This is part one in an investigation into government-funded, opposition-linked NGOs that pose as impartial monitors and investigators of the Syrian conflict.More on propaganda, disinformation, and the information wars as tools in hybrid warfare.
Newsguard co-CEO Steven Brill in Brussels on Tuesday claimed that news sites that have recently criticized Newsguard’s motives — MintPress among them — are “secretly supported” by the Russian government, a claim for which he provided no evidence....MintPress News
The Rand Corporation defines America's influence operations as... “the coordinated, integrated, and synchronized application of national diplomatic, informational, military, economic, and other capabilities in peacetime, crisis, conflict, and post-conflict to foster attitudes, behaviors, or decisions by foreign target audiences that further US interests and objectives. In this view, influence operations accent communications to affect attitudes and behaviors but also can include the employment of military capabilities, economic development, and other real-world capabilities that also can play a role in reinforcing these communications.”…
The fact is that spreading disinformation and confusion are what governments and intelligence services do to protect what they consider to be vital interests. It is naïve for the US Senate and America’s leading newspapers to maintain that intelligence probing and other forms of interference from Russia or China or Iran or even “friend” Israel occur in a vacuum. Everyone intrudes and spreads lies and everyone will continue to do it because it is easy to understand and cheap to run. In the end, however, its effectiveness is limited. In 2016 the election result was determined by a lack of trust on the part of the American people for what the establishment politicians have been offering, not because of interference from Moscow.
Many of these recent hit pieces are coming out of the UK, which is interesting given the way a BBC reporter recently admonished her interviewee for questioning the official story about the alleged Douma chemical attacks because his words could hurt the “information war” effort against Russia. If this view is widespread among British journalists (and recent headlines by the Times, the Independent and the Telegraphsuggest that it may be), this means we’re looking at an environment wherein reporters aren’t even pretending it’s their job to be truthful, tell all sides of a story and hold power to account, but rather to manufacture support for escalations against Russia and undermine anyone who resists....Overreach.
People scoff at state-funded channels like RT, while singing the praises of channels like MSNBC and CNN. Those networks benefit hugely from the myth that because they are not state-funded, they are somehow independent.
These are networks owned by giant parent corporations with plenty of skin in the political game — yet, it is rarely acknowledged that these corporations have a detrimental influence on the quality of journalism produced by their employees. The truth is rarely uttered, that network stars like Rachel Maddow are completely beholden to those corporate and political interests — and that this basic fact massively influences their reporting....And this is just MSNBC, hardly the worst of the lot of US media.
“In the past few months we at the IDF Spokesperson’s Office have come to the understanding that we are actually conducting media operations,” IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis told a room full of Israeli journalists earlier this week. “The IDF’s digital platforms are operational tools in the operational arm of the IDF.”
In the chief spokesperson’s words, the military is engaged of “a war over consciousness” — changing what and how people think of Israel, its army — and if you’re an Arab, what you think of your own leaders, government, and society.
“We actually define different goals for each audience, different platforms, and most fundamentally, different messages,” added Manelis, whose background is as an intelligence officer. “We come up with an operational strategy. We conduct media intelligence about who we are trying to reach with what message.”...
All Western media that I looked are for some obvious reasons conveniently deleting the rest of the statement by the gunman in which he says: "We have pledged Jihad for Muhammad". Why is that not mentioned here: "“Allah Akbar! Do not forget Aleppo!” said the gunman, according to the widely circulated video. “Do not forget Syria! Do not forget Aleppo! Do not forget Syria! As long as our lands are not safe, you will not be safe!" In fact, the Jihad vow is the headline for all the stories about the assassinations in the accounts of Syrian rebels and their supporters (in Arabic only of course) and even in the Huffington Post--the Jihadi Qatari Arabic version.Chance omission in the Wester media that can be spun as anti-Assad instead of jihadist? Not likely.
"'Don't forget Aleppo' - Russian ambassador's killer". They almost are implying that he was noble in his deed. Can you imagine such headlines for the killers of US ambassador in Libya? CNN had the exact same headline, as did other Western sites and papers.Look how ALL Western media are romanticizing the Turkish gunman and ignoring his Jihad message
In any event, the Post’s story was really all about PropOrNot’s list and, in contrast to FPRI, the organization remains fully opaque. What is PropOrNot trying to hide? One possibility: The Pentagon. The Defense Department is, after all, spending billions of dollars a year on information warfare, and has, under Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, been promoting the idea of Russia as an existential threat to the US.
One indication of some level of Pentagon involvement is the curious role of Joel Harding, whose own blog identifies him as a retired longtime military intelligence officer specializing in “information operations, strategic communication and cyberwarfare”—in other words, psychological warfare and propaganda. Harding, who denied (via an email conversation with me) any connection to the 30 or 40 “volunteers” alleged to be working at PropOrNot, is nonetheless the only named “analyst” whose work is cited as a rationale for listing any of the sites on PropOrNot’s list....FAIR — Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
One of most pernicious means underway to crush independent news sites is the release of software tools that brand them as unreliable. This means that hidden developers and the parties that fed them information are beyond any accountability, yet would serve as censors....The plot thickens. And under capitalism, the push will be on to monetize this.
We asked a former top NSA official and computer expert – Thomas Drake – to look at the diagram.
Drake is a decorated Air Force and Navy veteran, who has been awarded numerous medals including:
Drake was a member of the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service.
- Meritorious Service Medal
- Air Medal
- Air Force Commendation Medal
With a strong technical background in surveillance and computers, Drake was one of the top NSA executives, and was Senior Change Leader within the NSA.
Drake was also one America’s top government experts on Stasi Germany … so he knows a thing or two about propaganda....
Washington’s Blog asked Drake about PropOrNot and its diagram. Drake told us:My take?
It’s a prop for a disinfo op in order to serve a manufactured narrative....
No one knows who is behind the newly created PropOrNot website that came up with the list of 200 “Russian agents,” but it is as likely as not the State Department funded National Endowment for Democracy, which has been peddling propaganda as fake news since its inception. Indeed, it was created for the purpose of destabilizing the Soviet Union. Of course the CIA could be involved, or Israel, or George Soros, or some neoconservative group, or some new government funded organization as a tool of the propaganda war that the Obama regime has vowed to fight.PaulCraigRoberts.org
By publicizing the fake list in the Washington Post, the presstitute newspaper has brought buckets of shame and condemnation upon its head, destroying in the process the thin shred of credibility that the Main Stream media still possessed....
The story of PropOrNot should serve as a cautionary tale to those who fixate on malignant digital influences as a primary explanation for Trump’s stunning election. The story combines two of the most popular technological villains of post-election analysis—fake news and Russian subterfuge—into a single tantalizing package. Like the most effective Russian propaganda, the report weaved together truth and misinformation.The New Yorker
Nevertheless, it was the kind of nonsense that anyone who’d spent more than a few days in a decent journalism school could debunk fairly rapidly.
Notwithstanding this, the [Washington] Post published regardless. And it's hard to understand what its editors were thinking.…
It’s time for editors at The Independent, Chicago Tribune, Daily Mail, Associated Press, USA Today and The New York Times to take a dishonorable bow. Because they have all, without proper examination, spread WaPo’s ‘fake news’ this week.
In fact, only USA Today even remotely considered the possibly that they’d all been hoodwinked by referencing an RT editorial which punctured the balloon. Meanwhile, Mediaite - a relatively influential press affairs site - went the full Joseph McCarthy by more-or-less smearing Ed Schultz and Larry King, both associated with RT America, as treasonists.Trashing the brand, or what's left of it after the bogus reporting in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq based on false pretenses, fixed policy, and a manufactured narrative.
Right now, the narrative is “fake news” and Russia’s alleged part in it. However, when I personally think of made up stories which caused genuine and lasting damage, it’s the infamous Iraq ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction' pretext that springs to mind. And which media concern did more than basically any other to promote this falsehood? Why it was The Washington Post, with an incredible 140 front page stories, and 27 editorials pushing for America’s illegal invasion, which left close to one million people dead and continues to leave a trail of destruction across the Middle East.
Now, that sort of “fake news” is far from harmless, isn’t it? In fact, it's clear how The Washington Post has been showing us how to make phoney reportage go "viral" for years.Anyone that takes anything in the mainstream media news at face value is a fool.
For empires to rule, their agents must hang on to their monopoly of force, fraud and subversion, inside the home country as well as in its far flung dominions. Subversion means persuading people to believe what is true and good, when that’s false and bad for them. Propaganda, in short....Dances with Bears
The Washington Post’s McCarthyistic conspiracy theory implicating some 200 Web sites in an alleged Russian propaganda network continues to spread across mainstream media despite being debunked, as in Patrick Henningsen’s report.While this edit ploy is ostensibly about further demonizing Russia and anyone that can be tarred with being in any way associated, it appears to me that this a media barrage coming from Clinton supporters that are trying to discredit the election. This seems to be a response to what Hillary Clinton claimed was a "vast right-wing conspiracy" during Bill's presidency. Now it appears they are trying to turn the table with a matching conspiracy to "fight fire with fire."
The uncritical reliance on claims by the White Helmets without any effort to investigate their credibility is yet another telling example of journalistic malpractice by media outlets with a long record of skewing coverage of conflicts toward an interventionist narrative.Journalistic malpractice or information war? The former requires widespread and ongoing "journalistic malpractice." That doesn’t pass the mommy test. Planted "news" for the purpose of deception and sewing confusion seems much more likely.
The capital's paper of record crashes legacy media on an icebergRolling Stone
