It seems the liberal media simply can’t accept the fact that voters rejected Democrat Hillary Clinton. In a Thanksgiving Day hit piece that can only be described as “fake news” designed to push liberal propaganda, the Washington Post attempted to tie conservative and right-leaning sites to Russian propaganda and intelligence machinery.
According to the Post:
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 Web sites 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.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
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. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.
To “prove” the point, the Post used a list put together by “Propaganda or Not.”
PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times.
Some players in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded, while others were “useful idiots” — a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions that unknowingly assisted the propaganda efforts of the Soviet Union.
So, who are these alleged “peddlers of Russian propaganda?”
According to Propaganda or Not, the list includes the Drudge Report, Alex Jones’ Infowars and Zero Hedge, among many others.
Here’s what the site says (Emphasis added):
Please note that our criteria are behavioral. That means the characteristics of the propaganda outlets we identify are motivation-agnostic. For purposes of this definition it does not matter whether the sites listed here are being knowingly directed and paid by Russian intelligence officers, or whether they even knew they were echoing Russian propaganda at any particular point: If they meet these criteria, they are at the very least acting as bona-fide “useful idiots” of the Russian intelligence services, and are worthy of further scrutiny.
We assess that this overall Russian effort is at least semi-centralized, with multiple Russian projects and influence operations working in parallel to manage the direct and outsourced production of propaganda across a wide range of outlets. It is data-driven, and rewards effective entrepreneurship and innovation with increased funding and other resources. There are varying degrees of involvement in it, and awareness of involvement. Some people involved seem genuinely unaware that they are being used by Russia to produce propaganda, but many others seem to know full well.
Got that? According to this site, the Drudge Report, which provides links to stories — many of which are from the so-called “mainstream media,” is working for Russia.
What’s next? Will the Post claim that Trump voters are all on Putin’s payroll?
Talk about sore losers…
Related:
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- WaPo blogger: Trump sexist for calling Hillary ‘she’
- WaPo propaganda piece attempts to smear Trump, supporters as mentally ill conspiracy theorists
- WaPo: ‘Air conditioning made Americans greedy and silly’
- WaPo: ‘Crime Wave’ rhetoric is hype, except in three liberal cities
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