This Prism newsletter strives to be the paper of record for all that’s happening in misinformation. For any citizen whose life is impacted by misinformation, it helps you see how storylines evolve from multiple, sourced angles on important stories in one place. For amateur and professional misinformation watchers, it is your go-to resource for updates on peers, platforms, propagandists, and politicians. Learn more about Prism and our other products on our Substack page, follow us on Twitter, or like us on Facebook!
________________________________
Misinformation is the best lens through which to understand news about the world. Remove the garbage cluttering your view, and you can see things clearly for what they are.
I’m grateful you choose to spend part of your week with this newsletter. The best way to get it to more people is for you superfans to share with kindred spirits!
For your convenience, a signup button:
Reliability scores for media outlets cited in the summary are in parentheses for each, courtesy of the terrific folks at Ad Fontes Media.
Our top stories were too chunky, so we’re going with just two this week, with apologies and my promise to talk about America’s “trucker” convoy next week.
The U.S sounded the alarm on Russia’s buildup to invade its sovereign neighbor Ukraine, pushing back in particular on Moscow’s information tactics.
After the Biden Administration’s warning that the attack could come at any time (Wall Street Journal, 46.01), Putin signaled that diplomacy could still work (Associated Press, 48.79) and that he was pulling forces back (Wall Street Journal, 46.01)--but then just kept moving his troops toward the border anyway (CNN, 43.62).
Within days, cyber attacks were raining down on Ukraine’s government and banking websites (New York Times, 44.36), followed shortly by artillery shells on a village in its Donbas region (Reuters, 48.11). Russia has denied that any of this is its doing (The Guardian, 43.84).
Russia has succeeded in sowing confusion about what it is up to, but the U.S. has been playing things differently this time by pre-bunking and calling out how the Kremlin’s words don’t match its actions (NPR, 44.65). Officials even, for example, outed financial media outlet Zero Hedge as being an agent of Russian disinformation (Associated Press, 48.79).
Alongside all this drama, there was plenty of evidence that Russia’s longstanding use of disinformation operations continues in the context of its targeting of Ukraine (BBC, 46.17): fake headlines about Ukrainian aggression, fake claims about Ukrainian genocide, fake pictures of Ukrainian troops, fake claims that Biden was “masterminding” a provocation to spark a war, and more.
And speaking of Russia, the second story tonight might sound like a replay, but Republicans are trying to make Russiagate a thing again based on virtually nothing.
Things kicked off when DoJ Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion (CNN, 43.62) rehashing some already-public information about Democratic lawyer Michael Sussman, who was indicted last year for lying to the FBI, plus new revelations about the information Sussmann was reported to have passed to federal authorities. (Sussmann is accused of lying about not working for one of his clients, the presidential campaign of one Hillary Clinton, in contacting these authorities.)
It gets technical, but short version is there was no hacking (@ErrataRob via Substack) because all the data were legally obtained and analyzed with authorization, and the data itself contained no emails or text messages (@normative via Twitter) because it was only a record of the names of websites that mobile devices had accessed. It’s also not clear that any of this happened when Trump was president, or whether Hillary Clinton had anything to do with it beyond hiring Sussmann for campaign work.
Now the fun part. How do you think Fox News ran with the same information outlined above? Well, Tucker Carlson said Durham’s filing laid out a scheme to “intercept” internet traffic including emails and text messages. Sean Hannity lied to his audience saying the Clinton campaign had “hacked” into servers of the Trump campaign and the Office of the President. The story, falsely framed and reported, has been all over right-wing media for most of the week (New York Times, 44.36). Donald Trump, conservative media fan that he is, picked it up and has resumed his best “Hillary spied on me” hits. Overall, it was a pretty textbook case of completely misrepresenting the facts of what happened and ginning up outrage fuel that could be tied somehow to Hillary Clinton.
National Republicans professed “concern” and promised to investigate these shenanigans if they take back the House next January (Fox News, 36.01). Meanwhile Democratic presidential primary contender Tulsi Gabbard said the story shows that elites like Clinton are trying to destroy democracy from within.
Don’t fret, we’ve not forgotten the indispensable grab bag: recently arrested conspiracy enthusiast Tina Peters is running for Secretary of State in Colorado; Biden says the January 6th Committee can have Trump’s White House visitor logs, but the call logs are missing; @W_F_Thomas dives deep into the cultic milieu of Telegram; @FoldableHuman does VICE interview after his NFT-skeptic video went viral; there is a lot of rabbit hole stuff under the “Crypto Couple”; Mazars drops Trump as client because it cannot vouch for any of his financial statements; and Mike Lindell gifts the world, and Canadian truckers, a pillow airlift.
That, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin