Fake News

Media Matters reports: DR. HARVEY RISCH (GUEST): Honestly, I don’t know how he could say the masks are a lifesaving measure when there’s no evidence to suggest that. Whether there’s benefit or not scientists argue about, that’s fine. But to call them a lifesaving measure is totally beyond the pale of anything that is scientific and knowable. I think they’re …

Media Matters has the transcript: We spent all day trying to locate the famous QAnon, which, in the end, we learned is not even a website. If it’s out there, we could not find it. Then, we checked Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter feed because we have heard she traffics in disinformation, CNN told us, but nothing there. Next, we called …

Law & Crime reports: A federal judge in California has ordered Herring Networks, the parent company of far-right conservative media organization One America News Network (OAN), to pay MSNBC and host Rachel Maddow $250,000 in attorney’s fees stemming from a defamation lawsuit that was dismissed last year. Herring in July 2019 filed a lawsuit against Maddow which claimed the liberal …

The Hill reports: Twitter on Saturday issued a permanent suspension for the account run by Jim Hoft, founder and editor-in-chief of far-right news website Gateway Pundit, for violations of its “civic integrity policy.” A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the news to The Hill, citing “repeated violations” of its policy that bars users from tweeting messages “for the purpose of manipulating or …

Business Insider reports: Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems sent letters Thursday asking Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Parler to preserve posts by more than a dozen high-profile far-right people and news outlets as the company signals plans to file more defamation lawsuits. The lawyers said President Donald Trump; his campaign; the lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Lin Wood; MyPillow CEO …

The Daily Dot reports: Far-right website the Gateway Pundit led its readers to think that if you get an anal swab coronavirus test, you could be left walking like a penguin. Because of their need to be preposterously masculine, they are stoking concerns over the prospects of a COVID-19 anal test coming to the United States with an intensity typically …

The Austin Statesman reports: The Texas Supreme Court on Friday rejected, without comment, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ attempt to toss out four defamation lawsuits by parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. The parents sued in Travis County, where Jones and his InfoWars website are based, arguing that they were defamed and suffered emotional distress after InfoWars …

The Associated Press reports: White supremacists plotted to attack power stations in the southeastern U.S., and an Ohio teenager who allegedly shared the plan said he wanted the group to be “operational” on a fast-tracked timeline if President Donald Trump were to lose his re-election bid, the FBI alleges in an affidavit that was mistakenly unsealed. The Ohio teen, who …

Yahoo News reports: Just as star anchor Sean Hannity and other high-profile Fox News figures were due to be deposed about their promotion of a bogus conspiracy theory about the death of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, the cable network last month threw in the towel and moved to settle a lawsuit brought by Rich’s parents that threatened …

“There’s a lot of opinion hosts, and they have all sorts of things that I don’t subscribe to. I do believe in free discourse, I believe in people having their opinion. “We’re not saying that that is accurate. In fact, we’ve gone out of our way in our news reporting to say we have no evidence. “We have gone out …

Axios reports: YouTube has barred One America News Network from posting new videos for a week and stripped it of its ability to make money off existing content after the Trump-friendly channel uploaded a video promoting a phony cure for COVID-19, YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi tells Axios. YouTube has been criticized for allowing OANN to spread misinformation using its platform, …

The New York Times reports: On Friday morning, President Trump shared a seemingly innocuous article on Twitter. The piece said that his sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau, had publicly voiced her support for her brother amid his baseless claims that he won the 2020 election. “Thank you Elizabeth,” Mr. Trump wrote to his sister, who has long avoided the spotlight. “LOVE!” …

Fox News reports: The Republican National Committee (RNC) on Friday filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that the censorship of the New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings and former Vice President Joe Biden’s alleged knowledge of those dealings amounts to an “illegal corporate in-kind political contribution” to the Biden campaign, Fox News …

The Washington Post reports: YouTube on Thursday became the latest social media giant to take steps to stop QAnon, the sprawling pro-Trump conspiracy theory community whose online fantasies about a cabal of satanic pedophiles running the world have spilled over into offline violence. The company announced in a blog post that it was updating its hate speech and harassment policies …

The Hill reports: Some Republican lawmakers lashed out at Twitter and Facebook on Wednesday over the platforms’ decisions to limit the spread of a New York Post story about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. The GOP lawmakers characterized the moves as censorship and renewed their allegations that social media platforms have an anti-conservative bias. Sen. Josh Hawley …

“America is in a war for its very survival and now our president battling against the Communist Chinese, the globalists, and others in open worldwide economic war is being told he’s got to stay locked up for 14 days legitimizing this entire giant fraud. “What we know is 90% of the tests are false positive, conservatively. What we know is …

As previously reported: Fox17 Nashville took down the article that generated the right-wing media conspiracy theories. The station issued a statement to CNN’s Oliver Darcy saying in part: “In a segment that aired earlier this week, we incorrectly asserted that Mayor Cooper’s office withheld COVID-19 data from the public, which implied that there had been a cover up. We want …

The Daily Beast reports: A new study purporting to show that the novel coronavirus was manufactured in a Chinese lab was published by a pair of nonprofit groups linked to Steve Bannon, the former top Trump strategist now facing felony fraud charges. The study, co-authored by a Chinese virologist who fled Hong Kong this year, claims that “laboratory manipulation is …

The Daily Beast reports: Fox News star Sean Hannity was once his network’s most prominent booster of conspiracy theories about murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, only stopping the rumor-mongering after Rich’s grieving parents publicly begged him to knock it off. Now, Hannity will have to answer questions, under oath, about Fox’s coverage of Rich’s death. Hannity, along with …

Politico reports: George Soros directs a “Deep State” global conspiracy network. A Joe Biden win would put America in control of “Jews and Blacks.” The Democratic nominee has a pedophilia problem. Wild disinformation like this is inundating Spanish-speaking residents of South Florida ahead of Election Day, clogging their WhatsApp chats, Facebook feeds and even radio airwaves at a saturation level …