Journalists Struggle To Define ‘Fake News’ Even As They Declare War On It

 In the weeks following Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in last month’s election, liberal journalists have launched an all-out assault on “fake news,” which some have blamed for the disconnect between political journalists and everyday Americans.

But many of those same journalists seem unable to agree on a consistent definition of what “fake news” is, oftentimes pushing leading conservative and alternative media organizations that provide ideological balance in the public forum under the same “fake news” umbrella alongside websites whose entire purpose is generating viral hoaxes.

Left-leaning BuzzFeed News’ coverage of “fake news” — which has been subject to accusations of 
misleading the public in service of a narrative —  has focused on hoax websites run by teenagers in Macedonia pushing out lies like “Pope Francis endorses Donald Trump.”

Other left-leaning news organizations, meanwhile, have lumped in legitimate news organizations alongside objectively fake sources.

A list of “fake news” sites compiled by a liberal college professor — a list that was uncritically accepted and distributed by some liberal journalists — included top right-of-center sites like Independent Journal Review (IJR) and The Blaze alongside objectively fake sites. Left-leaning media organizations like the Los Angeles Times and New York magazine distributed the list to their readers.

One website that the Washington Post labeled “fake news” — without providing a single piece of evidence — is threatening to sue the Post for defamation, after being included on a similar list.

In an article last summer, liberal New York Magazine writer Brian Feldman tried to argue that “conservative news” and “fake news” are the same thing.

That some liberal journalists are lumping in legitimate news organizations alongside objectively false sites while at the same time calling for censorship of fake news has lead to concerns that the crackdown on fake news sites — the actual influence of which remains unknown — will be used by liberals to censor their conservative competitors.


Forbes contributor Frank Miniter argued that some liberals are using the “fake news” controversy to invite “government control over First Amendment-protected speech or by asking Facebook and Twitter to become even bigger censors of certain views.” 

In an interview with conservative site LifeZette, Media Research Center director of media analysis Tim Graham warned, “The danger here is that when liberals try to define ‘fake news,’ it can be defined as ‘fake angles,’ as in ‘things that should not be explored,’ like paying for protesters.” 
The sub-headline for that article read, “Liberals take aim at right-leaning media outlets under the guise of taking down ‘fake’ news.” 

After conservative website The Daily Wire was listed as “fake news” without justification, contributor John Nolte warned that the “fake news” label is being used by frustrated liberal journalists to censor conservative viewpoints. 

“The mainstream media put itself on the 2016 presidential ballot, lost,” Nolte wrote, “and now they want to silence competing ideas by smearing, marginalizing and, yes, blacklisting us as spreaders of Fake News.”

Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson

Tags: Facebook, Fake News

Dow, S&P and transports close at all-time highs as stocks surge more than 1%

by Fred Imbert 

U.S. equities closed sharply higher on Wednesday as the Dow and S&P hit new record highs, while investors awaited a monetary policy announcement from the European Central Bank.
The S&P 500 erased earlier losses to gain around 1.3 percent, with telecoms rallying around 2.4 percent to lead advancers.

"This 2,219 level [on the S&P] was on where a lot of people were expecting to see some resistance, and we went through it like a hot knife through butter," said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade, adding stocks were also boosted by some short covering. "A lot of people have been saying 'this is the end' and have ended up with very little money in their hands."

The Dow Jones industrial average gained nearly 300 points, with Home Depot, IBM and Goldman Sachs contributing the most gains. The Dow Transports, meanwhile, traded at their first intraday high since 2014. Since Nov. 8, transports have risen more than 12 percent.

"I think this is more momentum from the Trump rally," said Adam Sarhan, CEO at 50 Park Investments. "You've got the financials, transports, steel stocks, small and mid-cap stocks all trading higher. The areas that have worked [since the election] continue to work."

"While all this is happening, you've seen virtually no selling. That's very good for stocks moving forward," he said.

The Nasdaq composite rose 1.2 percent despite the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB) shedding around 3 percent.

Maris Ogg, president at Tower Bridge Advisors, said "we might get a correction" in the near term, "but there is so much low-hanging fruit that some of these reforms are going to be enacted. Recognizing that some of the problems we've had have been because of poor policy, they can be easily corrected."


As of Wednesday's close, the Dow has posted gains in 18 of the past 22 sessions and 12 record closes since the election. The S&P and the Nasdaq, meanwhile, have risen 4.8 percent and 3.9 percent since Nov. 8, respectively.

Getty Images

 

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

"We've obviously had a pretty significant run over the past few weeks, but with hardly any down days," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities. "The market is trying to price in a paradigm of fiscal stimulus and deregulation."


President-elect Donald Trump stunned the world by defeating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election with optimism for greater infrastructure spending and deregulation of certain sectors propelling the sharp increase in stocks since Nov. 8.

"Yesterday's 'checkmark' pattern traced by the S&P 500 offered another reminder of large institutions plowing cash into shares in a determined effort to boost their positioning. Despite this consistent risk extension since Donald Trump's shocking victory over Hillary Clinton, my most reliable sentiment indicators suggest that many portfolio managers still have the ability to increase their stock holdings substantially," said Jeremy Klein, chief market strategist at FBN Securities, in a note.


Investors also looked ahead to a key ECB meeting, in which the central bank is largely expected to extend its quantitative easing program beyond March 2017, particularly after a Sunday referendum in Italy left the country's banks in a vulnerable spot. "Now remember, this is the same [ECB President] Mario Draghi that says more than he does," said Wunderlich's Hogan. "I think the market is heading into this meeting with the expectation of more action" being taken.


There are no major U.S. economic data due Wednesday, one week before a Federal Reserve meeting in which the U.S. central bank is expected to raise interest rates. According to the CME Group's FedWatch tool, market expectations for a 25-basis-point increase in rates were around 95 percent.


The U.S. dollar has risen sharply over the past month on expectations of higher rates and fiscal stimulus. On Wednesday, however, the greenback fell 0.21 percent against a basket of currencies, with the euro around $1.075 and the yen near 113.9.

"November's Trump effect still fuels the Dollar with optimism over Donald Trump implementing fiscal stimulus measures reinforcing expectations of an improvement in overall US GDP. A strong rise in inflation from healthy growth could force the Federal Reserve to raise US interest rates aggressively in an effort to prevent the economy from overheating," Lukman Otunuga, research analyst at FXTM, said in a note.


U.S. Treasury yields fell across the board, with the two-year note yield trading around 1.09 percent and the benchmark 10-year yield near 2.34 percent.

In oil markets, West Texas Intermediate futures for January delivery settled 2.3 percent lower at $49.77 per barrel as doubts over an agreed upon OPEC production cut persisted, despite a reported drawdown of 2.4 million barrels by the Energy Information Administration.

Overseas, European stocks traded higher, with the pan-European Stoxx 600 index gaining 0.9 percent. In Asia, stocks closed mostly higher, with the Shanghai composite advancing 0.71 percent and the Nikkei 225 gaining 0.74 percent.

Symbol	Name	Price		Change	%Change
DJIA	Dow Industrials	19549.62		297.84	1.55%
S&P 500	S&P 500 Index	2241.35		29.12	1.32%
NASDAQ	NASDAQ Composite	5393.76		60.76	1.14%

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 270 points, or 1.4 percent, to trade at 19,523, with Home Depot leading advancers and Pfizer the biggest decliner.

The S&P 500 gained 26 points, or 1.2 percent, to 2,238, with telecommunications leading 10 sectors lower and health care the only decliner.

The Nasdaq composite advanced 63 points, or 1.2 percent, to 5,397.

About four stocks advanced for every decliner at the New York Stock Exchange, with an exchange volume of 622 million and a composite volume of 3.321 billion.

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, traded near 11.8.

—CNBC's Peter Schacknow contributed to this report.

Trump Helps Philadelphia House Homeless Veterans

The Spring Garden School, will be turned into an affordable-housing project for veterans, thanks to a generous donation from the Trump Foundation.

by Thomas Bailey
Philadelphia has recently announced it will expand its affordable & free housing for veterans with a new building. The Spring Garden School, an abandoned K-8 school in Philadelphia, was due to be demolished in 2018. However, thanks to support and donations from the Trump Foundation, it will instead be renovated and turned into a housing-assistance project for veterans.

Built in the 1920s, Spring Garden is a venerable 3-story brick-and-limestone building designed by famous architect Irwin Thornton Catharine. “It is an incredibly beautiful building,” said David Cleghorn, senior vice president of real estate development of Help USA, the charity charged with renovating the building. “Even the graffiti inside is high-quality street art.” Spring Garden has been on the National Register of Historic Buildings since 1986.

Help USA is one of America’s largest providers of affordable housing and social services, especially for homeless veterans, of which there are about 50,000 in America.  Help USA has three other ongoing projects in Philadelphia, and thousands more across the country.

Spring Garden, once renovated, will provide up to 37 apartments. Veterans will be prioritized in allocating these apartments (with 12 reserved specifically for homeless veterans). Apartments will only charge up to 30% of a resident’s income for rent. For many, especially homeless veterans, Cleghorn said, that’s “30 percent of nothing.” This means that without the support of charitable donations, such a project would be fiscally impossible.

Funding for the project came in the form of tax credits from the Pennsylvania state government; $1.3 million in small grants; a $500,00 mortgage, and $300,000 in individual contributions. But the bulk of the project’s funding came from a $5 million donation from the Trump Foundation. 

Donald Trump Man of the Year!

BY NANCY GIBBS
This is the 90th time we have named the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year. So which is it this year: Better or worse? The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees about the answer.

It’s hard to measure the scale of his disruption. This real estate baron and casino owner turned reality-TV star and provocateur—never a day spent in public office, never a debt owed to any interest besides his own—now surveys the smoking ruin of a vast political edifice that once housed parties, pundits, donors, pollsters, all those who did not see him coming or take him seriously. Out of this reckoning, Trump is poised to preside, for better or worse.

For those who believe this is all for the better, Trump’s victory represents a long-overdue rebuke to an entrenched and arrogant governing class; for those who see it as for the worse, the destruction extends to cherished norms of civility and discourse, a politics poisoned by vile streams of racism, sexism, nativism. To his believers, he delivers change—broad, deep, historic change, not modest measures doled out in Dixie cups; to his detractors, he inspires fear both for what he may do and what may be done in his name.

The revolution he stirred feels fully American, with its echoes of populists past, of Andrew Jackson and Huey Long and, at its most sinister, Joe McCarthy and Charles Coughlin. Trump’s assault on truth and logic, far from hurting him, made him stronger. His appeal—part hope, part snarl—dissolved party lines and dispatched the two reigning dynasties of U.S. politics. Yet his victory mirrors the ascent of nationalists across the world, from Britain to the Philippines, and taps forces far more powerful than one man’s message.

We can scarcely grasp what our generation has wrought by putting a supercomputer into all of our hands, all of the time. If you are reading this, whether on a page or a screen, there is a very good chance that you are caught up in a revolution that may have started with enticing gadgets but has now reshaped everything about how we live, love, work, play, shop, share—how our very hearts and minds encounter the world around us. Why would we have imagined that our national conversation would simply go on as before, same people, same promises, same patterns? Perhaps the President-elect will stop tweeting—but only because he will have found some other means to tell the story he wants to tell directly to the audience that wants to hear it.

It turned out to be a failing strategy when Hillary Clinton, who loves policy solutions and believes in them, tried to make this race a character test, a referendum on Trump. But it was certainly understandable. He presented so many challenges, so many choices about what America values. Her popular-vote victory, while legally irrelevant, affirmed the prospect of a female Commander in Chief.

In fact, she crushed Trump among voters who cared most about experience and judgment and temperament, qualities that have typically mattered when choosing the leader of the free world. Even at his moment of victory, 6 in 10 voters had an unfavorable view of Trump and didn’t think he was qualified to be President.

Paul Moakley for TIMEThe Nov. 28 photo shoot at the President-elect’s residence in Trump Tower.

But by almost 2 to 1, voters cared most about who could deliver change, and in that category he beat her by 69 points. This is his next test. The year 2016 was the year of his rise; 2017 will be the year of his rule, and like all newly elected leaders, he has a chance to fulfill promises and defy expectations.

His supporters and his critics will discover together how much of what he said he actually believes. In the days after the election, everything was negotiable: the wall became a fence, “Crooked Hillary” is “good people,” and maybe climate change is worth thinking about. Far from draining the swamp, he fed plums to some of its biggest gators. Were his followers alarmed? The critics were hardly reassured: nearly half of Americans expect race relations to worsen, and many women fear that his ascent comes directly at their expense. Trump prefers to talk about the alienated workers who flocked to his rallies and believed a billionaire could be their tribune—“I love them and they love me”—and avers that his every action will be on their behalf. But can he devise a New Deal for workers in the age of automation, renegotiate trade deals and reopen factories while simultaneously elevating many of the same people who profit from the trends he denounced?

For reminding America that demagoguery feeds on despair and that truth is only as powerful as the trust in those who speak it, for empowering a hidden electorate by mainstreaming its furies and live-streaming its fears, and for framing tomorrow’s political culture by demolishing yesterday’s, Donald Trump is TIME’s 2016 Person of the Year.

On 75th anniversary, U.S. veterans recall Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

By Dana Feldman and Hugh Gentry

LOS ANGELES/HONOLULU (Reuters) - It has been 75 years, but U.S. Navy veteran James Leavelle can still recall watching with horror as Japanese warplanes rained bombs down on his fellow sailors in the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War Two.

Bullets bounced off the steel deck of his own ship, the USS Whitney, anchored just outside Honolulu harbor, but a worse fate befell those aboard the USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma, USS Utah and others that capsized in an attack that killed 2,400 people.

"The way the Japanese planes were coming in, when they dropped bombs, they'd drop them and then circle back," said Leavelle, a 21-year-old Navy Storekeeper Second Class at the time of the attack.

Leavelle, now 96, was among 30 Pearl Harbor survivors honored at a reception in Los Angeles before heading to Honolulu to mark Wednesday's 75th anniversary of the attack.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor took place at 7:55 a.m. Honolulu time on Dec. 7, 1941, famously dubbed "a date which will live in infamy" by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Fewer than 200 survivors of the attacks there and on other military bases in Hawaii are still alive.

Wednesday's commemoration at a pier overlooking the memorial to the sunken USS Arizona built in the harbor is set to begin with a moment of silence at precisely that time.

About 350 World War Two veterans and their families will be serenaded by the Navy's Pacific Fleet Band with a musical remembrance made bittersweet by the knowledge that every member of the USS Arizona band - one of the best in the Navy - died that day.

Attendees will watch a parade, and two families will participate in a private ceremony in which the ashes of crew members who survived the attack and later died, will be interred in a turret of the Arizona.

Across the United States on Wednesday, Americans will pause to remember those who died at Pearl Harbor, and the long and difficult war that followed.

WAR BEGINS

The shock of the Pearl Harbor attack is vividly illustrated in an exhibit at Massachusetts' Museum of World War II, which features relics including a West Point cadet's letter to his father - then-Brigadier General Dwight Eisenhower - on how to prepare himself for the coming war. [L1N1E01KC]

The United States declared war on Japan the next day. Three days after that, Germany's Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States.

Will Lehner, 95, was among those who had a chance to fight back in the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. The 2nd class naval fireman was working in the boiler room at the USS Ward, patrolling the entrance to the harbor when crew members spotted a Japanese submarine.

"That submarine was on the surface and our skipper didn't know if it was ours or not," Lehner, 20 at the time of the attacks, said at the Los Angeles event. "He said: 'Load your guns.'"

"The first shot went right over the top, the next shot right after it hit that submarine and punched a hole in it."

After the war, a historical discrepancy nagged at Lehner. The remains of the Japanese submarine had not been recovered, and many historians doubted that it existed. That changed in 2002, when the sub was found.

"For 62 years," Lehner said, "Nobody believed us."

For his part, Leavelle would be touched twice by the hand of history. After the war, he became a policeman in Texas. On Nov. 24, 1963, he was the Dallas officer handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy was shot to death by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

(Reporting by Dana Feldman in Los Angeles and Hugh Gentry in Honolulu; Writing and additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Donald Trump Says New Air Force One Project With Boeing Should Be Scrapped

• 
   
  By Katherine Faulders 
   
  President-elect Donald Trump tweeted today that the government should cancel its order with Boeing for a new Air Force One, citing costs of the project.

  
  

  "Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!" Trump said in his tweet.

  
  

  Trump then made a surprise appearance, emerging from the elevators at Trump Tower in New York City before scheduled meetings and commented on the project.

  
  

  "Well, the plane is totally out of control. It's going to be over $4 billion. It's for Air Force One program, and I think it's ridiculous," Trump said. "I think Boeing is doing a little bit of a number. We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money."

  
  

  The Air Force announced in January 2015 that the Boeing 747-8 aircraft has been chosen as the upgrade for Air Force One from the current VC-25 model, which is also manufactured by Boeing.

  
  

  "The presidential aircraft is one of the most visible symbols of the United States of America and the office of the president of the United States," Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James said in a statement at the time.

  
  

  "The Boeing 747-8 is the only aircraft manufactured in the United States when fully missionized meets the necessary capabilities established to execute the presidential support mission while reflecting the office of the president of the United States of America consistent with the national public interest," she added.

  
  

  Boeing said in a statement today that the company is "currently under contract for $170 million to help determine the capabilities of these complex military aircraft that serve the unique requirements of the president of the United States."

  
  

  "We look forward to working with the U.S. Air Force on subsequent phases of the program allowing us to deliver the best planes for the president at the best value for the American taxpayer," the company added.

  
  

  The main differences between Air Force One and a regular 747 are state-of-the-art navigation, electronic and communications equipment, as well as the interior, which includes offices, a conference/dining room and living space for the president and first lady, according to Boeing's website.

  
  

  Boeing has long been mulling a retirement of the 747 line. Air Force One is filled with communications gear and defensive gear and costs much more than a regular 747 aircraft.

   

Japan PM Abe won't apologise at Pearl Harbor: government

More than 2,400 Americans were killed in the Japanese attack on Dec 7, 1941 (AFP Photo/)

Tokyo (AFP) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will honour war dead but won't apologise when he becomes the first Japanese leader to visit Pearl Harbor this month, a top government spokesman said on Tuesday.

The move follows Barack Obama's historic May trip to Hiroshima, the first by a sitting US president, where he spoke of victims' suffering but offered no apology for dropping the world's first nuclear bomb.

Abe will pay his respects to those who died in Japan's surprise 1941 attack at the US naval base in Hawaii, which triggered World War II in the Pacific, and highlight a decades-old security alliance between the former enemies.

"The purpose of this visit is to commemorate war dead, not to apologise," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular press briefing in Tokyo.

"The visit will serve as an opportunity to demonstrate to future generations our resolve not to repeat the horror and suffering of war as well as an opportunity to showcase the reconciliation between Japan and the United States," he added.

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who is in Japan as part of his last Asian tour, echoed those sentiments Tuesday.

"The US-Japan alliance has never been stronger than it is today," Carter told reporters during a visit to a Japanese destroyer.

"It's a two-way stream, equal benefits for both countries. That's necessary because we face many common responsibilities and threats," he added, without elaborating.

Carter, who is meeting with Abe later in the day, welcomed the Japanese leader's visit to Hawaii.

"One thing I will be sure to say to (Abe on Tuesday) is how pleased President Obama is and we all are that he will be visiting President Obama in Hawaii in a few weeks' time," he said.

- Nationalist leader -

Abe -- a nationalist who has been criticised for playing down his country's wartime record -- will be in Hawaii on December 26 and 27 for talks with Obama, who will join him at Pearl Harbor.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the deadly December 7, 1941 assault on the US naval base that left about 2,400 Americans dead.

The war ended in August 1945 after the US dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and, although the countries have forged strong ties in the seven decades since, how the war began and concluded has cast a long shadow.

In Hiroshima, Obama and Abe went to an atomic bomb memorial that honours some 140,000 people who died in the bombing or later from radiation exposure -- a visit that sparked speculation that Abe might go to Pearl Harbor in return.

The US leader lay a floral wreath and reiterated his call for the abolition of nuclear weapons but did not apologise for the attack and a subsequent bombing of Nagasaki that ended the war.

Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor also comes as Japan prepares to build a new relationship with Donald Trump, who will take over from Obama next month.

Trump sent shockwaves through Japan earlier this year when he appeared to call into question the two countries' security alliance, prompting Abe to become the first world leader to meet him after the election to confirm the relationship.