Media Matters' Kristian Ramos Describes The Fake News “Food Chain” And Its “Real-World Consequences”

Kristian Ramos Explains How Google Ads Are Boosting Fake News And Right-Wing Media Are Using It To Undermine Real News

From the December 15 edition of WWKB's The Leslie Marshall Show:

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KRISTIAN RAMOS: Fake news, I think, is the thing that people really need to start getting wise to, and I want to take you through the food chain of this because it is kind of unbelievable. But something goes up on Reddit, something crazy like Hillary Clinton is running a sex ring at a Comet pizza. Then it makes its way on one of these fake news websites, which are populated by kids from other countries. And then it makes its way to Facebook and then Google advertisements. And then all of the sudden you have some guy walk into a pizzeria with a loaded gun and trying to investigate something that never actually happened. So there are real-world consequences for it. It is something that a lot of people need to sort of understand. And the other side of it that's sort of crazy is conservatives are now using the term “fake news” to describe The New York Times or CNN. So, like, the Russian hacking scandal. They're up there saying, “Well, this is fake news.”

MICHELE JAWANDO: Wow, I haven’t even seen that connection yet.

RAMOS: And so it’s a problem, in that it’s out there. And then the other thing that I think people really need to wrap their heads around is Breitbart News is going to have an incredible influence on the White House because Steve Bannon --

MICHELE JAWANDO: That's right. And for our listeners who don't know what Breitbart is?

RAMOS: It's a very -- it used to be a very fringey, right-wing place that has a lot of nasty, horrible things on it. Anti-Semitic --

JAWANDO: White supremacist.

RAMOS: White supremacist. 

TIFFANY CROSS: That word is back. We can just use it now freely.

JAWANDO: It never left, for some of us. Right?

MARSHALL: I know, I know.

RAMOS: Well, the guy who used to be the executive chairman of that is now the president's chief strategist. 

Previously:

Understanding The Fake News Universe

Right-Wing Media Are Using The Term “Fake News” To Attack Credible News Sources

Google Officials Promised To Stop Making Fake News Profitable, But One Month Later, They've Failed