{"id":339329,"date":"2017-12-14T01:51:35","date_gmt":"2017-12-14T00:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/nyt-prints-government-funded-propaganda-about-government-funded-propaganda\/"},"modified":"2017-12-14T01:51:35","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T00:51:35","slug":"nyt-prints-government-funded-propaganda-about-government-funded-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/nyt-prints-government-funded-propaganda-about-government-funded-propaganda\/","title":{"rendered":"NYT Prints Government-Funded Propaganda About Government-Funded Propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"NYT:<\/p>\n

A New York Times<\/strong> op-ed (12\/11\/17<\/a>) warns of “efforts by government authorities to shape and control online discussions”–but doesn’t mention the government authorities who pay most of the author’s salary.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

An op-ed by the president of the right-wing human rights group Freedom House, published in the New York Times<\/b> Monday (12\/11\/17<\/a>)\u2014later boosted<\/a> by New York Times<\/b> chief White House correspondent Peter Baker\u2014warned of the menace of \u201ccommentators, trolls, bots, false news sites and propaganda,\u201d and their negative effects on democracy. Missing from its analysis was any account of how the government that funds their organization\u201486 percent of Freedom House\u2019s budget<\/a> comes from the US government, primarily the State Department and USAID\u2014uses social media to stir unrest and undermine governments worldwide.<\/p>\n

What the reader was left with was a very selective, curated impression that online social media manipulation is something done exclusively by brown and black people and those dastardly Slavs. The column condemns \u201csurreptitious techniques pioneered in Moscow and Beijing to use the internet to drown out dissent and undermine free elections,\u201d going on to site online skullduggery in the Philippines, Kenya, Turkey, Mexico and Iran.<\/p>\n

Missing from the piece by Freedom House\u2019s Michael Abramowitz is any mention\u2014much less discussion\u2014of numerous reports detailing online manipulation by US and allied governments and Western PR firms.<\/p>\n

No mention of the Defense Department\u2019s $100 million program Operation Earnest Voice<\/a> software that \u201ccreates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda.\u201d No mention of the US Air Force\u2019s 2010 solicitation<\/a> of \u201cpersona management\u201d software designed to create hundreds of sock puppets, \u201creplete with background, history, supporting details and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent.\u201d No mention of USAID (the same government agency, incidentally, that funds Freedom House) secretly creating an entire social media platform<\/a> to \u201cstir unrest\u201d in Cuba. No mention of the US State Department\u2019s newly-created $160 million Global Engagement Center, targeting English-language audiences<\/a> with unattributed Facebook<\/b> videos combating, in part, \u201cRussia propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Guardian:<\/p>\n

US manipulation of social media was off the radar of US-funded Freedom House.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Nor was there mention of the UK\u2019s \u201cteam of Facebook<\/b> warriors<\/a>,\u201d \u201cskilled in psychological operations and use of social media to engage in unconventional warfare in the information age.\u201d Or reference to the half-dozen<\/a> reports of Israeli troll farms promoting pro-Israel propaganda online.<\/p>\n

Though the op-ed had a particular focus on \u201cgoverning parties\u201d using covert online tools to \u201cinflate their popular support and essentially endorse themselves\u201d\u2014warning that this \u201cdevastating new threat to democracy\u201d is used to \u201cundermine elections, political debate and virtually every other aspect of governing\u201d\u2014there was no acknowledgement of the fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign spent $1 million in the 2016 primary<\/a> to promote its candidate using unattributed social media personas. Nor was there mention of a torrent of pro-Trump bots<\/a> that infected the 2016 campaign on social media.<\/p>\n

None of this merits mention, much less investigation. Instead, the piece primarily consists of little insight or larger discussion as to the scope of the problem. \u201cThe United States and other democracies\u201d are positioned as the victims of online manipulation, never its author. Amidst platitudes about \u201cthe future of democracy\u201d and \u201cmalevolent actors,\u201d the West\u2019s place as noble defenders of Real Information online is simply taken for granted, with, by implication, their ideological satellites\u2014like Freedom House\u2014as neutral arbiters of what is and isn\u2019t propaganda, never practitioners of propaganda themselves.<\/p>\n

The US Department of Defense admitted<\/a> in 2011 that it runs fake social media accounts in Farsi; the vast majority of Farsi speakers live in Iran. What were these accounts doing? Did they influence any elections there? Does Freedom House ask the question, much less attempt to answer it? Of course not; Iran can only be guilty of \u201c[manipulating] discussions…on social media,\u201d never the victim of it.<\/p>\n

Should the New York Times<\/b> have disclosed that the author of a piece about government propaganda runs a group overwhelmingly funded by the US government? The reader could theoretically do research on their own time to find out who backs the benign-sounding \u201cFreedom House\u201d (who doesn\u2019t love freedom?), but this is a fairly tall order for the average media consumer, doubly so when one considers the whole point of the piece is criticizing unattributed propaganda.<\/p>\n

\"Buzzfeed:<\/p>\n

Buzzfeed<\/strong> (11\/28\/17<\/a>) warns that “by democratizing media on platforms that reward pure attention capture, you enable manipulation on a profound scale”–but it’s thinking of “Russian trolls,” not USAID.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Also missing from Freedom House\u2019s cartoon narrative of Good Western Democracies vs. Bad Governments in the Global South is the issue of sophistication. One of the reasons groups like Freedom House know about clandestine attempts by these governments and affiliated parties to influence online messaging is they\u2019re mostly bad at it. Hacky, easily identifiable bots, sloppy knock-off websites, transparent \u201cfake news.\u201d The software solicited by the US Air Force in 2010, which would allow each user to control up to ten social media personas at once \u201cwithout fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries,\u201d would presumably be much more difficult to detect.<\/p>\n

Social media manipulation is a major problem in urgent need of robust discussion. But outlets like the New York Times<\/b>\u2014and others, such as Buzzfeed<\/b><\/a>\u2014that focus only on attempts by Official US Enemies, and never direct any<\/i> criticism inwards, aren\u2019t concerned with having an earnest discussion of the problem. They are, instead, using the specter of online manipulation to smear those in bad standing with the US State Department while deflecting any conversation about what the most powerful country in the history of the world may be up to online.<\/p>\n

\n

You can send a message to the New York Times<\/strong> at\u00a0letters@nytimes.com<\/a> (Twitter<\/strong>:\u00a0@NYTOpinion<\/a>). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.<\/em><\/p>\n

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