There has been attention raised recently about fake news stories on social media — particularly Facebook — which are solely creations to influence opinion.

However, manufactured accounts appear on mainstream news channels as well: the video above is about fake news stories being broadcast at present about eastern Aleppo in Syria, all of which are designed to make the Russians look bad, when in fact the various Islamic extremist rebel groups backed by the CIA, Saudia Arabia and Qatar are the villains.  The most notorious news channels for distorted and biased news are Al Jazeera, CNN, Fox News and, regrettably, the BBC which at one time was considered reliably truthful.

Close to home, we are poorly served for news, too.  We don’t watch TV One News and haven’t for a long time.  Newshub (TV3) is a little better, but not a lot.  Both are only interested in short sound bites and in-depth reporting is almost a thing of the past. Radio NZ isn’t too bad.

In Kapiti the two local newspapers are there to get advertising and don’t rely at all on subscribers as all copies are distributed free.  Both the Kapiti News and Kapiti Observer are content to report verbatim media releases from the council (Dougherty’s ‘communications team’) and even worse, property developers, both of which require investigative journalism but don’t get it.  Hence the continuing role for independent news websites and blogs like ours.

Update

Clearly the off-duty guard who assassinated the Russian ambassador in Ankara, Turkey, today was influenced by the false reports. Who benefits from them?  The arms dealers who supplied the rebels backed by the CIA certainly do — and nine of the top 10 arms manufacturers in the USA gave huge amounts to Hillary Clinton’s presidential election campaign.