In the declining field of American journalism, several websites have appeared in recent weeks with names that suggest a focus on familiar news. DC Weekly, New York News Daily, Chicago Chronicle, and a new sister publication, the Miami Chronicle. .
In fact, they are not local news outlets at all. According to researchers and government officials, these are Russian creations intended to imitate real news outlets and promote Kremlin propaganda with an occasionally bizarre mix of articles on crime, politics, and culture. It is said that
Russia has long sought ways to influence U.S. public discourse, but fake news organizations (at least five so far) are using technology in an effort to find new platforms to deceive unsuspecting U.S. readers. It symbolizes a leap forward. Researchers and officials said the sites could be the basis of an online network to surface disinformation ahead of November's U.S. presidential election.
Patrick Warren, co-director of Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub, which has exposed Russian covert intelligence operations, said advances in artificial intelligence and other digital tools are “making this easier and the content they do even more targeted.” It was narrowed down,” he said. ”
The Miami Chronicle's website first went live on February 26th. Its tagline falsely claims that it has been delivering “Florida News since 1937.”
Amid some true reporting, the site last week published an article about a “leaked audio recording” of U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, plunging Russia into a predicament after the Russian dissident's death. Discussed changes in US support for rebel groups. Alexei A. Navalny. Officials, who spoke anonymously only to discuss intelligence matters, said the recording was a crude hoax.
Experts and officials say the campaign appears to involve remnants of the media empire once controlled by Evgeny V. Prigozhin, a former colleague of President Vladimir V. Putin, and its troll factory. The Internet Research Agency intervened in the 2016 presidential election. Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mr. Prigozhin died in a plane crash outside Moscow in August after leading a short-lived military uprising against Russian forces, but his continued operation comes as the Kremlin prioritizes information warfare around the world. It highlights that. It is not clear who exactly was in command.
“Putin would be a total idiot to bring down the network,” said Darren Linville, Warren's partner at Clemson University. “He needs Prigogine's network now more than ever.”
Clemson University researchers revealed in a December report that there are Russian connections behind the DC Weekly website. After publication, Russian stories began appearing on another site, Clear Story News, which was launched in October. Since then, new outlets have appeared.
According to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which monitors domains, the Chicago Chronicle and New York News Daily websites were created with names clearly intended to evoke the city's famous tabloid, the Daily News. Both were created on January 18th.
All outlets use the same WordPress software to build their sites, resulting in a similar design.
The outlet has a logo and name that evokes a bygone era of American journalism and strives to create authenticity. The Chicago Chronicle ran from 1895 to 1907 for the same reason that is common for struggling newspapers today: It wasn't profitable.
In addition, important breaking news is updated regularly, giving the impression that it is a hot topic at first glance. An article about the Supreme Court's decision on Trump's eligibility to remain on Colorado's primary ballot was published on the Miami Chronicle's website within hours of the decision.
In another sense, the website is poorly constructed and partially incomplete. For example, the Miami Chronicle's “About” page embeds his Lorem ipsum, a Latin-based dummy text. Some images on the site have their original Russian file names. (None of the sites post contact information for their workplaces.)
The goal is not to trick discerning readers into diving deeper into a website, much less subscribing, Linville said. Instead of spreading disinformation, social media posts aim to give an aura of credibility.
The effort follows a pattern used previously by the Kremlin of laundering claims first published online through smaller news outlets. These reports once again spread online and were published in more media outlets, including Russia's state news agencies and television networks.
“This page simply exists to appear realistic enough to trick casual readers into thinking they are reading an article from a genuine American brand,” Linville said.
According to Clemson's investigation, DC Weekly has published numerous stories about the Kremlin since August. They included false claims that the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy purchased more than $1.1 million worth of jewelry at a Cartier store in New York during a visit to the United Nations in September.
The site claims to have a staff of 17 journalists, but that appears to have been fabricated. The biography of the story's author, Jessica Devlin, used a photo of Judy Battalion, author of best-selling books about Jewish women who fought the Nazis, as her profile picture. Battalion said she had never heard of the site or the author until she was contacted by a fact checker.
Other articles posted on the site appear to be excerpted from genuine news outlets such as Reuters and Fox News, or English-language news outlets of Russian state media such as RT. Some articles inadvertently included instructions or responses from one of his chatbots at OpenAI, Linville and Warren wrote in their research paper.
The New York News Daily recently published an article this month about an alleged American plot to interfere in Russia's election, with the foregone conclusion that Mr. Putin is the winner. The information was spread on social media by people with long-standing ties to the Kremlin's state media apparatus.
Another article from last week appears to be from the fictional character of X. The New York News Daily published an article purporting to be a thread announcing a $115 million Hollywood blockbuster about Mr. Zelensky. The X user was called Brian Wilson and was described as an associate producer at Paramount Pictures.
The account posted only 85 times to X, mostly reposting about the movie over a two-day period in February. A week later, the user suddenly announced in a series of posts that he had signed a deal to produce a biopic about Zelenskiy called “The Price of Victory.'' These were followed last week by two more videos featuring manipulated real videos of actors Chuck Norris and Dolph Lundgren wishing the film success.
The videos appear to have originated from Cameo, a celebrity greetings app that was involved in an earlier Russian campaign that Microsoft revealed in December.
A Paramount Pictures spokesperson said no one named Brian Wilson works at the studio. A Cameo spokesperson said Monday that the company was unaware of the video's existence, but added, “As a general rule, when a post that abuses content provided by Cameo comes to our attention, we remove it from the platform in question. I request you to do so,” he added. Later that day, he had two videos blocked on his X account for violating intellectual property rights. X subsequently suspended his account.
Posts about the film were widely spread on Telegram. Many users cited the actual New York Daily News as a source and said it highlighted the abuse of Western funding in Ukraine's war against Russia. Clint Watts, general manager of Microsoft's Threat Analysis Center, said the report was also amplified by news outlets with previous ties to Russian intelligence, including NewsFront and Politnavigator.
Articles typically have hundreds of posts across a variety of platforms, including X, Facebook, and Telegram, as well as Reddit, Gab, and Truth Social, but it's difficult to measure their exact reach. Combined, these could theoretically reach thousands or even millions of readers.
“This is definitely a precursor to the kind of interference we're going to see during this election cycle,” Linville said. “It's cheap, it's targeted, and it's clearly effective.”
Jeanne Noonan Delmundo Contributed to the report.
