(by Kelly McDonald, Jr) An assistant professor at Merrimack College, Melissa Zimdars, has recently declared that conservative news sites such as Breitbart, Red State, Drudge Report and others are “fake news”. Other institutions are latching onto the idea. Harvard University recently published a fake news guide based upon her work.
Her attempt to discredit these sites is called OpenSources.co. In it, she places specific labels on each conservative site such as “political”, ‘unreliable”, “bias” or “fake”. By labeling these news sources as “not credible” or “fake”, the assistant professor hopes to discredit them and thus reduce their traffic. However, she does not define the criteria for news sources to receive such labels. She even has a disclaimer on the website that she has no guarantee that these labels are accurate or reliable. These efforts certainly echo the book 1984, where reality was redefined to expunge and discredit all opposition.
