November 16, 2017 • 9 mins
George Noory and media analyst Mark Dice discuss the origins of the phenomenon of fake news in politics and world events, and how not to be tricked by a growing stream of disinformation.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcasts.
Become a Coast Insider and you can hear this complete conversation,
as well as recent shows featuring guests discussing new cases
of the troubling cattle mutilation phenomenon, worries, some instances of
clandestine c i, a torture, and the evidence that the
Lost City of Atlantis may have really once existed. Check
(00:21):
out these programs and many other fascinating episodes waiting for
you and the Coast to Coast archive by heading over
to Coast to Coast a m dot com and signing
up for Coast Insider. Now here's a highlight from Coast
to Coast AM on iHeart Radio and welcome back to
Coast to Coast. George Norri with you. Mark Dice with
us for the next couple hours. His latest work, The
(00:42):
True Story of Fake News. The rest of the title
is important How mainstream media manipulates millions now. Mark is
an author media analyst. He specializes in exposing secret societies
and the power of mainstream media and celebrities have on
shaping our culture. In our lives is YouTube channel has
received more than a hundred million views. He's been featured
(01:04):
on a variety of television shows like Our Ancient Aliens,
Conspiracy Theory with the Jesse Ventura, and Secret Societies of Hollywood. Mark,
welcome back. It's always good to have you on the show,
Always good to be with you. Certainly is a strange, exciting,
and sometimes scary time to be alive. Tonight's topic is
certainly fitting for our current climate in the country. We're
(01:26):
gonna look at some past historical events of fake news,
but give us the perspective mark of the definition of
what fake news is. You know, fake news it has
been around for hundreds of years. Will get into some
of the earlier examples. It was called different things. It
was called propaganda, called a hoax, called even conspiracy theories.
(01:48):
But as we all unfortunately no now, immediately after the election,
the term was sort of coined and propelled to the
consciousness of everybody in the country, and it sort of
took got a whole new meaning. As really an example
of that the ultimate goal I think of this whole
(02:09):
hysteria not to say that there isn't a problem with
fake news. Now that we're all connected through Facebook and
social media, anybody can post anything and can have it
go viral and be seen and heard by just as
many people as something on the network news. But we'll see,
we can get into it later of the show that
this is really kind of a disguise in order to
(02:30):
kind of clamp down on the rising independent alternative media,
to try to drive people back to the to the mainstream,
and we'll see that most of the fake news really
isn't coming from some random websites or the Russians, that
it is coming from the mainstream media. It's it's planned
(02:51):
out as well. Listen it, this is not just a
fluke or an accident. I've seen two different kinds of
fake news. Mark one is very deliberate, planned, methodical releases
of stories. Will get into that. And then I've seen
things where people are just playing around having fun. They've
killed off a celebrity. It goes all over the place.
(03:13):
I mean even I almost got duped one day when
I looked and I'm not even mentioned the name of
the celebrity. I don't want to kill the poor guy
off again. But he pops up on the website and
he's dead, and I go, oh my god, I haven't
heard anything about this. And then you check and it's
not real. Right after the election, they compiled a list
of maybe the top ten or so viral fake news stories,
(03:35):
and I mean eight out of ten of them weren't
even really fake news. They were more or less satire
or parody. And perhaps the title caught people's attention, and
people read maybe the first paragraph of the article, and
they didn't get to the meat of it where it
really starts to just go off into left field, and
it should be obvious to anyone that it's something like
the onion or or a satire and making fun of something.
(03:58):
And these were examples. I mean, sixty minutes did an
investigation into fake news and one of the examples that
they showed was a story about how Trump got a
kolonoscopy and they the doctor discovered a brain tumor. I mean,
it's it's obvious what that joke is. He's got his
head up his rear. I mean, but this is one
(04:20):
of the examples. Another one was, uh, somebody at a hotel,
a maid walked in with Trump and he was, uh,
you know, he was doing drugs and he had some
hookers there, and and and then it gets into and
really quite hilarious where she saw a dog on the floor,
but she thought it was his hair and it it
isn't fake news, it's a parody. It's satire, click bait.
(04:44):
You know, some of these fake news stories during the
election did get shared by some people in the campaign.
Court Lewandowski one time campaign retweeted a fake news story
from a website that was designed to look like an
ABC or an NBC news web said they had a
different extension instead of the dot com, which obviously has
taken it was you know, dot com dot d It was.
(05:08):
It was a hoaxing website. But the amount of fake
news that was spread is in no way comparable to
what people actually believed. Well, I was going to ask
you that why are they so gullible? It's not that
they're people even believe it. Just because somebody clicks on
something that someone shares on Facebook doesn't mean that they
(05:29):
actually believe it. It's it's a clickbait title out of curiosity.
Someone clicks on it. Most people know that it's fake.
You can see one of the top thumbed up comments
in people's Facebook post that says this is clearly fake.
So just because people were clicking on these viral stories,
just because they went to viral doesn't mean that anybody
actually believed them. And there there's been studies by different universities,
(05:52):
different independent research firms that have found that most people
didn't believe the fake news. Well that's that's good, But
I would guess, based on demographics, more younger people would
be more apt to believe these stories than older people.
What do you think, Yeah, because they don't have the
life experience. They obviously haven't been around the globe that
(06:15):
many times, so they're there. They don't have the worldly
knowledge and the historical base, so that they are and
they're in this online world, this this fifteen second news
cycle where they click and retweet something before they even
really read through it. They want to share it and
then somebody else shares it. The viral ability of these things,
but the the actual effects of this fake news, most
(06:38):
of which was parody, satire. There were some opportunists that
were putting out fake news, hoping not necessarily to influence
the election, but to just make a buck off of
advertising by driving people to their websites. Good point, now,
isn't this would you call fake news? Some of it dangerous? Well,
(07:01):
some of it is, and particularly in the ecosystems of
social media because the stories tweets become news. Tweets from random,
unknown users that have been unconfirmed can go viral, can
cause issues to start trending, can cause a frenzy. You know.
We we we've seen multiple times where actually parity Twitter
(07:24):
accounts on online have tweeted out parodies from let's say,
the Republic the government of North Korea, and these have
been picked up by newspapers like USA Today and The
New York Times. They just don't fact check these things.
Every time there's a mass shooting, these trolls, it's an
(07:45):
inside joke to them. They'll tweet out photos of this
individual and say that the shooter has been identified as
Sam Hyde, and people believe that, spreading it around, and so,
I mean, it's it's a it is a problem, but
it's not the problem that the mainstream media is framing
it because they have the power. And now Facebook, Twitter,
(08:07):
I mean, they are media company social media, it's right
in the name. But these companies drive a lot of
news into the mainstream, into television, into print based off
of what's trending, and sometimes, as we can maybe get
into later, those trending lists aren't exactly organic. It's not
necessarily what everybody is tweeting about or posting about. There's
(08:31):
some artificial inflation and suppression in those trending modules. So
you can't even really you can't even really believe what's
trending as being something that's one of the top stories
people are talking about. Because Facebook employees have blown the
whistle that they manipulate the top trending list and they
(08:51):
were suppressing certain stories and certain news outlets. Twitter, their
chief legal counsel actually just admitted in his testimony to
the congressional committee investigating the Russia alleged collaboration that they
suppressed tweets up to fifty of them when John Podesta
(09:12):
emails were leaked, when the d n C emails were leaked,
So they were suppressing of those tweets trying to prevent
those stories from going viral. So there's a whole censorship issue.
We're in a really strange Orwellian world. It's a it's
a new media world. It's no longer just a few
(09:33):
television stations and a couple of newspapers. It's a it's
a very strange media landscape that we're in, and that's
why it's important that people become media literate so that
they don't get swept away in some massive wave of disinformation.
Listen to more Coast to Coast a m. Every weeknight
at one a m. Eastern, and go to Coast to
Coast am dot com for more
Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcasts.
Become a Coast Insider and you can hear this complete conversation,
as well as recent shows featuring guests discussing new cases
of the troubling cattle mutilation phenomenon, worries, some instances of
clandestine c i, a torture, and the evidence that the
Lost City of Atlantis may have really once existed. Check
(00:21):
out these programs and many other fascinating episodes waiting for
you and the Coast to Coast archive by heading over
to Coast to Coast a m dot com and signing
up for Coast Insider. Now here's a highlight from Coast
to Coast AM on iHeart Radio and welcome back to
Coast to Coast. George Norri with you. Mark Dice with
us for the next couple hours. His latest work, The
(00:42):
True Story of Fake News. The rest of the title
is important How mainstream media manipulates millions now. Mark is
an author media analyst. He specializes in exposing secret societies
and the power of mainstream media and celebrities have on
shaping our culture. In our lives is YouTube channel has
received more than a hundred million views. He's been featured
(01:04):
on a variety of television shows like Our Ancient Aliens,
Conspiracy Theory with the Jesse Ventura, and Secret Societies of Hollywood. Mark,
welcome back. It's always good to have you on the show,
Always good to be with you. Certainly is a strange, exciting,
and sometimes scary time to be alive. Tonight's topic is
certainly fitting for our current climate in the country. We're
(01:26):
gonna look at some past historical events of fake news,
but give us the perspective mark of the definition of
what fake news is. You know, fake news it has
been around for hundreds of years. Will get into some
of the earlier examples. It was called different things. It
was called propaganda, called a hoax, called even conspiracy theories.
(01:48):
But as we all unfortunately no now, immediately after the election,
the term was sort of coined and propelled to the
consciousness of everybody in the country, and it sort of
took got a whole new meaning. As really an example
of that the ultimate goal I think of this whole
(02:09):
hysteria not to say that there isn't a problem with
fake news. Now that we're all connected through Facebook and
social media, anybody can post anything and can have it
go viral and be seen and heard by just as
many people as something on the network news. But we'll see,
we can get into it later of the show that
this is really kind of a disguise in order to
(02:30):
kind of clamp down on the rising independent alternative media,
to try to drive people back to the to the mainstream,
and we'll see that most of the fake news really
isn't coming from some random websites or the Russians, that
it is coming from the mainstream media. It's it's planned
(02:51):
out as well. Listen it, this is not just a
fluke or an accident. I've seen two different kinds of
fake news. Mark one is very deliberate, planned, methodical releases
of stories. Will get into that. And then I've seen
things where people are just playing around having fun. They've
killed off a celebrity. It goes all over the place.
(03:13):
I mean even I almost got duped one day when
I looked and I'm not even mentioned the name of
the celebrity. I don't want to kill the poor guy
off again. But he pops up on the website and
he's dead, and I go, oh my god, I haven't
heard anything about this. And then you check and it's
not real. Right after the election, they compiled a list
of maybe the top ten or so viral fake news stories,
(03:35):
and I mean eight out of ten of them weren't
even really fake news. They were more or less satire
or parody. And perhaps the title caught people's attention, and
people read maybe the first paragraph of the article, and
they didn't get to the meat of it where it
really starts to just go off into left field, and
it should be obvious to anyone that it's something like
the onion or or a satire and making fun of something.
(03:58):
And these were examples. I mean, sixty minutes did an
investigation into fake news and one of the examples that
they showed was a story about how Trump got a
kolonoscopy and they the doctor discovered a brain tumor. I mean,
it's it's obvious what that joke is. He's got his
head up his rear. I mean, but this is one
(04:20):
of the examples. Another one was, uh, somebody at a hotel,
a maid walked in with Trump and he was, uh,
you know, he was doing drugs and he had some
hookers there, and and and then it gets into and
really quite hilarious where she saw a dog on the floor,
but she thought it was his hair and it it
isn't fake news, it's a parody. It's satire, click bait.
(04:44):
You know, some of these fake news stories during the
election did get shared by some people in the campaign.
Court Lewandowski one time campaign retweeted a fake news story
from a website that was designed to look like an
ABC or an NBC news web said they had a
different extension instead of the dot com, which obviously has
taken it was you know, dot com dot d It was.
(05:08):
It was a hoaxing website. But the amount of fake
news that was spread is in no way comparable to
what people actually believed. Well, I was going to ask
you that why are they so gullible? It's not that
they're people even believe it. Just because somebody clicks on
something that someone shares on Facebook doesn't mean that they
(05:29):
actually believe it. It's it's a clickbait title out of curiosity.
Someone clicks on it. Most people know that it's fake.
You can see one of the top thumbed up comments
in people's Facebook post that says this is clearly fake.
So just because people were clicking on these viral stories,
just because they went to viral doesn't mean that anybody
actually believed them. And there there's been studies by different universities,
(05:52):
different independent research firms that have found that most people
didn't believe the fake news. Well that's that's good, But
I would guess, based on demographics, more younger people would
be more apt to believe these stories than older people.
What do you think, Yeah, because they don't have the
life experience. They obviously haven't been around the globe that
(06:15):
many times, so they're there. They don't have the worldly
knowledge and the historical base, so that they are and
they're in this online world, this this fifteen second news
cycle where they click and retweet something before they even
really read through it. They want to share it and
then somebody else shares it. The viral ability of these things,
but the the actual effects of this fake news, most
(06:38):
of which was parody, satire. There were some opportunists that
were putting out fake news, hoping not necessarily to influence
the election, but to just make a buck off of
advertising by driving people to their websites. Good point, now,
isn't this would you call fake news? Some of it dangerous? Well,
(07:01):
some of it is, and particularly in the ecosystems of
social media because the stories tweets become news. Tweets from random,
unknown users that have been unconfirmed can go viral, can
cause issues to start trending, can cause a frenzy. You know.
We we we've seen multiple times where actually parity Twitter
(07:24):
accounts on online have tweeted out parodies from let's say,
the Republic the government of North Korea, and these have
been picked up by newspapers like USA Today and The
New York Times. They just don't fact check these things.
Every time there's a mass shooting, these trolls, it's an
(07:45):
inside joke to them. They'll tweet out photos of this
individual and say that the shooter has been identified as
Sam Hyde, and people believe that, spreading it around, and so,
I mean, it's it's a it is a problem, but
it's not the problem that the mainstream media is framing
it because they have the power. And now Facebook, Twitter,
(08:07):
I mean, they are media company social media, it's right
in the name. But these companies drive a lot of
news into the mainstream, into television, into print based off
of what's trending, and sometimes, as we can maybe get
into later, those trending lists aren't exactly organic. It's not
necessarily what everybody is tweeting about or posting about. There's
(08:31):
some artificial inflation and suppression in those trending modules. So
you can't even really you can't even really believe what's
trending as being something that's one of the top stories
people are talking about. Because Facebook employees have blown the
whistle that they manipulate the top trending list and they
(08:51):
were suppressing certain stories and certain news outlets. Twitter, their
chief legal counsel actually just admitted in his testimony to
the congressional committee investigating the Russia alleged collaboration that they
suppressed tweets up to fifty of them when John Podesta
(09:12):
emails were leaked, when the d n C emails were leaked,
So they were suppressing of those tweets trying to prevent
those stories from going viral. So there's a whole censorship issue.
We're in a really strange Orwellian world. It's a it's
a new media world. It's no longer just a few
(09:33):
television stations and a couple of newspapers. It's a it's
a very strange media landscape that we're in, and that's
why it's important that people become media literate so that
they don't get swept away in some massive wave of disinformation.
Listen to more Coast to Coast a m. Every weeknight
at one a m. Eastern, and go to Coast to
Coast am dot com for more
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