Stelter: websites "appear to be Michigan local news outlets," but are full of conservative content

[Dennis Donovan]

Link to tweet

Brian Stelter ✔ @brianstelter

Dozens of new websites "appear to be Michigan local news outlets," but are full of conservative political content, @thompsoncarolk reports.

The issue is the trickery – making the sites seem like local papers, with similar names, etc, @MattMillerLSJ says

https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2019/10/21/lansing-sun-new-sites-michigan-local-news-outlets/3984689002/ …
Dozens of new websites appear to be Michigan local news outlets, but with political bent
Websites branded as local news outlets launched throughout Michigan, promising local news but offering with it some right-leaning political stories.

4:32 PM - Oct 21, 2019

Don't forget, that's exactly what Russia did in 2016 - making official-looking faux news websites...

[dalton99a]

1. Yep, the factory in St. Petersburg is ramping up production with new models

[Dennis Donovan]

2. I just hope people who should know better aren't duped...

[dalton99a]

3. Russia is using the same playbook

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/12/628085238/russian-influence-campaign-sought-to-exploit-americans-trust-in-local-news
Russian Influence Campaign Sought To Exploit Americans' Trust In Local News
July 12, 2018 5:00 AM ET

The information operatives who worked out of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg did not stop at posing as American social media users or spreading false information from purported news sources, according to new details.

They also created a number of Twitter accounts that posed as sources for Americans' hometown headlines.

NPR has reviewed information connected with the investigation and found 48 such accounts. They have names such as @ElPasoTopNews, @MilwaukeeVoice, @CamdenCityNews and @Seattle_Post.

"A not-insignificant amount of those had some sort of variation on what appeared to be a homegrown local news site," said Bret Schafer, a social media analyst for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which tracks Russian influence operations and first noticed this trend.

Another example: The Internet Research Agency created an account that looks like it is the Chicago Daily News. That newspaper shuttered in 1978.

The Internet Research Agency-linked account was created in May 2014, and for years, it just posted local headlines, accumulating some 19,000 followers by July 2016.

Another twist: These accounts apparently never spread misinformation. In fact, they posted real local news, serving as sleeper accounts building trust and readership for some future, unforeseen effort.

"They set them up for a reason. And if at any given moment, they wanted to operationalize this network of what seemed to be local American news handles, they can significantly influence the narrative on a breaking news story," Schafer told NPR. "But now instead of just showing up online and flooding it with news sites, they have these accounts with two years of credible history."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Putin’s specialty in the KGB was the art of maskirovka (mask in Russian). It refers to campaigns based on disinformation, deception and subversion. His mentor at the KGB academy, with whom he remained close until his death in the late 1990s, was one of the USSR’s most successful agents in this field. In the two countries in which he operated, he succeeded in penetrating their governments at the highest levels. He was never uncovered in one of them. In the other, he was but the level of his penetration and the damage he caused was deemed such a threat to the country’s political stability that they let him go in order to cover up the entire affair.

https://www.jerusalemonline.com/op-ed-benedict-donald-24278/