The design of Twitter, where many political journalists spend their time, is in large part responsible for this damage. Its space constraints mean that tweeted headlines or tiny summaries of reporting are often assumed to be true with no critical analysis of their accuracy and are easily spread. Claims from journalists that people want to believe are shared like wildfire, while less popular subsequent corrections or nuanced debunking are easily ignored. Whatever one's views are on the actual impact of Twitter Russian bots, surely the propensity of journalistic falsehoods to spread far and wide is at least as significant.
Just in the last week alone, there have been four major factually false claims that have gone viral because journalists on Twitter endorsed and spread them: three about the controversy involving Donna Brazile and the Democratic National Committee, and one about documents and emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. It's well worth examining them, both to document what the actual truth is, as well as to understand how often and easily this online journalistic misleading occurs.
Comment: Accusations are piling up against the Queen of Corruption Cheatery Clinton. No army of Twitter Clinton-bots and Fake News journalists will save her this time (or so we hope).
On the recent revelations made by Donna Brazile, see:
- Donna Brazile confesses: Trump and Bernie were right, DNC rigged nomination for Hillary from the start
- Donna Brazile has exposed globalist financing of DNC rigging for Killary - the background story
- Fmr chair of the Democratic National Committee Donna Brazile dishes the dirt: 'Clinton indeed stole the Democratic nomination from Bernie'
And more on whose side so-called journalists are on:Media Bias: ABC, NBC and CBS skip Donna Brazile bombshell that DNC was rigged for Clinton