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Russian Propaganda Effort Helped Spread 'Fake News' During Election, Experts Say (usatoday.com)
According to the Washington Post (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternate source), the "fake news" phenomenon that circulated thousands of phony stories during the election was aided by a sophisticated Russian propaganda effort that aimed to punish Democrat Hillary Clinton, help Republican Donald Trump and undermine faith in American democracy. Slashdot reader xtsigs shares with us an excerpt from the Washington Post's report: The flood of "fake news" this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation. Russia's increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery -- including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human "trolls," and networks of websites and social-media accounts -- echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia. Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House.
Our fake news said Hillary had a 99% chance of winning the election.
We don't need Russians for fake news. The US can do pretty well making its own.
Actually, there's plenty of evidence. NPR had a piece recently which you can listen to at http://www.npr.org/sections/al..., They found a guy, actually a Hillary voter, who made a reasonable amount of money putting out fake news during the run-up to the election. Listen, read, and see what you think. As a side line, I was a member of a right wing meetup group during the primaries. Someone posted a story that originated with that nut job Alex Jones (I hope he sues me) saying that some TV station in Wisconsin was reporting a guy who claims his vote was switched from Cruz to Trump (primaries). Their mistake was they cited the station. I called and they not only didn't put out the story but had never heard of the person alleged to have had his vote switched. By this time, however, the story had been widely spread throughout the Alt-Right bubble. Moral, don't believe a story until the source cites enough info, links, legitimate news organizations, or whatever so that you can verify the story yourself. Without that, there is a high probability that you're being lied to. BTW, I recently saw a news item that Trump was a paid agent of the KGB during the 1980's.
Some of their criticisms are fair. However:
I ended up blacklisting both of those sites on my Google News feed when they basically became indistinguishable from RT and Sputnik. These days they extensively source from Russian propaganda outlets, as well as using a lot of writers who also write for Russian propaganda outlets. The group's site explicitly states that they're not just listing sources, but also websites with a history of repeating Russian propaganda outlets and talking points.
Just looking at the front page of CounterPunch right now, to pick an example, I see this writing stuff like "In Ukraine, where the neoconservatives around Clinton and Nuland funded and brought about the overthrow of the elected government right on Russia’s borders, provoking a fast and unequivocal response by President Vladimir Putin (part of whose navy was always stationed in an important base in the Crimea), it is common (fictional) knowledge in the Euro-Media that the entire war there is about “Russian aggression”..."
Of course, that's mild compared to a lot of what I've seen. Some of which contains quotes almost verbatim from Sputnik and RT articles. This particular case here is just talking points.
Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
Putin is leading a full-scale propaganda war against the west, intended at undermining trust in our democarcies and our institutions.
Putin did?
The Republicans spent the last 40 years undermining trust in our institutions and democracies. The whole fucking last 8 years was a de-legitimization campaign against the executive branch. Stupid shit like "starve the beast" and the "norquist pledge" are the rallying cries for a race to the bottom in governance. And the Democrats let them do it. Because they've been running away from "common man politics" because anything left of the John Birch Society is "socialism." Political cowardice has governed the Democrats ever since Reagan won.
And the Press have shown even more cowardice, refusing to call out obvious bullshit and giving bloviating idiots like Trump FOUR billion fucking dollars of free air time. Because a clown-car wreck is more entertaining than covering issues. And any politician caught talking about issues (and their supporters) was ridiculed or ignored. And anything coming out of Hillary's mouth was golden, somehow, even if it was disingenuous (standing on stage next to Bernie mouthing the issues we all know damn well that she would abandon if elected).
Hillary's only selling point that she emphasized was that she "wasn't Trump." Big fuckin' deal. If you're going to elect "not trump" then a ham sandwich could stand in for that position. At least a ham sandwich didn't have the awful negatives that Hillary had. Hillary's campaign was the most tone-deaf thing I have had to waste my time watching go over a cliff.
The cynicism, self-dealing, gas-lighting, all of it made voters turn their noses up in disgust.
Putin didn't have to do a goddamned thing to undermine faith in our democracy and institutions. The people charged with running them have abdicated their responsibilities in favor of their own prurient interests.
I suggest that it's you who has to wake up.
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BMO