A classic gospel feline river is awaiting as sung by the great Irma Thomas although it sounds like an old spiritual The song was actually written by John Fogerty of the sixty's rock band c.c.r. Irma is a New Orleans staple and her 2008 album simply grand parents are up with pianists like Dr John Randy Newman Norah Jones and on that track Henry Butler It can be found on the rhythm and blues collection and makes a great show closer for today's edition. I'm Rosalie Howard to put in my a world music hour is produced by big toe audio. On behalf of our executive producer Dan story for we'd like to thank our producer Shane Sharkey production manager Sonja Skelton and you for joining us on the journey you can find out about the music on today's show and stream previous shows in our series and put in my own dot com that feel you tease you m a y o dot com till next time travel safely and so long. Says 90.3 k b u t Crested Butte 88.7 and I got Listen stay tuned up next is alternative radio where host David Barsamian explores issues not covered in the mainstream media that's followed at 5 by All Things Considered from n.p.r. News. We're talking about all the floods of 3 days because these giant new digital signal states operate at sky so the end result means that manatee will not be able to detect what is happening to humanity because the lies if you lie hold that your fleet attempts so fast and so sophisticated so that then leads off into a position where humanity cards see what is happening if you can see what is happening towards thank concourses we change what is happening it's a kind of fake news apocalypse. That's Julian a son and this is alternative radio I'm David Barsamian on this edition of a our features Julian a song on propaganda facts and fake news part one of a special 2 part program we live in an era of fake news fabricated reports go viral on social media totally false stories are concocted then tweeted and retreated fantastical theories and wild claims are circulated in cyberspace it's as all well says in 19 Eighty-Four the lie became truth. There's a lot of fire in fury inflaming the news cycle the term fake news is an all purpose smear used by the president and his supporters to deride and dismiss reporting that they don't like a recent study found that Facebook was by far the platform through which people used to get to a fake news site The report also noted that older less educated people were particularly susceptible to fake news are facts up for grabs how are we to navigate the mine lead in waters of propaganda and fake news our guest today is Julian a songe Julian a songes a journalist's activist then computer programmer and is founder of Wiki Leaks the whistle blowing website. Leaks collection shares confidential information on an international scale Julian Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 to escape allegations of sexual assault those charges have since been dropped Nevertheless he believes that if you leave the embassy he will be nabbed by the United States and prosecuted for publishing thousands of classified documents made available by Chelsea Manning in 2016 a songes work again drew enormous attention when Reeky Leaks published thousands of e-mails from u.s. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee he spoke in Bergen Norway and now Julian Asuncion. I have of course seen the debates about fake news and when this term came up perhaps a year ago or popularized initially by the u.s. Mainstream media I thought to myself you know what this fake news is going to turn around $180.00 degrees within a few hours and be used to criticize the all the Gawker controlled press in the United States and elsewhere and that's exactly what happened so I was I was in fact rather pleased with this to I don't want to suggest that there isn't some Eunice to the film and that's all correct that there are some new things occurring in particular where we're moving into in relation to Ai really is a potential change that human beings can have great difficulty encompassing essentially . If we're in a competition as human beings have been for many years between lie as people who detect lies out official intelligence means that the lies can be automated and pumped out on mass that's not something that is happening yet to a degree where I think we need to seriously worry about it but it will Ok now let's put some things into perspective Thomas Jefferson in 1807 this is a couple of years off to he had. Us presidency keeping in mind that the Us presidency back then was a much smaller affair there was no standing army of tens or hundreds of thousands of people in the presidential role was much more of a figurehead role but Jefferson who's a perhaps the smartest of the founding fathers of the United States put it like this nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle that's his view from that time and he goes on to jokingly assert that well perhaps when you use paper should be launched with different sections the 1st section being truth and the last section being absolute false leads and in the middle various types of claims in the 1st section would be almost nonexistent and the last section quite lodge and the middle heading out the rest so it's been that way for very very long time and while most people can perceive that the media is not trustworthy and if you and if you look at that on various opinion polls you will see that that is quite a common perception amongst people that the media is not trustworthy. There is a narrative that it is and well why is that because I think the media is in general terms one of the most destructive forces that has ever existed it is laid to nearly every war that we've had suddenly there was by democracies all the big wars that you can name at least in the post World War 2 period and. To a degree even in World War 2 were built up their populations were mobilized on the back of lies from the Gulf of Tonkin incident to the Iraq war to the Gulf War so that the average death count journalist I did the country lation for us journalists recently is something like $130.00 kills per journalist as a result of them not treating their supposed Well claims societal function seriously which is vi the truth and instead of spreading propaganda and lies all of the major powers dovish Mintz in the countries that they're in the festival ground this debate about fake mirrors with the reality that the news has always been fake it is always being something it is being used to manipulate the human populations on mass into absolutely disastrous outcomes in order for proprietors of news organizations to the yes to make profits by peddling salacious stories but much more significantly to keep the integration with the existing establishment in those countries and to the social level for each journalist and editor to ingratiate themselves socially with the various Tabish once they are meant to be policing the renewed talk about fake news well it's it's being taken up by own drum in his critiques of c.n.n. For example Ok now is it true that those responses by don't trump. Motivated by a president in power trying to distract from critique of the press absolutely because that's the motivation of it is he nonetheless in general terms correct yes in general terms he is. Correct c.n.n. I don't need to be counted on this is fairly It's certainly not the only one all the biggest television media in the United States folks news c.n.n. New York Times Washington Post field every day with very serious and misleading fake news why is that term being popularized other than. Politicians and other people who criticize in the media using is using it to rebuff that criticism whether that criticism is true or as it very often is false well that the u.s. Election sore and outbreak of uncontrolled popular is. Now that populism was honest by was a fictive Lee neo fascist a cultural sentiments that's true or was harnessed in various ways by those groups but nonetheless it is a democratic out this that occurred principally because of the increased eighty's with which. Human beings can share information with each other. Social media small publishers except and that of course is lead to change. Its lead to cultural change. Not simply because of underpinning reasons which. Many people on the left talk about such as the. Decline in us real wages from 1978 all by the concerns of people on the right talk about for example increased immigration but rather because the establishment press is integrated with the existing order of things and is used to. Has been used to create that order and to maintain it. Now where the you say. A decrease in the existing order as a positive or negative depends on weight way you think that is going and when and where they use stand to lose all gang in the process of that change. Do we accept that the press has a serious influence on society and the ideas that apos the round. Some ideas of pushed more than all those other ideas of suppressed other ideas introduced through the press. We all know that the press is being used to mobilize Nations for illegal wars for example. Ok I say that in a democracy especially. The press is one of the principal controlling functions of the existing establishment the existing order things so. When that control structure can be worked around social media. You publish is starting out with very little capital because of the Internet is that going to change the existing order of things obviously if you claim your claim was that the press is intimately pot of the existing order of things and there's a new press which is not the existing order things then obviously the order cultural order. And to some degree the Clearly the. Relative balance of who has power and who does not is going to change. So this has a terribly frightened existing establishment and those existing establishments. Of course integrated with the with the establishment press by definition so why we see such talk in the establishment press about the. About the fear of fake news is not simply because it's another thing to be salacious about not simply because. There is some to some degree a new phenomenon so the existing establishments. Including it including. Of course the press which is integrated with them see this uncontrolled phenomenon as a direct threat to their power and also to the existing order which creates some creates fear in themselves and also directly for the press itself so the press talks about it a lot and try and tries to. Push forward for there to be graded controls. In the spreading of information and this. This is that lead to a very serious situation extremely serious situation where pressure has been applied to Facebook Google these giants new digital super states these giant into meter he's to regain control of the informational flow the system. Of the West broadly speaking to prevent. Outposts of popular isn't an unexpected outcomes of which the election of don't trump or rather the failure to elect Hillary Clinton is the most obvious example. Well that is putting concrete terms in fronts. In the macro election so she's feeling the. Heat of criticism. Facebook and Google decided to explicitly intervene in the French election but is to say explicitly that they were setting up a mutual cost for us to prevent this reading of what they called a fake news during the French election now is it true that fake news was Fred during the pretty French election of course the fake news is spread in the mainstream press. And small press and social media in every election but the question of who determines what is fake news and what is not of course is the cited by the forces that come together to make the claim and to make the censorship system involved and of course in this case those forces wanted to see a manual macron elected and not Marion Le Pen Now of course there are good reasons to be concerned about both of these candidates but nonetheless this was an intervention by Google and Facebook American Silicon Valley companies into the French election with the construction of a since the ship system which they said. Was they in order to stop to stop. What they assessed to be a claim to be fake. If. Press will go into a question I can of course talk. I would like to talk as we go ahead about. Where this is going in terms of artificial intelligence and of course I can talk in practical things in practical terms about. The roles of various fire agencies and so on but. As I said. The it tends to influence if once a public have always been there for a very very long time there are some new elements but I don't think that they're significant but I do think is very significant is the debate by existing establishment press to say that certain forms of information spread need to be stopped and that is then leading to a new norm of automated censorship by giant Silicon Valley companies all of the information that we communicate with each other it's very serious Thank you very much Julian Now we move on to the next point in our program namely the interview with Julian assigns those of you in the audience who want to address the signs should line up here in French the podium during the interview I call on the whole the prize communications officer. To conduct the interview and it will yield the floor to you thank you Alan and Julian thank you so much for being with us I'd like to cover a few topics over the next 15 or so minutes starting with perhaps the most important and deadly aspect of propaganda that is its application in issues to war and peace. Using the Syrian case as an example journalist Patrick Cockburn wrote earlier this year that fabricated news and one sided reporting had taken over the news agenda to a degree probably not seen since the 1st World War. Do you agree and you currently see any winners in the global propaganda war. Thank you I mean on the Syrian case it's very clear that all sides have engaged in serious propaganda in the conflict. And of course you could understand all the direct belligerence grasping every tool that they can in order to preserve themselves or to win what's I suppose noteworthy is that the the media power that exists for Bashar Assad and his allies into war in Iran and Russia is almost only well for Syria it's essentially nonexistent for Iran almost nonexistent and for Russia pretty insignificant compared to the the media power over those. States like the United States u.k. Products etc which are believed which have which are have been believed drugs in one way and that all. I do think it's a it's a it is a very interesting question where the situation has objective Lee become worse. Clearly our ability to detect fake news. By various establishments of different countries. And the popular will has tremendously increased because we're able to compare the outputs of different countries and we were able to. Use the internet to collect underlying facts and which she thinks is an example of that as a primary source or cause a tree a pristine prime resource repository which can use them both make and also check various claims. I think it is in in a in a way it has become worse and that is the speed of information spread so fast that. False claims salacious false claims can spread around the world very very quickly now of course say they were always spread around the world. But with this slightly lower cost the slight story a slightly higher cost to making false claims why do I say that while the debate over whether the a claim is false and false a law is rapidly does this place by new information which is which is spreading everywhere so it is a kind of. Churn or chaos in the spread of information which means that debate debate to accusations about whether a newspaper produced fabricated coverage is swept aside but I wouldn't go so far as to say that those debates ever really happened properly. So you look at the predicate of front page stories of the New York Times which are which were then spread we must remember not just by the New York parties but nearly every single European strain Canadian except the paper on their front. Under the basis that they can always as possible New York Times are never held accountable. For producing those fabricated from pages All right. I'll move on to a different topic I'll try and cover a few If we have time now since we're talking about competing narratives I have to ask you about the allegation that we could Leaks conspired with the Russian government and the Trump campaign to hack the u.s. Election and publish e-mails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta now you have consistently denied these allegations but they're still presented as fact but by much of the established media what's your take on this. It's it's a very interesting former fake news on the one hand we have Wiki Leaks We don't speak about all sources in general we have said Al source is not a state in this case Ok. So that's what he that's out quite. There's been no presentation of evidence that that claim is not a correct. One of the allegations the formal allegations by u.s. Intelligence agencies they obviously can't be trusted the business CIA's business is both stealing information and fabricating it but that's it's business that statements obviously can't be trusted but what statements at this strongest it's statements at this strongest is that there were hacks of the d.n.c. . They provide no evidence it's their assessment they're hacks of the d.n.c. That they believe were in some households of by Russia and this information then flowed through some 3rd parties and came to us that's when we published that's the us intelligence allegation at its strongest. They say explicitly that there's not an allegation that Wiki Leaks conspired with Russia or conspired with a trunk and that that's not the allegation from the us intelligence services so but other allegations. That Wiki Leaks did conspire with u.s. Intelligence services and the trunk and yes every day those are made every day in the Us press fabricating even what even the strongest allegation of the us intelligence service so here we have an interesting example where. The statements of the CIA. More moderate than the statements of the us mainstream press very interesting that you would think that this No the CIA would be making outlandish allegations. And then the press would be checking those allegations and somehow. Producing a less strident form of them it's the opposite. All right now I know we can Leaks protect his sources I have to ask you you have denied that your source for the e-mail equals Russia or other state actors but you've also gone further and in an interview with Dutch t.v. You raised the issue of motive Democratic staffer Seth rich and related to how your sources take huge risks twice thereafter week Leaks offered a reward for information on richest motor aren't you contributing to outrages conspiracy theories and take news by doing this my concern is that about time that a young democratic stall had been murdered in Washington d.c. Shot in the back under suspicious circumstances and there's allegations that the serious that Rich was in some way connected to the sourcing of which leaks which are obviously we're never going to confirm that or deny that such an allegation about someone who's allegedly one of our sources has to be very seriously checked and it hasn't been very seriously checked by the media in fact is a presentation that that's a conspiracy theory is it true that there are statements by Republicans that go well beyond what the publicly available evidence is in that case it's absolutely true it's been instrumental lies for political purposes but is it also true that that's a serious case of someone be