fulfillment projection and often pushes borderline or outright falsehoods. It is in a similar vein to the ex Tory drug-addled grifter Louise Mensch.
How the Left Lost Its Mind
Polemicists, conspiracists, and outright fabulists are feeding an alternative media landscape—where the implausibility of a claim is no bar to its acceptance.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/liberal-fever-swamps/530736/
Last month, Democratic Senator Ed Markey delivered what seemed like an explosive bit of news during an interview with CNN: A grand jury had been impaneled in New York, he said, to investigate the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia.
The only problem: It wasn’t true.
The precise origins of the rumor are difficult to pin down, but it had been ricocheting around social media for days before Markey’s interview. The story had no reliable sourcing, and not a single credible news outlet touched it—but it had been fervently championed by The Palmer Report, a liberal blog known for peddling conspiracy theories, and by anti-Trump Twitter crusaders like Louise Mensch. Soon enough, prominent people with blue checkmarks by their names were amplifying it with “Big if true”-type Tweets. And by May 11, the story had migrated from the bowels of the internet to the mouth of a United States senator.
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Some are relative newcomers to this scene. There is The Palmer Report, the publication of record for anti-Trump conspiracy nuts who don’t care about the credibility of the record; Shareblue, a viral news site that aspires, according to its founder David Brock, to become the “Breitbart of the left”; and Patribotics, home to Mensch’s Russia-related rumormongering.
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On the “about” page for The Palmer Report, the site thanks a range of well-known people and mainstream media outlets it claims have shared its (dubious) reporting —including Representative Ted Lieu, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, former DNC chair Howard Dean, the actors Mark Ruffalo and Debra Messing, Newsweek, The Oregonian, and an array of MSNBC contributors. Laurence Tribe, the renowned Harvard scholar of constitutional law, has been an especially active booster for the site, routinely tweeting links to highly questionable, unverified news stories about Trump.
Last April, when Jason Chaffetz announced he would resign his House seat, The Palmer Report published an anonymously sourced bombshell claiming the FBI had discovered the Utah congressman was being blackmailed by the Kremlin. The story was characteristic of the site’s well-worn shtick. But that didn’t stop Ned Price, a former special assistant to President Obama, from credulously passing it along on Twitter. “Interesting, if single-sourced, article from a few days ago,” he wrote. Eric Schultz, a senior adviser to Obama, then chimed in, “Too bad nobody flagged this earlier.” When journalists began pressing the duo on why they were sharing a story from a website with such a spotty track record of accuracy, Price’s response was telling. “Every once in a blue moon, the tin hat can fit.”
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https://newrepublic.com/article/142977/new-paranoia-trump-election-turns-democrats-conspiracy-theorists
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Another left-wing node of conspiratorial diffusion can be found at The Palmer Report, a once relatively obscure pro-Hillary blog that has built a large following with its wildly speculative theories about Trump. According to the site, Trump himself had Russian agent Sergei Mikhailov killed in December to prevent the release of the now infamous “pee tape” that purportedly shows the president-elect watching as Russian sex workers urinate on a bed the Obamas slept in. Vladimir Putin, the site maintains, is using the video to blackmail Trump—and the president “may have already acted on it in a manner which would be both treasonous and murderous.” The site’s founder, Bill Palmer, routinely blasts out stories that sound serious but are actually based on a single, unverified source. In May, Palmer reported that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had ordered Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch to recuse himself from all Trump-related Russia hearings. His source? A single tweet from an anonymous Twitter account under the name “Puesto Loco.”
Long quarantined in the furthest corners of the internet, these left-wing rantings have begun to find their way into mainstream political discourse. In March, Louise Mensch was inexplicably given space on the New York Times op-ed page to trumpet her theories, rattling off a list of Russian operatives she believed should be called to testify before Congress—a list that included Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg. Her tally of agents has since expanded to encompass everyone from Black Lives Matter to Sean Hannity to Bernie Sanders. In April, MSNBC’s Laurence O’Donnell echoed a Palmer Report theory that Syria’s chemical weapon attack had been orchestrated by the Russian government, so that Trump could appear to distance himself from Putin. (Like a true conspiracy theorist, O’Donnell offered no proof for the claim, insisting instead that “you won’t hear ... proof that the scenario I’ve just outlined is impossible.”)
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https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/palmer-report/
Analysis / Bias
The Palmer Report is typically well sourced and usually points to credible sources. However, there is a very strong liberal bias in reporting and story content. The Palmer Report uses loaded words and sensational headlines that don’t always reflect the content of the article. An example headline is as follows: Donald Trump’s demented “Happy New Year” tweet is the worst thing you’ll read all year. The Palmer Report has been criticized by the Slate for publishing misinformation. Palmer Report also has false and unproven claims according to Snopes, which Mr. Palmer calls the National Enquirer.
From the well respected Atlantic regarding fake news: “It’s more wish-fulfillment stuff. “Trump About to be Arrested!” Well, yeah, when’s that gonna happen? And we know it’s coming from the left because I know it’s coming from known players. Bill Palmer used to run the Daily News Bin, and it was basically a pro-Hillary Clinton “news site.” It was out there to counter misinformation. Which, okay, fair enough. But then he started to reinvent it as a news site, more and more, and he changed the name to the Palmer Report. The stuff that he puts out there, it’s nominally true. When you click on it, it’s some innocuous story [with an outlandish headline]. That is very harmful, I think.”
Here is a list of additional False and Misleading Claims:
https://www.snopes.com/jared-kushner-go-saudi-arabia-doesnt-extradition-treaty-us/
https://www.snopes.com/russia-kompromat-jason-chaffetz/
https://www.snopes.com/denis-voronenkov-paul-manafort/
https://www.snopes.com/trump-staged-speechwriting-picture/
Notes from Dennis Kelley: The Palmer Report (TPR) is a liberally biased news site / blog that deals more in confirmation bias than in actual reporting. Confirmation bias generally consists of taking a set of facts, often unrelated, and building a web of conjecture around them in order to present a specific point of view as opposed to the actual facts. While confirmation bias may not be, technically, fake news, the sensational nature of this type of reporting often does more harm than good. Mr. Palmer has been criticized for inaccurate reporting in his work by other fact and bias checking sites, both for his work on Daily News Bin and on TPR, as evidenced by the entries on this list from Snopes, as well this article from the The Atlantic. Although TPR does contain some factual content, the misleading and biased way in which it is presented earns TPR a Questionable rating. (D. Kelley 4/3/17)
Overall, we rate the Palmer Report Left Biased based on story selection and editorial positions that routinely favor the left. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to several failed fact checks.
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