The left doesn’t need fake news. Project Censored (P.C.) claims to be a “media literacy and critical thinking” organization. Their radio program is aired nationwide on Pacifica Radio and other left leaning stations. Yet, Project Censored has abandoned their mission and have become the very same monsters they feed on criticizing, “Fake News”.
In P.C.’s review of Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s book, Cyberwar, written by Dr. Rob Williams, once again we see Project Censored’s pattern of taking a controversial data point out-of-context and creating a fallacious argument around it.
In this case, P.C. cherry-picked the most controversial Russian linked hack (that of the DNC) and conflates all of the Russian linked hacks into one controversial hack. In doing so, PC takes Jamieson’s arguments in Cyberwar out-of-context in order to promote a debunked and nonsensical straw man argument.
Project Censored:
Assumption #1: Jamieson implicitly asserts in Cyberwar that the Russians “hacked” into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer servers (as well as other hacks) and obtained digital copies of thousands of what became publicly damning emails from members of the DNC leadership team – Clinton campaign advisor John Podesta, HRC herself, and others – and then (by extension) tried to leverage the contents of these stolen documents for months in US social media spaces (and, by extension, influenced the shaping of US news narratives about HRC.)
The counter narrative to the “Russia hacked into the DNC computers” story? Information was “leaked” from inside the DNC, not hacked from the outside. How might we know? Former NSA cryptographer Bill Binney, former CIA official Ray McGovern, and many other members of the 2003-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) argue that, based on their review of computer bit rate information, the stolen DNC content traveled at bandwidth rates too high to have been an external “hack,” but rather an internal “leak.” The reality? We’ll never know for sure, because the DNC refused to hand over their compromised computer servers to the FBI, instead contracting with Crowd Strike, a private US cybersecurity firm, to ascertain affirmative Russian hacking involvement (#Surprise!). For interested readers, NSA whistleblower Bill Binney discusses his “leak versus hack” conclusions on this recent episode of Brass Check TV between 1:27 – 1:37 here.…” www.projectcensored.org/cyberwar-russiagate.
Fact Check:
“Podesta never chaired the DNC, nor had any involvement in the DNC’s handling of their email server”, according to DNC spokesperson Adrienne Watson.
"I had nothing to do with the Democratic National Committee — I chaired Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign," Podesta wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post. "So there was no DNC server for me to refuse to give, and I was never asked for one."
Once again, Project Censored radio show and articles cherry-picked a controversial data point (DNC’s emails hack/leak) and made a fallacious argument (this time a straw man).
Not only did John Podesta have nothing to do with the DNC and their stolen emails, Podesta’s stolen emails had nothing to do with the DNC. Podesta’s personal Gmail was one of the many “other hacks” which Project Censored conflates into the DNC hacks.
According to the threat researchers at Dell SecureWorks, hired by Google (not the DNC), Podesta’s personal Gmail account was one of many hacked accounts yielding from an aggressive Russian “GRU spearphishing campaign”.
Project Censored intentionally takes Jamieson's book Cyberwar out-of-context, conflates the unrelated DNC hacks with Podesta's Gmail hack, and then creates a false narrative. Thus, creating a straw man argument with their “Assumption #1”.
Equally egregious, Project Censored’s counter narrative intentionally omits the fact that Cyberwar directly addresses the so-called “DNC leak theory” controversy in some detail.
Instead, Project Censored's "Assumptions #1" chose to cite Bill Binney, a frequent guest on Alex Jones’ InfoWars, as their source. Bill Binney openly claims DNC employee Seth Rich may have been murdered because he “leaked” (as Project Censored’s counter narrative suggests) the emails.
Project Censored conveniently omits the fact that Jamieson’s book Cyberwar debunks the Seth Rich DNC leak conspiracy theory. Jamison’s book even provides links to her organization Factcheck.org for additional information: Gingrich-spreads-conspiracy-theory.
The left doesn’t need their own InfoWars style fake news sites. This is especially true for so-called academic organizations claiming to teach our kids media literacy and critical thinking. Unfortunately, Project Censored’s fake news radio show can be heard on Pacifica Radio nationwide. That is a problem.
