The hidden side of politics

Anti-Trump Activists Defend Fake-Washington Post Stunt

Reported by WIRED:

On Wednesday, a group of hoaxsters affiliated with the progressive nonprofit group the Yes Men circulated fake versions of The Washington Post, dated May 1, 2019, imagining a world in which President Trump has suddenly left office. Throughout the morning, the activists distributed print copies of the edition in front of the White House and debuted a website called My-WashingtonPost.com, which, despite looking like the real Post website, was splashed with the faux headline “UNPRESIDENTED: ENDING CRISIS, TRUMP HASTILY DEPARTS WHITE HO– USE.”

The stunt, which was promoted on Twitter by the left-leaning group MoveOn, was intended as a work of satire to “support impeachment,” according to Andy Bichlbaum, a cofounder of the Yes Men, who initially identified himself as “Andrew from The Washington Post” when WIRED called him Wednesday. “We’ve been around for about 20 years doing, I’d say, clowny sort of actions with a very serious impact,” Bichlbaum says.

But for some, the trick backfired, appearing to be just another example of fake news in an era already dominated by it. Charges of fake news have also been used by governments to undermine legitimate media outlets. President Trump himself has repeatedly referred to the Post, and other American news organizations, as fake news.

The Washington Post’s public relations department said on Twitter that it was aware of the fake papers and was looking into the matter.

This isn’t the first time the Yes Men have pulled off such a prank. In 2008 the group handed out phony versions of The New York Times bearing the headline “Iraq War Ends.” It, too, was accompanied by a mock website. But much has changed since then. The memory of fake news circulated by Russian and Macedonian actors in the run-up to the 2016 election is still fresh in people’s minds. Meanwhile, recent reports have surfaced of Democratic operatives using similarly misleading tactics and misrepresenting themselves during the Alabama senate race between Roy Moore and senator Doug Jones.

Bichlbaum says the group considered these concerns when it conceived of the campaign last August, along with writers L. A. Kauffman and Onnesha Roychoudhuri. (Roychoudhuri is a former fact-checker at WIRED.) But he says the creators felt confident that they were being fully transparent about the satirical nature of the “news.”

“Obviously it’s foremost in our thinking about this,” Bichlbaum says of the issue of fake news. “If you look at the website, I think you might agree it would take someone very strange to spend much time believing it’s true.”

Another difference, he says: Real fake-news artists never reveal that the news is fake, whereas the Yes Men put out a press release revealing themselves hours after the campaign went live. (The phone number accompanying the release includes an automated voice message that says, “Thank you for calling The Washington Post.”)

Before then, though, there was plenty of misreporting. Early Wednesday morning, MoveOn video producer Sara Kenigsberg shared photos of the activists standing in front of the White House on Twitter. Her tweets quickly went viral.1 The website Mediaite.com reported that MoveOn was behind the campaign, an allegation MoveOn later denied. Mediaite corrected its story.

There is, of course, an important line between satire and outright propaganda, and satire has always played an important role in political discourse. But in a world in which information is all filtered through the same channels, it can become increasingly tricky to stay on the right side of that line.

Bichlbaum says he was aware of some of the negative feedback the campaign received online Wednesday morning, but, he says, “It doesn’t bother us. We’re not out to make any friends. We’re out to get things out there and make change. If we piss off a couple people along the way, that’s fine.”

1Correction: 1:22 pm EDT 1/16/2019 An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to Sara Kenigsberg by her Twitter name, Sara Pearl.


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Source:WIRED

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