Towards the end of a career in communications, I became involved in a coordinated response to disinformation.
In 2015, I was assisting an upstart political action group with communications. the following occurred and never really ended:
On Wednesday evening, July 1, the producer for our radio show was alerted to an article posted on Yahoo News, an ABC News property, that featured his likeness, under the headline: Homophobes on Facebook are ‘American Flagging’ Their Facebook Profile Pictures as a Protest Against Pride. Beneath this photo was the article subhead: This radio producer has been promoting the tool on Facebook. Neither claim is true.
The following morning, we began calling for Yahoo News and Yahoo corporate to explain the defamation, remove the image of our director and clarify that our non profit organization had never stated or promoted the flag, and tighten their sloppy journalistic practices that could result in such a patently false representation of a man and a non profit that are in no way opposed to marriage of same sex couples. His post and photo were clearly outside the story context, and were used without any regard for journalistic integrity.
As the day went on, the article garnered over 1,500 comments, overwhelmingly supportive of the American flag overlay. However, we continued to receive reports through social media that Yahoo was deleting comments from the article that were favorable to our point of view. After pointing out to Yahoo News on Twitter, with attached screen shots, that we could see their activity and knew they were deleting comments, those comments were then re-approved by Yahoo News, and again appeared on their site.
Yahoo subsequently removed our producer’s photo from their UK site, where the story originally appeared, changed the title of the headline, but continued to ignore our calls to remove the false and inflammatory story, which most users were using to merely express their patriotism.
This is not appropriate behavior for a news outlet, and we are calling for ABC News to force Yahoo News to tighten up their editorial standards.
In what may be the most ironic twist in this story, shortly after the story was posted, the gay conservative who created the American flag overlay tool responded to Yahoo with a scathing Facebook post, followed by his own Twitter response, condemning the story. https://www.facebook.com/CHAPMANGOP?fref=ts
We are calling for ABC and Yahoo to:
- Remove or re-train Katie Solomon as a contributor
- Remove the inflammatory and false article
- Deny the author any revenue earned through this false, misleading, click-bait article
Is there any wonder that the latest TransferWise poll on patriotism shows a decline in favorable feelings about being American? This latest attack on free speech makes it more clear to us than ever that the most fashionable phobia in America, is [patriphobia].
Part II
Part II
What is BuzzFeed’s connection?
As previously distributed, just before July 4, 2015, social posts by one of our team members and one of our branded accounts were taken out of context and used to push a narrative putting Patriotism in direct conflict with Gay Rights. Worse, they used a photo of one of our team members to attempt to squelch his free speech and ours. Each mention of our brand or people in each and every article was completely irrelevant to the story and out of context with regards to the topic. This, to us, is a blatant attempt to first create and then manipulate news.
Three things were important to us as we looked at the evidence. Where did it start, how did it move, and why. Not all of these questions have been answered; however, we are very clear on where it started. When we determined the source was Russian, we were all pretty shocked, if not completely surprised. Imagine how surprised we were when that led us back to BuzzFeed, and a June 27 article on how “A Russian Man Created A Tool To Counter All The Pride Profile Pics On Facebook – BuzzFeed News.”
We are taking several steps, including beginning the process of regulatory and ethics complaints against the ‘journalists’ and the news organizations involved. Some of these writers are listed as editors on the sites to which they contribute, have degrees in journalism from prestigious schools, and know very well that this type of manipulation of news is neither professionally ethical nor moral.
What is frightening about our limited investigation is that a Russian owned news outlet may have swayed major U.S. news outlets, in such a rapid way that the effort seemed coordinated – whether or not it was.
We are certain this was a targeting, at least in part, of Red Nation Rising, because the consistent theme of each article was to include or feature our hashtag – #RedNationRising – even though only 2 tweets out of hundreds included our tag – we looked. Some subsequent posts used our hashtag by name, and every single story or blog featured at least one mention of our brand.
Three blogs, Gizmodo, by Alissa Walker (Gizmodo Editor) as well as Yahoo News and Tumblr articles by Katie Solomon used a screen shot of our radio producer’s Facebook page, without his permission or knowledge. Under his photo was the caption: This radio producer has been promoting the tool online. This is a patently false statement that is easily debunked by a closer look at the image.
The much vilified American Flag Profile Tool at RightWingNews.com was shared by our producer with a friend who specifically asked for it. In addition, our producer did not even use this tool to flag his profile, nor did he or anyone commenting on the post make any mention of a Rainbow flag. He ‘flagged’ his profile on his own, to celebrate the 4th of July. His Skype avatar has been “American Flagged” for over a month. The leap to associate our brand and people with what these writers identify as ‘homophobia’ could have cleared the Grand Canyon. Did they did this to scrape up enough evidence for a narrative they’d already created no later than June 27, via BuzzFeed?
Like other effective conservative organizations of the past, the left is attempting to create, contort and manipulate news in an effort to condemn our team through the media, without cause, and to discredit our organization as well as every American that loves and reveres the Stars and Stripes. We will not stand silent and allow this to happen.
Regardless of the reasons for the targeting of our brand, our team, and proud Americans everywhere, and despite the methods used to manipulate the news we will continue to demand answers and action from these major U.S and U.K. media outlets.
Through the last few elections, we have watched conservative group after group be vilified and shamed into silence or marginalized out of existence. Red Nation Rising will not be silent, and RNR Producer Jared Day has vowed to not let this go.
In addition to the complaints regarding journalistic ethics, we are submitting questions to each media company:
- Please help us understand how your blog circles work, and how the false narrative was propagated by these closely knit bloggers, how a Russian owned news outlet was involved, and how blogs were posted narrative within minutes of the embedded Twitter post cited, endorsing an avatar profile flag overlay tool.
- Why and how did each blogger, systematically, tied through headlines and other connections, create the same narrative for both Russians and Americans on Facebook..
- We understand how you have no control over the hashtags chosen in the one valid – to be determined – tweet with the meme making tool you were reporting, however, how and why did our brand become a consistent theme in each story. Our branded hashtag was used in 2 of the hundreds of tweets and Instagram messages about this topic.
- Most of all – since around 65% percent of American’s agree with Same Sex Couples’ right to marry one another, including myself and our producer, why are they attempting to create an issue of this? Most of us wish we could get 65% of people to agree with us on anything. Does 100% of American have to agree in order to validate their lifestyle. That is what is silly – not an American Flag profile tool.
We urge the involved media outlets to come forward with this information willingly, without further action on our part. These outlets currently include: Time Warner/AOL, ABC News/Yahoo News, International Business Times, BuzzFeed and the UK Independent.
As of the time of this release, we continue to find blogs and articles tied to major U.S broadcast news outlets that keep propagating this false narrative, regardless of being notified of the false information and unacceptable presentation of a private citizen’s personal information without their knowledge or consent. The Russian article, however, has been removed from the Russian owned UK Independent.
“JOURNALISTS”:
The Independent @Independent – Russian Owner
Christopher Hooton @ChristophHooton
TIME @TIME – AOL/TIME Warner
Joanna Plucinska @joannaplucinska
International Business Times @IBTimes – Mirror (Newsweek)
Sarah Berger @sarahberger0408
Gizmodo @Gizmodo – Yahoo / ABC
Alissa Walker @awalkerinLA
Towleroad @tlrd – independent
AndyTowle @AndyTowle
Yahoo News @YahooNews – ABC
Kate Solomon @katiesol
HuffPostGay and Huffington Post – AOL/ Time Warner
@huffpostgay @huffpost
Cavan Sieczkowski @cavanshays
Pink News @pinknews – TIME INC.
Nick M Duffy @NickMDuffy
Patheos – Independent or unknown
Camille Beredjick @cberedjick (also a Time reporter)
@PatheosAtheist
SDGLN – Independent
Timothy Noel Rawles @reporter66
Makers – AOL
By MAKERS Team