nov 24, 2016 - PropOrNot Washington Post

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Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. 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. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.

“They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who along with two other researchers"...

..."Watts’s report on this work, with colleagues Andrew Weisburd and J.M. Berger, appeared on the national security online magazine War on the Rocks this month under the headline “Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy.”

"Another group, called PropOrNot, a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds, planned to release its own findings"...

..."PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times."

Accusing them without evidence of being "useful idiots" parroting Mccarthyism.

..."researchers from both groups say, worked by harnessing the online world’s fascination with “buzzy” content that is surprising and emotionally potent, and tracks with popular conspiracy theories about how secret forces dictate world events."

This was most likely more do to the stories being more relevant to the average voters interests than not. As a reminder... the Washington Post has long been used by the CIA to publish information and is currently owned by the most wealthy man in the United States... Jeff Bezos... CEO of Amazon... who has since been forced to testify in front of Congress and makes more money than one of his employees will make in a year in less than 30 seconds.

"This propaganda machinery also helped push the phony story that an anti-Trump protester was paid thousands of dollars to participate in demonstrations"...

This was later verified as true and a group called Democracy partners lost a case in court over admitting to spend tens of thousands of dollars to start fights at Trump's campaign rallies. Bob Creamer husband of a Democratic congresswoman was forced to resign from advising the Clinton campaign during the election and this was reported by all major news outlets with a video admission from Bob Creamer himself.

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