This Week in Misinformation: Earthquake Clickbait, Twitter Hearing Fails, Pence Subpoenaed
9 February 2023
This Prism newsletter strives to be the paper of record for all that’s happening in misinformation in the United States. For any citizen whose life is impacted by misinformation, it helps you see how storylines evolve from multiple, sourced angles on important stories in one place. For amateur and professional misinformation watchers, it is your go-to resource for updates on peers, platforms, propagandists, and politicians. Learn more about Prism and our other products on our Substack page, follow us on Twitter, or like us on Facebook!
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Reliability scores for media outlets cited in the summary are in parentheses for each, courtesy of the terrific folks at Ad Fontes Media.
Now, on to our top stories.
Your periodic reminder that natural disasters like the Turkey earthquake are always accompanied by fake images and videos.
There’s the video supposedly showing a Turkish nuclear plant exploding after the quake that is actually from that big Beirut blast from a couple years back (@proaletheia via Twitter).
Or, if you like, the repurposing of 2011 Japanese tsunami footage to get clicks in the aftermath of this week’s calamity (@billdmccarthy via Twitter).
In fact there is no shortage at all of examples (@NickHardinges via Twitter). My point? When crises hit, exercise your skepticism about the things that show up in your feed and try to spend less time with news sources that feed you junk.
House Oversight Republicans came up empty-handed from their hearing with Twitter execs.
The panel focused its first public hearing on getting to the bottom of the Tale of Hunter’s Laptop that has circulated in conservative circles for more than two years (USA Today, 41.31), specifically the part which asserts that wildly liberal Twitter employees acted to suppress the New York Post (33.59) story about the laptop out of political malice. These leftists, according to the lore, ruined a perfectly good October surprise because they wanted the public to vote for Joe Biden.
If that makes sense to you, then I’ve done a better job than the GOP members prosecuting the case, messily, in the hearing (Washington Post, 38.35). It is a cast of characters and collection of catchphrases that make sense only if you have already been following the accusations pretty closely. In other words, not geared at persuading anyone who doesn’t already believe.
The witnesses did not corroborate (PBS, 47.92) the apparently fabricated portions of the questioners’ preferred narrative, which portrays them as partisan villains probably working for the FBI (NPR, 43.38) or perhaps directly for Democrats and Joe Biden. Most of the new information actually had to do with Donald Trump asking for and sometimes getting special treatment with respect to Twitter’s content moderation (New York Times, 42.50).
Sidebar as to the appearance of Yoel Roth: he testified about the experience he has had with respect to his former boss turning on and spreading lies about him. Roth was forced from his home and he and other Twits were harassed because Uncle Elon endorsed the theory that he is a pedophile (Forbes, 41.15).
The special counsel investigating Donald Trump is looking for information about January 6th from Mike Pence.
DoJ’s Jack Smith has been in talks for weeks or more with the former VP’s team about providing documents and testimony about what happened before and during the Capitol attack, culminating this week in the issuance of a subpoena for Pence (New York Times, 42.50). Pence was the subject of extensive misinformation related to his role in counting the Electoral College vote and the mob labeled him a traitor and threatened him as a result.
Though investigators have compelled evidence from sitting lawmakers like Scott Perry and pillow millionaires like Mike Lindell, this is the highest profile development since the House of Representatives committee examining the insurrection wrapped up its work--for which Pence did not give his testimony and said lawmakers had “no right” to it (CBS News, 44.28).
A quick grab bag before we go: China gets caught doing some deepfake stuff; Seymour Hersh puts out a huge, very thinly sourced bombshell story about the explosion of the Nord Stream pipeline, and Senator Mike Lee is all over it; President Biden played it loose with economic claims in the State of the Union; Harvard announces it will shut down its disinformation research effort; chatbots are misinformation machines; eggs; George Santos, Spider-Man, and Mitt Romney; the Ukraine war and Naftali Bennett; some crazy stuff about the Chinese spy balloon (also featured in our first-ever Prism Short!); and Elon Musk goes all out against the State Department’s office that looks at foreign disinformation.
All that, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin