A faux information web site falsely claimed that Ukraine’s president is paying Western reporters to tarnish US President Donald Trump — a part of a collection of misleading stories unfold by Russian-linked portals mimicking media shops.
The disinformation tactic, amid heightened worldwide efforts to halt the three-year struggle with Russia, seeks to undermine each Ukraine and public belief in mainstream media, researchers say.
This provides to the more and more troubling development of attributing false info to established media manufacturers, illustrating how the information medium is being actively hijacked to advance Ukraine-related disinformation.
Earlier this month, Clear Story Information falsely reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was utilizing US taxpayer {dollars} to pay Western media journalists to focus on Trump.
The article was accompanied with a picture of a letter purportedly despatched by Zelensky’s workplace to the chief of Ukraine’s parliament, demanding {that a} “plan” be developed to “create a destructive picture” of Trump.
The letter appeared fabricated, with the seal and signature digitally altered and the formatting inconsistent with official letters from Zelensky’s workplace, disinformation watchdog NewsGuard mentioned, citing evaluation from the media verification platform InVID.
NewsGuard known as Clear Story Information a Russian affect website linked to John Mark Dougan, a US fugitive turned Kremlin propagandist.
The article and purported letter had been revealed per week in a while USATimes.information, which researchers mentioned was one other apparently Russian-backed website.
– ‘Piggybacking on credibility’ –
The faux websites search to make false info seem extra credible and plausible by exploiting public belief in respectable media.
“These websites are sometimes designed to imitate the tone, structure, and branding of conventional native information with a view to launder false narratives by means of seemingly reliable, unbiased sources,” NewsGuard researcher McKenzie Sadeghi instructed AFP.
“It is much less about instantly attacking the media and extra about piggybacking on its credibility to achieve audiences who would possibly in any other case be skeptical of state-backed propaganda sources.”
NewsGuard has recognized 1,265 websites that current themselves as impartial information shops however are backed by or tied to partisan teams or hostile governments, together with Russia and Iran.
Final month, AFP’s fact-checkers debunked a false declare that Zelensky had purchased Adolf Hitler’s former retreat, the Eagle’s Nest, within the German state of Bavaria.
The declare was shared by aktuell-nachricht.de, a German-language website that purports to be a media outlet, with out a publication date or the writer’s identify. The location listed an organization identify and an deal with on its about web page, however AFP was unable to find both.
The location is linked to a Russian affect community dubbed Storm-1516, in keeping with the German nonprofit Correctiv.
Western intelligence officers and disinformation researchers have related the community with Dougan, a former Florida deputy sheriff, who fled to Russia whereas dealing with a slew of prices together with extortion.
– ‘Irony’ –
“The irony is that the dangerous actors behind these operations are sometimes dismissive and even downright hostile to mainstream information shops but go to nice lengths to mimic it,” Sadeghi mentioned.
The blizzard of falsehoods promoted by such websites displays a brand new regular within the age of data chaos, which researchers say is stoking mistrust within the mainstream press.
Propaganda-spewing web sites have usually relied on armies of writers, however generative synthetic intelligence instruments now provide a considerably cheaper and quicker approach to fabricate content material that’s typically onerous to decipher from genuine info.
Including to the development is the rising tactic of attributing false info to respectable media organizations.
These embrace a video styled as a Wall Road Journal report selling the false declare that US Vice President JD Vance rebuffed a prime Ukrainian official.
One other was a faux Economist journal cowl that warned of an “apocalypse” and World Struggle III over US navy help for Ukraine.
“Disinformation actors are intentionally mimicking the names, logos, and formatting of trusted information organizations, together with by utilizing AI, to make their false claims seem respectable,” a separate NewsGuard report warned.
“They exploit the credibility of those organizations and purpose to extend the possibilities that the false narrative will unfold extensively and be believed regardless of being baseless.”
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