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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRobert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farageRobert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media
With links to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage, the rightwing US computer scientist is at the heart of a multimillion-dollar propaganda network
Carole Cadwalladr
@carolecadwalla
Sunday 26 February 2017 04.00 EST
Last modified on Sunday 26 February 2017 04.03 EST
Just over a week ago, Donald Trump gathered members of the worlds press before him and told them they were liars. The press, honestly, is out of control, he said. The public doesnt believe you any more. CNN was described as very fake news story after story is bad. The BBC was another beauty.
That night I did two things. First, I typed Trump in the search box of Twitter. My feed was reporting that he was crazy, a lunatic, a raving madman. But that wasnt how it was playing out elsewhere. The results produced a stream of Go Donald!!!!, and You show em!!! There were star-spangled banner emojis and thumbs-up emojis and clips of Trump laying into the FAKE news MSM liars!
Trump had spoken, and his audience had heard him. Then I did what Ive been doing for two and a half months now. I Googled mainstream media is And there it was. Googles autocomplete suggestions: mainstream media is dead, dying, fake news, fake, finished. Is it dead, I wonder? Has FAKE news won? Are we now the FAKE news? Is the mainstream media we, us, I dying?
I click Googles first suggested link. It leads to a website called CNSnews.com and an article: The Mainstream media are dead. Theyre dead, I learn, because they we, I cannot be trusted. How had it, an obscure site Id never heard of, dominated Googles search algorithm on the topic? In the About us tab, I learn CNSnews is owned by the Media Research Center, which a click later I learn is Americas media watchdog, an organisation that claims an unwavering commitment to neutralising leftwing bias in the news, media and popular culture.
Another couple of clicks and I discover that it receives a large bulk of its funding more than $10m in the past decade from a single source, the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. If you follow US politics you may recognise the name. Robert Mercer is the money behind Donald Trump. But then, I will come to learn, Robert Mercer is the money behind an awful lot of things. He was Trumps single biggest donor. Mercer started backing Ted Cruz, but when he fell out of the presidential race he threw his money $13.5m of it behind the Trump campaign.
Its money hes made as a result of his career as a brilliant but reclusive computer scientist. He started his career at IBM, where he made what the Association for Computational Linguistics called revolutionary breakthroughs in language processing a science that went on to be key in developing todays AI and later became joint CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund that makes its money by using algorithms to model and trade on the financial markets.
One of its funds, Medallion, which manages only its employees money, is the most successful in the world generating $55bn so far. And since 2010, Mercer has donated $45m to different political campaigns all Republican and another $50m to non-profits all rightwing, ultra-conservative. This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the world according to his personal beliefs.
snip//
Were not quite in the alternative reality where the actual news has become FAKE news!!! But were almost there. Out on Twitter, the new transnational battleground for the future, someone I follow tweets a quote by Marshall McLuhan, the great information theorist of the 60s. World War III will be a guerrilla information war, it says. With no divisions between military and civilian participation.
By that definition were already there.
Tactical Peek
(1,213 posts)Kick
triron
(22,030 posts)as Mercer. Also we were both undergraduates in physics and math at UNM.
Never knew him personally but know he was an exceptional student in both fields.
Interesting that he went so far scientifically but in a bad direction politically.
babylonsister
(171,109 posts)One day I hope we know.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,430 posts)BSdetect
(8,999 posts)Exposed how exactly social media is being used to influence elections [View all]
Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media,
This is how they influence elections and even financial markets which has proven very successful
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage
babylonsister
(171,109 posts)the more we know.
BSdetect
(8,999 posts)Must keep up he Kicks
VOX
(22,976 posts)They just keep coming.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)The nation is divided between a largest majority group who aren't fooled, or only partly,
a large destructive segment on the right who are determined to deny reality as long as they can,
a smaller rabid group who never will,
and a significantly large group who don't know what to think and don't want to think about it.
Itm, readership is shooting up for honest investigative journalism. Viewership is increasing for those few shows worth watching for information.
And, extremely importantly, everyone is talking about "fake news." No matter where they claim it originates from, all now know our nation is awash in it. That's a huge change from just a half year ago.