Assistant Professor of Communication Melissa Zimdars of Merrimack College in Massachusetts has published a list of “fake news” websites that includes Breitbart News — even as the left and the tech giants are targeting “fake news” sites for destruction.
The list, posted online as a Google doc, is described as “for educational purposes only.” However, Google and Facebook are attempting to restrict advertising on “fake news” websites, which could effectively result in shutting many of the sites down.
Jessica Roy of the Los Angeles Times reports: “Breitbart, the “platform for the alt-right” whose chairman was just named Trump’s chief strategist, is on there, as is InfoWars.”
The Daily Caller reports that while Breitbart and other legitimate conservative new media websites appear on Zimdars’s “fake news” list, openly partisan left-wing sites like the Huffington Post — which attached a ridiculous disclaimer to its “reporting” on Donald Trump during the presidential campaign — are not included on the roster.
Zimdars includes Breitbart and other conservative sites “alongside objectively fake news websites like abcnews.com.co and MegynKelly.us,” the Caller notes.
President Barack Obama attacked “fake news” during the election, and irate Hillary Clinton supporters have blamed Facebook for costing her the election by allowing users to share information from “fake news” sites.
Ironically, one of the most widely-shared sites on Facebook is Occupy Democrats, which literally makes up nonsense for left-wingers to share with each other. Furthermore, Facebook came under fire during the election for its bias against conservative news websites in its “trending news” section.
As Breitbart News’ Chriss Street reported this week, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has vigorously denied that Facebook cost Clinton the election.
Some fear the attempt to paint a broad range of legitimate websites as “fake news” indicates a desire to censor free speech — a fear substantiated by a recent attempt by congressional Democrats to treat bloggers differently from other journalists.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.