A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories
STOCKHOLM With a vigorous national debate underway on whether Sweden should enter a military partnership with NATO, officials in Stockholm suddenly encountered an unsettling problem: a flood of distorted and outright false information on social media, confusing public perceptions of the issue.
The claims were alarming: If Sweden, a non-NATO member, signed the deal, the alliance would stockpile secret nuclear weapons on Swedish soil; NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without government approval; NATO soldiers, immune from prosecution, could rape Swedish women without fear of criminal charges.
They were all false, but the disinformation had begun spilling into the traditional news media, and as the defense minister, Peter Hultqvist, traveled the country to promote the pact in speeches and town hall meetings, he was repeatedly grilled about the bogus stories.
People were not used to it, and they got scared, asking what can be believed, what should be believed? said Marinette Nyh Radebo, Mr. Hultqvists spokeswoman.
As often happens in such cases, Swedish officials were never able to pin down the source of the false reports. But they, numerous analysts and experts in American and European intelligence point to Russia as the prime suspect, noting that preventing NATO expansion is a centerpiece of the foreign policy of President Vladimir V. Putin, who invaded Georgia in 2008 largely to forestall that possibility.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html?_r=0
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Let's assume that Russia is perfectly innocent. Then, what is a possible explanation for what RT is doing?
Russia Today is using the same old propaganda-techniques that were used in the Soviet-Union: They intentionally confuse the reader with irrelevant news, they slip lies in-between truths, they tactically omit facts to create a story... AND Russia Today is controlled by the Kremlin and has its offices in the same building as government-controlled press-agency TASS (formerly: Itar-Tass).
If Russia is not waging an information-war at all, why is Russia Today producing all this sloppy and incompetent and incorrect reporting that just so happens to make the US look bad?
Why does this incompetence get tolerated?
Why is nobody at Russia Today standing up and saying: "This story is misleading because crucial facts are missing! We cannot publish that!"
If Russia is innocent, how does one explain the existence of Russia Today?
Mika
(17,751 posts)Sloppy? Have you watched any Andrea Mitchell lately?
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Even Fox News isn't floating "Hillary = Illuminati" theories on their site...