Russia-Backed ‘Fake News Organizations’ Revealed Across the U.S. in Bombshell New York Times Report

Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

The New York Times reported on Thursday that several sites disguising themselves as local news outlets are actually spreading “Kremlin propaganda.”

Reporter Steven Lee Myers wrote about sites with names like “D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle” that had the appearance of being connected to “an online network primed to surface disinformation ahead of the American presidential election in November.” Myers spoke to researchers and unnamed government officials for his report about the handful of “fake news organizations” — about five — that “represent a technological leap in [Russia’s] efforts to find new platforms to dupe unsuspecting American readers.”

Myers described the findings:

The campaign, the experts and officials say, appears to involve remnants of the media empire once controlled by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin , a former associate of President Vladimir V. Putin whose troll factory, the Internet Research Agency, interfered in the 2016 presidential election between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton .

Mr. Prigozhin died in a plane crash outside Moscow in August after leading a brief military uprising against Russia’s military, but the continuation of his operations underscores the importance the Kremlin places on its information battles around the world. It is not clear who exactly has taken the helm.

The sites, which all seemingly have the same designs and are all created on WordPress, post real news along with the propaganda as a way to throw off any potential readers. The shift to web sites was intended to  cast “an aura of credibility” to what is already being spread on social media. And when the site uses titles that evoke actual newspapers — the Chicago Chronicle was once a real paper, though only until 1907 — it’s easy to fool unsuspecting readers who might not trust social media but would trust their local paper.

Read the full article at The New York Times .