title: Fake News: The Collapse of the MSM’s ‘Facebook Russian Bot’ Story
text: As 21WIRE said last year, the Russian hacking, or Russiagate story was a political hoax from the start. What this story can now demonstrate, is that for the last 18 months, the entire mainstream media has been promulgating a highly politicised, and relentless campaign of fake news designed to implicate Russia in an imaginary scandal. Leading the pack are former  papers of record  The New York Times and The Washington Post, flanked by America s premier broadcast TV propaganda outlet CNN.Last week, we revealed how powerful politicians in Washington had pressured Facebook executives to come up with any evidence to support the Democratic Party s theory of  Russian meddling,    demonstrating clear collusion between the Obama Administration and Silicon Valley corporation Facebook, with the goal of fabricating a scandal in order to scapegoat Vladimir Putin and the Russians for the electoral collapse of Hillary Clinton last November.As a result, US-Russian relations have been sacrificed at the altar of petty partisan politics and a failing deep state agenda.It certainly begs the question: with so much at stake, why would Washington and MSM lie and risk pushing global tensions closer to a world war level confrontation? If they are prepared to lie about this, what else are they prepared to lie about?Consortium News Exclusive: The U.S. mainstream media is determined to prove Russia-gate despite the scandal s cracking foundation and its inexplicable anomalies, such as why Russia would set up a Facebook  puppies  page.By Robert ParryWhat is perhaps most unprofessional, unethical and even immoral about the U.S. mainstream media s coverage of Russia-gate is how all the stories start with the conclusion    Russia bad    and then make whatever shards of information exist fit the preordained narrative.For instance, we re told that Facebook executives, who were sent back three times by Democratic lawmakers to find something to pin on Russia, finally detected $100,000 worth of ads spread out over three years from accounts  suspected of links to Russia  or similar hazy wording.These Facebook ads and 201 related Twitter accounts, we re told, represent the long-missing proof about Russian  meddling  in the U.S. presidential election after earlier claims faltered or fell apart under even minimal scrutiny.In the old days, journalists might have expressed some concern that Facebook  found  the ads only under extraordinary pressure from powerful politicians, such as Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a leading legislator on the tech industry. But today s mainstream reporters took Warner s side and made it look like Facebook had been dragging its heels and that there must be much more out there.However, it doesn t really seem to matter how little evidence there is. Anything will do.Even the paltry $100,000 is not put in any perspective (Facebook has annual revenue of $27 billion), nor the 201 Twitter accounts (compared to Twitter s 328 million monthly users). Nor are the hazy allegations of  suspected   links to Russia  subjected to serious inspection. Although Russia is a nation of 144 million people and many divergent interests, it s assumed that everything must be personally ordered by President Vladimir Putin.Yet, if you look at some of the details about these $100,000 in ads, you learn the case is even flimsier than you might have thought. The sum was spread out over 2015, 2016 and 2017   and thus represented a very tiny pebble in a very large lake of Facebook activity.But more recently we learned that only 44 percent of the ads appeared before Americans went to the polls last November, according to Facebook; that would mean that 56 percent appeared afterwards.Facebook added that  roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone.   For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent. So, as miniscule as the $100,000 in ad buys over three years may have seemed, the tiny pebble turns out really to be only a fraction of a tiny pebble if the Russians indeed did toss it into the 2016 campaign.What About the Puppies?We further have learned that most ads weren t for or against a specific candidate, but rather addressed supposedly controversial issues that the mainstream media insists were meant to divide the United States and thus somehow undermine American democracy.Except, it turns out that one of the issues was puppies.As Mike Isaac and Scott Shane of The New York Times reported in Tuesday s editions,  The Russians who posed as Americans on Facebook last year tried on quite an array of disguises.   There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads. Now, there are a lot of controversial issues in America, but I don t think any of us would put puppies near the top of the list. Isaac and Shane reported that there were also supposedly Russia-linked groups advocating gay rights, gun rights and black civil rights, although precisely how these divergent groups were  linked  to Russia or the Kremlin was never fully explained. (Facebook declined to offer details.)At this point, a professional journalist might begin to pose some very hard questions to the sources, who presumably include many partisan Democrats and their political allies hyping the evil-Russia narrative. It would be time for some lectures to the sources about the consequences for taking reporters on a wild ride in conspiracy land.Yet, instead of starting to question the overall premise of this  scandal,  journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, etc. keep making excuses for the nuttiness. The explanation for the puppy ads was that the nefarious Russians might be probing to discover Americans who might later be susceptible to propaganda. The goal of the dog lovers  page was more obscure,  Isaac and Shane acknowledged.  But some analysts suggested a possible motive: to build a large following before gradually introducing political content. Without viewing the entire feed from the page, now closed by Facebook, it is impossible to say whether the Russian operators tried such tactics. [Seriously, this is what the New York Times is passing off as  journalism  now]The Joe McCarthy of Russia-gateThe Times then turned to Clinton Watts, a former FBI agent and a top promoter of the New McCarthyism that has swept Official Washington. Watts has testified before Congress that almost anything that appears on social media these days criticizing a politician may well be traceable to the Russians Continue this story at Consortium NewsREAD MORE RUSSIAGATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russiagate FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE  SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV