Glenn Greenwald destroys WaPo "Russian propaganda" smear

[jct74]

this deserves its own thread


Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group

Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald
November 26 2016

THE WASHINGTON POST ON THURSDAY NIGHT promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of U.S. news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The article by reporter Craig Timberg – headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” – cites a report by a new, anonymous website calling itself “PropOrNot,” which claims that millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian “misinformation campaign.”

The group’s list of Russian disinformation outlets includes WikiLeaks and the Drudge Report, as well as Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute.

This Post report was one of the most widely circulated political news articles on social media over the last 48 hours, with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of U.S. journalists and pundits with large platforms hailing it as an earth-shattering exposé. It was the most-read piece on the entire Post website after it was published on Friday.

Yet the article is rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations, and fundamentally shaped by shoddy, slothful journalistic tactics. It was not surprising to learn that, as BuzzFeed’s Sheera Frenkel noted, “a lot of reporters passed on this story.” Its huge flaws are self-evident. But the Post gleefully ran with it and then promoted it aggressively, led by its Executive Editor Marty Baron:

...

read more:
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/

[eleganz]

Damn, Greenwald came out guns blazing..

[specsaregood]

Damn, Greenwald came out guns blazing..

upon reading that, I'm convinced that propornot is actually an excellent trolling effort that will come out later to make the post look like the hacks they are.

[eleganz]

upon reading that, I'm convinced that propornot is actually an excellent trolling effort that will come out later to make the post look like the hacks they are.

Those emoticons are what led me to believe the same.

[dannno]

Those emoticons are what led me to believe the same.

Emoji analysis

http://www.comedycentral.co.uk/south-park/videos/south-park-season-20-episode-6-emoji-analysis

[Mike4Freedom]

Episode V: The propagandists strike back

[William Tell]

Who are the conspiracy theorists now?

[goldenequity]

Every time the media doubles down on disinformation, a new pollywog is born

https://i.sli.mg/g1nLZq.jpg

[FSP-Rebel]

802945927455637507

[anaconda]

Interesting tidbits regarding Joe McCarthy.

http://themuckraker.net/earlwarrenfp.html

[AZJoe]

Highlights:

In casting the group behind this website as “experts,” the Post described PropOrNot simply as “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds.” Not one individual at the organization is named. … In other words, the individuals behind this newly created group are publicly branding journalists and news outlets as tools of Russian propaganda — even calling on the FBI to investigate them for espionage — while cowardly hiding their own identities. …

The credentials of this supposed group of experts are impossible to verify, as none is provided either by the Post or by the group itself. …

PropOrNot listed numerous organizations on its website as “allied” with it, yet many of these claimed “allies” told The Intercept, and complained on social media, they have nothing to do with the group and had never even heard of it before the Post published its story. … At some point last night, after multiple groups listed as “allies” objected, the group quietly changed the title of its “allied” list to “Related Projects.” …

this group of ostensible experts far more resembles amateur peddlers of primitive, shallow propagandistic clichés than serious, substantive analysis and expertise; that it has a blatant, demonstrable bias in promoting NATO’s narrative about the world; and that it is engaging in extremely dubious McCarthyite tactics about a wide range of critics and dissenters. …

To see how frivolous and even childish this group of anonymous cowards is … just sample a couple of the recent tweets from this group:
802473476279762944

As for their refusal to identify themselves even as they smear hundreds of American journalists as loyal to the Kremlin or “useful idiots” for it, this is their mature response:
802243300824449024

The Washington Post should be very proud: It staked a major part of its news story on the unverified, untestable assertions of this laughable organization. …

Basically, everyone who isn’t comfortably within the centrist Hillary Clinton/Jeb Bush spectrum is guilty. On its Twitter account, the group announced a new “plugin” that automatically alerts the user that a visited website has been designated by the group to be a Russian propaganda outlet. …

The group eschews alternative media outlets like these and instead recommends that readers rely solely on establishment-friendly publications … That is because a big part of the group’s definition for “Russian propaganda outlet” is criticizing U.S. foreign policy. … the website conflates criticism of Western governments and their actions and policies with Russian propaganda. News sites that do not uncritically echo a pro-NATO perspective are accused of being mouthpieces for the Kremlin …

it simultaneously calls for the U.S. government to use the FBI and DOJ to carry out “formal investigations” of these accused websites … The shadowy group even goes so far as to claim that people involved in the blacklisted websites may “have violated the Espionage Act, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and other related laws.” …

PropOrNot, where it gets its funding, and whether or not it is tied to any governments is a complete mystery. …

journalists — who constantly demand transparency from everyone else — refuse to provide even the most basic levels for themselves. …

EVEN MORE DISTURBING than the Post’s shoddy journalism in this instance is the broader trend in which any wild conspiracy theory or McCarthyite attack is now permitted in U.S. discourse as long as it involves Russia and Putin …

Two of the most discredited reports from the election season illustrate the point: a Slate article claiming that a private server had been located linking the Trump Organization and a Russian bank … and a completely deranged rant by Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald claiming that Putin had ordered emails in the WikiLeaks release to be doctored … The Post itself — now posing as a warrior against “fake news” — published an article in September that treated with great seriousness the claim that Hillary Clinton collapsed on 9/11 Day because she was poisoned by Putin. And that’s to say nothing of the paper’s disgraceful history of convincing Americans that Saddam was building non-existent nuclear weapons and had cultivated a vibrant alliance with al Qaeda. As is so often the case, those who mostly loudly warn of “fake news” from others are themselves the most aggressive disseminators of it. …

Indeed, what happened here is the essence of fake news. … Tens of thousands of people, perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions, consumed it … it is the ultimate irony that this Post story ended up illustrating and spreading far more fake news than it exposed.

[osan]

THE WASHINGTON POST ON THURSDAY NIGHT promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of U.S. news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” ... “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” – ... millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian “misinformation campaign.”

Let us assume for argument's sake that what has been asserted is true.

This forcibly leads with immediacy to the question, "why has this happened?"

In short, those raising the accusations have nobody but themselves to thank for this presumably sad turn of events. Had the MSM remained the faithful stewards of the Fifth Estate, rather than having turned toward the perfidious duty of a fifth column, they would have retained the trust of the people and these "fake news" sites would have gained no traction.

The MSM is to credit for the problems of the MSM. There is no complaint they might issue that would have the ear of thinking men, much less their sympathies. They have damned themselves, and deservedly shall it be were they to find themselves relegated to the stench-polluted corners of the Stygian Pit.

And if we reverse the presumption, they damn themselves all the more resolutely.

[jct74]

THE PROPAGANDA ABOUT RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA

By Adrian Chen
DECEMBER 1, 2016

In late October, I received an e-mail from “The PropOrNot Team,” which described itself as a “newly-formed independent team of computer scientists, statisticians, national security professionals, journalists and political activists, dedicated to identifying propaganda—particularly Russian propaganda targeting a U.S. audience.” PropOrNot said that it had identified two hundred Web sites that “qualify as Russian propaganda outlets.” The sites’ reach was wide—they are read by at least fifteen million Americans. PropOrNot said that it had “drafted a preliminary report about this for the office of Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), and after reviewing our report they urged us to get in touch with you and see about making it a story.”

Reporting on Internet phenomena, one learns to be wary of anonymous collectives freely offering the fruits of their research. I told PropOrNot that I was probably too busy to write a story, but I asked to see the report. In reply, PropOrNot asked me to put the group in touch with “folks at the NYTimes, WaPo, WSJ, and anyone else who you think would be interested.” Deep in the middle of another project, I never followed up.

PropOrNot managed to connect with the Washington Post on its own. Last week, the Post published a story based in part on PropOrNot’s research. Headlined “Russian Propaganda Effort Helped Spread ‘Fake News’ During Election, Experts Say,” the report claimed that a number of researchers had uncovered a “sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign” that spread fake-news articles across the Internet with the aim of hurting Hillary Clinton and helping Donald Trump. It prominently cited the PropOrNot research. The story topped the Post’s most-read list, and was shared widely by prominent journalists and politicians on Twitter. The former White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer tweeted, “Why isn’t this the biggest story in the world right now?”

Vladimir Putin and the Russian state’s affinity for Trump has been well-reported. During the campaign, countless stories speculated on connections between Trump and Putin and alleged that Russia contributed to Trump’s election using propaganda and subterfuge. Clinton made it a major line of attack. But the Post’s story had the force of revelation, thanks in large part to the apparent scientific authority of PropOrNot’s work: the group released a thirty-two-page report detailing its methodology, and named names with its list of two hundred suspect news outlets. The organization’s anonymity, which a spokesperson maintained was due to fear of Russian hackers, added a cybersexy mystique.

But a close look at the report showed that it was a mess. “To be honest, it looks like a pretty amateur attempt,” Eliot Higgins, a well-respected researcher who has investigated Russian fake-news stories on his Web site, Bellingcat, for years, told me. “I think it should have never been an article on any news site of any note.”

...

read more:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-propaganda-about-russian-propaganda

[AZJoe]

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15268057_1344634342215943_6002337931569397224_n.jp g?oh=015f792b929a48dff50da2ba106394d5&oe=58F2DCE9

[timosman]

bump

[Ender]

Gotta respect Greenwald.