Category: Fake News

Summary: Real Raw News is a satirical political news website that frequently peddles conspiracy theories. The site publishes fantastical, demonstrably false stories of arrests, trials, hangings and executions. Stories on the site generally promote conspiracy theories and other debunked claims, including about U.S. politics, the COVID-19 pandemic and Nibiru.

Real Raw News is a satirical political news website that frequently peddles conspiracy theories, some of which have gone viral. Combing blending of InfoWars and The Onion, the site has kept fact-checkers busy, with stories of Nancy Pelosi being arrested by US Special Forces for treason, Delta Force seizing an “IRS Weapons Shipment,” to claimsof the Military arresting Bill Gates on child sex trafficking charges.

According to its ‘About’ page:

Real Raw News tried to bring light to topics often ignored by others.

Yes, it literally says “tried” (not tries). Whereas the website footer states that the site is:

An independent publisher, RealRawNews explores content often avoided by the mainstream media.

Real Raw News is one of several conspiracy-oriented pages set up in recent years. The site publishes fantastical, demonstrably false stories of arrests, trials, hangings and executions. Site author “Michael Baxter” portrays himself as a reporter with access to privileged information. Using open source information, PolitiFact discovered that “Michael Baxter” is in fact Michael Tuffin.

The website includes a link to a PayPal page for donations. Stories on the site generally promote conspiracy theories and other debunked claims, including about U.S. politics, the COVID-19 pandemic and Nibiru.

While the phrase “fake news” is not new, it became a trending topic in early/mid November 2016 and in relation to the 2016 presidential election.

These were generally completely fabricated and hyper-partisan stories that often went viral, and generally outperformed real news, as well as any fact-checking follow ups to the fake news. These were spread on social media (especially Facebook, who took heat for having a “fake news problem“).  Politifact even gave awarded “Fake News” their 2016 Lie of the Year award.  Google even recently released a “fact check” tool to help combat fake news in its search results.Continue reading

Summary: With the phrase “fake news” being tossed around, often with little context, many are left wondering what the term means.  In this post, we’ll explain what is generally regarded as fake news organizations:  Sources that (likely knowingly) frame narratives by publishing rumors or falsehoods and omitting easily obtainable facts and basic context in order to support a conspiracy theory.  In this example, we’ll cover InfoWars.

The term “fake news” has gained prominence in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, with some claiming that fake news stories affected the actual outcome. The term itself has taken on different meanings:

1. Satirical news, often ‘obviously’ fake (ie. The Onion)
2. Purportedly real news stories with little/no fact checking, often times with a forced narrative with the intention of advancing an agenda (ie. InfoWars).
3. A hybrid of the above: clearly fake news but confusing to readers (often intentionally) with the intention of driving a specific narrative (ie. ‘The Pope endorses Trump‘).

Here we’ll deal with the 2nd version, explain WHY sources like Info Wars are regarded as fake news, and explain why this should not be conflated with the occasional errors or even slight bias encountered in mainstream new sources. While the latter is unfortunate, comparing an imperfect journalistic process with the narrative-driven process that intentionally distorts the truth and omits basic fact checking is a false equivalence.  It should also be noted that fake news organizations drive a sort of race to the bottom, as fake news stories often outperform real news in terms of engagement (in a business model where viewer impressions determine ad revenue, the lifeblood of online news sources).

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