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Category: Pseudo News

Did a Congressman really say we do not need satellites because we have the Weather Channel?

Did a Congressman really say we do not need satellites because we have the Weather Channel?

The 2017 social media meme: 2017 True Story: A Congressman was at a hearing for a request for funding for GOES satellites. He asked the scientist why do we need to spend money on satellites when you can turn on the weather channel and get the weather! TL;DR Summary This quote appears in 2000 and 2007 and 2011 and has nothing to do with events in 2017. As we will see, it appears several people who claim to have been…

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‘Can You Hear Me?’ Scam Warning is probably fake news

‘Can You Hear Me?’ Scam Warning is probably fake news

Dozens of news outlets reported on a purported scam wherein fraudsters supposedly falsify charges by randomly calling people and asking ‘Can you hear me?’ Source: ‘Can You Hear Me?’ Scam Warning CBS News prompted the latest round of this story. As Snopes notes, no one can identify an actual victim of the purported scam. Of course, it is a good idea to say as little as possible to telemarketers. However, it might not be a great idea to share the…

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False: Trump Administration deleted “Climate change”, “LGBTQ” from WhiteHouse.gov

False: Trump Administration deleted “Climate change”, “LGBTQ” from WhiteHouse.gov

TL;DR Summary The Daily Beast reported the Trump administration deleted references to “climate change”, “LGBTQ”, “health care” and “civil rights” and other topics from the whitehouse.gov web site. Fake news and “real” news web sites promoted the theory that these topics were deleted as part of an upcoming period of darkness under the Trump administration. My Twitter feed was absolutely filled with links to these stories. Reality: As part of the change in administrations, the U.S. National Archives archived the Obama record…

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How “public relations” uses propaganda

How “public relations” uses propaganda

While much social media propaganda is created by amateurs, much is also created by professionals who have titles like “Public Relations Officer”, “Communications Director”, “Press liaison”, “Spokesperson” and what not. Here is an example of how the MPAA planned to organized a propaganda campaign against Google (because Google searches enabled people to find copyrighted material): “Media: We want to make sure that the media is at the NAAG meeting. We propose working with MPAA (Vans), Comcast, and NewsCorp (Bill Guidera)…

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