Tag: mainstream media

10 Ways to Call Something Russian Disinformation Without Evidence

How do you call something “Russian disinformation” when you don’t have evidence it is? Let’s count the ways.

We don’t know a whole lot about how the New York Post story about Hunter Biden got into print. There are some reasons to think the material is genuine (including its cache of graphic photos and some apparent limited confirmation from people on the email chains), but in terms of sourcing, anything is possible. This material could have been hacked by any number of actors, and shopped for millions (as Time has reported), and all sorts of insidious characters – including notorious Russian partisans like Andrei Derkach – could have been behind it.

None of these details are known, however, which hasn’t stopped media companies from saying otherwise. Most major outlets began denouncing the story as foreign propaganda right away and haven’t stopped. 

Keep reading

Meet NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny — The Woman In Charge of Doxxing and Destroying Trump Supporters

Zadrozny was a major contributor to the Verification Handbook, a book for online journalists. Specifically, Zadrozny wrote a guide on how to unethically dox anonymous people online. Zadrozny appears to use paid, dark-data search engines to dox the personal information of anonymous Trump supporters online — obtaining property records, phone information, and even their Amazon wish lists.

Zadrozny is part of a press corps deployed to cover “misinformation, disinformation, and extremism” after the Internet fueled President Donald Trump’s win in 2016. This new journo beat was created to surveil, slander, and censor online voices that counter ruling class narratives.

Keep reading