5: 2016: The Year the Old Took Control
In primaries, elections and the EU referendum, the old always trounced the young.
2016 has been a year of shockers. From new kinds of terrorism and unimaginable geopolitical alliances, to unexpected election results and the rise of populist parties on the left and right, it has been a time of historical upheaval that has confounded bookies, pundits and many of the best minds of our time.
Vice News
4: WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived
IN THE PAST six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on how Russia is behind a massive explosion of “fake news,” the other on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a humiliating editor’s note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the story were fiction: The first note was posted a full two weeks later to the top of the original article; the other was buried the following day at the bottom.
The second story on the electric grid turned out to be far worse than I realized when I wrote about it on Saturday, when it became clear that there was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid” as the Post had claimed. In addition to the editor’s note, the Russia-hacked-our-electric-grid story now has a full-scale retraction in the form of a separate article admitting that “the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility” and there may not even have been malware at all on this laptop.
But while these debacles are embarrassing for the paper, they are also richly rewarding. That’s because journalists — including those at the Post — aggressively hype and promote the original, sensationalistic false stories, ensuring that they go viral, generating massive traffic for the Post (the paper’s executive editor, Marty Baron, recently boasted about how profitable the paper has become).
After spreading the falsehoods far and wide, raising fear levels and manipulating U.S. political discourse in the process (both Russia stories were widely hyped on cable news), journalists who spread the false claims subsequently note the retraction or corrections only in the most muted way possible, and often not at all. As a result, only a tiny fraction of people who were exposed to the original false story end up learning of the retractions.
The Intercept
3: Thousands more Iraqis flee Mosul battles
More than 13,000 civilians have fled Iraq’s Mosul over the past five days since government troops began the second phase in a battle to retake the city from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) last week, the United Nations has said.
“The average daily displacement numbers have increased by nearly 50 per cent since military operations intensified, some 1,600 to more than 2,300 displaced per day,” UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric has said.
Iraqi troops, backed by US-led coalition air strikes resumed their push to retake the northern city after a two-week lull in the operation. The military says it has taken back more than 60 percent of the city since the offensive began in October last year.
To date, nearly 130,000 out of 1.5 million Iraqis have been displaced from Mosul and its surrounding areas due to the fighting, the spokesman added at a news briefing. Approximately 50,000 children have also been affected in the conflict.
The UN refugee agency described the humanitarian situation as “dire” with food stockpiles dwindling and the price of staples spiralling, boreholes drying up or turning brackish from over-use and camps and emergency sites to the south and east reaching maximum capacity.
Aljazeera
2: Republicans voice disdain after Trump tweets support for Julian Assange
Leading Republicans broke with Donald Trump on Wednesday after the president-elect appeared to put more faith in WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange than in US intelligence agencies.
The sharp differences on a highly charged national security issue are the latest sign that matters of intelligence and policy towards Russia reflect a deep fault line in Trump’s relationship with the Republican party establishment.
The House speaker, Paul Ryan, called Assange “a sycophant for Russia” on a conservative radio show and GOP Senator Tom Cotton told MSNBC that he had “a lot more faith in our intelligence officers serving around the world … than I do in people like Julian Assange”.
The Guardian
A newly revealed memo from President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team sheds light on his plans to reverse immigration policies put in place by the Obama administration, and asks for data on recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This comes as more than 100 members of Congress sent a letter to Obama in December asking him to take action to protect their names and private information. “We all asked these young people to come forward, willingly and voluntarily, and guaranteed them that the information about themselves, and, more importantly, their parents and relatives in this country that might or might not be undocumented, would be protected,” says our guest Rep. Raúl Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. We also speak with César Zamudio, a freshman at Columbia University who is an undocumented immigrant and a recipient of DACA.
Democracy Now
