, and an Adam Sandler death hoax. [30][31][32]
KMT 11 News Falsely reports celebrity appearances and filming locations in random local towns. [33][34][35]
National Report Founder Jestin Coler told Columbia Journalism Review "When it comes to the fake stuff, you really want it to be red meat. [...] It doesn’t have to be offensive. It doesn’t have to be outrageous. It doesn’t have to be anything other than just giving them what they already wanted to hear." [9][10][14][23]
Newslo [9][36]
News Mutiny [9]
React 365 This user-created fake news generator, supposedly for "pranking your friends", had at least two stories that went viral. [23]
Rile News [9]
Stuppid This fake news purveyor specializes in articles with stories that are morally offensive. [23]
The Boston Tribune Starting in February 2016, this website's outright hoaxes quickly became popular with its readers. [23]
The News Nerd [24]
Conservative Frontline Owned by Jestin Coler. [14]
Denver Guardian Owned by Jestin Coler. [14]
International Report Owned by Jestin Coler. [14]
Naha Daily This fake news website is now defunct, and was active in a span of five months with popular fake news articles, including a fake quote by Michael Kors. [23]
News Hound [9][24]
United Media Publishing Owned by Jestin Coler. [14]
InfoWars Managed by Alex Jones. Has previously claimed that millions of people have voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election, that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, and that the Democratic Party was hosting a child sex slave ring out of a pizza restaurant.
[36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44][45]
Natural News Formerly NewsTarget, a website for the sale of various dietary supplements, promotion of alternative medicine, controversial nutrition and health claims, and various conspiracy theories, such as "chemtrails", chemophobic claims (including the purported dangers of fluoride in drinking water, anti-perspirants, laundry detergent, monosodium glutamate, aspartame), and purported health problems caused by allegedly "toxic" ingredients in vaccines, including the now-discredited link to autism. [36][46][46][47][48][49]
Prntly A politically conservative news site described by Snopes as "a disreputable outlet that has a penchant for publishing both fake news and spurious pro-Trump articles." [50][51]
Red Flag News [36]
70 News a Wordpress-hosted site that published a false news story, stating that Donald Trump had won the popular vote in the 2016 United States presidential election; the fake story rose to the top in searches for "final election results" on Google News [9][52][53]
Activist Post [36]
American News Published a false story claiming actor Denzel Washington endorsed Donald Trump for president. The fictional headline led to thousands of people sharing it on Facebook, a prominent example of fake news spreading on the social network prior to the 2016 presidential election. [9][36][54][55]
Before It's News Cited by US President Donald Trump at his 2016 campaign rallies. Before Its News and Infowars were described as "unabashedly unhinged 'news' sites" in 2014 by the Washington Post following its promotion of conspiracy theories relation to Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. [36][56][57]
Civic Tribune [9]
Daily Buzz Live [36]
DC Gazette [9][36]
Disclose TV [36]
Empire Herald Starting in January 2016, this fake news site had spread many of its hoaxes online in just a few weeks. [23]
Gummy Post Fake news website that has published claims about President Obama issuing a full pardon for convicted rapper C-Murder, Musician Kodak Black getting shot outside a nightclub in Florida, and a Hulk Hogan death hoax. [58][59][60]
Liberty Writers News Established in 2015 by Paris Wade and Ben Goldman, who told the Washington Post their stories focus on "violence and chaos and aggressive wording" to attract readers. The stories reflect the positions of supporters of Donald Trump. [61][62][62]
Media Mass [9][24]
News Examiner Started in 2015 by Paul Horner, the lead writer of the National Report. This website has been known to mix real news along with its fake news. [23]
News Breaks Here [63]
The News Buzz Daily This fake news website mostly consists of celebrity gossip and death hoaxes, but a few of its other stories became popular on social media. [23]
NewsWatch33 Starting in April 2015 under the name NewsWatch28 and later becoming NewsWatch33, the website disguises itself as a local television outlet. It has also been known to mix real news along with its fake news in an attempt to circumvent Facebook’s crackdown on them. [23]
Now 8 News Starting in 2015, this fake news website is also designed to look like a local television outlet. A lot of hoaxes were successfully spread on social media. [23][64]
Real News Right Now [9]
The Reporterz Starting in early 2016, this fake news website penned several different hoaxes, including one about a murder over a Twitter trend. [23]
World Truth TV [36]

See also
List of satirical news websites
Fake news in the United States
Clickbait




DEFENDING MY OWN CHOICE OF SOURCES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlterNet

AlterNet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

AlterNet is a progressive activist news service and a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute.[5] Launched in 1998, AlterNet claims a readership of over 5.9 million visitors per month,[6] though the web ratings service Quantcast estimates that it receives 1.3 million.[7]

AlterNet publishes original content as well as journalism from a wide variety of other sources. AlterNet states that its mission is to "inspire citizen action and advocacy on the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, and health care issues".[6] AlterNet's tagline is "The Mix is the Message."

Founded in 1998, AlterNet publishes a combination of policy critiques, investigative reports and analysis, grassroots success stories, and personal narratives. Its coverage emphasizes the discovery of solutions to social problems, and its editorial philosophy is "to uphold a commitment to fairness, equality, and global stewardship, while making connections across generational, ethnic, and issue lines".[6]

AlterNet publishes original content and also makes use of "alternative media", sourcing columns from Salon, The Guardian, Truthdig, Truthout, TomDispatch, The Washington Spectator, Al Jazeera English, Center for Public Integrity, Democracy Now!, Waging Nonviolence, Asia Times, New America Media and Mother Jones. The editorial staff is headed by founder and executive editor Don Hazen, a former publisher of Mother Jones.[8]

AlterNet is financed through individual donations, by grants from major donors, and ad revenue.[8] In 2001–2005, the top three financial backers of the Independent Media Institute were the Nathan Cummings Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.[citation needed]