FAKE NEWS
dium in Coney Island, wants
to repurpose Green-Wood
Cemetery as a public park
with the help of Cardinal Timothy
Dolan, intends to revive
Amazon’s HQ2 proposal at the
Brooklyn Army Terminal,
plans to tear down the Belt
Parkway, and build a public
park along the Bay Ridge waterfront.
A spokesperson for Hochul
declined to comment on the
Chronicle’s fake news proliferation,
except to say that all
of the stories are bogus.
“All of those things are not
happening,” said Avi Small.
In the other boroughs, the
Chronicle says the UN headquarters
is being moved to
Governors Island, that New
York Lottery hypewoman
Yolanda Vega is retiring
(which she is actually doing in
real-life) to run for Congress
against Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez (which she is not), that
the MTA is building Metro-
North stations in Astoria,
that Hochul wants to separate
Staten Island into its own city,
and that former Gov. Andrew
Cuomo plans to run for Tom
Suozzi’s seat in Congress.
Likewise, all of those stories
are simply baloney.
One article from last
month, which claimed that
Hochul planned to relocate
Madison Square Garden to
a new location atop a Hell’s
Kitchen park, was seen and interacted
COURIER L 28 IFE, FEBRUARY 4-10, 2022
with online so widely
it drew not only an article in
Patch to debunk it, but a statement
from the governor’s offi
ce that the article’s premise
was “completely false,” with
“no truth to it whatsoever.”
To Quinn, the fake news
articles go beyond just misleading
people: they give people
false hope of attention and
investment being driven towards
their community, echoing
a societal trend of fake
news infl uencing public opinion,
especially during the
Trump era and COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m just concerned because
a lot of people in that
area have been waiting a
long time for some kind of investment
in the community,”
Quinn said. “Not in real estate,
not in building amusement
parks and high-rises.
And this kind of indicates, oh,
the governor wants to invest
in Coney Island? Build better
resources? If you put this kind
of stuff out there, it damages
those people also, they think
that it’s true.”
“I don’t know what this
guy’s objective is,” he continued.
Why does he do it?
That guy is Matt Ricchiazzi,
a Buffalonian and self-described
urban planning afi cionado
who has mounted several
failed attempts for public offi ce
in the Western New York City,
and has cultivated a reputation
as a political dirty trickster.
Most articles run without a byline,
and readers get a 404 error
when they click on the “writers”
and “contact” sections of
the website.
Ricchiazzi did not respond
to multiple requests for comment
prior to publication of
this article, but following online
publication, he sent a Facebook
message to Brooklyn Paper
outlining his reasoning for
publishing fake news, arguing
that it’s “social art, designed
to inspire the collective aspirations
of the body politic.”
“The Buffalo Chronicle is
not fake news,” Ricchiazzi said.
“More than 98 percent of everything
we publish is factual. On
regular occasion we do publish
satire, and on other occasions
we publish content that I would
describe as social art, designed
to inspire the collective aspirations
of the body politic.”
Specifi cally, he wants his
“social art” to inspire the likes
of the governor to undertake
bold infrastructure and economic
development initiatives.
“Kathy Hochul is a nice
person, and my content is in
no way designed to make her
look bad,” Ricchiazzi said. “I
want to encourage her to go
further and be more bold in
her infrastructure projects.
The content that I produce is
designed, through social art…
to convince her do bold things,
while educating the public
about issues of urban planning
and urban design.”
Despite that, Ricchiazzi
does not label his content
as social art, satire, or anything
else that would tip off a
reader to its fi ctitious nature.
Though he doesn’t like nor embrace
the term “fake news,” he
doesn’t quite disown it either:
he argues that by publishing
phony content, not disclosed
as what it is, about largescale
infrastructure development,
he puts the reader in a
“posture of defense” that ultimately
leads them to demand
more of politicians.
“There is a certain magic
in the medium — of fake news,
for lack of a better term — because
the reader begins consuming
it from a posture of
defense, defending themselves
against what they presume to
be the inevitability of big-government
inertia,” Ricchiazzi
said. “And then when they
are presented with a possibility
that is not only plausible
but would also wildly benefi
t their interests, they are
shocked.”
“The art is in the ensuing
public discourse,” he continued.
“It’s putting people each
in a corner and seeing how
they react.”
Ricchiazzi told BuzzFeed
and the Toronto Star in 2019
that his website would “never
knowingly publish a falsehood”
and expressed “confi -
dence in all of our reporting
to date,” but an investigation
by those outlets found that he
had written slanted coverage
in favor of political candidates
that had paid him “consulting
fees” — and, on at least one occasion,
he had explicitly solicited
bribes from a candidate
for slanted coverage.
“Fees are as follows: positive
articles about your candidacy
are $200; negative articles
about your opponents
are $400; and an editorial endorsement
is $300,” Ricchiazzi
told a candidate in an email
obtained by BuzzFeed and the
Toronto Star.
For more on the Buffalo
Chronicle, visit BrooklynPaper.
com.
Continued from page 10