This Week in Misinformation: Prigozhin Goes, Climate Tropes, Surrender/Surrender
31 August 2023
Keeping up on misinformation is basically the best thing you can do for your brain. So glad you’re here!
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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.
The man called Prigozhin is no more. Or is he?
The disinformation mastermind and Wagner Group’s mercenary leader was on board a plane that crashed leaving no survivors (New York Times, 42.00). Prigozhin attempted a coup against Putin and fled Russia earlier this year. I won’t bother linking to Moscow’s winking denials that it was involved in the plane’s downing.
Misinformation followed Prigozhin to the end and beyond with one notably false theory that the plane’s pilot had suffered a vaccine reaction.
Other conspiracy ideation around the incident included a possibly fake missile strike thing (Reuters, 46.30), a probably fake "it was all faked” thing (@Shayan86 via Threads), accompanied closely by a definitely fake BBC report claiming Prigozhin is still alive (Lead Stories, -).
The Maui wildfire disaster and Hurricane Idalia have brought out the familiar climate denialist tropes.
How have falsehoods about these summertime natural disasters manifest? It’s a lot of misattributed videos and recycled old photos (New York Times).
More than a few, almost universally on the right, pushed back on suggestions that a hotter planet is resulting in more fires and severe weather, for example Republican presidential primary hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy’s nonsensical claim that more die from climate policies than climate change (PolitiFact, 45.22).
None of this is at all new, of course; conspiracy theories always proliferate after disasters for reasons that will always be with us (CNN, 42.17).
Drama in Fulton County as Trump and co-defendants descended on the federal courthouse to be processed.
The Georgia case against the former president and the most egregious conspirators who tried to help him overturn the 2020 election saw all the defendants surrender this week (Associated Press). While a couple tried to delay or avoid arrest (Politico, 42.47), and another couple including Trump are trying to go separate ways because some want a speedy trial and he does not (CNBC, ). Meanwhile, Arizona might soon follow Georgia as it investigates the Trump fake electors there (CBS News, 41.66).
Media coverage of focused on Trump, especially the first-ever ex-presidential mug shot that quickly blew up the Internet (Forbes, 40.26) and created widespread merchandising opportunities that Team Trump demanded it be cut in on (Axios, ). Trump’s supporters tried to manufacture a “backfire” of sorts, for example with a mural of the mug shot that popped up in Atlanta, but they probably should have waited until the guy finished painting because it ultimately was not an homage to the newly edgy-cool rich guy who was arrested (FOX 5 Atlanta, -).
Meanwhile the January 6th-related charges being brought by the federal government will be brought in a trial in DC starting on March 4th (New York Times). None of this has stoked any observable reflection or easing up on the false election fraud narrative (Associated Press, 46.34) that fueled so many of the crimes.
Can you say grab bag? Friend of the ‘letter Amanda goes writes about being undercover with the young Nazis and Nazi-adjacents who are trying to take over the Republican Party; DeSantis is forced to defend himself against a Trump inception that he will soon drop out; aging country star Travis Tritt tries to recycle some old false stuff about Georgia’s governor; a judge rules that Rudy Giuliani defamed Georgia election workers in his zeal to help Trump overturn 2020; a picture purports to show President Biden asleep at a memorial event in Maui; man who shot store owner for flying Pride flag, unsurprisingly, turns out to be a believer in conspiracy theories; Vivek pretends to be a 9/11 truther, then lies about being misquoted to that effect; Alex Jones spearheaded a new crusade against an imaginary COVID crackdown; that Bronny James medical event was because of a congenital heart defect, not a vaccine; all of Big Tech follows Elon Musk's lead on political misinformation content policy, maybe because that’s easier than continuing to do something about that stuff; Meta disrupts large-scale Chinese influence campaign; Google moves to put watermarks on AI-generated images to help people tell what’s not real (good!); and unfortunately yes, government websites are loaded with misinformation, which is a problem for a lot of reasons including that AI is training on that data.
All that, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin