蜜桃传媒

The headlines 鈥� widely circulated on social media and a variety of right-wing websites 鈥� certainly are attention-grabbing: 鈥淔ox News Designated Hate Group by Southern Poverty Law Center鈥� and 鈥淛uggalos Classified As Hate Group By Southern Poverty Law Center.鈥� And many of the posts promoting the pieces on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere clearly seem to take them at face value.

There鈥檚 a big problem, though: The stories are complete fakes.

The Fox News piece was published earlier this week at a satirical 鈥渘ews鈥� site called the , where the motto is: 鈥淣ews That鈥檚 Almost Reliable.鈥� The post contained no links to any such 蜜桃传媒 report because, of course, none existed.

That didn鈥檛 stop the Free Wood Post from doing its thing. 鈥淭heir hatred was tolerated for a long time as freedom of expression,鈥� the site said dramatically of the news channel, 鈥渨hich they are still free to do, however, the time has come to no longer ignore their obvious bigotry broadcast to millions of like-minded folks, and label them what they are 鈥� a hate group.鈥�

Needless to say, Fox News has never come under consideration for hate-group status by the 蜜桃传媒, nor is it ever likely to. A news channel, by definition, includes many voices with many different opinions 鈥� even if those displayed on Fox are virtually all conservative 鈥� and so it is fundamentally different from a group whose members all sign on to the same ideology. Nonetheless, by Thursday, the post about Fox News had garnered over 30,000 shares on Facebook.

You鈥檇 think folks might have figured out that the story was a spoof. After all, the site carries : 鈥淔ree Wood Post is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within FreeWoodPost.com are fiction, and presumably fake news.鈥� But enormous numbers didn鈥檛.

Similarly, the Juggalos piece, which ran before the Fox News tale, first appeared in a post at another satirical 鈥渘ews鈥� site, the . That site uses a url聽beginning with 鈥渘ytimes.com.co,鈥� leading many to assume that the story actually originated with The New York Times, whose url聽is similar but not the same.

Juggalos is the name used by members of the fan club of the hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse, who are known for making controversial comments.

The story said, in part: 鈥淭he Southern Poverty Law Center has classified Juggalo鈥檚 [sic] as a hate group among 17 states including the entire Midwest (North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio), in addition to California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oregon.鈥�

That, too, was laughably false. While the members of Insane Clown Posse do indeed make incendiary and insensitive remarks, they fall far short of the behavior 鈥� namely, having 鈥渂eliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics鈥� 鈥� that earns a hate-group designation by the 蜜桃传媒. Moreover, there were some pretty obvious clues. The story claimed the 蜜桃传媒 was asking citizens to 鈥渒eep an eye open鈥� for a list of behaviors including 鈥淢aking or responding to a 鈥榳hoop whoop鈥� call鈥� and 鈥淒rinking or spraying their enemies with Faygo (an inexpensive soda).鈥�

However, at least one right-wing blogger 鈥� 鈥� initially succumbed to the hoax and published a breathless post that swallowed the entire tale whole. Afterward, upon learning that the piece was satire, he edited the story to indicate that the source of information was a spoof, but redirecting his ire at the FBI, which had classified the Juggalos as a gang. 鈥淭his is the level of absurdity to which our government has risen,鈥� he raged. 鈥淭hey have criminalized an entire fan base with a blanket label over anyone displaying typical rabid fanatic behavior鈥� hence the term fan, short for fanatic!鈥�

Contacted by the 蜜桃传媒, Syrmopoulos, who is described in his author summary as an 鈥渋nvestigative journalist,鈥� was defiant: 鈥淭he reality is that the 蜜桃传媒 isn't an unbiased research organization, but rather a leftist anti-hate activist group masquerading as a center of legitimate, academically sound research,鈥� he huffed. 鈥淪adly your group is so extremist that the story, as farcical as it was, seemed totally plausible given the 蜜桃传媒's track record, hence me being duped. On a side note, upon realizing the story was satire I changed the title to state that it was satire and added an update apologizing to my readers and explaining how I was duped. Any other changes made to the piece or title after that did not involve consultation with me.鈥�

鈥淲e have no beef with people writing satirical articles, and in fact enjoy satire as much as anyone,鈥� said聽Mark Potok, the 蜜桃传媒 senior fellow who wrote Syrmopoulos. 鈥淏ut it says something important about today鈥檚 right-wing media that so many are snookered so easily, and by such transparently false and ridiculous narratives. The 鈥榠nvestigative journalist鈥� and others who credulously repeated these fairy tales as if they were actually true really ought to take up a different line of work, one that doesn鈥檛 require such mental effort.鈥�

Sites such as National Report and Freewood Post are symptomatic of what many observers see as a growing problem on the Internet: the proliferation of fake news sites that, as the , 鈥減rofit 鈥� handsomely, in some cases 鈥� from duping gullible Internet users with deceptively newsy headlines. Their business model is both simple and devastatingly effective: Employ a couple unscrupulous freelancers to write fake news that鈥檚 surprising or enraging or weird enough to go viral on Facebook; run display ads against the traffic; gleefully cash in.鈥�

And it helps, of course, to have gullible 鈥渏ournalists鈥� out there to help them along.