IN 2016, VELES BECAME THE MECCA OF THE POST-FACTUAL ERA. WHAT WAS ONCE A MANUFACTURING HUB IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA IS NOW HOSTING A COTTAGE INDUSTRY EXPORTING FAKE NEWS TO UNSUSPECTING AMERICANS. HOW DID A TOWN THAT USED TO PRODUCE CLOTHING AND CHINA NOW HOUSE THOUSANDS OF FAKE NEWS WEBSITES?
I have been a photojournalist for more than twenty years and have travelled around the world, covering everything from the war in Afghanistan to the refugee crisis in Europe. I have also been a journalist in the Balkans, where I’ve worked for more than a decade. I’m not a journalist who uses fake news. I use my camera to tell stories, not to make them. But, when it comes to the fake news, I have always been fascinated by it.
I want to tell people about the fake news industry. The fake news industry is very powerful and it is very dangerous. I think that if we don’t fight it, we will be very sorry. It was an interesting journey. I got to know people who worked for fake news sites, who had a lot of experience in the business, who were actively trying to make money from fake news. I also interviewed journalists and experts from the fake news industry, and learned a lot about what is going on in that world. This is a story about how the fake news industry works.
I arrived in Veles in the early afternoon of June 3. Upon arrival, I found the mayor, a man named Diokno, sitting in his office. Diokno is a tall, thin man with a large mustache and a bald head. He was wearing a black suit and tie and was surrounded by his staff. I asked him about the state of the city. He told me that the city was in a state of complete collapse. He had been mayor for twenty years and had never seen anything like it.
The mayor told me that the city had been a major industrial center for more than a hundred years but that over the last decade, the economy had been destroyed. The factories that had once employed thousands of people had all closed. Now, the city was simply a collection of abandoned buildings. According to the mayor, 50% of young Macedonians are unemployed.
A few years ago, Veles was the capital of a booming, modern, and cosmopolitan city. It was the center of a major pharmaceutical manufacturing plant and a major hospital complex. But today, the city is a ghost town. The city’s main airport, the main manufacturing facility, and the hospital have all closed. The city is littered with empty buildings and crumbling, decrepit structures.
I start walking through the city. It’s not beautiful. The streets were empty. I knew the Macedonian economy was in decline, but I didn’t know it had reached a point of no return. The only sign of life was a few poorly-lit kiosks selling snacks and drinks. Empty factories, once bustling with activity, were replaced by lifeless patches of asphalt.
Five minutes’ walk down a deserted highway from the city center, I noticed a BMW 4 Series parked by the side of the road. I asked the driver what was on her mind. After some back and forth, she and her friends agreed that the most pressing issue facing the country was unemployment.
Many factories had been shuttered, and with it, factory jobs. Its sole functioning hospital was closed a few years ago, and its downtown withered. Many young people had left the town to seek greener pastures elsewhere. No factory or office was left standing, and the local soccer team, Dnepr, had been dropped from the first division to the third.
But a miracle happened in the town of 50,000 people—the opening of a new era. The disappearance of good paying jobs has also created a thriving black market for low-quality fake news. The fake news industry is a perfect example of how the internet has transformed our world. More than 100 prominent US politics websites were registered in Veles, most created within the last twelve months. These sites tend to follow recognizable patterns: they follow news about Trump, often blatantly plagiarizing and sensationalizing it.
The fake news houses in Veles have become rich from two events: the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit vote. BuzzFeed said it had spoken with people who worked on the sites and found them to be “well-run, highly organized, and highly productive”. The Facebook gold rush has certainly provided work for locals. Many of them were young people struggling to make a living. They just didn’t know how much money they could make in fake news.
I spoke with a sixteen-year-old fake news creator in Veles who created several social media profiles in support of American politics. He says he now employs three to five people, including two teenagers, all working together to deliver high quality, viral content. They launch posts around midnight, and then disappear for a day or two, reading new tweets from their followers. Then they post about what they just saw, hoping to grab some new shares. Then they go back to tweeting about Trump.
“I live alone and do not have any relatives to care for me. My stepbrother works in a factory, my stepmother works in a textile company, my uncle owns a small house, my cousins all work in the same factories. I have been forced to work two or three jobs just to survive. I live in poverty here in Macedonia. We earn about 200-300 euros monthly for a family of three. My dad works in a chemical company, so I have always been interested in technology.”
“I worked on Trump’s campaign from the beginning. I was paid about 200 a month for a job which involved finding stories which would make the Trump campaign look good. The whole thing was just a big way of making money, using social media to spread the word. It was the most powerful thing that has ever happened to my life. Because of this, my life has changed forever. I tried to write what people wanted to read. I don’t think they believed all the lies I was writing, they were just buying into the stories I was presenting.”
What is certain is that the perpetrators of the fake news business knew how the system worked. Among the most successful US politics sites was Marco’s. It launched in June 2016 and has been described as the world’s most successful fake news site. It now has more than 310,000 Facebook followers, according to Facebookintelligence.com.
It was getting late afternoon when I met up with Marco in a café in Skopje. It was raining, so I decided to walk around to some other places in the city, like the Opera House or the Belvedere Theatre. When I got there, Marco pointed his finger at a map in his hand. It was from his website, which he runs with a partner. It showed that the Veles sites had more than two million Facebook followers, which is something Marco doesn’t want to think about. He prefers to think about his site as a full-service hotel chain, with every detail prepared and ready to go.
He showed me his website. By now it had secured $60,000 in revenue, a sizable sum in a country where the average monthly salary is $371. Backed by Google AdSense, it purports to have nearly eight million followers, mostly in the US.
The Macedonian crisis began when the country’s Prime Minister, Nokola Gruevski, ordered the Macedonian army to stop taking part in the NATO military alliance, which had been instrumental in supporting the NATO-led peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Gruevski’s refusal to participate in the NATO operation in Libya led to a massive anti-government protest movement in the streets of Macedonia, which culminated in the toppling of the government in February. The Macedonian crisis reached a peak when the Macedonian army began to take part in the NATO- led military operations in Libya. The European Union imposed severe economic sanctions on the country.
The city of Veles had been prosperous for over a century, but in recent years the people had begun to lose their confidence in the city. They were not sure of the future.
I saw the signs of this decay everywhere. There were abandoned buildings, with broken windows and doors. The roads were littered with the detritus of abandoned vehicles.
I met a man who told me he had come to the city from Greece on foot. He had been unable to find work and had been homeless for two months. He said he was a teacher, and that he had been forced to leave his family in Greece because they were too poor to feed him. He had been staying with friends in Veles, but he said that they had refused to help him. He was now sleeping on the streets.
However, the largest single source of income for the town of 60,000 is from its thriving fake news industry. I was surprised to find out that the fake news industry is one of the main sources of income for the people of Veles. According to the Macedonian Ministry of Economic Development, the fake news industry generated around $2.1 billion in 2016. Fake news has a direct impact on the country’s economy.
I drove around the tired streets of Veles. Run-down neighborhoods, empty shops, and abandoned factories dominated the skyline. I stopped in front of a small, white, three-story building. The main entrance was broken off by a pile of rubble. Small-time drug dealers and pirates roamed the seedy interiors. How could this place be so lifeless, I thought, nothing could be salvaged from this place; this junk food town, this fake news town. Nobody wanted to work here anymore.
I parked my car near the entrance of the building and walked up the steps to the front door. There was a sign on the door that said, “Welcome to the Fake News Factory.”
I had a good feeling about this. I walked into the building, and there it was: the office of a fake news agency. It was a small room with a desk and a computer. The windows were covered with black plastic, and there were no lights. There was a small wooden table with a lamp and a laptop.
I sat down on the table, and a young man with dark hair and a face that looked like it had been painted with a black marker sat down next to me. “Welcome to the Daily News,” the young man said. “I’m your host, and I’ll be your translator. In the next few minutes, we’ll be discussing some of the events that have taken place in Veles over the past few days.” I nodded.
Goran was an internet troll. He had dark hair that was parted in the middle, and was dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie. He was a young man of average height, with a clean-shaven face and a very friendly and outgoing personality. Goran’s social media presence was very strong. He had a lot of followers. He was always in a dark room with his headphones on. He would hang out on a popular Discord server with a group of other trolls. The server was called “Echo of Veles”.
Goran was not a native of Veles. He had a lot of skills, he was a good writer, he was a good hacker. Goran was one of the most powerful trolls in Veles, and he was capable of manipulating people into doing anything he wanted.
He was a part of the group that would play music and make memes. He would also play other games, such as “World of Warcraft”, and “Dota 2”. He also had a YouTube channel that he used to make funny videos. Goran was very outgoing, and he was also very popular with girls. Goran’s main role in the Veles campaign was to troll and spread fake news.
“We post fake news for a living. A good chunk of the world doesn’t know that we exist, so we earn a good living. Fake news is the number one click-bait source on the net. There are too many haters on the net. I have to choose between hating Hillary or supporting Trump. Which one do you think I am more attached to? I am fully aware that I am supporting a political candidate, but l am also fully aware that I am supporting a business. I work really hard to support my family. I started with just a few fake news sites and have since added a lot more. My main motivation is making money from this. I want to give back to my country and make money for my kids. The more people know about Trump, the easier it will be to make money out of this business. My political posts are the same as anyone else’s political posts, I’m simply using Facebook to share my own views and to spread the word around.”
The majority of the fake news we read on social media is written by young people. The internet is their world, so they are the first ones to say things that the rest of us will not think twice about. The internet is their language. The problem is that most of the things that are written on the internet are fake. The only thing that is not fake is the internet itself. The fake news industry is based on two main pillars: the distribution of misinformation via social media platforms, and the dissemination of “news” through mainstream media outlets. The spread of fake news is facilitated by the use of bots, which are automated online software programs that are used to spread misinformation.
I spoke to Trump supporter Alex, a thirty-four-year-old dental hygienist in Veles. It’s important to understand that the people who are writing the news for Trump sites are not even remotely interested in informing the public. They are only pursuing profit.
He and his friends “work” around the clock, posting news, photos, and engaging with their followers. “I support Trump for a few reasons. One, he makes money. Two, he makes Americans happy. Third, he makes money quickly.”
“Nobody can stop us, not even the police. There are too many haters on the net, and too many fake news sites, and fake news is the new truth. The main thing is that we believe in freedom of speech.” He goes on to say, “People are born with certain biases,” however, he doesn’t think that those biases are malicious, they are just human. When I ask him if he believes that humans are inherently evil, he doesn’t think that they are. “They are just tools.”
Confirmation bias means people tend to look for information they can use to reinforce their own prejudices. When people see information that fits their own point of view, their brain tells them that the story is real, and the people in the story are real.
I was told by a local that, “You have to understand that the economy is the most important thing here, the politics is secondary. If they have a bad economy, it doesn’t matter what kind of politician is in power, they will just throw more money at the problem.”
This was not the case. The economy was in a crisis, the media was in a state of crisis. And the politician in power was the one who had the most money, who had the most connections, and who had the most people behind him.
I met with the mayor, a member of the ruling party, and a few other people who were involved in the fake news industry. The mayor was a very nice man, but he was very reluctant to talk about the industry. He wanted to avoid the topic because he thought it was too controversial. He said that the fake news industry was an illegal industry, that it is illegal to make false information, and that the government would prosecute people who were involved in the fake news.
The mayor said that there was a fake news business in Veles, but that he didn’t know how much money was made. I asked him what kind of fake news was being made in Veles. He said that fake news is not just fake news. There is also fake news about football, about politics, about celebrities, and about everything. He said that he didn’t know exactly how much money was made in Veles, but that it was “a lot.” The fake news industry is the biggest source of income for this small town. The mayor of Veles, the most influential person in the town, is a Russian citizen, and he has been accused of being a Russian agent.
I asked the mayor how the fake news industry worked. He said that it was very simple. People would take an article that had been published by a website that was fake and use it as a basis for a fake news story. He said that the fake news industry is very much alive and well in Veles. People are still operating, and they are still making fake news. The mayor said some of the producers had gone as far as impersonating journalists. “There are always going to be people who are going to work for fake news, and there will be people who are going to work for real news,” he said. The mayor said some of the young people working for him had embezzled more than $60,000 off their salaries. He said some had stolen identities and were using pseudonyms.
I met up with Bojan and his two friends, both of whom are minors, to find out how they made their fake news videos look professional. He was wearing a green and black striped shirt, jeans and brown shoes. He is one of scores of Macedonian teenagers who are behind a cottage industry in the small city of Veles that’s been churning out fake pro- Donald Trump pieces on American politics for some time. He said that he had been involved in the creation of the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory for more than a year, and that he had been the first one to make it into the mainstream. He was one of the most popular trolls in Veles.
“I taught myself how to make money on the internet,” said Bojan, who is eighteen. “I looked at the sources, some were fake, some were real, and I wanted to make sure that everything I was making wasn’t fake. Then I joined a team and worked on it together.”
He said one of the reasons he became interested in politics is because his parents were both journalists. The reason Bojan was so successful was that he had a reputation for being an excellent hacker. He could hack into any system he wanted, and he was known for being able to compromise and hack into virtually any computer system. He also was very good at creating fake news, and he created many sites, and he was good at creating fake news that was very believable.
“The thing about bots is that they are not real people. They are machines,” he continued. “They are not thinking. They are not feeling. They are only doing what they are told to do.” The Macedonians who run these sites say they don’t care about Mr. Trump. “I have a different idea. How can we live without Trump? How can we live without fake news?” asks Bojan.
The next day I was walking along the outskirts of the city. There were a few old stone buildings and a few small houses which were built by the rich people who were moving into the area. I noticed a group of young men standing around a large bear. The bear was tied up and looking pretty worn out. The men were watching the bear as it stared at them. I was a little surprised at how quiet it was.
The men were a little skeptical. I asked them why they were so scared. They said that the bear had been “taking over their town.” They said that the bear was killing their cattle. I asked them what they were going to do. They said they were going to kill the bear. It was a very emotional moment. I didn’t know what to say. I just kept thinking “I’m so sorry.” I remember the smell of blood, sweat and death.
There are also reports of bears in the country killing people. In
the village of Vlach, in northern Macedonia, a man was killed by a bear in 2012. The man was collecting wood, when a bear came out of the woods and attacked him.
The local media has been forced to run stories about them, as they are considered a nuisance. The local TV station was reporting on the wild bears in the area. The newspapers were all reporting on the same story. The bears have been known to attack people who are not used to them. The bears also sometimes eat garbage, and they are not able to digest it.
In 2015, the number of bears in the area was estimated to be about eight hundred. Today, there are around one thousand.
“The problem is that they come to the city to eat garbage and leftovers,” says Frantz Mladenovski, a resident of Veles who runs a wildlife rehabilitation center. “They eat the garbage, then they get sick. The disease they get from the garbage is called glanders. It’s a contagious disease. It spreads through the air. It’s very dangerous.”
“The bears are a problem for us,” says Mladenovski. “We can’t manage them all. We have to look at what we can do. We are trying to find solutions. Many residents of Veles are fed up with the bears. They also feel that the animal is a problem for the local economy. Since the bear is said to be a symbol of power and honor, they are very popular with tourists. However, in 2010 a group of tourists were attacked by a bear near the city. In 2016, the municipality spent about $150,000 to protect Veles from bears.”
Mladenovski says that he has seen bears attack children and dogs. “I saw a bear just eating a dog. They are very dangerous.”
I decided to go out and see for myself, so I packed my camera. I drove to the nearest village, Kastelu, and met with a local man named Nikoli. I explained that I was a journalist and that I was documenting the situation. He showed me the location of the bears and told me that he had seen the same bears in the area in July and August. I asked him if I could photograph them in the wild, and he said yes. He also said that they were all around the same age, between eight and twelve years old. He said that they were in very good health, and that they were not afraid of humans.
I parked the car and walked into the forest. There were big trees, with big branches. I took a few pictures and then walked a little way down a hill. As I got closer, I could see them, the curious black-and-white animals that had taken up residence around the village. I got my gear and set up my tripod and camera. The first bear I saw was a huge male. It was standing at the edge of the village, looking out at the surrounding landscape. It was large and thick, with a huge head and a pair of ears that stuck out from its head.
The bear was standing on the right side of the frame. I took the first photo when the light was just right. Then I heard another rustling. This time, it was a mother and her cub. They were on the other side of the village.
I was worried that if I got too close, I would scare the bears away. I was very nervous because I had never seen a wild bear before, and I didn’t know what to expect. But the bears were very docile and friendly.
It was interesting, and I spent about an hour taking pictures. I like to get as close as I can, with the exception of when I have to use flash, which I’ll try to use at a distance where it will be hard to see me. I was able to get a few good pictures of the adult bears.
When I had finished photographing, I went back to the car. I had been outside all day and was cold and tired. I went back to the hotel and stayed in bed. I was exhausted and a little bit sick, and I did not sleep well.
When I woke up the next morning, I thought I had just had a bad dream. I felt a lot of pressure to finish the project. I decided to take a shower and eat a snack. I didn’t want to waste any more time. I felt much better and was ready for a long day of reporting. I had to find people who were willing to talk to me and would be willing to share information.
I met with the owner of a popular website, who gave me his personal address. The headquarters of the fake news factory is in a nondescript building in Veles. It’s owned by a family of wealthy oligarchs who have made their money in the construction business. The owner of the factory is a man named Andras Mitrovic, who is the head of the opposition party, Democratic Union for Integration. The factory is his personal office.
I met Mitrovic at the factory. He has a gray ponytail, a shock of gray hair, and a small smile. He quickly invited me into his office. He’s a small man with a nervous laugh and a tattoo on his left shoulder that reads “Macedonia”. He was wearing a blue suit and a black tie. I was told that I was the first journalist to visit the fake news factory.
The fake news operation is led by a young man named Konstantin, who is in his early twenties. He was born in Veles and moved to St. Petersburg with his parents when he was three. “The fake news operation started out as a small group of friends,” Konstantin said. “They were all in college and working as journalists, but they wanted to start their own website.”
“We were all just kind of bored and wanted to do something,” Konstantin said. “I think that’s why we started to do this.” The group decided to make fake news about the country’s most famous residents Vladimir Putin and his family. They started with a fake news story about Putin’s wife, Lyudmila, supposedly having an affair.
“The story was about how her boyfriend was killed in a car crash,” Konstantin said. The fake news story was picked up by the Russian media and was quickly picked up by Russian-speaking audiences in the US. “We wanted to do something new, something different, something that we could do for our friends in the United States and people in Europe,” Konstantin said.
They showed me a big screen. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was a propaganda piece. I was very surprised when the article got over 600 likes and over 1000 shares within the first 24 hours.
A few days later, I received a message from one of the producers of fake news. He told me he had a feeling that I would like to shoot him. I was not sure if I should accept his invitation. But I did. I arrived at his office and introduced myself. He asked me to take a seat and then he asked me a question.
“Is there anything you don’t like about the world?” “No,” I replied, “I like everything.” He then asked me to get up and began to read from a list of things he disliked about the world. “That’s why I am making fake news” he said.
Dimitri is not proud of his achievements. “I didn’t invent the wheel, I didn’t invent the fake news, I didn’t invent the fake news producers,” he said. “They are just paying me 100 a month. That is not enough to live on.” He was a huge man, standing at 6’5”, and weighed around 300 lbs. He was a popular, if slightly obnoxious, troll. His face was always covered by a mask, which was often white or blue.
The entrepreneur claims his false news rivals produce up to three times the traffic of his own articles. “We are already competitive with each other’s fake news and we will be even more so when it comes to online advertising,” he said. “They are just looking to earn money from ad networks, they are not investing in new opportunities.”
He was a professional troll, who specialized in trolling people who were heavily involved in the 2016 presidential election. His main targets were people who had a strong connection to the Clinton campaign. Dimitri says he’s indifferent to fake news. “This new digital age has completely changed my outlook on things. Publishing fake news for money is a game that long predated Trump’s bid for the presidency. And we have no plans to stop now,” Dimitri says. “There is money to be made here, and we are happy to see people like Donald Trump running for office.”
“There is more to do,’” says Dimitri. “There is money to be made off politics. It doesn’t matter if the source is fake or not, a fake story is always better than a real one.”
While there has been some progress made in clamping down on the flow of fake news, such as the recent arrests of two individuals involved in a failed digital advertising scam in Macedonia, the case of Dimitri and the dozens of others like him are not an isolated incident.
I took my camera with me and drove around Veles, with the young Macedonian in the front seat. I had no idea what I was going to do. I was just going to drive around and see if I could find a story. I was lucky to find a couple of people who were willing to talk to me. They were just kids. They did not have any experience in journalism. They were just teenagers.
Tamara, a student at the Veles Faculty of Technology, was recruited in 2016 by one of dozens of local investors engaged in a race to publish the most news on the Facebook at the earliest opportunity. Nineteen- years-old, she was working as a lifeguard at a resort city in North Macedonia. Her job was to churn out semi-plagiarized copies of articles previously posted on different websites. This was a job she liked doing, because it gave her the freedom to do it herself, without any supervision or interference from anyone. She didn’t have to work with any specific candidates, she said, “I was like. Wow. Wow. Wow.”
She used to do it all under a pseudonym. She used to change her name from time to time, and she also used to change her appearance. She used to wear a short skirt and a white dress, and she would wear a wig. She had a very good understanding of how to create fake news. She also had a very good understanding of how to manipulate people into believing what she wanted them to believe.
“Sometimes a Twitter bot will add a user ID to an article, for example, when it thinks it’s promoting a product”, she says. “That way, if a brand mentions something in a campaign and a user follows the brand, chances are good he will get notified whenever they post something. That’s a dead giveaway of an automated bot. There are other signs that these people are behind automated bots, as well as human error”, says Tamara.
“When I’m writing fake news, I’m not writing factual stories. I’m writing entertainment,” she explains. “When I’m writing factual stories, they are always tweaked and changed. And usually the title has changed.” The titles she’s writing are usually either ridiculously sensationalist or outright false. I ask her about the most-read news articles she’d written on Trump. Most of them she says were either completely false or completely misleading. Some of them, she claims, even edited the material to make it seem like it had more information at the end. “l think a lot of the content I’m writing is not true but at the same time, I don’t care,” she says. “Because if the readers are being led to believe something, then use it.”
For five or six years now, Facebook has held sway over how people think about news and amplify the most harmful of what they read. In August, Facebook started cracking down on fake news sites, and it has also taken steps to undercut the business model of fake news publishers.
Not everyone is convinced that Facebook is doing enough to stop fake news. “There is no such thing as a good PR move when it comes to spreading fake news,” Tamara said. “When Google AdSense disabled my site, I couldn’t make any money from it. They’re shutting down our profiles and we can’t work anymore. That was the most devastating thing.”
“I knew that this was dangerous work, because once you’re in, there’s no going back. You end up becoming very serious. It was just a matter of time before somebody would do it. Then the fake news sites would add their own articles, and the whole thing would just get more and more dramatic and more absurd. They would post stories on biased foreign sites, things that were not true. The stories were always the same: illegal immigration, Muslims in America, etc. I think they are just looking to make money. Is it wrong that they want to make a quick buck out of it? No, it is not wrong at all. The rest of the time, they are just surfing the web in the dark, thinking ‘Oh my God, who would believe this kind of garbage?’”
“People in America are far more open to the idea of a fake news site than here in Macedonia. Ad clicks aren’t worth much in Europe, in America they are worth much more. That set up the whole political propaganda loop. The entire time I was writing these stories, I was always thinking ‘Oh my God, who would believe this kind of crap?’ My daughter is eight years old and she knows nothing about politics. And she was like, ‘You know what? That makes no sense.’”
I started to get worried. Is this the beginning of the end? Is this the beginning of the propaganda war? As a journalist, I’m always conscious of the fact that I’m in a dangerous place. I’m here to cover the political and social situation in a country that’s been struggling for freedom for decades. The media are controlled by the government, and the police are corrupt. The authorities don’t respect the law.
I was walking on the outskirts of the town when I saw a lot of policemen with guns. I went back to the station, and there were a lot of policemen outside. I asked a policeman why they were there, and he said that the mayor had been killed, and they were protecting the town against another assassination attempt. I decided to stay, but I couldn’t help feeling that something was wrong. I was very scared. I thought that I might get killed. I felt very alone. I didn’t know anyone. So, I had to get permission from each one to get their permission to take their picture.
They said: “We don’t want to be photographed, we don’t want to be interviewed, we don’t want to be on camera.”
When I tried to photograph, I was attacked by the police. They took me to the police station. And the message was clear: If you publish anything negative about the authorities, you will be destroyed. This is a kind of psychological war that is waged against journalists. I’m not the only one who has suffered this. I know of at least ten journalists who have been assaulted in the city.
The government of the Republic of Macedonia has been accused of having a “war on media” for more than a year now. I have not been back to the area since. It was my freedom of speech that was attacked. A week before the attack, I had been planning to go to the area to photograph a group of people, but I decided to cancel my trip after I got the threats.
I was not attacked for my views. I was attacked because I was a journalist.
Truth is the things we believe in, and that’s a simple definition. What’s more complicated is how we tell the truth. My work is about telling the truth, about capturing it, about showing it and about presenting it. I think that the desire to capture truth is a universal human desire. The truth is what you see, and it’s the essence of photography.
I wanted to find a way to bring this idea into the world of photography. I knew that truth was an important part of my own experience, and also knew that there was a need for this kind of photography in the world. I wanted to create something that would bring the truth to the world and give people the opportunity to see it.
I started thinking about truth as a concept that I would try to convey through my photographs. I think that we all have a tendency to project our own reality onto the world around us. I like to think that it’s a natural human tendency, but I also think that it’s a very important and valuable part of our existence.
How do we know what’s true? I began to question whether I was telling the truth in my own mind, and that’s when I realized that I wasn’t. I wanted to find a way to communicate the truth in a way that would not be judged by the people around me. I realized that truth is something that we create.
The problem with fake news is that it is easy to make, and easy to spread. And it is cheap. It was easy for me to buy a set of Photoshop skills to make fake news look as real as possible. There was no need to find a source. The news was already there. And so, I set out to create a fake news report.
I tried to make it look as real as possible, but in my mind I knew it was fake. I had the headlines and images ready to go. I would have to change it all, of course. But I knew
it would be good enough to get the story out there. And that’s how it all started.
This is going to change the way people see photography. It’s going to change the way people see themselves. It’s going to change the way people see the world.
I can’t wait.
GPT 2.Dec 2020