Fake News: Finally Somebody Is Doing Something About It!
Vladimir Putin's Foreign Ministry
The world is awash in disinformation being peddling by the "opposition"—uh, journalists. Surely it is past time for a steady hand to dispassionately evaluate "stories" appearing on websites, in newspapers and broadcasts. Fortunately, under the gloriously firm leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian Foreign Ministry has bravely stepped forward to shoulder this onerous task. Foreign Ministry disinformation specialists (after all, they should know fake news when they see it) will daily comb the internet for stories that fail to provide the appropriate "alternate facts." Such stories will be identified on the Foreign Ministry's Fake News website with a bright red "Fake News" label. The label is helpfully in English. Readers no longer have to figure out what's real for themselves anymore: The Russian government will do it for them!
According to Engadget, so far the the vigilant watchdogs at the Foreign Ministry have …
…only attacked outlets in the US and the UK like the New York Times, Bloomberg, the Telegraph, NBC News and the Santa Monica Observer. As the ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova explained to the government's own state-run RIA Novosti news agency, the site is intended to prevent the sharing of articles it believes are inaccurate.
"Here we will make an example of such propaganda dumped by various media outlets, providing links to their sources, and so on," Zakharova said. The site does not, however, explain why Russia's foreign ministry believes the articles are incorrect, it only provides the cryptic message "This material contains data, not corresponding to the truth" and a link to the original article.
In its report on the new Russian information initiative, The New York Times noted: "Seemingly borrowing a practice from President Trump, Russia appears to be labeling as fake any articles it dislikes." Surely that story is just ripe for a big red stamp!