NBC News, to Claim Russia Supports Tulsi Gabbard, Relies on Firm Just Caught Fabricating Russia Data for the Democratic Party

[steven36]

NBC News published a predictably viral story Friday, claiming that “experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.”

 

 

But the whole story was a sham: the only “experts” cited by NBC in support of its key claim was the firm, New Knowledge, that just got caught by the New York Times fabricating Russian troll accounts on behalf of the Democratic Party in the Alabama Senate race to manufacture false accusations that the Kremlin was interfering in that election.

 

To justify its claim that Tulsi Gabbard is the Kremlin’s candidate, NBC stated: “analysts at New Knowledge, the company the Senate Intelligence Committee used to track Russian activities in the 2016 election, told NBC News they’ve spotted ‘chatter’ related to Gabbard in anonymous online message boards, including those known for fomenting right-wing troll campaigns.”

 

What NBC – amazingly – concealed is a fact that reveals its article to be a journalistic fraud: that same firm, New Knowledge, was caught just six weeks ago engaging in a massive scam to create fictitious Russian troll accounts on Facebook and Twitter in order to claim that the Kremlin was working to defeat Democratic Senate nominee Doug Jones in Alabama. The New York Times, when exposing the scam, quoted a New Knowledge report that boasted of its fabrications: “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the [Roy] Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.'”

 

That fraud was overseen by New Research’s CEO, Jonathon Morgan. At the same time Morgan was fabricating Russian troll accounts and using them to create a fraudulent appearance that Putin was trying to defeat the Democratic Senate candidate, he was exploiting his social media “expertise” to claim that Russians were interfering in the Alabama Senate election. In other words, Morgan used his own fake Russian accounts to lie to the public and deceive the national media into believing that Kremlin-linked accounts were trying to defeat the Democratic Senate candidate when, in fact, the accounts he was citing were ones he himself had fabricated and controlled.

 

Even worse, Morgan’s firm is behind one of the recent Senate reports on Russian social media election interference as well as the creation of “Hamilton 68,” the pseudo-data-driven dashboard constantly used by U.S. media outlets to claim that its enemies are supported by the Kremlin (that tool has so been abused that even some of its designers urged the media to stop exaggerating its meaning). During the Alabama race, Morgan – in a tweet he deleted once his fraud was exposed – cited the #Hamilton68 data that he himself manipulated with his fake Russian accounts to claim that Russia was interfering in the Alabama Senate race:

 

 

In response to this scam being revealed, Facebook closed the accounts of five Americans who were responsible for this fraud, including Morgan himself, the “prominent social media researcher” who is the CEO of New Knowledge. He also touts himself as a “State Dept. advisor, computational propaganda researcher for DARPA, Brookings Institution.”

 

Beyond Morgan’s Facebook suspension, the billionaire funder and LinkedIn founder who provided the money for the New Knowledge project, Reid Hoffman, apologized and claimed he had no knowledge of the fraud. The victorious Democratic Senate candidate who won the Alabama Senate race and who repeatedly cited New Knowledge’s fake Russian accounts during the election to claim he was being attacked by Russian bots, Doug Jones, insisted he had no knowledge of the scheme and has now called for a federal investigation into New Knowledge.

 

 

 

 

This is the group of “experts” on which NBC News principally relied to spread its inflammatory, sensationalistic, McCarthyite storyline that Gabbard’s candidacy is supported by the Kremlin.

 

While NBC cited a slew of former FBI and other security state agents to speculate about why the Kremlin would like Gabbard, its claim that “experts” have detected the “stirrings” of such support came from this discredited, disgraced firm, one that just proved it specializes in issuing fictitious accusations against enemies of the Democratic Party that they are linked to Russia. Just marvel at how heavily NBC News relies on the disgraced New Knowledge to smear Gabbard as a favorite of Moscow:

Experts who track inauthentic social media accounts, however, have already found some extolling Gabbard’s positions since she declared.

 

Within a few days of Gabbard announcing her presidential bid, DisInfo 2018, part of the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge, found that three of the top 15 URLs shared by the 800 social media accounts affiliated with known and suspected Russian propaganda operations directed at U.S. citizens were about Gabbard.

 

Analysts at New Knowledge, the company the Senate Intelligence Committee used to track Russian activities in the 2016 election, told NBC News they’ve spotted “chatter” related to Gabbard in anonymous online message boards, including those known for fomenting right-wing troll campaigns. The chatter discussed Gabbard’s usefulness.

“A few of our analysts saw some chatter on 8chan saying she was a good ‘divider’ candidate to amplify,” said New Knowledge’s director of research Renee DiResta, director of research at New Knowledge.

What’s particularly unethical about the NBC report is that it tries to bolster the credentials of this group by touting it as “the company the Senate Intelligence Committee used to track Russian activities in the 2016 election,” while concealing from its audience the fraud that this firm’s CEO just got caught perpetrating on the public on behalf of the Democratic Party.

 

 

 

 

The only other so-called “expert” cited by NBC in support of its claim that Russian accounts are supporting Gabbard is someone named “Josh Russell,” who NBC identified as “Josh Russel.” Russell, or Russel, is touted by NBC as “a researcher and ‘troll hunter’ known for identifying fake accounts.” In reality, “Russel” is someone CNN last year touted as an “Indiana dad” and “amateur troll hunter” with a full-time job unrelated to Russia (he works as programmer at a college) and whose “hobby” is tracing online Russian accounts.

 

So beyond the firm that just got caught in a major fraudulent scam fabricating Russian support to help the Democratic Party, that’s NBC’s only other vaunted expert for its claim that the Kremlin is promoting Gabbard: someone CNN just last year called an “amateur” who traces Russian accounts as a “hobby.” And even there, NBC could only cite Russel (sic) as saying that “he recently spotted a few clusters of suspicious accounts that retweeted the same exact text about Gabbard, mostly neutral or slightly positive headlines.”

 

NBC also purported to rely on its own highly sophisticated analysis by counting the number of times Gabbard was mentioned by RT, Sputnik and Russia Insider, and then noting what it seems to regard as the highly incriminating fact that “Gabbard was mentioned on the three sites about twice as often as two of the best known Democratic possibilities for 2020, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, each with 10 stories.”

 

But in contrast to Gabbard, who announced her intent to run for President almost a month ago, neither Biden nor Sanders has done so. Perhaps that fact, rather than – as one of the NBC reporters adolescently gushed: “The Kremlin already has a crush on Tulsi Gabbard” – is what explains the greater amount of coverage?

 

Quote

 

The Kremlin already has a crush on Tulsi Gabbard https://t.co/bCpTdWG0Bo

— Ben Popken (@bpopken) February 2, 2019

 

 

In any event, NBC News, to smear Gabbard as a Kremlin favorite, relied on a group that it heralded as “experts” without telling its audience about the major fraud which this firm just got caught perpetrating in order – on behalf of the Democratic Party – to fabricate claims of Kremlin interference in the Alabama Senate race.

 

That’s because the playbook used by the axis of the Democratic Party, NBC/MSNBC, neocons and the intelligence community has been, is and will continue to be a very simple one: to smear any adversary of the establishment wing of the Democratic Party – whether on the left or the right – as a stooge or asset of the Kremlin (a key target will undoubtedly be, indeed already is, Bernie Sanders).

 

To accomplish this McCarthyite goal, this Democratic Party coalition of neocons, intelligence operatives and NBC stars will deceive, smear and even engage in outright journalistic deception, as NBC (once again) just proved with this report.

 

Source

 

Hows that for  US mainstream  news propaganda !  

[dMog]

and yet NOBODY  talks about the crap fox news says and does   Bottom line, politics is not a business for widows and orphans or the faint of heart,   because the the big fish often get eaten alive the little ones do not stand a chance

[steven36]

20 minutes ago, dMog said:

and yet NOBODY  talks about the crap fox news says and does   Bottom line, politics is not a business for widows and orphans or the faint of heart,   because the the big fish often get eaten alive the little ones do not stand a chance

Most sites i visit don't be posting Fox News .. I don't even post Fox news unless not about politics .. But fact is Fox News have a much higher  viewership  than NBC on cable in the USA for many years they been the 1# viewed network on TV in the USA tells you most people dont even watch NBC news.  If you Google the News what do you see? Not Fox  in Google News , it be mostly center and left wing news sites .  The reason you don't see much said about Fox the left don't want to give them no publicity be it negative or positive because they make way more money than others do anyway. 

[dMog]

that still does not stop the fact that fox news was brought into existence and remains today, a political arm and mouthpiece of one particular party. Fox News has also posted extreme amounts of  untruth, purposefully misguided  facts or just plain opinion disguised as news, even if one is apolitical you have to admit if you are pointing fingers at biased news coverage fox news get overlooked all the time for the bias they have always admitted is the basis of their coverage. news is news opinion is something totally  and far different from actual news and fox has always blurred that line

[steven36]

42 minutes ago, dMog said:

that still does not stop the fact that fox news was brought into existence and remains today, a political arm and mouthpiece of one particular party. Fox News has also posted extreme amounts of  untruth, purposefully misguided  facts or just plain opinion disguised as news, even if one is apolitical you have to admit if you are pointing fingers at biased news coverage fox news get overlooked all the time for the bias they have always admitted is the basis of their coverage. news is news opinion is something totally different news and fox has always blurred that line

Fox News are only considered a right wing news site by the left anymore . Most  people on the Right consider them to be far to the left to be right wing there like bloomberg there more to the center than they are the right.  A real Right Wing  news station  would be OAN  News,.

 

As far as I know when FOX News got caught doing things they made the news just like CNN ,NYT and NBC do. they have a whole page on it at wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies

 

The difference in NBC doing it wikipedia don't have a whole page on them, that kind of behavior is normal for CNN  and FOX it's well documented at lest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_News

[dMog]

fox news takes days to make retractions, that is IF  they make a retraction at all. others do it right away when proven wrong, and are proven wrong FAR less than fox. if one is going to post about ANY  news site making false or misleading stories they should not just point them out from one single source when there are others that are doing far more of it...especially when pointing out political news ...it just makes them look biased themselves when they totally overlook one of the biggest biased sites going, now if you were to say you never quote info wars you would have had creds...  it does seem you see fox as biased though but again you never seem to point them out, only single out others that perhaps do not agree with your personal views? If so it does not excuse the wrong that sites do that happen to agree with you. Or, they do not agree with you, it is interesting as to why you never point out their wrongs

[dMog]

the thing is these two competing news sites constantly are reporting black to be white as the other site reports white to be black... both cannot be right, but one thing is certain, using a political yardstick to measure truth is always wrong. NO SINGLE PARTY has all the right or correct ways and means to do everything all the time, and that is my point here...too many people are led to believe otherwise on both sides of the equation

[steven36]

1 hour ago, dMog said:

fox news takes days to make retractions, that is IF  they make a retraction at all. others do it right away when proven wrong, and are proven wrong FAR less than fox. if one is going to post about ANY  news site making false or misleading stories they should not just point them out from one single source when there are others that are doing far more of it...especially when pointing out political news ...it just makes them look biased themselves when they totally overlook one of the biggest biased sites going, now if you were to say you never quote info wars you would have had creds...  it does seem you see fox as biased though but again you never seem to point them out, only single out others that perhaps do not agree with your personal views? If so it does not excuse the wrong that sites do that happen to agree with you. Or, they do not agree with you, it is interesting as to why you never point out their wrongs

 Well both CNN   and Fox News both have whole pages of things they do wrong  at wikipedia here is CNN page,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN_controversies

 

What the hell do  Fox News got to do with NBC News slandering the left in favor of the mainstream Democratic party they done the same thing to Bernie Sanders and failed to get HRC elected if they would of stayed out of it ,things may not even be the way they  are now?  This topic is not about Fox News they are not the ones who done it stay on topic. Last I checked  2 wrongs don't make a right .Fox-news  is a whole other topic  when they mess up again and i 'm sure they will ,post the topic.  I don't appreciate you coming in a topic i started and start  going on about some mainstream  right winged news site  that has nothing to do with the topic .I'm not a right winger I'm a independent and what NBC done concerns me. 

 

Also this is proof that the Democratic party are making up non existent  Russian Trolls and trying blame there losses off on Russia and got in the way of the peace process . Even after  they done all that ,all you want to do is say, look at what this right winged site did  like it justify what NBC done when it don't . 2 wrongs don't make a right. Some of the Democrats are the trolls if you don't believe me go to reddit any day of the week and see them hating on other countries  and on the independent and right wing parties. The main news subs are over run with left winged trolls  that sit around and judge people all day  . I come here to get away from hearing  them talk bad about people,

[dMog]

i am not vilifying political parties by name...you are.  What I  am saying is both do  it..you, on the other hand, tend to only vilify one single party and totally discount wrongdoing of the other...gives you no credibility at all when you must obviously see wrong on both parties, or do you pretend one party never does wrong or actually think that to be true.  Or just never report one but cherry pick the bad and not so bad of the other party as your proof of them being wrong all the time. 

 

In other words simply put, WHY do logic and objectivity become the first casualty in politics. The best things that ever comes of ANY democratically elected government is when BOTH PARTIES  work for the common good of the Country as opposed to the power  of one party over the other party.  I  have never seen the USA so divided as it is now, it seems your country is on the verge of another civil war, and for what, over what and why does nobody in power seem to wish NOT to stop it BUT  to work on ensuring even more divisiveness.

strongly suggest you let all that become rhetorical questioning, and not answer here...this thread most likely is about to be shut down before it gets too heavy ... again i am not looking for a political fight  but wish things to improve in this world... starting with the USA

 

[steven36]

40 minutes ago, dMog said:

i am not vilifying political parties by name...you are.  What I  am saying is both do  it..you, on the other hand, tend to only vilify one single party and totally discount wrongdoing of the other...gives you no credibility at all when you must obviously see wrong on both parties, or do you pretend one party never does wrong or actually think that to be true.  Or just never report one but cherry pick the bad and not so bad of the other party as your proof of them being wrong all the time. 

 

In other words simply put, WHY do logic and objectivity become the first casualty in politics. The best things that ever comes of ANY democratically elected government is when BOTH PARTIES  work for the common good of the Country as opposed to the power  of one party over the other party.  I  have never seen the USA so divided as it is now, it seems your country is on the verge of another civil war, and for what, over what and why does nobody in power seem to wish NOT to stop it BUT  to work on ensuring even more divisiveness.

strongly suggest you let all that become rhetorical questioning, and not answer here...this thread most likely is about to be shut down before it gets too heavy ... again i am not looking for a political fight  but wish things to improve in this world... starting with the USA

 

Still what you say has nothing to with this topic so why bother to comment at all ? if you have nothing to add to the topic  , if you want to get  that rant of a message across go speak before congress because it just bores me . The USA has always been divided  and far worse than it is now . it was so  divided before the civil war ,we was so  divided, we had a war and killed each other, we were split in two at one time. Then after we came back together,  minorities didn't even get equal rights tell like a 100 years latter. Things just got a little better was all, but the division we have has always been here, it never went away. It even goes back further than that before we became a nation and was ruled under the British Empire .Part of the people  were for the British and part of them were not and that's how we became a nation is being divided and coming together when needed. We had our freedom long before  the British Empire left Canada in the frontier days governing  all the trade. We had to fight for ours.

Quote

From the sound up in Long Island out to San Francisco Bay
And ev'ry thing that's in between them is our home
And we may have done a little bit of fighting amongst ourselves
But you outside people best leave us alone
Cause we'll all stick together and you can take that to the bank
That's the cowboys and the hippies and the rebels and the yanks
You just go and lay your head on a Pittsburgh Steeler fan
And I think you're gonna finally understand

 

 

 

[knowledge-Spammer]

Claim Russia

do this and do that and soon u see more bs russia did this and  did that and is doing this

but yes like both u have said cold war is on nowdays i think  with us and russia