PropOrNot

PropOrNot is a website that seeks to expose Russian propaganda and those groups that use material from Russian sources. It has been featured in The Washington Post about Russian propaganda and the spread of fake news. PropOrNot's methods and anonymity have received criticism.

PropOrNot
PropOrNot logo
MottoIs It Propaganda Or Not? - Your Friendly Neighborhood Propaganda Identification Service, Since 2016!
TypeWebsite
Legal statusOnline
PurposeNews analysis
Official language
English
Executive Director
Anonymous[1]
Websitewww.propornot.com/p/home.html

Operations and organization

The website is written anonymously, and purports to be the arbiter of which opinions are not acceptable and which are acceptable, by either labelling or not labelling certain expressed opinions as "propaganda"; a spokesperson for the website who spoke by phone to The New Yorker was described as an American male who was "well versed in Internet culture and swore enthusiastically." The same spokesperson said that the group comprised around 40 unnamed individuals.[2]

Compiled list

On November 30 2016, PropOrNot published a list of some 200 websites they classify as Russian propaganda based on "a combination of manual and automated analysis, including analysis of content, timing, technical indicators, and other reporting".[3] The group's list includes Zero Hedge, Naked Capitalism, the Ron Paul Institute, Black Agenda Report, Truthout, Truthdig, antiwar.com, and many others, which the group suggests are "consistently, uncritically, and one-sidedly echoing, repeating, being used by, and redirecting their audiences to Russian official and semi-official state media".[3]

CounterPunch in response called PropOrNot a "shady little group," its findings "bogus," and their inclusion on the list a "baseless allegation." After email communications, PropOrNot agreed to remove CounterPunch from the list.[4]

PropOrNot has said there was a Russian propaganda effort involved in propagating fake news during the 2016 presidential election.[5][6] PropOrNot has said it analyzed data from Twitter and Facebook and tracked propaganda from a disinformation campaign by Russia that had a national reach of 15 million people within the United States.[5][6] PropOrNot concluded that accounts belonging to both Russia Today and Sputnik News promoted "false and misleading stories in their reports," and additionally magnified other false articles found on the Internet to support their propaganda effort.[5]

Criticism

PropOrNot's methods and anonymity have received criticism from publications such as The New Yorker, The Intercept, and Rolling Stone, as well as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.[7]

Andrew Cockburn, Washington editor for Harper's, was sharply critical of The Washington Post's decision to put the story on its front page, calling the article a "sorry piece of trash."[1] Writers in The Intercept, Fortune, and Rolling Stone challenged The Washington Post for including a report by an organization with no reputation for fact-checking (such as PropOrNot itself) in an article on "fake news."[8][9][10] The Intercept journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton were particularly critical of the inclusion of Naked Capitalism on the list of "useful idiots" for Russian propagandists.[8]

Later, in The New Yorker, Adrian Chen said that he had been previously contacted by the organization, but had chosen not to follow up with them. Looking more carefully into their methodology, he argued that PropOrNot's criteria for establishing propaganda were so broad that they could have included "not only Russian state-controlled media organizations, such as Russia Today, but nearly every news outlet in the world, including the Post itself" on their list.[2] Eliot Higgins of the Bellingcat website told Chen: "I think it should have never been an article on any news site of any note."[2]

Writing for Rolling Stone magazine, Matt Taibbi questioned the methodology used by PropOrNot and the lack of information about who was behind the organization.[10]

In December 2016, after receiving criticism, The Washington Post appended an "Editor's Note" to its article in response to the criticism of PropOrNot's list of websites.[11] The note read, "The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so."[5]

gollark: I don't get it. Is this a cognitohazard?
gollark: So it is more efficient.
gollark: - is equivalent to 254 +s.
gollark: Hey, those are Macron instructions!
gollark: Ah yes, PHP.

See also
  • 2016 United States election interference by Russia
  • Hamilton 68

References
  1. Grove, Lloyd (9 December 2016), "Washington Post on the 'Fake News' Hot Seat", The Daily Beast, retrieved 11 December 2016
  2. Chen, Adrian (December 1, 2016). "The Propaganda About Russian Propaganda". The New Yorker. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  3. "An Initial Set of Sites That Reliably Echo Russian Propaganda".
  4. "CounterPunch as Russian Propagandists: the Washington Post's Shallow Smear". CounterPunch. 2 December 2016. Retrieved 20 December 2016.
  5. Timberg, Craig (24 November 2016), "Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say", The Washington Post, retrieved 15 December 2016, Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment
  6. "Russian propaganda effort likely behind flood of fake news that preceded election", PBS NewsHour, Associated Press, 25 November 2016, retrieved 26 November 2016
  7. https://fair.org/home/rather-than-exposing-propaganda-wapo-shows-how-its-done/
  8. Ben Norton; Glenn Greenwald (26 November 2016), "Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group", The Intercept, retrieved 27 November 2016
  9. Ingram, Matthew (25 November 2016), "No, Russian Agents Are Not Behind Every Piece of Fake News You See", Fortune magazine, retrieved 27 November 2016
  10. Taibbi, Matt (28 November 2016). "The Washington Post 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful and Disgusting". Rolling Stone.
  11. Beaujon, Andrew (December 7, 2016). "Washington Post Appends Editor's Note to Russian Propaganda Story". Washingtonian. Archived from the original on July 15, 2018.
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