The Philadelphia sheriff’s team posted a series of flattering but false headlines on his campaign website and then issued a lackadaisical disclaimer when his fake news scheme was exposed.
Democrat Rochelle Bilal’s first term was marred by allegations that her office lost dozens of guns, tried to embezzle funds to double her salary and hired a top congressman who works as a defense attorney, but visitors to her campaign website they are met with glowing headlines about it. achievements.
The only problem is: those articles don’t exist, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The alleged headlines came from reputable local outlets such as NBC10, CBS3, WHYY and The Inquirer, but were removed from the site on Friday after the newspaper asked for comment because it could not verify that any of the headlines were authentic, according to the report.
By Monday afternoon, the campaign had reposted the purported headlines on its website, accompanied by a disclaimer that said it “makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability , suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information provided.”
Only three of the articles (all news releases from the sheriff’s office) had clickable links.
The fake article names combined with their purported means of publication did not return any results on Google News, as legitimate archived digital articles should, when The Post searched for them.
Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal’s campaign website is littered with dozens of laudatory fake news headlines. AP
An NBC10 spokesperson reportedly said none of the 12 alleged articles credited to the outlet about “its November 2019 election, police reform initiatives, distribution of free gun locks, moratorium on evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic or advice for survivors of domestic abuse,” could be located by digital publishers.
According to the report, stories that loosely matched the content of articles promoted by the campaign site had different headlines and publication dates.
Bilal did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment and his spokesman said the issue would have to be addressed by his campaign manager. But the spokeswoman was reportedly unable to identify the manager.
Neither Bilal’s office nor the campaign immediately responded to a request for comment from The Post.
Watchdogs hypothesized that the campaign had used artificial intelligence to fabricate headlines, which they said could lead the public to become more distrustful of both elected officials and the media.
Voters bombarded with fake news “simply assume that everything is a lie,” Peter Loge, who directs the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at George Washington University, told the outlet.
“That’s dangerous.”
After a scathing report in The Philadelphia Inquirer, the website simply added a disclaimer stating that it could not guarantee the “completeness, accuracy” or “reliability” of the fake content. AP
“You keep saying things that make people tired and they don’t know what to believe,” Matthew Jordan, a media studies professor and director of Penn State’s Information Literacy Initiative, told the Inquirer.
“This works in that kind of environment, where people are exhausted and no one is going to check it anymore,” Jordan said. “Most people are probably watching this on their phones and just scrolling.”
Most of the removed headlines had elements of truth and appeared credible, according to the newspaper.
A fake WHYY headline with a publication date of March 16, 2020, reportedly read: “Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office announces temporary suspension of evictions amid coronavirus outbreak.”
A day earlier, the outlet had published an article titled “Philadelphia pauses evictions as coronavirus spreads,” but neither Bilal nor his office were mentioned in it, according to the report.
“This is how misinformation works,” Kelly McBride, who chairs the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, told the newspaper. “It has to be credible. It has to be plausible. That’s what’s so insidious.”
Other articles appeared to be complete works of fiction, including an alleged January 29, 2020 Inquirer article headlined, “Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office to Digitize Sheriff’s Sale Process, Reduce Confusion and Fraud.”
The newspaper said it did not publish any articles about Bilal or his office on or around that date.
The top results of a Google News search for Rochelle Bilal were far from flattering. They included Monday’s Inquirer exposé and 2023 reports of dozens of guns missing from her office, FBI interrogations of her staff and her denial of embezzlement amid her controversy over her attempted pay raise.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn