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Did Poynter Plagiarize The Harvard Law School Library List, Or Just Collaborate With It?

By Judi McLeod ——--May 4, 2019

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Did Poynter Plagiarize The Harvard Law School Library List, Or Just Collaborate With It?If you are one of the 500-plus Conservative-leaning news sources relieved that the Poynter Institute has been forced to scrap its list of “unreliable” news sources, you’re being conned. ‘Poynter forced to scrap 'unreliable news' list targeting conservative outlets after outcry’ (Fox News Front Page Headline: May 3, 2019).
Don’t take Fox News’ headline to hear, anybody. After 2 days of promoting their list, heralded in Fox front page headlines as being “forced to scrap”, Poynter deleted the list and issued an ‘apology’. But if you are one of the smeared, you can see for yourself that the Conservative black list is still up there, and likely always will be. The best analogy for what Poynter has done should be: Once the bell’s been rung, there’s no unringing it. Poynter’s Conservative Black List—really an abridged version of the 2017 Harvard Library Conservative Black List, (still on line)— hasn’t been scrapped, it’s merely been archived for future use. For all those on the Poynter Conservative Black List: Go to the Wayback Machine and there you are! We’ve seen this movie before, fellow Conservatives, and you can bet the farm that we’ll continue to see it ad nauseum, straight through to Election 2020 and beyond.
“Calling out Conservative publications as Fake News took rise in the immediate aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s stunning, historic and impossible-to-accept loss to Donald Trump. (Canada Free Press, Jan. 12, 2018)
“Left in exile by the outcome of Election 2016, the Democrats moved with lightning speed to drop the Fake News smear on the doorstep of Conservative news publications.” “They desperately needed to hide the scope of the down and dirty tricks they put into play during a presidential election campaign best described as unprecedented. “They needed big distractions while waiting for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to come up with the evidence of a Russia/Trump collusion conspiracy that would impeach America’s unexpected 45th.”
Mueller’s Special Counsel came up empty, leaving Clinton and the Democrats pulling their hair out.
“Nothing like the Marxist Fine Art of Projection to make the enemy look like the bad guy.” (CFP) “It was time to unleash hard left professor, feminist, and activist Melissa “Mish” Zimdars of Merrimack College in Massachusetts on the ‘Fake News Is Conservative’ conspiracy. “That way the progressive left could continue building the bombs but get narcissist Zimdars to throw them. "Bomb Number One was a fake list of fake news practitioners—picked up and run again in 2019 by the Poynter Institute."

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“Zimdars, a Donald Trump critic and Carly Rae Jepsen fan, is an assistant professor at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, whose research focus includes “social justice.”  (Free Beacon, March 13, 2017) “She has organized liberal protest rallies against student debt and refers to conservatives as the “DARK SIDE.”
“So powerful was the fake news list Zimdars created, “False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and Satirical ‘News’ Sources,” shortly after Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the presidential election, it began going viral. (CFP)
“The list, which Zimdars has already edited because news sites mistakenly appeared on it, features numerous conservative outlets. (Free Beacon) “Zimdars runs the “OpenSources.co” project, which continuously updates the database for online developers to “leverage in the fight against fake, false, conspiratorial, and misleading news.” “Our database is maintained by professionals who have analyzed each source, looking for overall inaccuracy, extreme biases, lack of transparency, and other kinds of misinformation,” the website states. “One article and video at a time, I’m gradually bringing my Dad and brother back from the propagandistic, conservative/Republican DARK SIDE,” Zimdars tweeted in 2015. “Zimdars refers to Donald Trump as “Drumpf,” and said illegal immigrants “contribute more to this country” than Trump “ever has or ever will.”
  The Zimdars list was, nonetheless soon picked up and circulated by the Harvard Library.
There are 1,001 names on the Harvard list and 515 on the Poynter list. Like CFP, most of the Conservative-leaning blacklisted are included in both lists. What a convenient coincidence! The massive Merrimack-Harvard database of “fake, false, or regularly misleading websites,” still in use to the present day, purportedly as a resource for university students to be able to identify “fake news”, is now getting a Poynter resurgence. That’s because it’s the intention of the progressive left to prevent conservative publications from getting their message out over the Internet. The gang-up of social media suppression of conservative publications seeks to turn the lights off on them, one by one; to rid them of advertising revenue and to drive them out of business. It must be to their utter frustration knowing that readers continue to search online to find the publications of their choice and go directly to their websites. Barrett Golding, of the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is the chief activist behind the Harvard Library Poynter-reactivated Conservative Black List. In his own words: ”Our next release will include more sites and the criteria we used for inclusion.
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Poynter Institute only yanked their Conservative Black List for their own survival after being hit by massive public blowback. In a day where readers trust the journalists of mainstream media about as much as they trust lying politicians, why would they trust an organization that actually teaches ‘journalism’ students how to report the news? The arrogance of Poynter in creating a list of 500-plus “unreliable" news sources with the deliberate attempt to dry up their advertising revenues and drive them out of business, is stunning. Lost in their own gargantuan egos and swimming in Soros and other far left money sources, Poynter principals thought they’d get away with it. Problem is that the databases they used do not have a monopoly on the truth. Poynter’s black listing mission came at a time when people are fed up with being told how to think, for whom to vote, what to eat, what to say, what headgear to wear, who refuse to be dictated to by either Congress or their media Praetorian Guard. It should surprise none that the black list was created with the help of an employee for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has already got countless news outlets (including this one) thrown off of PayPal. “Poynter’s managing editor, Barbara Allen, posted a mea culpa Thursday as the backlash built.
“Soon after we published, we received complaints from those on the list and readers who objected to the inclusion of certain sites, and the exclusion of others. “We began an audit to test the accuracy and veracity of the list, and while we feel that many of the sites did have a track record of publishing unreliable information, our review found weaknesses in the methodology.”
Why wasn’t their ‘audit’ conducted before smearing 515 news sites?
“Therefore, we are removing this unreliable sites list until we are able to provide our audience a more consistent and rigorous set of criteria. The list was intended to be a starting place for readers and journalists to learn more about the veracity of websites that purported to offer news; it was not intended to be definitive or all encompassing.”
But “definitive” and “all encompassing” was precisely what their mission was.
“We regret that we failed to ensure that the data was rigorous before publication, and apologize for the confusion and agitation caused by its publication. We pledge to continue to hold ourselves to the highest standards.”
Poynter principals flat-out lied about pulling their blacklist off line. Their list is still up there, archived: Did Poynter plagiarize the Harvard Law School Library List, or just collaborate with it? The politically biased Conservative Black List will always be there, but thankfully so too will loyal readers who go directly to the news sources they want to read. Meanwhile, expect the Conservative Black List to crop up repeatedly between now and 2020 Election Day.

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Judi McLeod—— -- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

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