Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Washington Post Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200
Publications of Being Russian Propaganda Plants
________________________________________
Washington Post Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200 Publications of
Being Russian Propaganda Plants
By Max Blumenthal [1] / AlterNet [2]
November 25, 2016
A shady website [3] that claims "Russia is Manipulating US Opinion Through
Online Propaganda" has compiled a blacklist of websites its anonymous
authors accuse of pushing fake news and Russian propaganda. The blacklist
includes over 200 outlets, from the right-wing Drudge Report and Russian
government-funded Russia Today, to Wikileaks and an array of marginal
conspiracy and far-right sites. The blacklist also includes some of the
flagship publications of the progressive left, including Truthdig,
Counterpunch, Truthout, Naked Capitalism, and the Black Agenda Report, a
leftist African-American opinion hub that is critical of the liberal black
political establishment.
Called PropOrNot, the blacklisting organization was described by the
Washington Post's Craig Timberg as "a nonpartisan collection of researchers
with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds." The Washington
Post agreed to preserve the anonymity of the group's director on the grounds
that exposure could result in their being targeted by "Russia's legions of
skilled hackers." The Post failed to explain what methods PropOrNot relied
on to conclude that "stories planted or promoted by the Russian
disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times." (Timberg
also cited a report co-authored by Aaron Weisburg, founder of the one-man
anti-Palestinian "Internet Haganah" operation, who has been accused [4] of
interfering in federal investigations, stealing the personal information of
anarchists, online harassment, and fabricating information to smear his
targets.)
Despite the Washington Post's charitable description of PropOrNot as a group
of independent-minded researchers dedicated to protecting the integrity of
American democracy, the shadowy group bears many of the qualities of the red
enemies it claims to be battling. In addition to its blacklist of Russian
dupes, it lists a collection of outlets funded by the U.S. State Department,
NATO and assorted tech and weapons companies as "allies." PropOrNot's
methodology is so shabby it is able to peg widely read outlets like Naked
Capitalism, a leading left-wing financial news blog, as Russian propaganda
operations.
Though the supposed experts behind PropOrNot remain unknown, the site has
been granted a veneer of credibility thanks to the Washington Post, and
journalists from the New York Times, including deputy Washington editor
Jonathan Weissman [5] to former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer [6], are
hailing Timberg's story as Pulitzer-level journalism. "Russia appears to
have successfully hacked American democracy," declared [7] Sahil Kapur, the
senior political reporter for Bloomberg. The dead-enders of Hillary
Clinton's campaign for president have also seized on PropOrNot's claims as
proof that the election was rigged, with Clinton confidant and Center For
American Progress president Neera Tanden declaring [8], "Wake up people," as
she blasted out the Washington Post article on Russian black ops.
PropOrNot's malicious agenda is clearly spelled out on its website. While
denying McCarthyite intentions, the group is openly attempting [9] to compel
"formal investigations by the U.S. government, because the kind of folks who
make propaganda for brutal authoritarian oligarchies are often involved in a
wide range of bad business." The group also seeks to brand major progressive
politics sites (and a number of prominent right-wing opinion outlets) as
"'gray' fake-media propaganda outlets" influenced or directly operated by
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). It can then compel Facebook and
Google to ban them [10], denying them the ad revenue they rely on to
survive.
Though PropOrNot's hidden authors claim, "we do not reach our conclusions
lightly," the group's methodology [11] leaves more than enough room to smear
an outlet on political grounds. Among the criteria PropOrNot identifies as
clear signs of Russian propaganda are, "Support for policies like Brexit,
and the breakup of the EU and Eurozone" and, "Opposition to Ukrainian
resistance to Russia and Syrian resistance to Assad."
By these standards, any outlet that raises the alarm about the considerable
presence of extreme right-wing elements among the post-Maidan Ukrainian
government or that questions the Western- and Saudi-funded campaign for
regime change in Syria can be designated a Russia dupe or a paid agent of
the FSB. Indeed, while admitting that they have no idea whether any of the
outlets they blacklisted are being paid by Russian intelligence or are even
aware they are spreading Russian propaganda, PropOrNot's authors concluded
that any outlets that have met their highly politicized criteria "have
effectively become tools of the Russian intelligence services, and are
worthy of further investigation."
Among the most ironic characteristics of PropOrNot is its claim to be
defending journalistic integrity, a rigorous adherence to the facts, and
most of all, a sense of political levity. In fact, the group's own
literature reflects a deeply paranoid view of Russia and the outside world.
According to PropOrNot's website [11], Russia is staging a hostile takeover
of America's alternative online media environment "in order to Make Russia
Great Again (as a new 'Eurasian' empire stretching from Dublin to
Vladisvostok), on the other. That means preserving Russian allies like
Bashar al-Assad in Syria, breaking up the 'globalist' EU, NATO, and
US-aligned trade and defense organizations, and getting countries to join
'Eurasianist' Russian equivalents. Or else."
The message is clear: Stamp out the websites blacklisted by PropOrNot,or
submit to the malevolent influence of Putin's "new global empire."
Among the websites listed by PropOrNot as "allies" are a number of groups
funded by the U.S. government or NATO. They include InterpreterMag, an
anti-Russian media monitoring blog funded [12] through Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, an arm of the U.S. government, which is edited by the
hardline neoconservative Michael Weiss. Polygraph Fact Check, another
project [13] of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty aimed at Russian
misinformation, is listed as an "ally." So is Bellingcat, the crowdsourced
military analysis blog run by Elliot Higgins through the Atlantic Council,
which receives funding [14] from the U.S. State Department, various Gulf
monarchies and the weapons industry. (Bellingcat is directly funded [15] by
Google, according to Higgins.)
Unfortunately for PropOrNot's mysterious authors, an alliance requires the
consent of all parties involved. Alerted to his designation on the website,
Bellingcat's Higgins immediately disavowed it: "Just want to note I hadn't
heard of Propornot before the WP piece and never gave permission to them to
call Bellingcat 'allies,'" he wrote [16].
As scrutiny of PropOrNot increases, its credibility is rapidly unraveling.
But that has not stopped Beltway media wiseguys and Democratic political
operatives from hyping its claims. Fake news and Russian propaganda have
become the great post-election moral panic, a creeping Sharia-style
conspiracy theory for shell-shocked liberals. Hoping to punish the dark
foreign forces they blame for rigging the election, many of these insiders
have latched onto a McCarthyite campaign that calls for government
investigations of a wide array of alternative media outlets. In this case,
the medicine might be worse than the disease.
Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and
the award-winning author of Goliath [17] and Republican Gomorrah [18]. His
most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Follow him
on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal [19].
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________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/media/washington-post-promotes-shadowy-website-accus
es-200-publications-russian-propaganda-plants
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.propornot.com/p/home.html
[4] http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/04/3157.php
[5] https://twitter.com/jonathanweisman/status/801968278591721472
[6] https://twitter.com/danpfeiffer/status/802205196516368384
[7] https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/802154980530671617
[8] https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/801975199021273088
[9] http://www.propornot.com/p/frequently-asked-questions.html
[10]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/technology/google-will-ban-websites-that-h
ost-fake-news-from-using-its-ad-service.html?_r=0
[11]
http://www.propornot.com/2016/10/introducing-propornot-be-aware-of-and.html
[12] http://www.interpretermag.com/author/tim-michael-weiss/
[13] http://www.polygraph.info/p/5981.html
[14] http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/support/supporters
[15] https://twitter.com/markamesexiled/status/662275031301562368
[16] https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/802166958426914816
[17]
http://www.amazon.com/Goliath-Life-Loathing-Greater-Israel/dp/1568586345
[18] http://republicangomorrah.com/
[19] http://twitter.com/maxblumenthal
[20] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Washington Post
Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200 Publications of Being Russian
Propaganda Plants
[21] http://www.alternet.org/
[22] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Washington Post Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200
Publications of Being Russian Propaganda Plants
Washington Post Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200 Publications of
Being Russian Propaganda Plants
By Max Blumenthal [1] / AlterNet [2]
November 25, 2016
AddThis Sharing Buttons
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Email
A shady website [3] that claims "Russia is Manipulating US Opinion Through
Online Propaganda" has compiled a blacklist of websites its anonymous
authors accuse of pushing fake news and Russian propaganda. The blacklist
includes over 200 outlets, from the right-wing Drudge Report and Russian
government-funded Russia Today, to Wikileaks and an array of marginal
conspiracy and far-right sites. The blacklist also includes some of the
flagship publications of the progressive left, including Truthdig,
Counterpunch, Truthout, Naked Capitalism, and the Black Agenda Report, a
leftist African-American opinion hub that is critical of the liberal black
political establishment.
Called PropOrNot, the blacklisting organization was described by the
Washington Post's Craig Timberg as "a nonpartisan collection of researchers
with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds." The Washington
Post agreed to preserve the anonymity of the group's director on the grounds
that exposure could result in their being targeted by "Russia's legions of
skilled hackers." The Post failed to explain what methods PropOrNot relied
on to conclude that "stories planted or promoted by the Russian
disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times." (Timberg
also cited a report co-authored by Aaron Weisburg, founder of the one-man
anti-Palestinian "Internet Haganah" operation, who has been accused [4] of
interfering in federal investigations, stealing the personal information of
anarchists, online harassment, and fabricating information to smear his
targets.)
Despite the Washington Post's charitable description of PropOrNot as a group
of independent-minded researchers dedicated to protecting the integrity of
American democracy, the shadowy group bears many of the qualities of the red
enemies it claims to be battling. In addition to its blacklist of Russian
dupes, it lists a collection of outlets funded by the U.S. State Department,
NATO and assorted tech and weapons companies as "allies." PropOrNot's
methodology is so shabby it is able to peg widely read outlets like Naked
Capitalism, a leading left-wing financial news blog, as Russian propaganda
operations.
Though the supposed experts behind PropOrNot remain unknown, the site has
been granted a veneer of credibility thanks to the Washington Post, and
journalists from the New York Times, including deputy Washington editor
Jonathan Weissman [5] to former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer [6], are
hailing Timberg's story as Pulitzer-level journalism. "Russia appears to
have successfully hacked American democracy," declared [7] Sahil Kapur, the
senior political reporter for Bloomberg. The dead-enders of Hillary
Clinton's campaign for president have also seized on PropOrNot's claims as
proof that the election was rigged, with Clinton confidant and Center For
American Progress president Neera Tanden declaring [8], "Wake up people," as
she blasted out the Washington Post article on Russian black ops.
PropOrNot's malicious agenda is clearly spelled out on its website. While
denying McCarthyite intentions, the group is openly attempting [9] to compel
"formal investigations by the U.S. government, because the kind of folks who
make propaganda for brutal authoritarian oligarchies are often involved in a
wide range of bad business." The group also seeks to brand major progressive
politics sites (and a number of prominent right-wing opinion outlets) as
"'gray' fake-media propaganda outlets" influenced or directly operated by
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). It can then compel Facebook and
Google to ban them [10], denying them the ad revenue they rely on to
survive.
Though PropOrNot's hidden authors claim, "we do not reach our conclusions
lightly," the group's methodology [11] leaves more than enough room to smear
an outlet on political grounds. Among the criteria PropOrNot identifies as
clear signs of Russian propaganda are, "Support for policies like Brexit,
and the breakup of the EU and Eurozone" and, "Opposition to Ukrainian
resistance to Russia and Syrian resistance to Assad."
By these standards, any outlet that raises the alarm about the considerable
presence of extreme right-wing elements among the post-Maidan Ukrainian
government or that questions the Western- and Saudi-funded campaign for
regime change in Syria can be designated a Russia dupe or a paid agent of
the FSB. Indeed, while admitting that they have no idea whether any of the
outlets they blacklisted are being paid by Russian intelligence or are even
aware they are spreading Russian propaganda, PropOrNot's authors concluded
that any outlets that have met their highly politicized criteria "have
effectively become tools of the Russian intelligence services, and are
worthy of further investigation."
Among the most ironic characteristics of PropOrNot is its claim to be
defending journalistic integrity, a rigorous adherence to the facts, and
most of all, a sense of political levity. In fact, the group's own
literature reflects a deeply paranoid view of Russia and the outside world.
According to PropOrNot's website [11], Russia is staging a hostile takeover
of America's alternative online media environment "in order to Make Russia
Great Again (as a new 'Eurasian' empire stretching from Dublin to
Vladisvostok), on the other. That means preserving Russian allies like
Bashar al-Assad in Syria, breaking up the 'globalist' EU, NATO, and
US-aligned trade and defense organizations, and getting countries to join
'Eurasianist' Russian equivalents. Or else."
The message is clear: Stamp out the websites blacklisted by PropOrNot,or
submit to the malevolent influence of Putin's "new global empire."
Among the websites listed by PropOrNot as "allies" are a number of groups
funded by the U.S. government or NATO. They include InterpreterMag, an
anti-Russian media monitoring blog funded [12] through Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, an arm of the U.S. government, which is edited by the
hardline neoconservative Michael Weiss. Polygraph Fact Check, another
project [13] of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty aimed at Russian
misinformation, is listed as an "ally." So is Bellingcat, the crowdsourced
military analysis blog run by Elliot Higgins through the Atlantic Council,
which receives funding [14] from the U.S. State Department, various Gulf
monarchies and the weapons industry. (Bellingcat is directly funded [15] by
Google, according to Higgins.)
Unfortunately for PropOrNot's mysterious authors, an alliance requires the
consent of all parties involved. Alerted to his designation on the website,
Bellingcat's Higgins immediately disavowed it: "Just want to note I hadn't
heard of Propornot before the WP piece and never gave permission to them to
call Bellingcat 'allies,'" he wrote [16].
As scrutiny of PropOrNot increases, its credibility is rapidly unraveling.
But that has not stopped Beltway media wiseguys and Democratic political
operatives from hyping its claims. Fake news and Russian propaganda have
become the great post-election moral panic, a creeping Sharia-style
conspiracy theory for shell-shocked liberals. Hoping to punish the dark
foreign forces they blame for rigging the election, many of these insiders
have latched onto a McCarthyite campaign that calls for government
investigations of a wide array of alternative media outlets. In this case,
the medicine might be worse than the disease.
Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and
the award-winning author of Goliath [17] and Republican Gomorrah [18]. His
most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Follow him
on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal [19].
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [20]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[21]
Stay Ahead of the Rest
Sign Up for AlterNet's Daily Newsletter
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+ sign up for additional lists
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/media/washington-post-promotes-shadowy-website-accus
es-200-publications-russian-propaganda-plants
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.propornot.com/p/home.html
[4] http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/04/3157.php
[5] https://twitter.com/jonathanweisman/status/801968278591721472
[6] https://twitter.com/danpfeiffer/status/802205196516368384
[7] https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/802154980530671617
[8] https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/801975199021273088
[9] http://www.propornot.com/p/frequently-asked-questions.html
[10]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/technology/google-will-ban-websites-that-h
ost-fake-news-from-using-its-ad-service.html?_r=0
[11]
http://www.propornot.com/2016/10/introducing-propornot-be-aware-of-and.html
[12] http://www.interpretermag.com/author/tim-michael-weiss/
[13] http://www.polygraph.info/p/5981.html
[14] http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/support/supporters
[15] https://twitter.com/markamesexiled/status/662275031301562368
[16] https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/802166958426914816
[17]
http://www.amazon.com/Goliath-Life-Loathing-Greater-Israel/dp/1568586345
[18] http://republicangomorrah.com/
[19] http://twitter.com/maxblumenthal
[20] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Washington Post
Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200 Publications of Being Russian
Propaganda Plants
[21] http://www.alternet.org/
[22] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
a