Fact checking — Paul Robinson

The big news from Italy this week is the seizure by Turin police of a massive arsenal of weapons held by a neo-Nazi group. Among the weapons was a stonking-big air-to-air missile. Reporting the story, the BBC links the neo-Nazis to ‘Russian-backed separatist forces’ in Ukraine….

Naughty separatists. Despite all that talk of fighting ‘fascism’, it appears that they’re in bed with neo-Nazis. But then again, maybe not. For as Mark Ames points out on Twitter, there’s a problem with the BBC report. The official police statement says something very different. In fact, it says the following:…

Which for those of you who don’t speak Italian, translates as:

The investigations had begun about a year ago when the police headquarters in Turin, coordinated by the Central Directorate of Prevention Police, monitored some people linked to political movements of the ultra-right who had fought in the Ukrainian region of Donbass against the separatists.

So it turns out that they fought not ‘for the separatists’ but ‘against the separatists’....

But here’s the thing. It’s not just the BBC which makes that claim. CNN, for instance, reports that:

The stockpile was discovered by police who were investigating Italians ‘with extremist ideology’ who had fought alongside Russian-backed separatist forces in Donbass, eastern Ukraine, last July, according to the police statement.Similarly The Guardian writes that:

Police said that the discoveries stemmed from a previous investigation into Italians who took part in the Russian-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

This is word for word what the Associated Press (AP) writes. And that perhaps explain why so many media outlets are repeating the same story. They’ve just copied it from AP without verifying it.

There is one exception, however. One media organization seems to have actually checked what the police statement said, telling us that:

The police say the groups had fought “against the separatists” in the Donbass region of Ukraine – the forces of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the east of the country.
Who’s this? The answer – RT....

Irrussianality

Fact checking
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

See also

RT

Media link Italy neo-Nazi missile to ‘pro-Russian separatists’ despite police saying the OPPOSITE

Italian police seize MISSILE, guns and neo-Nazi material in raid on far-right militants

Moon of Alabama — When AP Spreads #Fakenews - A Forensic Appraisal

I would not call this an example of fake news, even though it amount to misreporting. I would call it unprofessional reporting that is sloppy and overlooks nuance. To the degree that it misrepresents what the official Russian reports from the Ministry of Defense and state media actually said.  

However, Defense Minister Shoygu did report to President Putin on it, so it can be inferred that while not confirming the new, the ministry and intel services have "high confidence" in it. So calling the AP report "fake news" might be excessive.

Journalistic unprofessionalism is becoming typical the US media where headlines are often misleading based on the rest of the article. Moreover, it is common knowledge in the profession that most people only read the headline and maybe the lede. Very few read the whole article, so the qualifiers, if any, are buried at the end.

In addition , articles are often written to support the headline with the argument is not supported by the facts, which are easily checkable with an Internet search.

Moreover, there is a also a deficit of critical thinking among the public, so unprofessional, slanted (spun) reporting, and even fake news go unchallenged, and many people form their opinions based on false information.

This is an issue not only with respect to politics, but also many other important aspects of life. Medical reporting is especially bad, for example, and in some cases promotes what amounts to quackery. In some cases, advertising is disguised as news.

I suspect that there are several factors leading to this. The first is the sensationalism of journalism after the success of the Murdoch model that brought the tabloid model of sensationalism into the mainstream.

The second is the spread of unprofessionalism in journalism as the standards relaxed.

 Thirdly, advertisers play an increasingly important role, owing to the way media are now financed by ad revenue rather than subscriptions. 

Fourthly, groupthink. 

Fifth, the infiltration of propaganda into the news.

The result is a media that cannot be trusted to report accurately and comprehensively, which is in essence b's conclusion in the post.

Moon of Alabama

When AP Spreads #Fakenews - A Forensic Appraisal

b

Here is some real fake news fresh from The Independent and exposed by Russia Insider.

Russia Insider
Does Russia Force Underage Girls to Take Virginity Tests? Western Media Says 'Yes', Reality Says 'Nope'
RI Staff

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