How Venezuela has been affected from #fakenews from all media sources (Social Networks, Blogs, MSM, Government Press).

Well, as it seems, most of the news that we read on social media, blogs, government, and mainstream media (MSM), really targets our way too see certain aspects of politics, events, our views on life and the world, while keeping away the main purpose of journalism:

the production and the distribution of reports on recent events

Journalism - Wikipedia

In this post, I want to give my views on how #fakenews is being spotted in Venezuela. I also want to point out that #fakenews is different from anything that qualifies as a legit news report, a biased news report, and an opinion article. BTW, I don't mind when any person gives their views on the repercussions, approval or dissapproval of certain events that have been reported. But when that happens, it stops being news, it's just an opinion article, or it's biased news. Maybe i'll write about that topic in a following post.

I will use examples that happened and are currently happening in my country. I am sure that in North America and Europe it happens in a similar way.

#fakenews is spread massively by government bots on social media

Gaby Castellanos, CEO of Socialphilia, a major advertising agency in Spain but with international scope, has denounced that on January 16, 2018, "759 twitter accounts created posing as #Anonymous or subgroups and 862 created on Instagram for the same or false profiles of struggle" in Venezuela. José Blanco Oliver, founder of the agency Trendinalia, also tweeted on July 23, 2017 that "2,000 of the 5,000 tweets published with the HT #EmpresariosConLaConstituyente were published by 280 bots" with a backup image. Before, Diaz had also registered "more than 1,000 bots" on April 30, 2015 to position the #SoyGuardiandeMaduro tag.

A study by the University of Oxford entitled Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation published in July 2017, found that in 28 countries around the world there is "sufficient evidence" of the use of "cyber troops" to manipulate Public opinion. In the case of Venezuela, this digital army would be directed from the Ministry of Communication and Information, the document reads. The Institute of Press and Society (IPYS Venezuela) had reported in 2015 "a pattern of state behavior and abuse of public resources for partisan political purposes" by using the official Twitter accounts of various state institutions to promote the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The often post links from rip-off blogs-news sources to spread "#fakenews.

Castellanos warns that "it is a usual practice in the country without scruples" with the intention of obtaining thousands of followers "in some cases to generate a false credibility, information and/or news and in others only to put on sale that account". He says that with the military operation that ended the life of the inspector Óscar Pérez and his companions, which was described as "massacre" - concept supported by the death of more than three people according to the UN, explained the incident journalist Javier Mayorga in his blog- by the opposition public opinion, "took advantage to also falsify currents of opinion by replicating information brought from real media, to put false news in the middle, and thus justify the actions of the government". In addition, it warns that what qualifies as "propaganda practices of the Venezuelan dictatorship" has been extended to Argentina and Spain.

A social media strategist and a reporter who worked in or near one of the laboratories located in the state of Aragua provided statements with the request to omit her name, as well as references that would allow them to be identified. "Our boss commissioned one of the community managers who was in charge of creating false accounts and tweeting with specific orders on relevant political issues, but we also had to block many" egg accounts "(without a photo or biography) that were obviously false", she explains. They also ordered them to use their personal accounts to give more promotion to some news published in related media or announcements from local or national authorities. The reporter remembers that they were direct orders: "to give RT news that wanted to know more, but I remember that once there was an employee of an official media that tripped and broke something in a church in the south of Aragua, and people started to publish it on Twitter. Then there was an order for the bot accounts to be used to deny it, publishing photos and videos. The collaboration of the press teams was requested to create and spread the message", he reveals.

Fake News in Venezuela: labs, power abuse and the lasagna method - Medianalisis.org

Castellanos explains that "the generation of fake news intends to generate confusion, and uses known profiles to be reinforced. That's where the subject goes out of hand, because it's not just the propaganda laboratories, and it's worrisome. People who work in reputation, what comes to be white hat, do not do that work, simply generate content based on positive life, and expose it to download links in a search engine". On the outsourcing of advertising agencies with expertise in social networks to improve the image of a person on the Internet. "In the case of black hat hacker, it is another issue and that is what they work in Venezuela. Information, news and false accusations to modify the thinking of the masses. We speak of manipulation. In Venezuela they are leaders in that kind of content", he laments. He agrees with Díaz about the role of the Russians: "they do not play in Venezuela".

Sometimes #fakenews is spread by these bots favoring opposition parties in order to create confusion, investigate deserters or traitors, and counter any enemies of the regime.

In the recent weeks, efforts are made from government and opposition party media managers to manipulate the electorate using "positive" #fakenews about electoral institutions and proceedures, to boost participation in the next bogus presidential elections.

#fakenews is spread by messaging services

Same happens in messaging services, like Whatsapp and Telegram.

It has become very common to spread information through voice notes.

These are characterized by people who use false names, to spread events that are not happening. This method has been somewhat more effective to affect the psyche of those who receive these messages. These are spread quickly, through massive messaging and group chats publications. Curiously, the alleged messengers emphasize that these events are true and that they are being safeguarded because the "organisms", "corporations" or "media" do not want such information to be published.

#fakenews spread by government official media

In the government's flagship channel, Venezolana de Televisión (VTV), it is almost impossible to hear anyone admit that Venezuelans are not having a good time.

And on the occasions when they do it, those responsible for the different evils, according to the official lexicon, are the US, the fascist opposition, the stateless entrepreneurs, the capitalist market or "El Niño" climate phenomenon.

That isn't new.

In 2011 and part of 2012 I was correspondent of BBC Mundo in Venezuela and now I returned for a few days to Caracas.

At that time the remote control of my television was almost an ornament. Although I must admit that sometimes it was a tortuous practice, constantly being aware of VTV was an inescapable obligation for any foreign journalist who wanted to know the vision of the government, which - as now - was quite reluctant to grant interviews.

Hugo Chávez, excellent speaker, owner of an incomparable charisma and communicator by antonomasia of the Bolivarian Revolution, governed the air, live and by VTV. Channel 8 could not be changed.

With that experience in tow, in my recent stay I decided to see how the channel is telling what is happening in the country.

Doing it, as I did for several days a couple of weeks ago, amounted to dawn listening to talk of "induced shortage" and "unconventional war", spend the afternoon watching how there is a conspiracy of the international right against the country and go to sleep with the speech that you want to force a foreign intervention in Venezuela.

The country that I saw watching a week VTV, the state channel of Venezuela
- BBC World

The tip of the iceberg of #fakenews from government media came on 2013, with the reports of Hugo Chavez health condition, before suddenly reporting his death in March of that same year. Chavismo has used lies so abusively that nobody believes them anymore.

The problem is, that most of the population doesn't even believe the MSM.

#fakenews spread by MSM

#fakenews in Venezuelan MSM is not common, as in these days they prefer to use disinformation and self-censorship, in order to maintain a "reputation" of being fair and balanced.

But that happening now does not exempt them from what happened in the past.

The infamous shooting that wasn't what it looked like. There were no protestors in the line of fire from the shooters from the bridge. Source

When Hugo Chavez was ousted from power in 2002, one of the main reasons of the coup was that alledgedly the main protest that was heading towards the Government Palace was attacked by gunfire by his supporters. Images of that were repeatedly broadcasted by national TV networks, and the journalist that was covering the news was actually awarded for an untruly coverage:

Last year, the King of Spain Award for Journalism, endowed with six thousand euros, was awarded to journalist Venevisión Luis Alfonso Fernández for a video documentary entitled "The massacre of the center of Caracas." It is a graphic report about ten minutes long that includes the images of several Chavez militants firing with small arms from the top of the Llaguno Bridge in the Venezuelan capital on April 11, 2002. The audio of the documentary's announcer includes expressions such as "Observe the gunmen, the murderers, how they unload the gun and reload it, on the defenseless march".

This documentary, wielded as proof of the implication of the pro-Chavez sectors in the death of nineteen people during the riots and subsequent coup d'état in April 2002, was issued every day an average of three times during a whole year for the television stations hostile to the government of Hugo Chávez.

The five people who are the protagonists of those shots were imprisoned and prosecuted and their acquittals are now made public. One of them, Richard Peñalver, along with his lawyers Riner Biel Morales, Aiskel Biel Blanco and Erika Peñalver, has traveled to Spain and explained all the details of those events and the trial.

They never denied the authenticity of the images nor were the authors of those shots. However, the first issue to highlight is that the prosecution did not accuse them of any death or any injured, that is, the so-called "murderers" in the award-winning documentary, were not even presumed because none of those bullets wounded anyone.

As demonstrated in the trial, among other tests by the statements of the award-winning journalist, the images were never broadcast live, were collected and taken to the television channel by a camera of the Venevisión team, not by the award-winning journalist He also did not participate in the editing and production of the video, he did not even supervise the production. The audio of the documentary, which simulates the excitement of the live show, was added to the studio by an announcer who was never there, who read a text prepared by his superiors, none of whom witnessed the events.

In this way, the award-winning journalist, who did not even say who the announcer was, did not shoot those images, nor took them to the station, nor did he include any testimony of the events, nor did he review or supervise the production of the issued document. I just shared the roof with the camera that rolled them.

On the other hand, as the sentence collects, the video "does not show who, who or what and why these people brandish and fire their weapons," despite the award-winning document talks about "unloading weapons on the fly helpless. " It has been the trial and its subsequent sentence with its proven fact story which has clarified that the accused ("assassins" according to the award-winning journalistic story), acted "moved by the defense of their person, proceeded to wield their firearms, in order to repel an aggression that was illegitimately received by some officials of the metropolitan police, "the municipal police sent by the opposition mayor Alfredo Peña. The sentence establishes "justified the means used by the defendants to impel or repel" the aggression, qualified as "legitimate defense of third parties, state of necessity, necessary situation or necessary assistance."

Moreover, the ruling also clarifies that the two dead of that shooting, along with a score of wounded were the companions of the accused. That is why, now there are in prison awaiting trial, eight of those municipal police.

The ruling also establishes that the march of the opposition, the one on which, according to the voice of the award-winning documentary, the defendants shot, "did not reach the vicinity of Llaguno Bridge." The award-winning journalist recognized him at the trial: "I did not see who was being shot." At the trial, a journalist from the Globovisión channel also stated that she also took pictures of those events, images in which the avenue supposedly occupied by the opposition demonstrators and target of the shooting was seen, empty. Images that were never reissued by that station, but served as evidence in the trial.

A year and a half of investigations, statements, testimonies and filmed documents have allowed to discover the truth. A truth diametrically opposed to the one awarded in Spain by a jury made up of the Efe agency and the Cooperation Agency. The only prize that would correspond to the documentary "The massacre of the center of Caracas", would be that of deception and manipulation.

So, #fakenews is a tool that is commonly used in Venezuela to control the masses. I just wanted to expose this in order to aware you guys if something like this is happening on your neighbourhoods, cities or countries.

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