Washington Post, Miami Herald, InfoWars and other U.S. sites spread Russian propaganda from Twitter

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The Washington Post, Miami Herald, InfoWars and other U.S. sites spread Russian propaganda from Twitter

Tweets from 2,752 fake Twitter accounts created by Russian government trolls found their way into U.S. news stories.

BY TONY ROMM AND RANI MOLLA ON NOVEMBER 3, 2017 11:24 AM

The tweet that opened a story in the Washington Post on Feb. 11, 2016 seemed innocuous: It was an attempt to illustrate Syrian territory occupied by clashing government and ISIS forces.

Problem is, the account behind that tweet — @WarfareWW — was one of 2,752 Twitter trolls identified this week as tied to the Russian government and suspended for spreading disinformation.

U.S. lawmakers are probing the extent of the Kremlin’s campaign to disrupt last year’s presidential election, and so far, they have trained their scrutiny on tech platforms like Twitter.

But new data show that many news publications — including established outfits like the Post, the Miami Herald (owned by McClatchy), Buzzfeed and even Vox, as well as controversial alt-right hubs like InfoWars — were duped into citing some of these nefarious tweets in their coverage, perhaps unwittingly amplifying the reach of Russian propaganda in the process.

The Post was one of the most prominent news organizations to include the bogus, misleading tweets in their stories. On at least eight occasions since early 2016, the paper cited Twitter accounts that since have been pegged as Kremlin-sponsored trolls,according to an analysis by Recode with the aid of Meltwater, a media-intelligence firm.


More at link

https://www.recode.net/platform/amp/2017/11/3/16599816/washington-post-mcclatchy-miami-herald-ap-russian-propaganda-twitter