Sublime

Clinton is under fire for the discovery that she used private servers for classified government business as secretary of state, and that she destroyed thousands of emails that had been subpoenaed. Clinton aide Cheryl Mills emails colleagues the following optional scenarios to use the media to spin Hillary’s email controversy:

Transactional journalism has become key to a smear artist’s ability to formulate a Truman Show–esque alternate existence all around us. As with astroturf, it’s a vehicle to create a smoke screen, making narratives appear to be organic, hard-nosed journalism when they’re the exact opposite. Much like astroturf, this is a world in which little happen

But the real scandal is another case of selective editing by the media: they edited out remarks made by Hillary Clinton, who had also referred to the attack as a bombing—just like Trump.

Rampant incivility, participation inequality, polarization, propaganda, distortion and distrust

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What, exactly, is a smear? That depends on who you ask. One man’s smear is another man’s truth. In simple terms, it’s an effort to manipulate opinion by promulgating an overblown, scandalous, and damaging narrative. The goal is often to destroy ideas by ruining the people who are most effective at communicating them. What you may not know is that a