{"id":53327,"date":"2022-10-11T11:30:42","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T18:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=53327"},"modified":"2022-10-11T11:30:42","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T18:30:42","slug":"fake-news-kicks-into-high-gear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=53327","title":{"rendered":"Fake News Kicks Into High Gear"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Peter White<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As the midterms approach, voters are being bombarded with disinformation in multiple languages.<\/h2>\n

People who are addicted to fake news get it from sources they trust. Trouble is, people who produce it know they are lying.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis information has always existed,\u201d says\u00a0<\/strong>Vanessa C\u00e1rdenas, deputy director of\u00a0America\u2019s Voice<\/em>\u00a0and a policy expert on political disinformation. During an Ethnic Media Services\u00a0press call<\/a>\u00a0last week, C\u00e1rdenas said that there\u2019s a lot more fake news out there and it spreads quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s different is the way in which we are consuming information has changed, and that has created this monster that we are not able to control, and many times the platforms are not able to control,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

News that misleads reaches millions via Facebook and Twitter. When Fox News peddles conspiracy theories, they play to an audience that wants to believe the message regardless of whether it is true or not.<\/p>\n

C\u00e1rdenas said false narratives about immigration, crime, and the economy are flourishing on Fox News and its viewers see them repeated constantly as the midterm elections approach. She said the Right has created an echo chamber that reinforces and amplifies negative stereotypes about immigrants or repeats the \u201cbig lie\u201d that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see that candidates, Republican candidates, are taking a lot of these themes and are using them in their ads. America\u2019s Voice has been tracking TV ads for campaigns across the country and we see hundreds and hundreds of ads. We see hundreds and hundreds of emails that come from these campaigns touching on these themes,\u201d C\u00e1rdenas said.<\/p>\n

Disinformation creates a feedback loop that amplifies false messages to voters and politicians use them to win elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a political tactic. There\u2019s no policy substance. It\u2019s not a factual conversation. It\u2019s not a solution-oriented conversation. It\u2019s all about giving red meat to their base,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Added to the slew of misinformation are a raft of newly enacted restrictive voting laws. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, after the 2020 election 21 states passed 42 restrictive voting laws.<\/p>\n

Mekela Panditharatne with the Brennan Center\u2019s Democracy Program noted these laws \u201ctarget or disproportionately impact Latino and Black voters<\/a>. And we found that newly registered voters are most likely to be Latino,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Many of these new voters are being bombarded with misinformation on Spanish-language platforms.<\/p>\n

Spanish radio is the news media of choice for Latinos in states like Florida and Texas.\u00a0Factchequeado<\/a>, a Spanish fact-checking platform, calls out fake news in Spanish language news media by using WhatsApp, a cross-platform instant messaging service popular among Latino\/a communities.<\/p>\n

Factchequeado started in April with support from the Google News Initiative and is modeled after two similar operations,\u00a0Maldita.es<\/a>\u00a0in Spain and\u00a0Chequeado<\/a>\u00a0in Argentina. It has 30 large and small media partners who collaborate as fake news watchdogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing a lot of disinformation similar to the past election,\u201d says Factchequeado Managing Editor Tamoa Calzadilla, former director of fact checking at Univision, the largest Spanish language TV network in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Allegations of fraud in the 2020 election are common, along with other false narratives directed at Latino\/a communities. Calzadilla cited one fake story circulating on radio stations in Florida that claimed the Internal Revenue Service bought ammunition to attack people in their homes and steal their money.<\/p>\n

Two other false narratives circulating widely in Spanish-speaking communities are \u201cthe border crisis\u201d and race replacement theory that says U.S. immigration authorities are letting \u201cillegals\u201d come into the country to replace whites.<\/p>\n

Calzadilla said that both parties spin the news but the tidal wave of disinformation about crime and especially immigration, comes from conservatives. When radio announcers call undocumented immigrants \u201cillegals\u201d they are making a political statement and spreading a false narrative, too.<\/p>\n

The hard truth is that the country is polarized and hungry for news that both influences their opinions and reinforces what they already believe. Immigration is a top issue with Latinos right now and ideologues are exploiting it.<\/p>\n

Some Latinos see Dreamers and new asylum seekers as immigrants just like themselves. Others with legal status, or waiting for it, see new arrivals as cheaters trying to jump the queue.<\/p>\n

While both parties are responsible for the current dysfunction in our immigration system, Republicans are putting all the blame on President Biden and the Democrats, a strategy that appears to be working as reporting shows GOP gains among Latino\/a voters since 2020.<\/p>\n

Disinformation is also prevalent within the Chinese-speaking community, says Rong Xiaoqing, a reporter for the Chinese-language\u00a0Sing Tao Daily<\/em>\u00a0in New York who monitors Chinese social networks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most popular one among Chinese is WeChat,\u201d Xiaoqing said, adding a lot of these discussions happen in private groups, making them difficult to trace.<\/p>\n

While the Chinese government censors WeChat, its intrusion into messaging around COVID was \u201crelatively clean,\u201d Xiaoqing explained. \u201cIt\u2019s in the Chinese government\u2019s interest to vaccinate people and to fight against COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n

Misinformation related to U.S. politics is another story. \u201cIts running rampant on WeChat because it is in the Chinese government\u2019s interest to portray that the US and its democracy has been collapsing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

There is also overlap on WeChat with narratives being pedaled in Spanish.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Biden administration is issuing a temporary green card to illegal immigrants. That\u2019s their exact words, illegal immigrants,\u201d Xiaoqing noted. \u201cWhat they are actually referring to is an ID card that Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to issue to immigrants coming to the border in order to help them quickly access their file and book immigration related hearings.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those Chinese immigrants applying for green cards via the official process,\u00a0it\u2019s a message that can resonate. \u201cWhen they see that\u2026 someone is getting it before me via a shortcut, they will not be happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this year the non-profit Chinese for Affirmative Action\u00a0launched the fact checking<\/a>\u00a0website Piyaoba.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey do index fact checking in Chinese. Not only will they tell you \u2018Oh, here\u2019s a piece of misinformation that\u2019s circulating on Chinese language social media platforms\u2019, but they also dig into the arrangement of the message and its evolution through the years,\u201d Xiaoqing said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByPeter White Oct 10, 2022 As...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53328,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53327\/revisions\/53328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}