Spate of Mock News Sites With Russian Ties Pop Up in U.S.

The New York Times ^ | March 7, 2024 | Steven Lee Myers

[Timber Rattler]

Into the depleted field of journalism in America, a handful of websites have appeared in recent weeks with names suggesting a focus on news close to home: D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle.

In fact, they are not local news organizations at all. They are Russian creations, researchers and government officials say, meant to mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it among an at-times odd mix of stories about crime, politics and culture.

While Russia has long sought ways to influence public discourse in the United States, the fake news organizations — at least five, so far — represent a technological leap in its efforts to find new platforms to dupe unsuspecting American readers. The sites, the researchers and officials said, could well be the foundations of an online network primed to surface disinformation ahead of the American presidential election in November.

Patrick Warren, a co-director at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, which has exposed furtive Russian disinformation efforts, said advances in artificial intelligence and other digital tools had “made this even easier to do and to make the content that they do even more targeted.”

The Miami Chronicle’s website first appeared on Feb. 26. Its tagline falsely claims to have delivered “the Florida News since 1937.”

Amid some true reports, the site published a story last week about a “leaked audio recording” of Victoria Nuland, the U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs, discussing a shift in American support for Russia’s beleaguered opposition after the death of the Russian dissident Aleksei A. Navalny. The recording is a crude fake, according to administration officials who would speak only anonymously to discuss intelligence matters.

[Timber Rattler]

Kinda like SONAR21, Moon of Alabama, and the various other fringe blogs and Youtube vblogs (as well as the fake overseas news outlets) that are commonly cited as sources around here by anti-Ukraine posters. The Muscovites are now taking it a another step further with fake online news outlets claiming to be located here in America, but are in fact created, operated, and managed by the Putin regime.

Be on the lookout for the fake outlets mentioned in this story:

• The D.C. Weekly
• The New York News Daily
• The Chicago Chronicle
• The Miami Chronicle.

[Timber Rattler]

Be on the lookout for these fake news sources and others on future posts and threads.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Hardly anyone reads the New York Times.

So these new, pop up news sites will likely have much lower readership.

Maybe a couple hundred clicks a day?

Hardly money well spent for Russia.

[BobL]

The Russians are EVERYWHERE!!!!!!

Even the 90% or so of FReepers who want the Ukraine War to end WITHOUT going nuclear are actually THE RUSSIANS!!!!

They are EVERYWHERE!!!!!!

(thank God for the other 10% here who are not Russians)

[jacknhoo]

That’s just great. More Fake News orgs. Like we didn’t already have enough:

New York Times
The Washington Post
Newsweek
The Associated Press
Politico
The Daily Beast
USA Today
ABC
Reuters
Public Broadcasting Service
The New Yorker
Bloomberg
The Atlantic
The National Review
The Hill
Yahoo News
Axios
MSNBC
Slate
Al Jazeera
HuffPost
BuzzFeed News
Daily Kos

[aMorePerfectUnion]

(((PING!)))

Join and laugh at the humor Zeepers provide!!

[Flavious_Maximus]

Note to Steven Lee Myers: look in the mirror, you are working for the filthiest discredited Mock News site in the world.

So spare us the lecture about Russia. /spit

[PIF]

I mentioned that to some one I know and got a lecture about Fox and Gen Kean. Made no sense, I think he must rely on fake sites for his news & also a heavy tictok user.

[BBB333]

Beware of stories written by Boris Badenov — especially when he writes kell moose!

Pure Russian propaganda!

[dforest]

Here we go. This is coming from the NYT. They are creating the set up to make it look like Russia is behind Trump and interfering in the upcoming election.

If Trump should win, the RATs are going to start screaming Russia Russia Russia. See, they have sites set up that help him. Joe will refuse to leave the WH. They accused Trump of trying to do that. They only difference is that Biden will actually do that.

Why in the world would you ever believe a RAT propaganda depot like the NYT unless you are a RAT.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Russia collision hoax deja vu all over again.

[Timber Rattler]

If Trump should win, the RATs are going to start screaming Russia Russia Russia. See, they have sites set up that help him.

One big problem with your scenario...Putin wants Biden to win instead of Trump.

Putin says Russia prefers Biden to Trump but criticizes current US policy

President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would prefer to see U.S. President Joe Biden win a second term, describing him as more experienced and predictable than Donald Trump — even though Moscow strongly disagrees with the current administration’s policies.

Putin’s comments during an interview with Russian state television Wednesday were his first about the upcoming U.S. presidential election, likely to pit Biden against Trump. They were rare praise for Biden, a fierce critic of the Russian leader who has frequently lauded Trump.

“Biden, he’s more experienced, more predictable, he’s a politician of the old formation,” Putin said, when asked which candidate would be better for Russia. “But we will work with any U.S. leader whom the American people trust.”

[wardaddy]

I’ll give you an example of Russian media property that works

Yandex

Try googling election fraud 2020 or anomalies

You’ll get page after page of legacy media hits ridiculing the search basically

Use Yandex and you get a fair number of articles detailing the irregularities from sources google once had but they’ve purged including those I had bookmarked three years ago

So there is that

I watch Putin news conferences occasionally

Translated obviously

He gets harder questions from a number of Doocys there

But they don’t ridicule him

[EEGator]

I’m on the lookout for Neocon trash that never post about domestic US issues.
Found one…

[BobL]

“Kinda like SONAR21, Moon of Alabama, and the various other fringe blogs and Youtube vblogs (as well as the fake overseas news outlets) that are commonly cited as sources around here by anti-Ukraine posters.”

...and yet these ‘fake news’ sites have a 90% or so accuracy rate*, versus closer to 10% for the ‘mainstream’ sites the Zeepers want us to only pay attention to.

*among major aspects of this conflict that were correctly predicted by the ‘fake news’ are the abject failure of the ‘sanctions’ to bring down the Russian economy and likewise the predication that the ‘sanctions’ would instead bring down the European economies instead; the abject failure of Ukraine’s Greatest Counteroffensive Ever to even make a dent in Russian defenses; and the failure of Western ‘wonder-weapons’ to change the course of the war, or even significantly hold-off the Russian advances.

[BobL]

Correct, Yandex doesn’t use the Google technique of “Shadow Searching”, where they’ll take a search such as “Covid Vaccine Injuries” and, without telling you, change it to “Covid Vaccine Recommendations” and pull up results from the latter search phrase (at least that’s how my daughter’s boyfriend, who had worked at Google explained it to me).

[Timber Rattler]

...and yet these ‘fake news’ sites have a 90% or so accuracy rate*,

Utter nonsense.

[jacknhoo]

The Chicago Chronicle:

https://www.newspapers.com/paper/the-chicago-chronicle/23724/

[Timber Rattler]

Yeah, that's the original dead newspaper. It only lasted two years before folding 127 years ago! Do you not know how to read that archival site?

The Chicago Chronicle, Chicago, Illinois, 1895–1897

[BobL]

“Utter nonsense.”

Didn’t like my examples ehhh?

Or are we supposed to believe that the Western Media will ONLY NOW start trying to report the truth?