You know sites like "VerifiedPolitics" and "BipartisanReport" are always going to live up to their names, right?
They certainly did in their recent "articles" about Leeann Tweeden, who we all know is the Conservative radio host who made accusations against Senator Al Franken.
They chose a forum I participate in as their source for their claim that she signed a contract for a book deal (with a conglomerate, Sinclair Broadcasting, that doesn't have a book publishing division) -- a post of an unsourced Tweet that half the people responding (including me) said "Facts or GTFO".
"Hinterland Gazette" quickly reprinted the "article" from the original site. "Bipartisan Report" didn't include the link to the forum post or the specific claim that Tweeden had signed a book deal in the text of their reprint, but chose to include a Tweet referencing the rumor. All include bawdy pictures or video from Tweeden's USO shows presented in a manner to suggest they, too, discredit her. All are Domains By Proxy registered sites, so we have no idea who runs them.
But we do know who's getting shafted by being linked as a "source" -- the very forum that said "Give us the links!"
Well, one of my handles is now attached to a link in multiple articles I don't want to be even "20 degrees from Kevin Bacon" near.
So I wanted to figure out just how this got started. If I'm attached to a claim now, even under one anonymous posting identity, I want to figure out if it's true... and more importantly, HOW my alias is now linked through Google for all time to this.
A pretty small account with a 0/10 Make Adverbs Great Again rating (potentially just a regular user, potentially someone the algorithm hasn't caught), replied with five different assertions that Leeann Tweeden had signed some deal with Sinclair. He also makes the claim that the photo was part of the skit. In less than 10 minutes.
That one, in response to Seth Abramson, got a retweet -- by a 7/10 MAvGA account claiming to be located in Alabama.
But another came a little later in the evening, again from a 0/10 account, but with a photo and reprint of "Aiden Benjamin"'s now Snopes discredited claims.
That one got 21 reTweets. One from 6/10 (who I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to here in my numbers), one 9/10, and *four* 10/10 MAvGA rated accounts. Just counting the followers of those high rated accounts, 11,000 people saw this unsubstantiated rumor along with the discredited Franken photographer allegation.
Now, in searching what came after, this not-highly rated person posted the first allegation that the contract or deal was for a book.
When asked what their source was, they said:
Was she one of those 11,000 who saw the earlier Tweet and thought it was news?
By 12:09 PM on the 17th, the first 10/10 troll posts the accusation of a deal with Sinclair "today", but doesn't say it's for a book:
No reTweets showing, but has another 2,958 followers now who have been exposed to the rumor.
Now, going through the rest of the search for "Tweeden Sinclair" by earliest Tweet, I see the first phrasing of the Tweet that hit my forum: from a 7/10 MAvGA rated account. At 4:13 PM on November 17th.
Someone else asks "Did she or did she not", and several other Tweets assert some kind of deal, then the trolls got the account they wanted to bite on this deliciously juicy retweet bait within 5 hours....
Which got over three thousand teTweets, posted on my forum, linked by "Voices4Hillary" to get more visibility, and mentioned now in the two "articles" that all source back to... this very Tweet.
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So, is it true?
Tweeden may have made, or will make, a business deal of some kind as a result of the publicity on this.
Is it a book deal with Sinclair Broadcasting, a media conglomerate that focuses on radio and television? Likely not.
Most of the original Tweets that link Tweeden with Sinclair are suggestions her station is owned by them (the website suggests Cumulus owned them in 2015, but things change) and suggestions that she might be "auditioning" for a media deal with Sinclair Broadcasting of some type. Others were much-emojied Tweets saying they had to be involved in pushing the allegations against Franken into the spotlight.
I'm also unsure of the MAvGA algorithm and exactly what it picks out. Many people sharing had 5/10 ratings, which was technically a negative, and one had a 6/10 rating but was technically a positive. Is it picking up a tendency to engage/share things from people who share unreliable sources in its "negative" or "barely positive" results? My attempts to address the Aiden Benjamin rumors pushed my own Twitter account's rating from a 2 to a 3.
Still, the number of highly suspicious accounts involved in the development and propagation of this rumor is astounding.
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As liberals, we are often pigeonholed by our own ethical standards, because the other side doesn't hold to them. Yet, if we lose touch with those ethical standards, we lose touch with what makes us different from them. Whether the allegations are against someone we love or loathe, we have to be willing to put aside that emotion and *listen* to every alleged victim's story.
It's also perfectly reasonable to prioritize investigations by the level of abuse of power involved, and the vulnerability of the alleged victim. We don't have to fall into the trap of "false equivalency" -- yes, all the allegations victims are making are of bad things, but some ARE objectively worse than others, like accusations of abusing power to harm vulnerable juveniles.
We are also being, in my opinion, trolled on this issue.
I felt similarly about John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate after the DNC confirmed they wouldn't be putting Hillary as VP on the 2008 ticket. As a feminist and a Hillary supporter in that primary, I had an immediate visceral anger at what seemed like an attempt to pander to women. I wasn't a Hillary supporter just because she had a vagina! But then there came attacks, from the left, at Palin for not "living up to Conservative values", etc. The ones preached then by Dr. Laura about how "I am my kid's mom" should be a woman's biggest achievement. Still, we're the Party that always agreed women could have careers *and* families and be good at both.
Then the hysteria got worse. Rumors and innuendo finally reached critical mass when the media reported liberals were convinced Bristol was actually Trig's mother. "Liberal" Internet obstetricians were questioning the medical management of her pregnancy -- IF Sarah really had been pregnant. Whatever happened to keeping out of women's wombs? And the criticisms they *really* wanted, what they salivated to see -- that she should have aborted Trig.
Then, they got to unveil Bristol's actual pregnancy as proof she couldn't have been Trig's mother, and pander to the pro-lifers with "Look at these awful hypocritical liberals! They say they're 'pro-choice', but then try to say they know better than Sarah and her doctor about the management of her pregnancy. Some are pushing their own choices on her! They aren't pro-choice, they're pro-death!"
How many of those rumors were planted so the left *would* go crazy and let the teen pregnancy reveal be done that way?
Leeann Tweeden, like Sarah Palin, is a figure they knew the left would accidentally shoot themselves trying to discredit.
We can certainly say she wasn't living up to "Quiverfull" values in her USO show performances, but we reject those values, don't we? Aren't we the Party saying sex workers who have experienced sexual assault aren't listened to, and should be, instead of being dismissed because of their "choice" (because sometimes it's not one) to engage in sex work? Aren't we the ones who say that nobody "asks for it"?
So why are liberals sharing out memes that amount to "Because she allowed herself to be seen as sexualized eye candy onstage, she shouldn't be offended at it being done without her consent backstage or on the plane" -- slut-shaming to the nth degree?
Because those same memes are attached to things we want to believe, like that Tweeden is after a payday, or was awake for the photo, etc.
How they're being created is still questionable. The origin accounts for all Tweets suggesting the original ideas except the first "Well well well" on the "book deal" part of the rumor are all less than 5/10 on the MAvGA rating system. Even the first account suggesting she had a deal with Sinclair of some kind, posting several times rapidly, had a 0/10 score.
So are the bot accounts floating rumors they see from regular users to see how much traction they get? Are they perhaps using some throwaway accounts to start rumors, then using the high-follower (and therefore enough data to rate as 9/10 or 10/10) accounts spreading them? A mixture of both?
Either way... all of this looks bad regardless of if Tweeden is going to get career advancement from Conservative media outlets from this or not, and whether her timing of this allegation was political or not. In fact, this kind of rumor spreading makes it MORE likely that she will get sympathetic treatment by Conservative press. They'll empathize with her about all these "awful hypocritical liberals who can't wait to spread gossip if it discredits an attractive Conservative woman" (because remember, they think all feminists are ugly jealous hags for realizing the porn/modeling industries exploit women more than liberating them).
So, please. Be responsible social media users. There's a social disease called "intellectual laziness", and it's contagious on social media. Please don't spread it.
Thank you.