Leading The Charge On Ending Fake News

Bros4America is implementing a new policy that aims to lead the charge on ending the fake news epidemic, one that contributed to the electoral college loss of our superb Democratic nominee for president in the 2016 presidential election, and will continue to have an adverse affect on our politics if we do not become the change we wish to see.

From now on we are placing a hard ban on fake news sites posted to our social media accounts. We will no longer accept posts to our Facebook group that come from designated fake news sources, and will not share these items to our social media. We encourage you all to do the same. Take some time to review the Daily Dot’s definitive list of hard banned sites.

And y’all, save us your angry letters: your free speech rights do not extend to posting on message boards and we must moderate our boards to protect against the harmful effects of proliferating these stories.

We do realize that at Bros4America we sometimes report on and aggregate news items. Those items will always be designated “News.” Under the strictest of standards, anything that remotely resembles opinion editorializing will placed in “Opinion” category.

For our followers and readers, we encourage you to take active steps to discern what is fake news versus real news.

Although most fake news is generated for the right, some fake news—and “click-bait” sites—are generated for the left. Some websites that often fall into the category of clickbait include: Addictinginfo, usuncut, dailynewsbin, and palmerreport are four of the top click-bait sites.

It is important that we not post fake news- and be extremely critical of click-bait- even when it supports our opinions. If we spread fake news, we are guilty of helping to destroy America’s objective investigative press. So let’s not do that.

But how can we tell what news is fake and what is real?

Let’s use this piece of excellent investigative journalism as an example of how to vet news from an unfamiliar site to tell whether it is fake or real:

• Hard data
  • This article links to the (site’s own) original investigative piece by Laurelai Bailey. Bailey explains in that piece how she’s used common Linux commands to discover who owns Wikileaks servers.Two of the Wikileaks servers are Russian.This data also tells us when the Russian servers were added to the Wikileaks system: Sept 30, 2016, one week before the Podesta emails were leaked.

• Objectivity
  • Bailey does not leap to conclusions or simply give us validation of what we want to hear. She uses rigorous objective journalism to examine the questions raised by her data.Why would Putin allow Wikileaks to suddenly—on that pivotal date—begin using Russian servers, when he controls the Russian Internet? Out of the goodness of his heart? Or because he stands to gain by it? why do we believe one motivation over the other? what might he stand to gain?

• Strong Logic
  • IF/AND/THEN are the foundations of logic:IF Putin controls the Russian Internet
  • AND he allows Wikileaks to use Russian servers
  • AND the date specified between Wikileaks and those Russian servers is significant to the US election
  • AND Putin’s interference in our election has been verified by 17 of our intelligence agencies
  • THEN we can safely conclude that Putin not only knows Wikileaks is using Russian servers but gains something by it, that the date is not a coincidence, and that what he gains is probably linked to his interference in our election.
  • When analyzing logic, remember that IF does not automatically lead to THEN.
  • Always look for the AND.

• Further Reading
  • Bailey includes links to more hard data that elaborate upon her data and conclusions.

• Credentials
  • Bailey’s credentials are also very good—she is an original Wikileaks activist. This means she knows how they get things done. So, although we may never have heard of patribotics.wordpress.com before, we can infer that it is a credible site that uses hard data, strong logic, and good credentials for objective investigative journalism.

• Other Resources
  • University of California Berkeley Library’s Comprehensive Guide to Fake News/Real News.