Fakeville
So here is my trigger. The latest move by New York to allow women to control their bodies and allow abortion at any stage to protect their physical health has stirred up a whole host of friends within my social network to post nonsense about late term abortion and just abortion in general. A big issue for me as a woman, as a mother and as an human being. I'm pro-choice-who else is going to advocate for my health except me? As a grown adult woman? Remember, I am a Canadian woman. I have had a legal right to an abortion at any time due to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms since 1988. Abortion is an issue between the woman and her doctor. Abortion has been declining in Canada, but is still a hot button issue here as there are people who want to turn back the clock.
I lived in the southern US for many years. Many of my American Facebook friends are my age or older, are from the South, the majority of them being fervid pro-life supporters, both male and female. So the New York decision triggered a flood of ridiculousness on my feed.
Remember? From Canada, so I look at this and think you've got to be kidding me? In 2019?
I put most of these friends to sleep for a month so missed most of it. Plus I don't use Facebook as a news site.
But today some of the silly posts popped back up onto Facebook and this is the one I saw. https://dailysign.al/2S34uoC
So my first instinct? Kill the post. Say nothing to the poster because she is in her 70s and isn't going to listen to me anyway. Instead I chose to use this article to analyse #Fakeville.
How much of this is fake?
So the first thing I did was read the article.
"Because the documents were highly redacted, The Daily Signal was unable to independently confirm the prices of each body part."
So in the article itself , the writer acknowledged that they were not able to verify the information but published the article anyway. #Fakeville1
Now what was interesting was the date of the article she posted. April 20, 2016. So this post is almost three years old. So I started my research. I am old school so I didn't grow up in the age of the Internet. I research in a certain way and funnily enough it is rather similar to the 4 moves and a habit. As a museum researcher you are always looking for original sources.
Remember when you look at the graphic that these are the numbers the author admitted she COULD NOT independently verify because they were redacted. The Daily Signal according to https://mediabiasfactcheck.com is a right bias publication, funded by the Heritage Foundation, a right bias think tank organisation. According to MediaBiasFactCheck they are mixed for factual reporting on climate change but ok for everything else. The image used in the article was created by the Daily Signal for the article itself. The image spread like wildfire.
A Google search resulted in multiple pages showing how the image spread. It comes up under tags like Planned Parenthood Stats, but also Black Market Body Parts which it is more closely associated with. Various religious bloggers and networks carried it the day it was published. It appeared in the Daily Caller (also right biased and must have every article fact checked) on April 21, 2016. May 3, 2016 a man of faith wrote four articles about the decision over the space of 5 months and used the picture 4 times. He included the link to the white papers on the Hearing: The Pricing of Fetal Tissue found on the US House of Representatives Committee Repository. Ahh Hah! I have found a reputable source! Multiple bloggers also followed suit. Live Action News (rated by MediaBias as "Overall, we rate Live Action a moderate conspiracy website based on misleading and sometimes false accusations against Planned Parenthood and Pro-choice advocates." ran it on May 6th, 2016 and then several more times, using the image each time. Total number of results for the images use? 25,270,000,000
Recently, the image and article has been reposted which is why it has suddenly appeared on Facebook
again. Why is that? The New York State Reproductive Health Act passed on January 22, 2019. So I
clicked on one of the recent links that said it had the picture embedded in the article. I didn't see the
picture itself but had been redirected to a website called the Washington Standard that is edited by
Tim Brown. Here is where he publishes:
"Tim Brown is an author and Editor at FreedomOutpost.com, SonsOfLibertyMedia.com, GunsInTheNews.com and TheWashingtonStandard.com. He is husband to his "more precious than rubies" wife, father of 10 "mighty arrows", jack of all trades, Christian and lover of liberty. He resides in the U.S. occupied Great State of South Carolina. . Follow Tim on Twitter. Also check him out on Gab, Minds, MeWe, Spreely, Mumbl It and Steemit"
There is no rating that I can find on the MediaBias website about him and I can't find him on a list of
fake news websites either. That's because it looks like the whole thing is done on Wordpress to look
like it a news organization. Ugh! In this article by the Washington Standard on February 1, 2019 it
included the picture. So where did the The Daily Signal get their information? From the US
House of Representatives Committee Repository as a White Paper on the Pricing of Fetal Tissue posted
to their website on April 19 2016.
So I am a museum person and we want just the facts, please, though we always collect the myths that
arise from information because that is how humans work. There is no story humans can't make better
with good storytelling.
So after getting mired in the weeds of fake news and having multiple pages open I went back to the
US House of Representatives Committee Repository and started reading. And oh boy is it interesting. Here's the background document. Here's the transcript. Now before we go any further, have a look at the Daily Signal article again. Notice they have printed exhibit B3? If you read the transcript of the hearing you can hear the Democrats asking "Where did you get this information? Did you write this yourselves?" Have a look at the documents list people!!!! And then at the transcript. "Why yes I had my staff members write this," says the Chairperson.
Now look at this document. This is from Stem Express saying:
"Potential Use of Stolen Documents as “Evidence” While several of the Majority’s exhibits masquerade as redacted StemExpress documents—cited as being sourced from a “procurement business”—it is not clear whether they are derived from the nearly 900 pages of materials that were produced by StemExpress with Bates stamping and conspicuous confidentiality legends. Instead, it appears that the Majority Staff may have repurposed unauthenticated, stolen documents illegally obtained by David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress (“CMP”). Mr. Daleiden has admitted under oath that he used the password of Holly O’Donnell, a former StemExpress contractor, to illegally gain unauthorized access to StemExpress’s email system to steal electronic documents. See Ex. A, Daleiden Dep. 286:8-288:12, Dec. 30, 2015, StemExpress LLC, et al. v. Daleiden, et al., Case No.BC589145 (Ca. Sup. Ct.). These actions constitute violations of both California and federal law. See, e.g., 10 U.S.C. § 1030. While some of these illegally obtained documents are posted to the CMP website, some of the Majority’s exhibits have never appeared publicly, suggesting that perhaps the Select Panel may be receiving so-called “evidence” directly from Mr. Daleiden and/or his associates. At least one document, Exhibit C3, appears to be a screenshot taken by some unknown person who nefariously accessed the administrator portion of StemExpress’s “WordPress” website builder. Other documents appear to have been created by Mr. Daleiden’s fake tissue procurement company, BioMax, which was established using false identification and falsified documents. Mr. Daleiden and his associate, Susan Merritt, are currently the subject of indictments in Texas and an ongoing investigation in California that will likely result in additional indictments."
Huh? Are you telling me that a Committee Hearing of the US Government included fake information to base its decisions on? Information that had been obtained that was at the time being adjudicated through the courts? That staff members actually wrote it up as fact? This is fakery at its most high. #Fakeville2
This in turn lead to a whole different line of enquiry. Now this Daily Signal article is based on information obtained by pro-life people from the Center on Medical Progress through fraud. I am not going to include a link. I can't bear to.
It's so convoluted I turned to, yeah, Wikipedia and there lo and behold was the whole mess laid out.
Bottom line? Someone fueled with moral outrage and no ethics illegally taped people from Planned Parenthood and a biotissue organization and then stole and altered documents, sent it viral and it ended up in front of a biased government committee who wrote it up as fact and had the numbers to make it stick. #rewardingbreakingthelaw #McCarthyism
Result? Planned Parenthood investigated (and found not guilty) and defunded by some states, Stem Express no longer deals with fetal tissue and research in the areas of the Zika virus, HIV, fetal and other diseases has been put on hold and or shutdown. Thanks for blocking the potential cure for Alzheimer's!
Well done #Fakeville! I am soooo glad I am Canadian! Come up to Canada to do your research!
I lived in the southern US for many years. Many of my American Facebook friends are my age or older, are from the South, the majority of them being fervid pro-life supporters, both male and female. So the New York decision triggered a flood of ridiculousness on my feed.
Remember? From Canada, so I look at this and think you've got to be kidding me? In 2019?
I put most of these friends to sleep for a month so missed most of it. Plus I don't use Facebook as a news site.
But today some of the silly posts popped back up onto Facebook and this is the one I saw. https://dailysign.al/2S34uoC
So my first instinct? Kill the post. Say nothing to the poster because she is in her 70s and isn't going to listen to me anyway. Instead I chose to use this article to analyse #Fakeville.
How much of this is fake?
So the first thing I did was read the article.
"Because the documents were highly redacted, The Daily Signal was unable to independently confirm the prices of each body part."
So in the article itself , the writer acknowledged that they were not able to verify the information but published the article anyway. #Fakeville1
Now what was interesting was the date of the article she posted. April 20, 2016. So this post is almost three years old. So I started my research. I am old school so I didn't grow up in the age of the Internet. I research in a certain way and funnily enough it is rather similar to the 4 moves and a habit. As a museum researcher you are always looking for original sources.
Part 1: The spread of disinformation through the use of a powerful image.
Remember when you look at the graphic that these are the numbers the author admitted she COULD NOT independently verify because they were redacted. The Daily Signal according to https://mediabiasfactcheck.com is a right bias publication, funded by the Heritage Foundation, a right bias think tank organisation. According to MediaBiasFactCheck they are mixed for factual reporting on climate change but ok for everything else. The image used in the article was created by the Daily Signal for the article itself. The image spread like wildfire.
A Google search resulted in multiple pages showing how the image spread. It comes up under tags like Planned Parenthood Stats, but also Black Market Body Parts which it is more closely associated with. Various religious bloggers and networks carried it the day it was published. It appeared in the Daily Caller (also right biased and must have every article fact checked) on April 21, 2016. May 3, 2016 a man of faith wrote four articles about the decision over the space of 5 months and used the picture 4 times. He included the link to the white papers on the Hearing: The Pricing of Fetal Tissue found on the US House of Representatives Committee Repository. Ahh Hah! I have found a reputable source! Multiple bloggers also followed suit. Live Action News (rated by MediaBias as "Overall, we rate Live Action a moderate conspiracy website based on misleading and sometimes false accusations against Planned Parenthood and Pro-choice advocates." ran it on May 6th, 2016 and then several more times, using the image each time. Total number of results for the images use? 25,270,000,000
Recently, the image and article has been reposted which is why it has suddenly appeared on Facebook
again. Why is that? The New York State Reproductive Health Act passed on January 22, 2019. So I
clicked on one of the recent links that said it had the picture embedded in the article. I didn't see the
picture itself but had been redirected to a website called the Washington Standard that is edited by
Tim Brown. Here is where he publishes:
"Tim Brown is an author and Editor at FreedomOutpost.com, SonsOfLibertyMedia.com, GunsInTheNews.com and TheWashingtonStandard.com. He is husband to his "more precious than rubies" wife, father of 10 "mighty arrows", jack of all trades, Christian and lover of liberty. He resides in the U.S. occupied Great State of South Carolina. . Follow Tim on Twitter. Also check him out on Gab, Minds, MeWe, Spreely, Mumbl It and Steemit"
There is no rating that I can find on the MediaBias website about him and I can't find him on a list of
fake news websites either. That's because it looks like the whole thing is done on Wordpress to look
like it a news organization. Ugh! In this article by the Washington Standard on February 1, 2019 it
included the picture. So where did the The Daily Signal get their information? From the US
House of Representatives Committee Repository as a White Paper on the Pricing of Fetal Tissue posted
to their website on April 19 2016.
Part 2: Where did you get this information?
So I am a museum person and we want just the facts, please, though we always collect the myths that
arise from information because that is how humans work. There is no story humans can't make better
with good storytelling.
So after getting mired in the weeds of fake news and having multiple pages open I went back to the
US House of Representatives Committee Repository and started reading. And oh boy is it interesting. Here's the background document. Here's the transcript. Now before we go any further, have a look at the Daily Signal article again. Notice they have printed exhibit B3? If you read the transcript of the hearing you can hear the Democrats asking "Where did you get this information? Did you write this yourselves?" Have a look at the documents list people!!!! And then at the transcript. "Why yes I had my staff members write this," says the Chairperson.
Now look at this document. This is from Stem Express saying:
"Potential Use of Stolen Documents as “Evidence” While several of the Majority’s exhibits masquerade as redacted StemExpress documents—cited as being sourced from a “procurement business”—it is not clear whether they are derived from the nearly 900 pages of materials that were produced by StemExpress with Bates stamping and conspicuous confidentiality legends. Instead, it appears that the Majority Staff may have repurposed unauthenticated, stolen documents illegally obtained by David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress (“CMP”). Mr. Daleiden has admitted under oath that he used the password of Holly O’Donnell, a former StemExpress contractor, to illegally gain unauthorized access to StemExpress’s email system to steal electronic documents. See Ex. A, Daleiden Dep. 286:8-288:12, Dec. 30, 2015, StemExpress LLC, et al. v. Daleiden, et al., Case No.BC589145 (Ca. Sup. Ct.). These actions constitute violations of both California and federal law. See, e.g., 10 U.S.C. § 1030. While some of these illegally obtained documents are posted to the CMP website, some of the Majority’s exhibits have never appeared publicly, suggesting that perhaps the Select Panel may be receiving so-called “evidence” directly from Mr. Daleiden and/or his associates. At least one document, Exhibit C3, appears to be a screenshot taken by some unknown person who nefariously accessed the administrator portion of StemExpress’s “WordPress” website builder. Other documents appear to have been created by Mr. Daleiden’s fake tissue procurement company, BioMax, which was established using false identification and falsified documents. Mr. Daleiden and his associate, Susan Merritt, are currently the subject of indictments in Texas and an ongoing investigation in California that will likely result in additional indictments."
Huh? Are you telling me that a Committee Hearing of the US Government included fake information to base its decisions on? Information that had been obtained that was at the time being adjudicated through the courts? That staff members actually wrote it up as fact? This is fakery at its most high. #Fakeville2
This in turn lead to a whole different line of enquiry. Now this Daily Signal article is based on information obtained by pro-life people from the Center on Medical Progress through fraud. I am not going to include a link. I can't bear to.
It's so convoluted I turned to, yeah, Wikipedia and there lo and behold was the whole mess laid out.
Bottom line? Someone fueled with moral outrage and no ethics illegally taped people from Planned Parenthood and a biotissue organization and then stole and altered documents, sent it viral and it ended up in front of a biased government committee who wrote it up as fact and had the numbers to make it stick. #rewardingbreakingthelaw #McCarthyism
Result? Planned Parenthood investigated (and found not guilty) and defunded by some states, Stem Express no longer deals with fetal tissue and research in the areas of the Zika virus, HIV, fetal and other diseases has been put on hold and or shutdown. Thanks for blocking the potential cure for Alzheimer's!
Well done #Fakeville! I am soooo glad I am Canadian! Come up to Canada to do your research!
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