Editor’s Note: The following set of observations by Independent Media Solidarity members and MHB reader Paul Bennett is especially insightful and in our view warrants a separate post. Since the Sandy Hook massacre event this site has provided copious documentation that the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program [HSEEP] training has been implemented by local and regional authorities to conduct routine training with the objective of inclusion in the given area’s news cycle. Awareness of HSEEP and related programs has resulted in many alternative media and independent researchers actually tracing alleged mass casualty events to such drills and drawing public attention to a potential relationship. 
The record reveals how particularly during the Obama administration some of these events were seized upon by political groups to promote gun control legislation, generate fear of “angry white supremacists,” and so on. Further, as the videos below suggest and as the “crisis actors” theory first postulated, massive federal funding toward HSEEP has prompted an entire industry to emerge and service local bureaucracies and their first responder staff conducting such events.
By Paul Bennett
Fake News is its own reward. That is, there does not need to be a “reason”, or policy change, behind the faked news item. Debating the possible purpose of a fake media event is a complete waste of time.
Most of the time these drills are concocted by local authorities along with the local media, and generally following HSEEP protocol. From time to time the mass media outlets, NGO’s and politicians may decide that your local drama fits into their larger campaign, in which case they will invade en masse, but the vast majority of fake news is designed to stay on the back pages.