It was a natural \u2018bombshell\u2019 story: \u201cAlt-right\u201d<\/em> botnets and even Russians themselves had targeted the Minnesota Democrat after a radio broadcaster \u2013 described as a \u201cHooters pinup girl and lad-mag model\u201d<\/em> \u2013 accused him of groping her on a comedy tour years ago. \u201cFranken was framed!\u201d<\/em> exclaimed the #Resistance Twitter, calling for the senator\u2019s reinstatement, following a story published on Monday<\/a> by Newsweek.<\/p>\n According to the piece, accusations by broadcaster Leanne Tweeden were unreasonably amplified by a pair of fake news websites based in Japan and created before she came forward, while a \u201cswarm of related Twitter bots\u201d<\/em> made the accusations go viral in tandem with \u201cprominent real, live members of the far right\u201d<\/em> such as Mike Cernovich. This supposedly drowned out testimonies by female Democrat staffers defending Franken.<\/p>\n The story even claimed that a \u201cRussian intelligence operation\u201d<\/em> had joined in, citing the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), another shady outfit that sees Russian bots and Putin puppets everywhere. Newsweek\u2019s story was quickly seized-upon by Clinton supporters such as Richard Painter, head of the activist group CREW, and progressive news blog RawStory.<\/p>\n Putin\u2019s MeToo moment?<\/p>\n This is one of the reasons I demanded an investigation not a resignation. The senate got played and Minnesota lost a fine statesman.<\/p>\n How an alt-right botnet took down Al Franken https:\/\/t.co\/8iAgBgGmMf<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) February 20, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n There was a tiny problem with the story, though. It was not true. The fact-checking outfit Snopes was the first<\/a> to raise some red flags. The bit about Russians was removed after ASD disputed the interpretation of their \u201cresearch.\u201d<\/em> Newsweek eventually retracted the story in its entirety on Wednesday, with an apology by national politics reporter Nina Burleigh.<\/p>\n We are retracting the Al Franken story. After investigating further we can\u2019t verify source claims that the botnet was political. I\u2019m sorry.<\/p>\n \u2014 Nina Burleigh (@ninaburleigh) February 21, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n \u2018What happened?\u2019 as Hillary Clinton herself might wonder. Apparently, Burleigh was all too eager to lap up the slop served up by a shady outfit called \u201cUnhack the Vote,\u201d<\/em> which first made the claim about overseas \u2018alt-right\u2019 bots and cheered when it was picked up by Newsweek and RawStory.<\/p>\n According to the retraction, Newsweek was \u201cunable to independently verify\u201d<\/em> Unhack the Vote\u2019s claims. That\u2019s all fine and good, but isn\u2019t fact-checking something that ought to be done before publication, not days later?<\/p>\n Also, though both Newsweek and RawStory had referred to journalist Ijema Oluo\u2019s article about Franken in their stories, neither outlet had apparently taken the trouble of actually contacting her.<\/p>\n Newsweek was once a respectable magazine. Founded in 1933, it was acquired by the Washington Post in 1961, and extensively covered the Watergate scandal in the 1970s. By 2008, however, it had fallen on hard times, and was sold in 2010 for the grand sum of $1. After a brief merger with the Daily Beast, it was relaunched as a print magazine in 2014, under new management.<\/p>\n The magazine also had formerly employed Kurt Eichenwald, whose articles, claiming that Trump conspired with Russia in libelling a former Sputnik editor, had to be retracted under the terms of a court settlement. Eichenwald became infamous after his tweets, revealing his interest in Japanese cartoon pornography, somehow upstaged former FBI Director James Comey\u2019s first Senate testimony last year.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n \n
\n
\n ![\"\u00a9
Maksim](\"https:\/\/cdni.rt.com\/files\/2017.07\/thumbnail\/597378fafc7e931d3f8b4568.jpg\")
\n <\/a>\n<\/div>\n