Read on Twitter
1/ I want to focus on this segment, which has been touted as a great example of holding a Trump administration official to account on false accusations of voter fraud. Folks are right to praise @HallieJackson but please listen closely to what Gidley is saying, as it is revealing. https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1319288477624586242
2/ When Jackson disputes the idea there is voter fraud Gidley says “You can’t deny what you’ve seen on television in all of these local markets, where people are finding ballots of trash cans, people are finding ballots in ditches and in the back of trucks….”
3/ When Jackson pushes back, citing the FBI Director's statement that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, he says “Your local markets and all types of NBC affiliates are reporting on this in all types of areas across this country, this is rampant, everyone sees that”.
4/ It is Gidley's repeated use of the word "local markets" that caught my attention. It sounds like he is giving us a peek into a communications strategy to produce evidence from the bottom up that would support the Trump narrative of voter fraud.
5/ This is one of the six key disinfo threats I wrote about recently for @just_security. We know the Trump team is building an army of "observers" for election day. Most of the reporting has been focused on whether they will intimidate voters at the polls. https://www.justsecurity.org/72740/six-disinformation-threats-in-the-post-election-period/
6/ But @JarrettRenshaw and @JTanfani report the "Army for Trump" is being trained to capture photos and videos and to produce "evidence" to support "unfounded claims that mail voting is riddled with chicanery and to help their case if legal disputes erupt over the results..."
7/ The Election Integrity @2020Partnership has chronicled how this type of bogus "evidence" can get laundered into media coverage to support this narrative, such as this example in Sonoma that sounds like one of the examples Gidley is referring to. https://www.eipartnership.net/rapid-response/vast-majority-of-discarded-ballot-amplification-isnt-from-foreign-sources
8/ The failure of the Tribune merger notwithstanding, we know that the pro-Trump company Sinclair has built a network of affiliates across the country that reaches a fair number of Americans, for instance. https://www.vox.com/2018/4/3/17180020/sinclair-broadcast-group-conservative-trump-david-smith-local-news-tv-affiliate
9/ So what I hear in Gidley's deflection & false assertions is possible strategy- he is seeding the idea the picture will emerge from the bottom up- produced by the Army for Trump, brandishing cell phones across the land to film every janitor taking out the trash at a poll site.
10/ Will it work? It takes time to debunk these claims. The Sonoma incident is a good example- it had already made its way into the media before it was dismissed. It took four days. https://www.kcra.com/article/get-the-facts-election-ballots-dumped-sonoma-county/34213955#
11/ Time will be a crucial commodity in the post-election period. 72 hours of chasing down every purported irregularity while tensions mount is a dangerous proposition. How will these photos & videos be tagged or not by the platforms? And how many will see an eventual fact check?
12/ While Hallie was successful at stopping Gidley from spouting lies, I do not think the system is set up to quash a coordinated campaign from the bottom up. In fact, it's quite the opposite. If there are hundreds of such claims, or more, how much damage is done?
13/ @jayrosen_nyu has made the compelling case that "the big national news teams need threat modeling teams". Certainly they do. But what if the real threat is at affiliate level, the local level? Gidley may have just tipped the Trump campaign's hand. https://pressthink.org/2020/09/the-national-news-providers-need-threat-modeling-teams/
14/ (For the nerds: here is a deep cut on how the Bush administration used local media to do an end run around the national media to shape opinions on issues such as the Iraq war. This strategy essentially preys on resource constraints at the local level.) https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/under-bush-a-new-age-of-prepackaged-tv-news.html
15/ Caught in the act: The Trump campaign has been videotaping voters as they deposit ballots in drop boxes in Philadelphia ― a practice the campaign claims is to document ballot fraud but that the PA AG warns could amount to illegal voter intimidation. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5f92de1dc5b6481d48fca9d2?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
16/ @daveyalba and @Kellen_Browning: "Fueled by inaccurate comments from Mr. Trump and others, election lies have spread across social media...." now election officials are confronting an onslaught of questions and accusations at the local level. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/technology/misinformation-local-election-officials.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
17/ "But their efforts have largely been fruitless, they said. When one rumor is smacked down, another pops up. And the reach of the rumors online is often so vast that the officials said they could not hope to compete." Election officials work overtime: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/technology/misinformation-local-election-officials.html
18/ Here is a good example of the above phenomenon. There will be many thousands of these. https://twitter.com/illinoissbe/status/1321827978591014913?s=19
19/ Per above, role of Sinclair in advancing Trump-friendly "stories" across its local affiliate network: https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1321896783811936261?s=20
20/ @TimAlberta with an important feature in Politico, painting this phenomenon on a national canvas in great detail: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/30/voting-mail-election-2020-paranoia-433356
21/ Coming back to this, because predictably they are executing on the strategy.
22/ Here is a near perfect example. https://twitter.com/FBoversight/status/1324880722868449283?s=19
23/ It is indeed a form of vigilante behavior. Perfect word. https://twitter.com/katestarbird/status/1324876939518115841?s=19
24/ Here's another example, from Michigan, h/t @curious_georgio, though this is based on amplification of a benign error. Started with a software error. Reported locally, spun into a Federal*st piece. Here’s the initial report, below Trumpist tweets: https://www.wxyz.com/news/antrim-county-in-michigan-to-manually-recount-ballots-after-election-software-error?_amp=true&__twitter_impression=true
25/ Here is final clarification from @freep's @paulegan4- it was a benign problem that would have been caught in a canvassing of votes anyway. Not exactly HUGE despite White House and Trump campaign claims, and breathless "reporting" in far right media. https://amp.freep.com/amp/6185031002
26/ Jane is keeping up with dozens of these examples as they come up: https://twitter.com/JaneLytv/status/1324853759235809282?s=19
