NOVEMBER 28, 2018


NEWS AND VIEWS


I HOPE THIS KIND OF SQUABBLING OVER WHO GETS TO USE THE MIKE NEXT IS SMOOTHER IN THE FUTURE. IT WOULD BE BETTER HANDLED BY GIVING OUT NUMBERS, AND THE REPORTER WITH THE LOWEST NUMBER CAN GO FIRST. THE NUMBERS SHOULD BE IN A DECORATIVE BOWL, PRINTED ON CARDS, AND THE REPORTERS WOULD PERHAPS ALL GO UP TO GET THEIR NUMBER. THEN SANDERS OR TRUMP CAN GO DOWN THE LIST CALLING NUMBERS IN ORDER. IT SHOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR SANDERS TO KNOW AHEAD OF TIME WHAT REPORTER HAS EACH NUMBER, BECAUSE THEY VERY LIKELY MIGHT TRY TO KEEP ACOSTA FROM GETTING A QUESTION IN.

https://www.commondreams.org/further/2018/11/19/kissing-ring-after-acosta-wins-white-house-issues-imperious-new-rules-deter
Monday, November 19, 2018
Kissing the Ring: After Acosta Wins, White House Issues Imperious New "Rules" To Deter Further Uppitiness
byAbby Zimet, staff writer

PHOTOGRAPH – White House assistant reaches for Acosta’s mic. Caption: "If I want your opinion I'll give it to you." - Samuel Goldwyn

Backing down after a legal defeat at the hands of a Trump-appointed judge - the best kind! - a cornered White House Monday restored CNN's Jim Acosta's press credentials and then swiftly, dare we say vengefully issued a set of unprecedented new rules aimed at curbing further "unprofessional behavior," like, say, asking Il Douche a question he doesn't like. The rules, reminiscent of what you might find scrawled on a blackboard on the first diligent day of fourth grade: A journalist "will ask a single question and then will yield the floor to other journalists," said "yielding" consists of "physically surrendering" the microphone, follow-up questions will be permitted "at the discretion of the president" or his sycophants, and "failure to abide" by any of the rules may result in "suspension or revocation of the journalist's hard pass."

The decree, Sarah Sanders explained in a scolding, noxious, Sarah-esque letter, was created "with a degree of regret." For years - actually a century, others noted - White House reporters had attended countless press events "without engaging in the behavior Mr. Acosta displayed," and naturally they would have "greatly preferred to continue hosting (those events) in reliance on a set of understood professional norms." This is, of course, a bald-faced lie, as anyone who's ever witnessed the decades of rowdy, combative White House press conferences could attest. What's different today isn't Jim Acosta. It's that before there was always an adult in charge, and now there's a sick, mean, wildly insecure, tantrum-throwing malignant narcissist man-child whose daddy didn't love him enough, leaving a dangerous gaping hole the world, or at least the press, must now attempt to fill.

Alas, many noted, this is not their job - which is, as guaranteed and cherished by the Constitution, to question, challenge, poke, prod, doubt, hassle, confront and sometimes piss off people in power to arrive at the truth, a requisite of democracy. Rules that allow the banning of a reporter for asking an "unauthorized" follow-up question, argues Ben Wizner of the ACLU, “give the White House far too much discretion to avoid real scrutiny (and) should be revised to ensure that no journalist gets kicked out of the White House for doing their job.” Other critics blasted the attempt to "shave down to one question" the Constitutional right to free speech, noting that above all the rules, while "adorable," egregiously mandate "decorum" only for those seeking "to interview persons totally lacking any." Many want a rule Trump has to answer the damn question, or at least let a reporter ask it completely "BEFORE he starts his lying. Or insulting the reporter. Or deflecting."

Others wonder if the rules mandate starting each question with “Your Royal Highness” or "My Liege," though they agree kissing his ring is optional, as is genuflection. One brilliant suggestion: A dunk tank for anyone who fails to answer a question honestly. Even better, Rule 5: "Failure by the President or other White House official taking questions to answer said question may result in their temporary or permanent removal from office." At the very least, many propose serious ways for journalists to fight back: Keep asking any question that goes unanswered, hand the mike to Acosta every time, write their own rules, walk out en masse. Apt, given the gag rules landed the same day as the cowardly news that this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner will feature a historian, not a comedian; the group is evidently still smarting from Michelle Wolf's blistering roast of not just Trump but an-often-complicit mainstream media. "You helped create this monster," she declared, "and now you're profiting off of him." She's right. Time to buckle up.

PHOTOGRAPHS -- press_trump_hitler_46296992_775162122868

This is the world we live in. This is the world we cover.



https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/27/politics/bernie-sanders-climate-change-report-cnntv/index.html

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/11/25/tackle-climate-crisis-says-bernie-sanders-us-must-be-bold-and-aggressive-standing
Published on Sunday, November 25, 2018
byCommon Dreams
To Tackle Climate Crisis, Says Bernie Sanders, US Must 'Be Bold and Aggressive in Standing Up to Greed of Fossil Fuel Industry'
"We have got to rally the American people. The scientific community has made it 100 percent clear... this is a major crisis facing this country and our planet."
byJake Johnson, staff writer

PHOTOGRAPH -- "It is very clear that we have got to bring our people together to address this terribly important issue. And it is amazing to me that we have an administration right now that still considers climate change to be a hoax," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said. (Photo: CBS/Twitter)

In an interview on CBS's "Face the Nation" shortly after the Trump administration attempted to bury a devastating report on the climate crisis, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said it is more important than ever to unite the public around ambitious solutions to human-caused climate change as the White House actively works with the fossil fuel industry to make it worse.

"We need millions of people all over this country to stand up and demand fundamental changes in our energy policy in order to protect our kids and our grandchildren and the planet."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

"It is very clear that we have got to bring our people together to address this terribly important issue. And it is amazing to me that we have an administration right now that still considers climate change to be a hoax," Sanders said. "We have got to rally the American people."

"The scientific community has made it 100 percent clear... this is a major crisis facing this country and our planet, and we have got to be bold and aggressive in standing up to the greed of the fossil fuel industry, who are more concerned about short-term profits than the planet we are leaving our kids and our grandchildren," Sanders concluded.

In an effort to build grassroots support for bold climate action as the corporate media fails to give the planetary emergency the attention it so badly needs, Sanders early next month is hosting a town hall titled "Solving Our Climate Crisis" in partnership with independent progressive media outlets.

The event will feature prominent environmentalists and scientists who are dedicated to "addressing the global threat of climate change and exploring solutions that can protect the planet from devastation and create tens of millions of good-paying jobs."

"We need millions of people all over this country to stand up and demand fundamental changes in our energy policy in order to protect our kids and our grandchildren and the planet," Sanders told the Huffington Post last week. "The good news is the American people are beginning to stand up and fight back."

Among those fighting back are youth climate leaders and their backers in Congress. As Common Dreams reported, the Sunrise Movement has staged sit-ins at the offices of Democratic leaders to demand that they back a Green New Deal.

Additionally, environmentalists and progressive lawmakers have pushed Democrats—who will control the House in the next Congress—to form a Green New Deal Select Committee and make Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the chair.

According to the Sunrise Movement, 12 House Democrats have expressed their support for a Green New Deal Select Committee. Click here to contact your representatives if they are not on the list.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License


I THINK I SMELL SMOKE ....

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret-talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy
Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy, sources say
Trump ally met WikiLeaks founder months before emails hacked by Russia were published
Live: follow the latest US politics news
Luke Harding and Dan Collyns in Quito
Tue 27 Nov 2018 09.23 EST

PHOTOGRAPH -- Paul Manafort’s 2016 visit to Assange lasted about 40 minutes, one source said. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign, the Guardian has been told.

Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.

In a statement, Manafort denied meeting Assange. He said: “I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I have never been contacted by anyone connected to WikiLeaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or WikiLeaks on any matter.”

It is unclear why Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last apparent meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016. Months later WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers.

Manafort, 69, denies involvement in the hack and says the claim is “100% false”. His lawyers initially declined to answer the Guardian’s questions about the visits.

In a series of tweets WikiLeaks said Assange and Manafort had not met. Assange described the story as a hoax.

Manafort was jailed this year and was thought to have become a star cooperator in the Mueller inquiry. But on Monday Mueller said Manafort had repeatedly lied to the FBI, despite agreeing to cooperate two months ago in a plea deal. According to a court document, Manafort had committed “crimes and lies” on a “variety of subject matters”.

His defence team says he believes what he has told Mueller to be truthful and has not violated his deal.

Julian Assange
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Why Manafort sought out Julian Assange in 2013 is unclear. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Manafort’s first visit to the embassy took place a year after Assange sought asylum inside, two sources said.

A separate internal document written by Ecuador’s Senain intelligence agency and seen by the Guardian lists “Paul Manaford [sic]” as one of several well-known guests. It also mentions “Russians”.

According to the sources, Manafort returned to the embassy in 2015. He paid another visit in spring 2016, turning up alone, around the time Trump named him as his convention manager. The visit is tentatively dated to March.

Manafort’s 2016 visit to Assange lasted about 40 minutes, one source said, adding that the American was casually dressed when he exited the embassy, wearing sandy-coloured chinos, a cardigan and a light-coloured shirt.

Visitors normally register with embassy security guards and show their passports. Sources in Ecuador, however, say Manafort was not logged.

Embassy staff were aware only later of the potential significance of Manafort’s visit and his political role with Trump, it is understood.

The revelation could shed new light on the sequence of events in the run-up to summer 2016, when WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of emails hacked by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. Hillary Clinton has said the hack contributed to her defeat.

The previously unreported Manafort-Assange connection is likely to be of interest to Mueller, who has been investigating possible contacts between WikiLeaks and associates of Trump including the political lobbyist Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr.

One key question is when the Trump campaign was aware of the Kremlin’s hacking operation – and what, if anything, it did to encourage it. Trump has repeatedly denied collusion.

Earlier this year Mueller indicted 12 GRU intelligence officers for carrying out the hack, which began in March 2016.

In June of that year WikiLeaks emailed the GRU via an intermediary seeking the DNC material. After failed attempts, Vladimir Putin’s spies sent the documents in mid-July to WikiLeaks as an encrypted attachment.

According to sources, Manafort’s acquaintance with Assange goes back at least five years, to late 2012 or 2013, when the American was working in Ukraine and advising its Moscow-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Why Manafort might have sought out Assange in 2013 is unclear. During this period the veteran consultant was involved in black operations against Yanukovych’s chief political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, whom Yanukovych had jailed. Manafort ran an extensive lobbying operation featuring European former politicians.

He flew frequently from the US to Ukraine’s capital, Kiev – usually via Frankfurt but sometimes through London, flight records seen by the Guardian show.

Manafort is currently in jail in Alexandria, Virginia. In August a jury convicted him of crimes arising from his decade-long activities in Ukraine. They include large-scale money laundering and failure to pay US tax. Manafort pleaded guilty to further charges in order to avoid a second trial in Washington.

As well as accusing him of lying on Monday, the special counsel moved to set a date for Manafort to be sentenced.

One person familiar with WikiLeaks said Assange was motivated to damage the Democrats campaign because he believed a future Trump administration would be less likely to seek his extradition on possible charges of espionage. This fate had hung over Assange since 2010, when he released confidential US state department cables. It contributed to his decision to take refuge in the embassy.

According to the dossier written by the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, Manafort was at the centre of a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between the Trump campaign and Russia’s leadership. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Clinton, Steele wrote, whom Putin “hated and feared”.

In a memo written soon after the DNC emails were published, Steele said: “The [hacking] operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team.”

As a candidate Trump warmly welcomed the dump of DNC emails by Assange. In October 2016 he declared: “I love WikiLeaks.” Trump’s comments came after WikiLeaks released a second tranche of emails seized from the email account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

The Trump White House subsequently sent out mixed messages over Assange and his legal fate. In 2017 and behind the scenes Assange tried to reach a deal with Trump’s Department of Justice that might see him avoid US prison.

In May 2017, Manafort flew to Ecuador to hold talks with the country’s president-elect Lenín Moreno. The discussions, days before Moreno was sworn in, and before Manafort was indicted – were ostensibly about a large-scale Chinese investment.

However, one source in Quito suggests that Manafort also discreetly raised Assange’s plight. Another senior foreign ministry source said he was sceptical Assange was mentioned. At the time Moreno was expected to continue support for him.

Last week a court filing released in error suggested that the US justice department had secretly charged Assange with a criminal offence. Written by the assistant US attorney, Kellen Dwyer, the document did not say what Assange had been charged with or when the alleged offence took place.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/25/robert-mueller-donald-trump-russia-investigation
'He has moved incredibly quickly': Mueller nears Trump endgame
David Taylor in New York
Sun 25 Nov 2018 01.00 EST

PHOTOGRAPHS -- Robert Mueller in 2013, when he was FBI director, and Donald Trump last year. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

A new urgency surrounds the Russia investigation, with Donald Trump Jr and longtime Trump ally Roger Stone in legal peril

David Taylor in New York

Sun 25 Nov 2018 01.00 EST Last modified on Mon 26 Nov 2018 04.25 EST
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Robert Mueller in 2013, when he was FBI director, and Donald Trump last year. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump only has himself to blame for Robert Mueller’s return to public life. The former FBI director, now 74, was asked to come out of retirement after Trump fired James Comey,on 9 May 2017.

RELATED: 'America's straightest arrow': Robert Mueller silent as urgency mounts

In March that year, on Capitol Hill, Comey revealed publicly that in July 2016 the FBI opened an investigation into Russian interference in the US election and possible Trump campaign collusion. During the election, Comey spoke openly about the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. The Trump-Russia inquiry was kept secret.

Eight days after Comey was fired, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, appointed Mueller as special counsel. Eighteen months later, the inquiry has led to indictments against 32 individuals and three Russian entities on charges ranging from computer hacking to obstruction of justice.

RELATED: Despite nearly daily false attacks from the president and his allies, the entire team has just kept its head down
Elizabeth de la Vega

Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn both pleaded guilty to criminal charges and pledged to cooperate. Donald Trump Jr and longtime Trump aide Roger Stone are in legal peril.

Trump Jr orchestrated the now infamous Trump Tower meeting with a group of Russians after being promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Stone has been under scrutiny over whether he joined the Russian conspiracy.

Trump, who would himself be in legal trouble if he knew of any conspiracy or obstructed justice, has consistently called the Mueller investigation a hoax and turned “NO COLLUSION!” into a catchphrase.

‘He has moved incredibly quickly’
The investigation, which cost more than $16.6m in its first 11 months, can be broken down into four distinct parts which have all led to indictments:

Manafort and his business connections to Russia following years of work in support of the former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Russian use of fake social media accounts to influence the 2016 election.
Russian hacking of the Democratic party and the Clinton aide John Podesta – and the subsequent leak of thousands of emails by WikiLeaks.
Trump campaign connections to Russia – including the Trump Tower meeting and the adviser George Papadopoulos’s involvement with a professor who told him the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton including “thousands of emails”.
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Anne Milgram, a law professor at New York University and a former prosecutor and attorney general of New Jersey, said Mueller and his 17 lawyers had done “a terrific job”.

“Months have gone by – people think it’s a long time – it is not in criminal justice,” she said. “He has moved incredibly quickly, got a lot of cooperation agreements, charges, done an extraordinary job of running down Russian hacking of the election.”

RELATED: Trump at bay: failure looms as Democrats load 'subpoena cannon'

Elizabeth de la Vega, a former federal prosecutor for the northern district of California, said: “Complex charges against nearly three dozen people [and] organizations in less than two years is unheard of. Federal investigations may go on for three or four years before charges are brought against a few defendants. Also despite nearly daily false attacks from the president and his allies, the entire team has just kept its head down and done their work.”

One indictment charging three Russian companies and 13 Russians goes into amazing detail about the companies, which had budgets of more than $1.2m a month and hundreds of staff creating fake content aimed at stirring up American voters.

Another indictment charges 12 members of the Russian military with hacking the Democrats and the Clinton campaign. The individuals are alleged to have created the site DC Leaks and created the Guccifer 2.0 persona, supposed to be a lone Romanian hacker who shared data with WikiLeaks.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump Jr watches his father leave the stage on the night of 2016 Iowa caucus, in Des Moines. Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters

“It is really extraordinary, detailed evidence of the way the Russian government hacked the American election,” Milgram said. “What is still outstanding is are any Americans charged in connection with that, will Roger Stone be charged, will Mueller write a report on the president, what about Donald Trump Jr?

“High-level questions remain – how close did this come to the campaign? Were they involved in the coordinated release of the hacked emails of Podesta? What about the president’s efforts to fire Comey to allegedly obstruct justice?”

The grand jury
Little is known about the inner workings of Mueller’s investigation, which has been operating out of an office in south-west Washington, not far from the National Mall.

A grand jury has been convened, meeting at the DC federal court on Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and Capitol Hill. People appear either voluntarily or under subpoena and are questioned without their lawyer. The jury can weigh evidence and say whether charges should be brought.

Rob Goldstone, a British PR man for the Russian Agalarov family, fixed up the Trump Tower meeting with a promise of Russian dirt on Clinton.

“If it’s what you say, I love it,” Trump Jr wrote, before bringing in his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and Manafort. He had been promised “very high-level and sensitive information” as part of Russian support for Trump.

RELATED:
You have no lawyers, you’re on your own, so that’s pretty terrifying
Rob Goldstone

Goldstone met Mueller’s team voluntarily. He told the Guardian he was taken in an unmarked car for six or seven hours of interviews in February this year.

“It was a basic room,” he said, “a long table. I sat on one side and they sat on the other side with my lawyers sat next to me. There was something very methodical and logical about the approach to questions.

“There were about six people in total, a couple of FBI people and a couple of people from, I suppose, the Mueller team. Over the course of the day they asked me a series of questions about my email, the Trump Tower meeting and about my relationship with my clients, the Agalarovs.

“A lot of friends have asked me did you meet Robert Mueller? I’ve said even if he came in to change the lightbulb or adjust the air-conditioning I’d probably be horrified by the idea that he was there, considering I hadn’t heard he had been in anybody else’s. So I was thankful of the fact I didn’t see Bob Mueller.”

On 9 March, Goldstone voluntarily appeared before the grand jury. He said there were 22 or 23 people in tiered seating.

“Similar sort of thing,” he said. “The difference there, you have no lawyers, you’re on your own, so that’s pretty terrifying. Terrifying even if you know and believe you have nothing to fear.”

Unanswered questions
All eyes are on Manafort. Due to be sentenced on charges including bank and tax fraud on 8 February, he is cooperating.

Mueller’s team asked for a delay in the sentencing of Rick Gates, Manafort’s former partner and a key witness against him. Earlier this month they also asked for a delay before updating a judge about Manafort’s cooperation. On Monday, they will submit a report.

Paul Manafort looks on during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, in July 2016.
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Paul Manafort looks on with Donald Trump during the Republican national convention in Cleveland, in July 2016. Photograph: Rick Wilking/Reuters
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Observers assume that means an indictment is imminent, against someone. If he is not cooperating fully, Manafort could be sentenced more harshly.

Milgram said: “Now the question you and I can’t answer is what does Paul Manafort have … is he cooperating against the president, is he cooperating against Donald Jr – and only Mueller knows that right now.”

Milgram suspects Mueller was aware the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was likely to be removed after the midterm elections. The acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, is under pressure to keep his hands off the investigation.


Jerome Corsi: rightwing author pursuing plea deal with Robert Mueller
Read more
“I suspect there are a lot of cases already put into the grand jury, some of those could have been voted out and put under seal,” Milgram said. “I think Mueller will have done as much work as possible and have gotten as far as he can prior to the midterms, understanding there was a risk to the integrity of the investigation.”

She thought the investigation might have about six months left, although if Trump refuses a face-to-face meeting, Mueller could seek a subpoena to put him before the grand jury. That could be fought all the way to the supreme court.

There is a precedent, US v Nixon, when the justices ruled that the president must deliver subpoenaed materials to a district court. Sixteen days later, Nixon resigned.

If Mueller decides not to have that fight, he could write a report saying he believed the president obstructed justice. If he does not reach that conclusion, the Democratic-led House could issue its own subpoenas.

“It is a chess match,” said Milgram. “We’ll have to see how it plays out in the next year.”


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/23/jerome-corsi-robert-mueller-plea-negotiations
Jerome Corsi: rightwing author pursuing plea deal with Robert Mueller
Conspiracy theorist confirms reported negotiations to Guardian but does not offer details
Martin Pengelly and Jon Swaine
Fri 23 Nov 2018 16.18 EST

Opinion: Trump-Russia requires a new kind of journalism

PHOTOGRAPH -- Jerome Corsi is an associate of Donald Trump’s ally Roger Stone. Photograph: AP


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/23/cyberwar-network-propaganda-review-russia-rightwing-media-2016-election
Cyberwar, Network Propaganda review: did Russia or the right do most to help Trump?
Michael Cornfield
Fri 23 Nov 2018 01.00 EST

PHOTOGRAPH -- Rush Limbaugh looks on before joining Donald Trump at a rally in Cape Girardeau, Missouri this month. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts seek to shed light on the 2016 election

Since the Director of National Intelligence’s (DNI) interagency report of January 2017, it has been a truth selectively acknowledged that the Russian government took to the US media surreptitiously in 2016 to help elect Donald Trump president. But did it work? Were sufficient numbers of voters persuaded, mobilized and, crucially, demobilized by the efforts of the Internet Research Agency to swing the election in Trump’s favor?

RELATED:
How Russia cyber attacks helped Trump to the US presidency
Kathleen Hall Jamieson

To answer this question sufficiently requires not just additional evidence but also a theory of influence. Two books by top scholars in political communication have now weighed in – and they disagree in their conclusions.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson will have nothing of the euphemistic “meddling” as a descriptor of what the Russians did. She calls it cyberwar and she contends that America lost this battle. Jamieson brings great credentials to her brief, as she immodestly but accurately notes. Her oeuvre includes a peerless evaluation of Ronald Reagan’s visual and verbal rhetoric, standard histories of presidential television advertising and debates, and a dissection of Rush Limbaugh.

Cyberwar, however, is an odd book. It makes a special plead [sic] on behalf of Hillary Clinton: Russian trolls and hackers, abetted by the news media, robbed her of the presidency. The case presented is a Jenga tower of suppositions, hypotheticals, concessions, contingencies, qualifications, cherry picks and really good points. Jamieson writes protracted sentences (one has six sentence-length statements stacked up by semi-colons) that wind their way through academically conscientious but progressively dubious lists of the possible causes and effects of Russian interventions in the campaign discourse.

For instance (reviewer takes deep breath): Jamieson argues that news media gatekeepers watched the Sunday morning political talk shows on 9 October 2016 and spread the Russia-fanned notion to elite opinion leaders that, here you have it, Hillary Clinton is irredeemably rotten, and that these leaders in turn swayed colleagues running the first two presidential debates, and that sufficient numbers of debate watchers were turned away from Clinton by the unfairly crafted questions from the moderators to provide victory margins in crucially close midwestern states. Plausible? Yes. Factual? Yes. Conclusive? No, not without audience research data at each step along the pathway of influence. Jamieson supplies it at the second to last step, citing poll data that show a drop in Clinton’s reputation in mid- and late-October. That’s impressive. But attributing it to the Russians elongates the case beyond this reader’s credulity.

A far-right subnetwork traffics in vicious attacks, conspiracy theories and standard-bearers such as Trump

Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts, co-authors of Network Propaganda, contend that the Russians added icing on a cake 30 years in the baking. Their main subject is a state of political information disorder or “epistemic crisis”, of which the trolling and hacking affecting the 2016 presidential election are symptomatic.
permanent campaign
They document this warp in the public discourse through social network diagrams based on analysis of nearly 4 million online messages sent between 2015 and 2018, data they collected and sorted by telltale phrases: “Hillary Clinton”, “Donald Trump”, “deep state”, “email server”, etc. By including the websites of broadcast and print media, the authors are able to assess most of the media content about the campaigns. Their supervening question: Who linked to whom? Being linked to is an index of influence.

Topic by topic, day by day, these network maps exhibit a disturbing pattern. The galaxy of communications voices and channels in which presidential campaigns occur has been split in two. A legacy, mainstream, familiar subnetwork encompasses the center-right to the far left. Some of its sources make mistakes and spread mischievous and even malicious statements, but these tend to be challenged and corrected from elsewhere. (The Guardian attracted the 10th highest number of in-links, the most of any non-US based source in this grid.)

Trump greets Sean Hannity in Cape Girardeau.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump greets Sean Hannity in Cape Girardeau. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

RELATED: The latest major Trump resignations and firings

Meanwhile, a far-right subnetwork traffics in vicious attacks, arrant rumors, conspiracy theories and the valorizing of standard-bearers such as Trump. Its stars include Limbaugh, Steve Bannon, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Lou Dobbs; its central node is Fox News. This malign subnetwork not only does not repair to standard methods of verification as found in journalism, law, the academy and science, it also vilifies exponents of such methods as agents of oppression. In 2011, the authors note, Limbaugh dubbed these four truth-assessing institutions “the Four Corners of Deceit”.

The propaganda network distracts, disorients, disturbs and manipulates people to achieve certain political goals. For example, Trump’s reactions on Twitter to the release of the DNI report ranged from promising to investigate who leaked it to NBC News, to blaming Democrats for allowing the Russian hacking to succeed, to calling critics of his ties to Russia “stupid”. Those who read and link to the subnetwork are the people who do not acknowledge the truth of the report’s findings.

Given the extensiveness of this subnetwork, the authors assert, the Russian propaganda amplified more than it created. Its trolls and hackers were accessories, not perpetrators. (The same designation applies to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook.) And some of the intrusions were not all that effective. Attacks aimed at alienating Bernie Sanders supporters from Clinton largely failed because those supporters belonged to the evidence-based subnetwork and saw through the gambit.

Benkler, Faris and Roberts weave their findings into a dense but readable narrative that draws on a wide array of political science studies. They conclude that restoration and reunification of the cleaved system of US public communication cannot begin without “a series of electoral defeats that would force such a transformation”. Perhaps that series has begun.

Michael Cornfield is an associate professor of political management at the George Washington University


FACEBOOK IS NOW SETTING UP A FOCUS ON PRESENTING LOCAL NEWS, WHICH IF IT STAYS OUT OF POLITICS, I COULD FIND VERY INTERESTING, BUT THERE ARE NO BIGOTS LIKE THE LOCAL BIGOTS. THE LOCAL STORIES SHOULD NOT BE PRESENTED UNVERIFIED OR WITHOUT A FACT REBUTTAL. FACEBOOK IS AGAINST LIBERALISM. THE DEEP CONNECTION TO RUSSIA’S IRS FICTIONAL STORIES IS A SIGN, AND THIS RENEWAL OF THE SCAPEGOATING OF GEORGE SOROS IS A DEAD GIVEAWAY. FOR SHAME! SEE THE TWO ARTICLES BELOW. THEY HAVE SHARED CONTENT, BUT ARE NOT IDENTICAL.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-rolls-out-its-local-news-today-feature-400-u-n941301
Facebook rolls out its local news 'Today In' feature to more than 400 U.S. cities
Nov. 28, 2018 / 2:22 PM EST
By Michael Cappetta

Silhouettes of mobile users next to a screen projection of the Facebook logo on March 28, 2018.Dado Ruvic / Reuters file

Facebook announced on Wednesday that is expanding its feature that spreads local news and community information from governments to users based on their geographic location.

"Today In," which Facebook started testing last January in five U.S. cities, will now be available in more than 400 cities in the U.S., the company said in a blog post.

The dedicated section collects and aggregates relevant stories for local communities in a packaged form in the user’s News Feed. Facebook said the goal is to allow users to "catch up on news, events, and discussions happening in your community." The content comes from a mix of local news, community pages, and municipalities.

Facebook announced it would prioritize local news content in the News Feed in January 2018. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said in a blog post: “People consistently tell us they want to see more local news on Facebook. Local news helps us understand the issues that matter in our communities and affect our lives.”

While Zuckerberg emphasized the company’s interest in promoting local news, Anthea Watson Strong, Facebook’s product manager for local news and information, said the social network didn’t want to rush into creating the feature platform.

“We wanted to get this right,” Strong said. “We didn’t want to rush into expanding until we were driving value for these communities and their pages.”

Strong, who grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, said she follows her community using the "Today In" feature and is pleasantly surprised by the variety of local news she is able to get, that she may have previously missed out on because she does not follow every local page in the community.

“I loved seeing the Halloween parade from the school I attended while growing up and the Myers Park pool where I was a lifeguard,” Strong says.

This move comes as the company is battling widespread concerns about fake news, data privacy, and the hiring of a public affairs company with an in-house “fake news” operation.

Facebook faced additional criticism this week when Zuckerberg did not attend a U.K. Parliament hearing.

Facebook’s role in the news world has also been a subject of skepticism, particularly after announcing in early 2018 that it would be showing less news in its News Feed.

“We are super aware of the mistakes that have been made in the past. We are trying to be careful every time we make a move, how is this going to affect the community? How could this be misused?” Strong said. “This is a particular type of information that is hard to find. People want local news and information. It’s about the stuff happening down the street."

Michael Cappetta
Michael Cappetta is a producer at NBC News covering business and technology.


SANDBERG AND ZUCKERMAN “DIDN’T KNOW” WHAT WAS GOING ON. THAT’S POSSIBLE, BUT I WOULD BET MONEY THAT THEY DID.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/technology/facebook-definers-soros.html
Facebook Cuts Ties With Washington Firm That Sought to Discredit Social Network’s Critics
By Mike Isaac and Jack Nicas
Nov. 15, 2018

PHOTOGRAPH -- A Facebook logo reflected on an advertisement board outside the United States Capitol in Washington in October. Facebook had initially hired Definers Public Affairs, a consulting firm, to monitor news about the social network.CreditCreditTom Brenner for The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook said Thursday that it had ended its relationship with a Washington-based consulting firm, Definers Public Affairs, which spread disparaging information about the social network’s critics and competitors.

The move followed a New York Times article on Wednesday that described the kind of work that Definers did on Facebook’s behalf. Among other things, Definers worked to discredit activist protesters who were against Facebook, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tried to deflect criticism of the social network by pressing reporters to look into rivals like Google.

Late Wednesday, Facebook decided to terminate its relationship with Definers after the publication of the Times article prompted an outcry, said a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Top Facebook executives including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were not aware of the specific work being done by Definers, the person said.

In a statement, Facebook said it had not hidden its ties to Definers and disputed that it had asked the firm to spread false information.

“It is wrong to suggest that we have ever asked Definers to pay for or write articles on Facebook’s behalf, or communicate anything untrue,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in the statement.

“The relationship with Facebook was well known by the media — not least because they have on several occasions sent out invitations to hundreds of journalists about important press calls on our behalf,” the spokeswoman added.

Facebook confirmed on Thursday that it had ended its relationship with Definers, without citing a reason.

Definers was founded by veterans of Republican presidential campaigns and specialized in applying political campaign tactics to corporate public relations. Last year, Tim Miller, a Definers official and former spokesman for Jeb Bush, started a Silicon Valley chapter. He said in one interview that as technology firms mature, a goal should be to “have positive content pushed out about your company and negative content that’s being pushed out about your competitor.”

Facebook initially hired Definers to monitor news about the social network. It expanded its relationship with the firm in October 2017 when scrutiny of Facebook was increasing over how Russian agents had used the social media site to sow discord before the 2016 United States presidential election.

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The Times reported on Wednesday that earlier this year, a conservative website called NTK Network began publishing stories defending Facebook and criticizing Facebook rivals like Google. NTK is an affiliate of Definers.

[Read the Times investigation of how Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook responded to a series of scandals.]

In addition, Definers circulated a research document this summer casting Mr. Soros, the billionaire liberal donor, as the unacknowledged force behind what appeared to be a broad anti-Facebook movement. Definers pressed reporters to explore the financial connections between Mr. Soros and groups that had criticized Facebook, including a progressive group founded by Mr. Soros’s son and Color of Change, an online racial justice organization.

An official at Mr. Soros’s Open Society Foundations said the philanthropy had supported both member groups, but that no grants had been made to support campaigns against Facebook.

“We are proud to have partnered with Facebook over the past year on a range of public affairs services. All of our work is based on publicly available documents and information,” a Definers spokesman said in a statement.

He added, “The document referenced in the Times story regarding the anti-Facebook organization’s potential funding sources was entirely factual and based on public records.”

Mr. Miller said late Wednesday on Twitter that he was hurt by accusations that Definers’s work related to Mr. Soros was anti-Semitic. “Im disgusted by the rise of anti-semitism including people who have falsely targeted Soros. It’s deeply deeply personal. I’ve continuously fought the alt-right & others who spread racist lies & hate & will keep doing so,” he said.


Tim Miller
✔
@Timodc
· Nov 15, 2018
For ppl asking - Definers shared a narrow document about an anti-Facebook group's funding. It was entirely factual, as Open Markets organizers have acknoweldged they get funding from Soros. I have defended Soros from smears & conspiracies that weren't based in fact. 1/


Tim Miller
✔
@Timodc
On a personal note I'm really blown up by the accusations. Im disgusted by the rise of anti-semitism including people who have falsely targeted Soros. It's deeply deeply personal. I've continuously fought the alt-right & others who spread racist lies & hate & will keep doing so

789
1:27 AM - Nov 15, 2018
Twitter Ads info and privacy
371 people are talking about this
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After the Times article, other organizations also began re-evaluating their relationship with Definers. One of those was Crooked Media, which runs the popular political podcast Pod Save America. Mr. Miller is a frequent contributor to the podcast.

“We need to get to the bottom of Tim’s involvement in this work, and he won’t be contributing to Crooked more in the meantime,” Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor, three of the hosts of the podcast, said in a statement published to Twitter on Wednesday.

[Subscribe to “With Interest.” It’s a Sunday newsletter with essential business insights that’ll prep you for the week ahead.]

Follow Mike Isaac and Jack Nicas on Twitter: @MikeIsaac and @jacknicas.


I WISH I DIDN'T LIKE FACEBOOK AS A COMMUNICATIONS METHOD, BECAUSE I ABSOLUTELY DON'T TRUST THEM AT ALL ANYMORE. LIARS AND CHEATS! BAH, HUMBUG!!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes/2018/11/21/facebook-admits-it-asked-definers-to-look-into-george-soros/#4b337af437c8
Nov 21, 2018, 08:50pm
Facebook Admits It Asked Opposition Firm Definers To Investigate George Soros
Laura Mandaro
Forbes Staff
I'm assistant managing editor for technology and innovation.

PHOTOGRAPH -- Facebook late Wednesday admitted it used Definers Public Affairs to research and spread information on George Soros' funding activities. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Facebook said Wednesday evening it had asked Definers Public Affairs to look into George Soros' funding activities after the billionaire philanthropist called the social network a "menace to society" in early 2018 and Facebook called for a deeper investigation of its critics.

"We had not heard such criticism from him before and wanted to determine if he had any financial motivation," wrote outgoing communications head Elliot Schrage on the Facebook blog. He said, at Facebook's behest, Definers investigated groups that were part of a “Freedom from Facebook” campaign and learned Soros was funding several of the coalition members. Definers then spread that information to the media to show "that this was not simply a spontaneous grassroots movement."

The admission, made on the eve of Thanksgiving, corroborates some of the reporting in an explosive New York Times investigation that detailed how Facebook hired the opposition research firm to counter criticism of its role in spreading Russian misinformation and exposing its users to the political-ad-targeting firm Cambridge Analytica.

Soros' Open Society Foundations has lambasted the tactics, which included distributing news stories via a partner site called NTK. Facebook's top executives have found themselves in a now familiar position — defending the way they've handled the internal knowledge that outside companies misused the activity of its 2.3 billion users to influence elections.

The Times says Facebook staff were aware in spring 2016, more than a year before making the disclosures public, that Russian hackers used the platform to interfere with the 2016 presidential election and that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg decided to publicly downplay concerns about interference. When Facebook finally revealed, in the fall of 2017, that a Kremlin-linked operation had reached nearly 150 million users with false posts in an effort to sway the 2016 election, Facebook launched an intensive lobbying and PR campaign to minimize criticism, including by hiring Definers.

Zuckerberg and Sandberg last week denied they knew about hiring the Washington, DC public relations firm led by political veterans who have worked and campaigned for Republican lawmakers such as Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio. Parts of its work were well known to the media after Facebook in October 2017 started to use the firm for advisories and arrange events, though the extent of that work — including using an affiliate news site to spread stories negative about its clients' rivals or critics — was not. After the newspaper published its report, Facebook fired Definers.

Schrage, who said he took responsibility Wednesday for deciding what Definers would do, said it also used the firm to investigate Facebook's competitors.

Some of the most stinging criticism that's followed the Times report has centered around Definers' information campaign on Soros, a frequent target of anti-Semitic campaigns that place him at the center of conspiracy theories, such as that he orchestrated the migrant caravan headed for the U.S. border.

"No matter how innocuously you may choose to represent it publicly, pushing the Jewish 'puppet masters' trope was intentional," wrote Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, in a letter Zuckerberg and Sandberg, which was shared with the media.

Definers spread information that Soros was a funder of Color of Change*, a civil rights organization that was part of the Freedom From Facebook* coalition, according to the Times report.

That approach, defended by Facebook as simple research into publicly available information, has a more sinister intent, said the nonprofit. "It is ripped from a playbook centuries in the making and directly linked to attempts to undermine the civil rights movement in the 1960s," said Robinson.

Sandberg speaks on Soros

Sandberg, in the same blog as Schrage, said "it was never anyone’s intention to play into an anti-Semitic narrative against Mr. Soros or anyone else. Being Jewish is a core part of who I am and our company stands firmly against hate. The idea that our work has been interpreted as anti-Semitic is abhorrent to me — and deeply personal."

Definers, which has said investigating Facebook's critics was a small part of its work for Facebook, issued a new statement Wednesday that said calling its research into Soros a "'smear campaign' against Mr. Soros and anti-Facebook groups is a completely false and an unfortunate part of the story."

©2018 Forbes Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.


COLOR OF CHANGE* --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_Change


JEWISH ‘PUPPET MASTERS’ TROPE* --
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn544992
https://forward.com/fast-forward/412436/jewish-billionaire-george-soros-drawn-as-puppet-master-in-florida-campaign/


THIS SITE IS VERY INFORMATIONAL, BUT EXTREMELY DISTURBING TO KIND PEOPLE. HOWEVER, I SUGGEST YOU TAKE A LOOK AT IT JUST TO SEE WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST AS A DEMOCRATIC NATION WHICH PROTECTS ALL ITS’ PEOPLE WITH A TOTALLY EQUAL AND FAIR HAND. WE DO, DON’T WE?


FREEDOM FROM FACEBOOK –
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/27/18113343/facebook-color-of-change-meeting-george-soros
Facebook will meet with one of the groups it targeted with Soros opposition research
The social media company is now doing a liberal apology tour, too.
By Emily Stewart Nov 27, 2018, 9:50am EST

PHOTOGRAPH -- Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg testifies on Capitol Hill in September 2018. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

One of the civil rights activist groups reportedly targeted by opposition researchers that Facebook hired plans to meet chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and other Facebook executives on Thursday. The group will discuss what exactly Facebook was up to when a Republican firm it hired sought to discredit those groups, in part by linking them to billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

Facebook has previously apologized after the company came under fire for anti-conservative bias when trying to curb the spread of fake news on the platform. This meeting shows that Facebook is taking a similar strategy with liberal groups.

Facebook agreed to undertake a civil rights audit this spring, including studying its impact on communities of color, amid concerns over discriminatory advertising and voter suppression tactics on the platform. Facebook confirmed that the meeting with activist group Color of Change would be happening but did not comment further.

Representatives from Color of Change, an online racial justice organization, told Vox they’ll discuss four demands they’ve made to Facebook as part of what the group describes as a “multi-year-effort to hold the tech giant accountable.”

Those demands include firing Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s lobbyist who hosted now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation party, and the public relations firms Facebook hired with to go after Color of Change. They also want Facebook to release the opposition research documents and commit to a public release of a civil rights audit of Facebook’s policies and practices.

Brandi Collins-Dexter, senior campaign director at Color of Change, said her group has been at the negotiating table with Facebook “for years,” and that they plan to continue, though she’s not particularly hopeful that talks will advance.

Facebook has developed something of a pattern on apologizing for past behavior but struggling to address the underlying issues. The pattern may be embedded in CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous philosophy, “move fast and break things.”

“While we have been able to get a few policy changes, negotiations with them always feel like one step forward and five steps back,” Collins-Dexter said.

Why is Facebook meeting with Color of Change?
Color of Change was named in a blockbuster New York Times story earlier this month detailing Facebook’s behind-the-scenes efforts to downplay and deny a string of recent controversies, including the Cambridge Analytica data breach and Russia’s 2016 presidential election interference using its platform.

According to the Times, Definers Public Affairs, a Republican opposition research firm contracted by Facebook, pushed reporters to “explore the financial connections” between Soros, a liberal billionaire, and organizations agitating against it, including Color of Change.

“We want answers, we want resolutions. We want to see them stop treating this like a PR crisis and to start treating this like a crisis that’s impacting people on their platforms in very real, tangible ways,” Collins-Dexter told me. She will join Color of Change president Rashad Robinson and managing director of campaign ads Arisha Hatch at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Thursday.

Color of Change is a partner of Freedom from Facebook, a coalition that emerged earlier this year to call for the social media giant’s breakup. It is not an official member. Color of Change has been meeting with Facebook on a variety of issues tied to racial justice and civil rights since 2015, including black activists being “doxxed” online and allegations of the surveillance of black people on the platform.

Soros is a boogeyman to conservatives, and attacks on him often have an anti-Semitic tinge.

“No matter how innocuously you may choose to represent it publicly, pushing the Jewish ‘puppet masters’ trope* was intentional,” Robinson wrote in an open letter to Facebook last week calling for the meeting and asking Facebook for answers regarding the Times report.

Collins-Dexter said that Soros is not one of Color of Change’s top donors. According to campaign finance tracking website OpenSecrets, he donated at least $400,000 to the group in the 2016 election cycle. Dustin Moskovitz, who co-founded Facebook with Zuckerberg, is actually a much bigger supporter — he gave the group more than $1.5 million that cycle.

2018 hasn’t been a great year for Facebook

The already-heightened scrutiny on Facebook has increased in recent weeks amid stories from the Times and the Wall Street Journal about how it’s handled the scandals surrounding it, including WSJ’s report that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has told other Facebook executives that the company is at war. Facebook has defended itself in the face of criticism, and Zuckerberg and Sandberg have said they knew nothing of the opposition research prior to the Times’s story.

The Color of Change meeting signals that Facebook is putting on a charm offensive to try to get some of its detractors back on its side. It’s not all that different than from when Zuckerberg met with conservative leaders in 2016 to ease concerns that the company might be suppressing right-leaning news.

Though Color of Change is a partner of Freedom from Facebook, which is an offshoot of anti-monopoly think tank the Open Markets Institute, that think tank told Vox they have received no such overtures from Facebook.

“Nobody from Facebook has contacted us, so we do not have plans to meet with them this week,” Sarah Miller, deputy director of the Open Markets Institute, said in a phone interview.

She said the group launched an ad campaign last week on Facebook giving potential employees at Facebook the opportunity to blow a whistle or share information with them securely. “That was our next step,” she said.

Facebook certainly has a long way to go in rebuilding trust with its users, with its workers, and with investors. Just over half of Facebook’s employees are optimistic about its future, down from 84 percent a year ago. And Facebook’s stock price has declined by about 40 percent since July.

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FAKE NEWS

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-hired-firm-house-fake-news-shop-combat-pr-crisis-n936591
Nov. 15, 2018 / 12:09 PM EST
By Michael Cappetta, Ben Collins and Jo Ling Kent

PHOTOGRAPH -- The entrance to Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, CaliforniaElijah Nouvelage / Reuters file

The conservative lobbying firm that Facebook hired in the midst of an October 2017 public relations crisis about Russian disinformation included what one former employee told NBC News was an “in-house fake news shop” as part of its operations.

Facebook’s ties to the lobbying firm, Definers Public Affairs*, were first reported on Wednesday in The New York Times, which detailed how the group aimed to “discredit activist protesters [of Facebook], in part by linking them to liberal financier George Soros*,” who has become the subject of widespread right-wing conspiracy theories for his philanthropy work.

The report resulted in widespread criticism and accusations of hypocrisy by Facebook for its use of a lobbying firm that pushed narratives on behalf of its clients disguised as news articles. And some of the firm’s more inflammatory political ads for other clients were removed by Facebook itself for violating its advertising policies.

Definers runs a website called NTK Network*, which has a verified page on Facebook with more than 120,000 followers that publishes and promotes articles about the firm’s clients as well as their competitors.

A former employee of Definers, who asked not to be identified in order to protect professional relationships, told NBC News that NTK Network was “our in-house fake news shop.” Some clients would actively pay for NTK Network’s positive coverage, which the ex-employee said would then be pushed out through Facebook in the hopes of being picked up by larger conservative media outlets such as Breitbart.

One article currently being promoted on Facebook through NTK Network’s page promotes the page as having “the latest stories without the liberal bias,” according to Facebook’s publicly available ad index.

The former employee told NBC News the company would run positive stories about clients “at the end of the day” simply to “fill up space” on NTK Network’s website and feed, even if they didn’t specifically pay for NTK’s suite of services through Definers.

A NTK Network ad on Facebook. -- NTK is currently running an ad to promote a story published on Tuesday headlined “Conservatives Blast ITC Judge’s Ruling on Apple,” which refers to a patent dispute between Apple and Qualcomm. The former employee claimed Qualcomm had a relationship with Definers.

Qualcomm and Apple declined to comment.

The revelation highlights how public relations firms like Definers have been able to move beyond efforts to seed stories in the press on behalf of their clients and can now promote their own articles on Facebook in the guise of news, just as Russia promoted misinformation and divisive political rhetoric through disguised media publications. And now it turns out that Facebook was not just the platform for this kind of opposition work, but had actually hired a practitioner to do so on its behalf.

“After a year of increasingly worrying revelations about the scourge of misinformation on Facebook, it is still shocking to learn that Facebook itself employed the same tactics that bad actors have used to exploit its platform,” Justin Hendrix, executive director at NYC Media Lab, a university consortium focused on media technology, said.

“How can we ever trust this company?” Hendrix said. “It is apparently more willing to use misinformation tactics than to seriously police them.”

NTK Network declined to comment.

The ex-employee said that Facebook hired the firm to research opponents of Facebook following its problems with Russian disinformation. A current employee at Definers, who asked not to be named as they are not authorized to speak on behalf of the company, confirmed that Facebook began its working relationship with the firm in October of 2017.

Flake, Coons bill to protect Mueller fails in Senate

Within the first month of their working relationship, positive coverage of Facebook on NTK Network’s site was already up and running. On Oct. 31, one NTK headline stated: “Russian Content on Facebook Amounted to Just .004% of Total Content.” The article echoes statements delivered to Congress by Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch, who appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October 2017 to talk about Facebook’s role in the Russian disinformation crisis before the 2016 U.S. election.

The site’s positive coverage of Facebook, with no discernible negative content, continued for months, including a story headlined: “Facebook VP: Russian Goal Was to Divide, Not to Swing Election.”

Last month, while the social media giant was still working with Definers, Facebook removed some of NTK Network’s political ads for violating Facebook’s advertising policies, including one with the headline: “Are These Liberal Billionaires the Biggest Threat to Americans’ Second Amendment Rights?”

Other NTK Network ads attacking Democrats from earlier in 2018 were removed for “running without a ‘Paid For By’ label,” according to Facebook’s ad database.

Image: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appears before a Senate hearingFacebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appears before a Senate hearing about privacy and election meddling on Capitol Hill on April 11, 2018.David Butow / for NBC News file

Patrick Gaspard, president of the Open Society Foundations, the nonprofit group funded by Soros, called for Facebook to explain its actions.

“Your methods threaten the very values underpinning our democracy,” Gaspard wrote in a letter addressed to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. “I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss this matter with you in person, and to hear what steps you might take to help remediate the damage done by this deeply misguided — and dangerous — effort carried out at Facebook’s behest.”

When asked about NTK’s working relationship with the social media company, Facebook directed NBC News to a company blog posted late Wednesday night, saying it had ended its relationship with the consulting firm.

“The New York Times is wrong to suggest that we ever asked Definers to pay for or write articles on Facebook’s behalf — or to spread misinformation,” Facebook wrote in its statement.

“Definers did encourage members of the press to look into the funding of ‘Freedom from Facebook,’ an anti-Facebook organization,” the company statement said. “The intention was to demonstrate that it was not simply a spontaneous grassroots campaign, as it claimed, but supported by a well-known critic of our company. To suggest that this was an anti-Semitic attack is reprehensible and untrue.”

Facebook spent a total of $3.3 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2018, according to a public filing.

Facebook did not respond when asked if the company was aware of NTK Network’s existence, or its role in seeding news coverage that attacked clients’ enemies and pushed client narratives on its platform, while the companies worked together.

CORRECTION (Nov. 16, 2018, 5:42 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated Facebook's payment to Definers Public Affairs. Facebook spent $3.3. million on all of its first-quarter lobbying in 2018, not $3.3 million with Definers.

Michael Cappetta
Michael Cappetta is a producer at NBC News covering business and technology.

Ben Collins
Ben Collins covers disinformation, extremism and the internet for NBC News.

Jo Ling Kent
Jo Ling Kent is the business and technology correspondent for NBC News.



https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ntk-network/

NTK NETWORK

RIGHT BIAS

These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Right Bias sources.

Factual Reporting: MIXED

Notes: NTK Network is a news and opinion website that has a strong right wing bias. All stories tend to favor the right and denigrate the left through the use of loaded words and story selection. NTK does a good job of sourcing their information to a variety of Left-Center, Least Biased and Right-Center sources, however they also sources to far right sources that have a mixed record with fact checkers, such as the Washington Free Beacon. In many ways NTK Network is similar to the Washington Free Beacon, in that they take a credible source of information and use spin to create a different narrative. So, the information may be factual, but the message may lack context or mislead with a right wing bias. An excellent example is how NTK Network routinely reported on the Clinton Uranium story when it has been debunked for several years. Overall, we rate NTK Network Right Biased based on story selection/wording and Mixed for factual reporting due to promotion of debunked stories and use of sources that have failed fact checks. (D. Van Zandt 12/15/2017)

Source: https://ntknetwork.com

THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN

POLITICO -- Morning Score
Your guide to the permanent campaign*
GOP researchers get into the news business
By ELENA SCHNEIDER (eschneider@politico.com; @ec_schneider)10/06/2016 10:00 AM EDT
With Maggie Severns, Theodoric Meyer and Kevin Robillard

The following newsletter is an abridged version of Campaign Pro's Morning Score. For an earlier morning read on exponentially more races — and for a more comprehensive aggregation of the day's most important campaign news — sign up for Campaign Pro today. (http://www.politicopro.com/proinfo)

COME ON IN, THE WATER'S WARM — “GOP researchers try the news business,” by Campaign Pro’s Maggie Severns: “When Democrat Ted Strickland joked about the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia during a recent AFL-CIO event, the Ohio Senate candidate met a familiar fate: A recording device spread his words from the meeting to the internet, where news outlets and social media spent a day blasting Strickland’s comment. But the way Strickland’s gaffe traveled was unusual. The audio was obtained by an under-the-radar website called NTK Network — which happens to be run by operatives connected to Republican opposition research firm America Rising, and is headquartered in the same building. ... America Rising co-founder Joe Pounder and three colleagues launched NTK (short for Need to Know) Network this summer as a side project, along with three colleagues who work for America Rising or Definers Public Affairs ... Pounder and others post collections of links and footage they think will raise eyebrows on a clean, image-heavy site, alongside other developing stories and news of the day about topics less germane to conservative political junkies — like the NFL or, this week, Kim Kardashian.” Full story.

MSNBC VIDEOS

http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog
Trump judge pick may be too controversial even for Republicans
11/27/18 09:57PM
Rachel Maddow reports on the delay of the confirmation vote for Donald Trump nominee for U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Thomas Farr, and wonders if his record of apparent racist vote suppression may be an obstacle to gaining sufficient votes.


http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog
Schiff: Manafort double-dealing Mueller a 'very serious blunder'
11/27/18 09:47PM
Rep. Adam Schiff talks with Rachel Maddow about news from the New York Times that Paul Manafort was trying to double-deal Robert Mueller, and what the House Intelligence Committee will investigate of the matter when Democrats take control of the House. watch


Mueller to detail Manafort's 'crimes and lies' in new filing
11/27/18 09:40PM
Rachel Maddow reports on what is expected next in the Paul Manafort case, including a detailed "sentencing submission" from the Robert Mueller team that "sets forth the nature of the defendant's crimes and lies." watch


http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog
NYT: Manafort lawyer told Trump team about Mueller interactions
11/27/18 09:29PM
Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney, talks with Rachel Maddow about the legal implications of new reporting from the New York Times that Paul Manafort likely lost his plea deal with Mueller in part because his lawyer was telling Donald Trump's lawyers about what Mueller was asking Manafort. watch


http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog
Apparent Mueller docs connect dots from Trump camp to Wikileaks
11/27/18 09:12PM
Rachel Maddow reports on apparent drafts of legal documents for a plea agreement for Jerome Corsi with Robert Mueller that describe Corsi's middle-man role between the Trump campaign and Wikileaks. watch


http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog
Elections ending in exact tie show value of every vote single
11/27/18 09:00PM
Rachel Maddow reports on a state house race in Alaska that has ended in an exact tie, and that's not even the first election to end that way this year! watch


http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog
Tuesday's Mini-Report, 11.27.18
By Steve Benen 11/27/18 05:30PM
Today's edition of quick hits:

* Afghanistan: "Three U.S. service members were killed and three were wounded in Afghanistan when an improvised explosive device detonated Tuesday, NATO officials said. An American contractor was also wounded when the device detonated near Ghazni city, the NATO-led Resolute Support mission said in a statement."

* An important scoop: "Two months before WikiLeaks released emails stolen from the Clinton campaign, right-wing conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi sent an email to former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone anticipating the document dump, according to draft court papers obtained by NBC News."

* Seems fair: "Former FBI director James B. Comey apparently isn't too impressed with the mental prowess of President Trump's acting attorney general. Matthew G. Whitaker 'may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer,' Comey said during a radio interview on Monday night in which he sized up the man Trump installed this month to replace ousted attorney general Jeff Sessions."

* A new tax package for the lame-duck session? "House Republicans on Monday evening unexpectedly released a 297-page tax bill they hope to move during the lame-duck session of Congress. The legislation would revive a number of expired tax provisions known as 'extenders,' address glitches in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and make a range of changes to savings- and retirement-related tax provisions."

* Hmm: "The head of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency, General Igor Korobov, has died at aged 62, Russia's defense ministry says. Gen Korobov, who took up the post in 2016, is said to have died after 'a serious and long illness' on Wednesday."

* Noted without comment: In interviews with "Fox & Friends," former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's team "chose the topics for interviews, and knew the questions in advance. In one instance, according to emails revealed in a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Sierra Club and reviewed by The Daily Beast, Pruitt's team even approved part of the show's script."

RELATED:
The border fence stands at the United States-Mexico border along the Rio Grande river in Brownsville, Texas, Aug. 5, 2014. (Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
Mexico requests 'full investigation' after US tear-gas incident
By Steve Benen 11/27/18 12:46PM

You've probably seen the photograph of a migrant mom with her two young children running from a smoking tear-gas canister. It's a memorable image: "Both children are clad only in T-shirts, and one appears to be wearing a pull-up diaper. One child is barefoot, another wears flip-flops."

One of the first questions that come to mind looking at the image is why we're supposed to be afraid of this Honduran family. That, of course, leads to the related question of why U.S. officials fired tear gas at them. Reuters reports that Mexico -- the country we fired the tear gas into -- would like some answers.

Mexico's foreign ministry presented a diplomatic note to the U.S. government on Monday calling for "a full investigation" into what it described as non-lethal weapons directed toward Mexican territory on Sunday, a statement from the ministry said.

U.S. authorities shot tear gas canisters toward migrants in Mexico on Sunday near the border crossing separating the Mexican city of Tijuana from San Diego, California, after some of them attempted to cross into the United States.

I'll be eager to hear the Trump administration's response, because at this point, the defense for the what transpired at the border needs work.

Donald Trump claimed yesterday, for example, that officials "had to" use the chemical agent, adding hours later, "We had tremendous violence -- three Border Patrol people yesterday were very badly hurt through getting hit with rocks and stones."

The president appears to have made that up. As NBC News reported, "That's false, according to the president's own administration. The Department of Homeland Security said Monday that there were no injuries during the weekend clashes in which border agents used tear gas against migrants seeking to enter the U.S."


http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/tuesdays-campaign-round-112718
Tuesday’s Campaign Round-Up, 11.27.18
11/27/18 12:00 PM
By Steve Benen

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* Mississippi will hold its U.S. Senate runoff election today, and Donald Trump headlined two events for incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) yesterday. At one event, the president said of Mike Espy (D), “How does he fit in with Mississippi? I mean, how does he fit in?” For the record, Espy, who is black, is a lifelong Mississippian, whose family has been in the state for generations. He “fits in” fine.

* On a related note, Barack Obama recorded a robocall for Espy, which reached households yesterday. “My name may not be on the ballot, but our future is, and that’s why I believe this is one of the most important elections in our lifetime,” the former president said on the recording. “Make a plan to vote tomorrow. I’m counting on you to be in line to vote before polls close.”

* Will House Democrats pick up their 40th seat of the cycle by flipping a California district that had been called for the Republican? It sure looks like it.

* In Maine’s 2nd congressional district, where Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R) lost as a result of ranked-choice voting, the congressman requested a recount yesterday, citing concerns about “computer-engineered rank voting” and “artificial intelligence.” I have no idea what he’s talking about.

* Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah) conceded yesterday, in her remarks, she said her party’s president has “no relationships, just convenient transactions.”

* Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), one of the leading House Democrats opposed to Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reclaiming the Speaker’s gavel, indicated yesterday that he’s prepared to negotiate with Pelosi about the party’s leadership posts. That suggests his campaign against her isn’t going especially well.

* The latest Gallup poll, released yesterday, found Donald Trump’s approval rating dropping to 38%, while his disapproval rating climbed to 60%, which ties this president’s worst disapproval rating to date.


* And with one week remaining before Georgia’s runoff special election for secretary of state, Trump tweeted his support yesterday for Republican Brad Raffensperger. In the process, the president suggested he doesn’t know what Georgia’s secretary of state does, telling the public that Raffensperger “is tough on Crime and Borders, Loves our Military and Vets. He will be great for jobs!”



http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/mexico-requests-full-investigation-after-us-tear-gas-incident
Mexico requests ‘full investigation’ after US tear-gas incident
11/27/18 12:46 PM—UPDATED 11/27/18 12:50 PM
By Steve Benen

PHOTOGRAPH -- The border fence stands at the United States-Mexico border along the Rio Grande river in Brownsville, Texas, Aug. 5, 2014. Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

You’ve probably seen the photograph of a migrant mom with her two young children running from a smoking tear-gas canister. It’s a memorable image: “Both children are clad only in T-shirts, and one appears to be wearing a pull-up diaper. One child is barefoot, another wears flip-flops.”

One of the first questions that come to mind looking at the image is why we’re supposed to be afraid of this Honduran family. That, of course, leads to the related question of why U.S. officials fired tear gas at them. Reuters reports that Mexico – the country we fired the tear gas into – would like some answers.

Mexico’s foreign ministry presented a diplomatic note to the U.S. government on Monday calling for “a full investigation” into what it described as non-lethal weapons directed toward Mexican territory on Sunday, a statement from the ministry said.

U.S. authorities shot tear gas canisters toward migrants in Mexico on Sunday near the border crossing separating the Mexican city of Tijuana from San Diego, California, after some of them attempted to cross into the United States.

I’ll be eager to hear the Trump administration’s response, because at this point, the defense for the what transpired at the border needs work.

Donald Trump claimed yesterday, for example, that officials “had to” use the chemical agent, adding hours later, “We had tremendous violence – three Border Patrol people yesterday were very badly hurt through getting hit with rocks and stones.”

The president appears to have made that up. As NBC News reported, “That’s false, according to the president’s own administration. The Department of Homeland Security said Monday that there were no injuries during the weekend clashes in which border agents used tear gas against migrants seeking to enter the U.S.”

As the Washington Post reported, Trump added yesterday that some of those who were tear-gassed were “grabbers” who took others’ children to protect themselves, but the evidence to substantiate the claims doesn’t exist.

In the meantime, the White House and its allies have invested quite a bit of time arguing that tear gas is effectively meaningless. The president himself called it “very minor” and “very safe.” (It’s neither minor nor safe, especially for young children.)

In conservative media, one Fox News guest said of pepper spray, “It’s natural. You could actually put it on your nachos and eat it.” Conservatives have peddled this line before, and it’s plainly untrue.

As for Mexico’s request for “a full investigation” into Sunday’s incident, we don’t yet know whether the White House will agree to such scrutiny.