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Home > NY Times Frets About Russian Propaganda, Ignores the Massive Troll
Farms Run By America and Its Allies
NY Times Frets About Russian Propaganda, Ignores the Massive Troll Farms Run
By America and Its Allies
By Adam Johnson [1] / FAIR [2]
December 16, 2017, 2:29 PM GMT
An op-ed by the president of the right-wing human rights group Freedom
House, published in the New York Times Monday (12/11/17 [3])-later boosted
[4] by New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker-warned of
the menace of "commentators, trolls, bots, false news sites and propaganda,"
and their negative effects on democracy. Missing from its analysis was any
account of how the government that funds its organization ( 86 percent of
Freedom House's budget [5] comes from the US government, primarily the State
Department and USAID) uses social media to stir unrest and undermine
governments worldwide.
What the reader was left with was a very selective, curated impression that
online social media manipulation is something done exclusively by brown and
black people and those dastardly Slavs. The column condemns "surreptitious
techniques pioneered in Moscow and Beijing to use the internet to drown out
dissent and undermine free elections," going on to cite online skullduggery
in the Philippines, Kenya, Turkey, Mexico and Iran.
Missing from the piece by Freedom House's Michael Abramowitz is any mention
of numerous reports detailing online manipulation by US and allied
governments and Western PR firms.
No mention of the Defense Department's $100 million program Operation
Earnest Voice [6] software that "creates fake online identities to spread
pro-American propaganda." No mention of the US Air Force's 2010 solicitation
[7] of "persona management" software designed to create hundreds of sock
puppets, "replete with background, history, supporting details and cyber
presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent."
No mention of USAID (the same government agency, incidentally, that funds
Freedom House) secretly creating an entire social media platform [8] to
"stir unrest" in Cuba. No mention of the US State Department's newly created
$160 million Global Engagement Center, targeting English-language audiences
[9] with unattributed Facebook videos combating, in part, "Russia
propaganda."
Nor was there mention of the UK's "team of Facebook warriors [10]," "skilled
in psychological operations and use of social media to engage in
unconventional warfare in the information age," or reference to the
half-dozen [11] reports of Israeli troll farms promoting pro-Israel
propaganda online.
The op-ed had a particular focus on "governing parties" using covert online
tools to "inflate their popular support and essentially endorse themselves,"
warning that this "devastating new threat to democracy" is used to
"undermine elections, political debate and virtually every other aspect of
governing." Yet there was no acknowledgement of the fact that the Hillary
Clinton campaign spent $1 million in the 2016 primary [12] to promote its
candidate using unattributed social media personas. Nor was there mention of
a torrent of pro-Trump bots [13] that infected the 2016 campaign on social
media.
Instead, the piece primarily consists of little insight or larger discussion
as to the scope of the problem. "The United States and other democracies"
are positioned as the victims of online manipulation, never its author. Amid
platitudes about "the future of democracy" and "malevolent actors," the
West's place as noble defenders of Real Information online is simply taken
for granted, with, by implication, their ideological satellites-like Freedom
House-as neutral arbiters of what is and isn't propaganda, never
practitioners of propaganda themselves.
The US Department of Defense admitted [6] in 2011 that it runs fake social
media accounts in Farsi; the vast majority of Farsi speakers live in Iran.
What were these accounts doing? Did they influence any elections there? Does
Freedom House ask the question, much less attempt to answer it? Of course
not; Iran can only be guilty of "[manipulating] discussions.on social
media," never the victim of it.
Should the New York Times have disclosed that the author of a piece about
government propaganda runs a group overwhelmingly funded by the US
government? The reader could theoretically do research on their own time to
find out who backs the benign-sounding "Freedom House" (who doesn't love
freedom?), but this is a fairly tall order for the average media consumer,
doubly so when one considers the whole point of the piece is criticizing
unattributed propaganda.
Also missing from Freedom House's cartoon narrative of Good Western
Democracies vs. Bad Governments in the Global South is the issue of
sophistication. One of the reasons groups like Freedom House know about
clandestine attempts by these governments and affiliated parties to
influence online messaging is they're mostly bad at it. Hacky, easily
identifiable bots, sloppy knock-off websites, transparent "fake news." The
software solicited by the US Air Force in 2010, which would allow each user
to control up to ten social media personas at once "without fear of being
discovered by sophisticated adversaries," would presumably be much more
difficult to detect.
Social media manipulation is a major problem in urgent need of robust
discussion. But outlets like the New York Times-and others, such as Buzzfeed
[14]-that focus only on attempts by Official US Enemies, and never direct
any criticism inwards, aren't concerned with having an earnest discussion of
the problem. They are, instead, using the specter of online manipulation to
smear those in bad standing with the US State Department while deflecting
any conversation about what the most powerful country in the history of the
world may be up to online.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst at FAIR and contributing writer for
AlterNet. Follow him on Twitter @AdamJohnsonNYC [15].
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Source URL:
https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/nyt-prints-government-funded-propa
ganda-about-government-funded-propaganda
Links:
[1] https://www.alternet.org/authors/adam-johnson-0
[2] http://www.fair.org
[3]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/11/opinion/fake-news-russia-kenya.html?smpro
d=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=1
[4] https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/940278250730934274
[5]
https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FINAL_Basic_Financial_Statement
s_2016.pdf
[6]
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-n
etworks
[7]
https://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/personamanagementcontrac
t.pdf
[8]
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter-zunzuneo-stir
-unrest
[9]
https://www.thenation.com/article/us-officials-wont-say-if-a-new-anti-russia
-propaganda-project-is-targeting-americans/
[10]
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/31/british-army-facebook-warrio
rs-77th-brigade
[11]
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-social-
media/2651715/
[12]
http://beta.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-20160506-sna
p-htmlstory.html
[13]
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/01/social-media-ads-russia-wanted-ame
ricans-to-see-244423
[14] https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/935537517478023168
[15] https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC
[16] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=Typo on NY Times Frets About
Russian Propaganda, Ignores the Massive Troll Farms Run By America and Its
Allies
&body=URL:http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/nyt-prints-government-fun
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[17] https://www.alternet.org/
[18] https://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B