My skin isn’t thick enough to endure criticism trailblazers like Harris, Pelosi, Gandhi, Meir, and Thatcher have had to suffer; but I have been inspired to follow in their footsteps, in my own ways. As Harris told Marie Claire magazine, “I want [young] women to know, you are powerful and your voice matters." Amen, Sisters. Amen.
Resource Guide: Unbiased Election Info
Fake News Is All Too Real
Long before we knew who the Democratic nominee for president would be, The Atlantic wrote a disturbing article detailing a billion-dollar disinformation campaign to re-elect Donald Trump. It asserts, “The Trump campaign is planning to spend more than $1 billion, and it will be aided by a vast coalition of partisan media, outside political groups, and enterprising freelance operatives. These pro-Trump forces are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history.”
The article continues, “From June to November [2016], Trump’s campaign ran 5.9 million ads on Facebook, while Clinton’s ran just 66,000. A Facebook executive would later write in a leaked memo that Trump “got elected because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser”. TMM wonders whether this, in part, explains why “Facebook Says It Won’t Back Down From Allowing Lies in Political Ads”, the headline for a New York Times story.
A legion of former White House employees have made millions from tell-all books describing in minute detail Trump’s deliberate efforts to sow chaos and control the news cycle with outrageous claims. A billion-dollar disinformation campaign takes the chaos and dishonest claims to levels never before seen – and could cause Americans to question the very foundations of our democracy.
FB is the Battleground
The sad truth is, Facebook and its leadership are getting rich off our elections—for better and for worse.
In a recent New York Magazine story, Former Republican consultant Rick Wilson, who formed the Lincoln Project late last year with fellow Never Trumpers, said this about Facebook: “The hellscape that is Facebook is the most meaningful tool of political manipulation ever devised in the history of all mankind… As much as I truly believe it should be destroyed, plowed into the earth, and the ground salted where it once stood — that’s where the toolbox is.”
The Win Black/Pa’lante Network is also taking its 2020 election battle to social media. Its campaign mission is to combat misinformation. They assert “Black and Latinx voters are being targeted by vast misinformation campaigns at a scale too big for organizing groups to tackle alone.”
Unbiased, Factual Information Found Here
Amid all this disinformation, where do we voters find the truth? Are you hoping to replace your Facebook and Twitter feeds with unbiased, nonpartisan sources for Election 2020 information? Are you seeking the truth about stories you saw on TV or the internet? Here are some reliable resources TMM can recommend:
https://justfacts.votesmart.org/about/
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/politics/
Moderates, don’t be deceived by the deluge of disinformation during this campaign. Remain vigilant and determined to fact-check claims that seem too good (or bad) to be true – using objective, unbiased sources, like the ones mentioned above. Then, above all, VOTE.
By Laurentine Nicoletto, TMM Staff
Images: Google images
Fake news warning: idginsider.com
FB leadership (Zuckerberg and Sandberg): Businessinsider.com
Fake news/Facts: BBC.com
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