Russian Campaign Targets NewsGuard — Again
What happened: Soon after NewsGuard reported that a Russian propaganda campaign published a series of videos styled to look like authentic NewsGuard reports that made false claims, the campaign struck again.
Context: On July 15, NewsGuard published a report documenting how the Russian malign influence campaign known as Matroyoshka (a reference to Russian stacking dolls) is targeting the pro-West government of the Eastern European nation of Moldova with false claims ahead of its upcoming elections.
Matroyoshka then created fabricated videos accusing NewsGuard of corruption, including the claim that editors were paid $150,000 to publish the Moldova report and that NewsGuard fired the analysts who wrote the report because Moldova had “commissioned” the stories.
For more on this campaign, see NewsGuard’s Aug. 6 commentary.
A closer look: On Aug. 11, the Russian campaign released a new video, this one styled as a supposed NewsGuard rebuttal purporting to refute an earlier hoax video alleging that NewsGuard was paid by Moldovan authorities to publish its report about Moldova. This time, the video quoted NewsGuard supposedly saying that it received “only 100 million Euros” from Moldovan government organizations, not “300 million euros” that was alleged earlier.
Zooming out: The supposed NewsGuard rebuttal to the earlier fabricated video is yet another fabrication, and shows how Russia’s well-funded propaganda apparatus aims to obfuscate and to overwhelm factcheckers, with the ultimate goal of eroding trust entirely.
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