Disinformation and Fake News: Mainstream Media and Alternative Media Both Guilty
I turned into a conspiracy researcher from 1980 which was when I first read John Todd’s testimonial about Witchcraft and the Illuminati. Todd taught me to read between the lines when listening to newscasters. The mainstream media is owned and controlled by large corporations. Almost by definition, a corporation’s bottom line is profit, not the well being of the public. An excellent resource that brings this out is a book, “Flat Earth News” by Nick Davies. The message of that book:
“Mainstream media (MSM) news agencies have been taken over by profit-seeking corporations. One way to raise profits is to cut costs, and cutting costs include time taken to fact check sources of information. In other words, making money rather than educating the public is the sole motivation of news corporations today. “
Conspiracy researchers such as myself have realized this instinctively and have therefore turned to alternative news media for information. My search for truth became a journey of hit and miss with alternative media. After a few months of listening to the likes of Alex Jones, Jeff Rense, David Icke, Joyce Riley, and others, I began to see they had something in common other than trying to educate the public. They all have something to sell! And it’s usually health food supplements that are supposed to protect us from the effects of nuclear radiation.
On this website, I wrote about Joyce Riley’s false reporting of the aftermath of the Dai-Ichi nuclear reactor in Fukushima Japan. Though she promoted health products on her website, she lived from 1948 – 2017, only 69 years. I’ve outlived her by one year so far. I’m not on any medications and take only vitamin C and zinc supplements, I think I’m doing OK health-wise. I can still run up a flight of stairs and ride a mountain bike for exercise.
The following is an excerpt from a New York Times magazine article by a man who once worked for Alex Jones as a video editor, Josh Owens, written on Dec. 5, 2019: I Worked for Alex Jones. I Regret It.
Soon after I was hired, Jones’s Infowars-branded store — which sells emergency-survival foods, water filters, body armor and much more — introduced an iodine supplement, initially marketed as a “shield” against nuclear fallout. Still learning the ropes, I was tasked with creating video advertisements for the supplement, which he ran on his online TV show. One of these ads started with a shot of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it exploded. I doubled the sound of the explosion, adding a glitch filter and sirens in the background for dramatic effect. Jones stood over my shoulder as I edited. “This is great,” he said. “See if you can find flyover footage of Chernobyl as well.”
Shortly after Jones began selling the supplements, someone posted a video on YouTube holding a Geiger counter displaying high radiation readings on a beach in Half Moon Bay, Calif. The video went viral, stoking fears that radiation from Fukushima was drifting across the Pacific Ocean. Jones saw an opportunity and sent me, along with a reporter, a writer and another cameraman, to California. We had multiple Geiger counters shipped overnight, unaware of how to read or work them, and drove up the West Coast, frequently stopping to check radiation levels. Other than a small spike in Half Moon Bay — which the California Department of Public Health said was from naturally occurring radioactive materials, not Fukushima — we found nothing.
Jones was furious. We started getting calls from the radio-show producers in the office, warning us to stop posting videos to YouTube stating we weren’t finding elevated levels of radiation. We couldn’t just stop, though; Jones demanded constant real-time content. On some of these calls, I could hear Jones screaming in the background. One of the producers told me they had never seen him so angry.
We scrambled to find something, anything we could report on. We tested freshly caught crab from a dock in Crescent City, Calif., and traveled to the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in Avila Beach, asking fishermen if we could test the small croakers they caught off a nearby pier. We even tried to locate a small nuclear-waste facility just so we could capture the Geiger counter displaying a high number. But we couldn’t find what Jones wanted, and after two weeks of traveling from San Diego to Portland, we flew back to Texas as failures, bracing for Jones’s rage.
For more about Alex Jones, please see Why I stopped listening to Alex Jones
What I think about what Jeff Rense has to say about Fukushima.
Joyce Riley also came out with disinformation and lies about Fukushima
Folks, I was living in Japan during the major earthquake and tsunami that killed around 20,000 people on March 11, 2011. It seemed so ironic to me that the further away a person lives from Fukushima, the more he or she seemed to fear it! And why? They were getting fear-mongering news from the media! And alternative media actually told MORE lies about Fukushima than the mainstream media did! My home was then in Niigata City, only a little over 100 miles or 160 kilometers as the crow flies from the damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant in the town of Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture. I can tell you the thought of harmful nuclear radiation in the air from the power plant was not a topic of discussion among the locals. Nobody was worried. But for some reason, a friend who lived hundreds of miles further away in southern Japan was spreading on the Internet all kinds of horror stories about Fukushima. And where did he get it from? From alternative media in America!
Here’s a general rule of thumb for how I judge the news today: When I listen to mainstream media, I always try to read between the lines and not take anything at face value. Newscasters like Lester Holt of NBC are enjoyable to listen to, but I don’t believe anything he says about the coronavirus or the importance of vaccinations. For alternative news sources, I stick with men who I see to be sincere and dedicated Christians, men like Dr. Chuck Baldwin. When I heard him say that QAnon is a hoax, I believed him. I don’t follow QAnon. I’m grateful to pastor Baldwin for warning me about it. Some of my friends do follow QAnon. I think not only are they wasting their time, but they are also going to be greatly discouraged and disappointed someday when they see everything that Q promised them did not and will not come to pass.
Another way some people get news is through social media like Facebook or Twitter. This may be the least reliable method for a couple reasons.
1. Both Facebook and Twitter are subject to censorship of any information that is contrary to the mainstream narrative.
2. Well meaning friends may share information they didn’t fact check. Once I got a link from a trusted friend about the Pope changing one of the Ten Commandments and adding an eleventh commandment! I immediately shared it on my Facebook timeline only to find a few hours later that it was false! Why did I share information without fact checking it? Two reasons: I got the information from a very good and trusted friend, and the information agreed with my cognitive bias about the Pope. I had to learn to always fact check. This also applies to other social media that is becoming popular such as MeWe and Parler. You won’t face censorship using them, but well meaning friends can still lead you astray by their posts.