One of the country’s biggest publishers of fake news says he did it for our own good

[endicom]

Boston Globe
Billy Baker
Apr. 7, 2018

WATERBORO, Maine — Christopher Blair was sitting quietly in the corner of Dunkin’ Donuts, not far from his home on an unpaved road in rural Maine, looking at his phone.

People around him, absorbed in their own phones, paid no attention to the large man sitting alone among them. At 6-foot-6 and 320 pounds, with a long scraggly beard, he looks the part of a construction worker, which he was, in his former life.

Now he makes his living telling lies on the Internet.
Fact-checking organizations like Snopes and PolitiFact have labeled Blair one of the Web’s most notorious creators of fake news. Hidden behind his Internet persona, “Busta Troll,” he has for several years pumped out geysers of newsy-looking posts for an audience eager to believe them, with headlines like “College Prank Kills 2 — Malia Obama a ‘Prime Suspect’ ” and “Emma Gonzales attacks a 2nd Amendment supporter’s truck at a March for Our Lives rally.”

More... https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/04/07/one-country-biggest-publishers-fake-news-says-did-for-our-own-good/fzIDkkKZf7IbYA9oyGuzhI/story.html?camp=breakingnews:newsletter

[Sanguine]

On Oct. 26, an article on Blair’s Freedum Junkshun carried the headline “BREAKING: Black Soldier Killed in Niger Was a Deserter.”

The story falsely said that Sergeant La David Johnson — one of four soldiers killed in Niger after being attacked by Islamic State militants — had been missing for days before the attack and that the ambush occurred while three other members of his unit were out searching for him. The story used an invented quote from an unnamed soldier: “It seems suspicious that these terrorists were waiting for them.”

The fake story, which Blair says was written by his writer, came at a time when Johnson’s death was already at the center of a national controversy; President Trump was overheard telling the soldier’s widow in a consolation call that her husband “knew what he signed up for.”

The uproar was so quick and angry that Blair removed the story and issued an apology on The Last Line of Defense’s Facebook page.

There's some evil stuff in there.

[corbe]

   Very interesting Article.
   Thanks for posting this @endicom

[corbe]

   Gotta be a Stoner:

Already, he’s turned his attention to a new venture: “No Fake News Online,” a satirical site that fact-checks ridiculous news that he makes up. In one such item, he debunked his own invented claim that actor Gary Busey is the biological father of Eric Trump.

[Smokin Joe]

There's some evil stuff in there.

Guys like that are made-to-order for the Left. Now, if the outrageous truths of the unbelievable criminal and corrupt acts of the Clinton and Obama administrations do get out, the Left can brand it "fake news" and skate. Perfect.

The truth of the corruption in those administrations would likely read like a wild-eyed and overblown novel, something so outrageous that no one would believe it--which is their best and most enduring defense, calling it all "conspiracy theory"

[endicom]

   Very interesting Article.
   Thanks for posting this @endicom

The La David Johnson fake story was piggybacked on the real story so it could easily have been taken as genuine. We all get fooled sometime.

[endicom]

There's some evil stuff in there.

Malicious gossip can be evil and there's no shortage of malicious gossip.

[Smokin Joe]

Malicious gossip can be evil and there's no shortage of malicious gossip.

Yep. And a lie can circumnavigate the glove three times before the truth gets out the front door.