{"id":83795,"date":"2017-09-14T19:36:15","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T23:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=83795"},"modified":"2017-09-14T19:36:44","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T23:36:44","slug":"has-the-nyt-gone-collectively-mad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=83795","title":{"rendered":"Has the NYT Gone Collectively Mad?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Special Report:<\/strong>\u00a0Crossing a line from recklessness into madness, The New York Times published a front-page opus suggesting that Russia was behind social media criticism of Hillary Clinton, reports Robert Parry.<\/p>\n

By Robert Parry<\/p>\n

For those of us who have taught journalism or worked as editors, a sign that an article is the product of sloppy or dishonest journalism is that a key point will be declared as flat fact when it is unproven or a point in serious dispute \u2013 and it then becomes the foundation for other claims, building a story like a high-rise constructed on sand.<\/p>\n

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This use of speculation as fact is something to guard against particularly in the work of inexperienced or opinionated reporters. But what happens when this sort of unprofessional work tops page one of The New York Times one day as a major \u201cinvestigative\u201d article and reemerges the next day in even more strident form as a major Times editorial? Are we dealing then with an inept journalist who got carried away with his thesis or are we facing institutional corruption or even a collective madness driven by ideological fervor?<\/p>\n

What is stunning about the\u00a0lede story<\/a>\u00a0in last Friday\u2019s print edition of The New York Times is that it offers no real evidence to support its provocative claim that \u2013 as the headline states \u2013 \u201cTo Sway Vote, Russia Used Army of Fake Americans\u201d or its subhead: \u201cFlooding Twitter and Facebook, Impostors Helped Fuel Anger in Polarized U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the old days, this wildly speculative article, which spills over three pages, would have earned an F in a J-school class or gotten a rookie reporter a stern rebuke from a senior editor. But now such unprofessionalism is highlighted by The New York Times, which boasts that it is the standard-setter of American journalism, the nation\u2019s \u201cnewspaper of record.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this case, it allows reporter Scott Shane to introduce his thesis by citing some Internet accounts that apparently used fake identities, but he ties none of them to the Russian government. Acting like he has minimal familiarity with the Internet \u2013 yes, a lot of people do use fake identities \u2013 Shane builds his case on the assumption that accounts that cited references to purloined Democratic emails must be somehow from an agent or a bot connected to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

For instance, Shane cites the fake identity of \u201cMelvin Redick,\u201d who suggested on June 8, 2016, that people visit DCLeaks which, a few days earlier, had posted some emails from prominent Americans, which Shane states as fact \u2013 not allegation \u2013 were \u201cstolen \u2026 by Russian hackers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shane then adds, also as flat fact, that \u201cThe site\u2019s phony promoters were in the vanguard of a cyberarmy of counterfeit Facebook and Twitter accounts, a legion of Russian-controlled impostors whose operations are still being unraveled.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times\u2019 Version<\/strong><\/p>\n

In other words, Shane tells us, \u201cThe Russian information attack on the election did not stop with the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails or the fire hose of stories, true, false and in between, that battered Mrs. Clinton on Russian outlets like RT and Sputnik. Far less splashy, and far more difficult to trace, was Russia\u2019s experimentation on Facebook and Twitter, the American companies that essentially invented the tools of social media and, in this case, did not stop them from being turned into engines of deception and propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n

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New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Besides the obvious point that very few Americans watch RT and\/or Sputnik and that Shane offers no details about the alleged falsity of those \u201cfire hose of stories,\u201d let\u2019s examine how his accusations are backed up:<\/p>\n

\u201cAn investigation by The New York Times, and new research from the cybersecurity firm FireEye, reveals some of the mechanisms by which suspected Russian operators used Twitter and Facebook to spread anti-Clinton messages and promote the hacked material they had leaked. On Wednesday, Facebook officials disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign. On Twitter, as on Facebook, Russian fingerprints are on hundreds or thousands of fake accounts that regularly posted anti-Clinton messages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note the weasel words: \u201csuspected\u201d; \u201cbelieve\u201d; \u2018linked\u201d; \u201cfingerprints.\u201d When you see such equivocation, it means that these folks \u2013 both the Times and FireEye \u2013 don\u2019t have hard evidence; they are speculating.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s worth noting that the supposed \u201carmy of fake Americans\u201d may amount to hundreds out of Facebook\u2019s\u00a0two billion or so monthly users<\/a>\u00a0and the $100,000 in ads compare to the company\u2019s annual ad revenue of\u00a0around $27 billion<\/a>. (I\u2019d do the math but my calculator doesn\u2019t compute such tiny percentages.)<\/p>\n

So, this \u201carmy\u201d is really not an \u201carmy\u201d and we don\u2019t even know that it is \u201cRussian.\u201d But some readers might say that surely we know that the Kremlin did mastermind the hacking of Democratic emails!<\/p>\n

That claim is supported by the Jan. 6 \u201cintelligence community assessment\u201d that was the work of what President Obama\u2019s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called \u201chand-picked\u201d analysts from three agencies \u2013 the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. But, as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you hand-pick the analysts, you are hand-picking the conclusions.<\/p>\n

Agreeing with Putin<\/strong><\/p>\n

But some still might protest that the Jan. 6 report surely presented convincing evidence of this serious charge about Russian President Vladimir Putin personally intervening in the U.S. election to help put Donald Trump in the White House. Well, as it turns out, not so much, and if you don\u2019t believe me, we can call to the witness stand none other than New York Times reporter Scott Shane.<\/p>\n

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Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Shane\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0at the time: \u201cWhat is missing from the [the Jan. 6] public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies\u2019 claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. \u2026 Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to \u2018trust us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

So, even Scott Shane, the author of last Friday\u2019s opus, recognized the lack of \u201chard evidence\u201d to prove that the Russian government was behind the release of the Democratic emails, a claim that both Putin and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published a trove of the emails, have denied. While it is surely possible that Putin and Assange are lying or don\u2019t know the facts, you might think that their denials would be relevant to this lengthy investigative article, which also could have benefited from some mention of Shane\u2019s own skepticism of last January, but, hey, you don\u2019t want inconvenient details to mess up a cool narrative.<\/p>\n

Yet, if you struggle all the way to the end of last Friday\u2019s article, you do find out how flimsy the Times\u2019 case actually is. How, for instance, do we know that \u201cMelvin Redick\u201d is a Russian impostor posing as an American? The proof, according to Shane, is that \u201cHis posts were never personal, just news articles reflecting a pro-Russian worldview.\u201d<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the Times now operates with what must be called a neo-McCarthyistic approach for identifying people as Kremlin stooges, i.e., anyone who doubts the truthfulness of the State Department\u2019s narratives on Syria, Ukraine and other international topics.<\/p>\n

Unreliable Source<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the article\u2019s last section, Shane acknowledges as much in citing one of his experts, \u201cAndrew Weisburd, an Illinois online researcher who has written frequently about Russian influence on social media.\u201d Shane quotes Weisburd as admitting how hard it is to differentiate Americans who just might oppose Hillary Clinton because they didn\u2019t think she\u2019d make a good president from supposed Russian operatives: \u201cTrying to disaggregate the two was difficult, to put it mildly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Couple walking along the Kremlin, Dec. 7, 2016. (Photo by Robert Parry)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

According to Shane, \u201cMr. Weisburd said he had labeled some Twitter accounts \u2018Kremlin trolls\u2019 based simply on their pro-Russia tweets and with no proof of Russian government ties. The Times contacted several such users, who insisted that they had come by their anti-American, pro-Russian views honestly, without payment or instructions from Moscow.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Weisburd\u2019s \u201cKremlin trolls\u201d turned out to be 66-year-old Marilyn Justice who lives in Nova Scotia and who\u00a0somehow reached the conclusion<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cHillary\u2019s a warmonger.\u201d During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, she reached another conclusion: that U.S. commentators were exhibiting a snide anti-Russia bias perhaps because they indeed were exhibiting a snide anti-Russia bias.<\/p>\n

Shane tracked down another \u201cKremlin troll,\u201d 48-year-old Marcel Sardo, a web producer in Zurich, Switzerland, who dares to dispute the West\u2019s groupthink that Russia was responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, and the State Department\u2019s claims that the Syrian government used sarin gas in a Damascus suburb on Aug. 21, 2013.<\/p>\n

Presumably, if you don\u2019t toe the line on those dubious U.S. government narratives, you are part of the Kremlin\u2019s propaganda machine. (In both cases, there actually are serious reasons to doubt the Western groupthinks which again lack real evidence.)<\/p>\n

But Shane accuses Sardo and his fellow-travelers of spreading \u201cwhat American officials consider to be Russian disinformation on election hacking, Syria, Ukraine and more.\u201d In other words, if you examine the evidence on MH-17 or the Syrian sarin case and conclude that the U.S. government\u2019s claims are dubious if not downright false, you are somehow disloyal and making Russian officials \u201cgleeful at their success,\u201d as Shane puts it.<\/p>\n

But what kind of a traitor are you if you quote Shane\u2019s initial judgment after reading the Jan. 6 report on alleged Russian election meddling? What are you if you agree with his factual observation that the report lacked anything approaching \u201chard evidence\u201d? That\u2019s a point that also dovetails with what Vladimir Putin has been saying \u2013 that \u201cIP addresses can be simply made up. \u2026 This is no proof\u201d?<\/p>\n

So is Scott Shane a \u201cKremlin troll,\u201d too? Should the Times immediately fire him as a disloyal foreign agent? What if Putin says that 2 plus 2 equals 4 and your child is taught the same thing in elementary school, what does that say about public school teachers?<\/p>\n

Out of such gibberish come the evils of McCarthyism and the death of the Enlightenment. Instead of encouraging a questioning citizenry, the new American paradigm is to silence debate and ridicule anyone who steps out of line.<\/p>\n

You might have thought people would have learned something from the disastrous groupthink about Iraqi WMD, a canard that the Times and most of the U.S. mainstream media eagerly promoted.<\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re feeling generous and thinking that the Times\u2019 editors must have been chastened by their Iraq-WMD fiasco but perhaps had a bad day last week and somehow allowed an egregious piece of journalism to lead their front page, your kind-heartedness would be shattered on Saturday when the Times\u2019 editorial board penned\u00a0a laudatory reprise<\/a>\u00a0of Scott Shane\u2019s big scoop.<\/p>\n

Stripping away even the few caveats that the article had included, the Times\u2019 editors informed us that \u201ca startling investigation by Scott Shane of The New York Times, and new research by the cybersecurity firm FireEye, now reveal, the Kremlin\u2019s stealth intrusion into the election was far broader and more complex, involving a cyberarmy of bloggers posing as Americans and spreading propaganda and disinformation to an American electorate on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that the scheming is clear, Facebook and Twitter say they are reviewing the 2016 race and studying how to defend against such meddling in the future. \u2026 Facing the Russian challenge will involve complicated issues dealing with secret foreign efforts to undermine American free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what is the real threat to \u201cAmerican free speech\u201d? Is it the possibility that Russia \u2013 in a very mild imitation of what the U.S. government does all over the world \u2013 used some Web sites clandestinely to get out its side of various stories, an accusation against Russia that still lacks any real evidence?<\/p>\n

Or is the bigger threat that the nearly year-long Russia-gate hysteria will be used to clamp down on Americans who dare question fact-lite or fact-free Official Narratives handed down by the State Department and The New York Times?<\/p>\n

___
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