EPIC introduces the study by the Pew Research Center with this statement:
The Pew Research Center released a report on how to address the spread of digital misinformation in the coming decade. The report's respondents were evenly divided on whether technological advances in the coming decade will fix the problem of misinformation, or only compound it. EPIC President Marc Rotenberg told Pew, "The problem with online news is structural: There are too few gatekeepers, and the internet business model does not sustain quality journalism. The reason is simply that advertising revenue has been untethered from news production." The prevalence of "fake news" was one of the most significant issues in the 2016 presidential election. EPIC's Democracy and Cybersecurity Project seeks to restore integrity in democratic elections. EPIC is also pursuing details of the Russian election interference in FOIA cases against the FBI, the Office of Director in National Intelligence, and the IRS. This week several senators introduced bipartisan legislation to strengthen disclosure requirements for online political ads.Actually I don't want you to read the lengthy report from the Pew Research Center, unless, of course, you want to. It is predictable as corporate media feeding us anti-Russian stories. I did a little research on the background of the Pews who set up this foundation which is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. I found the following:
Although today The Pew Charitable Trusts is non-partisan and non-ideological, Joseph Pew and his heirs were politically conservative. The modern day organization works to encourage responsive government and support scientific research on a wide range of issues, including global ocean governance, correction reform, and antibiotic resistance.Then I turned my attention to EPIC which carried this post. I've long been suspicious about the efforts of EPIC in protecting internet users privacy, but this post really accelerated my suspicions. Thus, I decided to investigate EPIC. Wikipedia and others were not at all helpful. But I found what I was looking for at SourceWatch, a project of The Center for Media and Democracy. (This is an excellent resource to get funding information on many non-profit, mostly fake "do-gooder" organizations). I found that it is funded by the following foundations and charities.
Early priorities of the Pew Memorial Trust included cancer research, the American Red Cross, and a pioneering project to assist historically black colleges. Later beneficiaries included conservative organizations such as the John Birch Society, the American Liberty League, and the American Enterprise Institute, as well as environmental organizations such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Oceana, and mainstream think tanks like the Brookings Institution.
Major grants to support the work of EPIC have been received from: Arca Foundation, Bauman Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Counterpane Systems, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Earthlink, Ford Foundation, Fund for Constitutional Government, HKH Foundation, W.K. Kellog Foundation, Irving Kohn Foundation, Albert List Foundation, Lutz Foundation Trust, Markle Foundation, Metromail Cy Pres Fund, Norman Foundation, Omidyar Network, Open Society Institute, Quixote Foundation, Red Hat Center, Rockefeller Family Fund, Rose Foundation, Glushko-Samuelson Foundation, Scherman Foundation, Simons Foundation, Sun Hill Foundation, Sun Microsystems, Trio Foundation of St. Louis, Working Assets, Zero Knowledge SystemsMany of these funders have been involved in what has become known as color revolutions which have been directed by agents of the Empire to destabilize governments such as in Ukraine which now has Nazis installed in the new regime. The Ford Foundation and the CIA were involved in the destabilization of the Sukarno's Indonesian government that resulted in the massacres of 500,000 Indonesian people. So don't trust EPIC to protect you privacy information. This well publicized interest of theirs is only a cover for their more dubious projects.
(Note: I very much regret posting an article entitled "Who Has Your Back?" in August of this year.)
I encourage you to trust people like the Australian journalist John Pilger who talks about corporate media and their management and censorship of broadcast news and other media to suit the interests of capitalist ruling classes. (I thank the people at 21st Century Wire for the reproduction of Pilger's remarks.)
The following [12:07m] segment is from the ‘Media and War’ Conference held at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, 17 November 2012. Watch:
