Name: Gabriel U.

Leyma

Section: Stem 11-Einstein

Into the depleted field of journalism in America, a handful of websites have appeared in
recent weeks with names suggesting a focus on news close to home: D.C. Weekly, the
New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami
Chronicle.

In fact, they are not local news organizations at all. They are Russian creations,
researchers and government officials say, meant to mimic actual news organizations to
push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it among an at-times odd mix of stories
about crime, politics and culture.

While Russia has long sought ways to influence public discourse in the United States,
the fake news organizations — at least five, so far — represent a technological leap in its
efforts to find new platforms to dupe unsuspecting American readers. The sites, the
researchers and officials said, could well be the foundations of an online network primed
to surface disinformation ahead of the American presidential election in November.

Patrick Warren, a co-director at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, which has
exposed furtive Russian disinformation efforts, said advances in artificial intelligence
and other digital tools had “made this even easier to do and to make the content that
they do even more targeted.”

The Miami Chronicle’s website first appeared on Feb. 26. Its tagline falsely claims to
have delivered “the Florida News since 1937.”

Amid some true reports, the site published a story last week about a “leaked audio
recording” of Victoria Nuland, the U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs,
discussing a shift in American support for Russia’s beleaguered opposition after the
death of the Russian dissident Aleksei A. Navalny. The recording is a crude fake,
according to administration officials who would speak only anonymously to discuss
intelligence matters.

The campaign, the experts and officials say, appears to involve remnants of the media
empire once controlled by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a former associate of President
Vladimir V. Putin whose troll factory, the Internet Research Agency, interfered in the
2016 presidential election between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mr. Prigozhin died in a plane crash outside Moscow in August after leading a brief
military uprising against Russia’s military, but the continuation of his operations
underscores the importance the Kremlin places on its information battles around the
world. It is not clear who exactly has taken the helm.
Image

A makeshift memorial in Moscow for Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Internet
Research Agency, after he died in a plane crash in August.Credit...Nanna Heitmann for
The New York Times
A building housing the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg in
2018.Credit...Dmitri Lovetsky/Associated Press

“Putin would be a complete and utter idiot to let the network fall apart,” said Darren
Linvill, Mr. Warren’s partner at Clemson. “He needs the Prigozhin network more than
ever before.”

Relations Between Russia and the U.S.

 A New Round of Sanctions: Reacting to news of the death of the Russian dissident
Aleksei Navalny in prison, the United States imposed sanctions on more than 500
targets, the largest single package in a flurry of economic restrictions since Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine two years ago.
 A Warning to Allies: The United States told its European allies that if Russia were to
launch a nuclear weapon into orbit, it would probably do so this year. Still, American
intelligence agencies are sharply divided about what President Vladimir Putin of Russia
is planning.
 Dual Citizen Arrest: Russia’s main security agency said that it had arrested a 33-year-
old woman who was a citizen of both Russia and the United States on accusations of
committing state treason by raising funds for Ukraine.
The researchers at Clemson disclosed the Russian connections behind the D.C. Weekly
website in a report in December. After their disclosure, Russian narratives began
appearing on another site that had been created in October, Clear Story News. Since
then, new outlets have appeared.

The websites of the Chicago Chronicle and the New York News Daily, whose name
clearly is meant to evoke the city’s storied Daily News tabloid, were both created on Jan.
18, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which
monitors domains.
Image

The Miami Chronicle’s website, which mimics an actual news site to push Russia
propaganda, first appeared on Feb. 26.
All the outlets use the same WordPress software to build the sites and, as a result, have
similar designs.

The outlets have logos and names that evoke a bygone era of American journalism, an
effort to create a semblance of authenticity. A Chicago Chronicle did operate from 1895
to 1907 before folding for a reason that would be all too familiar to struggling
newspapers today: It was not profitable.
Image
The Chicago Chronicle existed until 1907.Credit...Chicago Chronicle
They also update regularly with major breaking news, creating at first glance the
impression of topicality. An article about the Supreme Court’s ruling about Mr. Trump’s
eligibility to remain on the primary ballot in Colorado appeared on the Miami
Chronicle’s site within hours of the decision.

In other ways, the websites are poorly constructed, even incomplete in parts. The
“about” page for the Miami Chronicle, for example, is filled with Lorem ipsum, the
Latin-based dummy text. Some of images on the site have file names from the original
Russian. (None of the sites post working contact information.)

The purpose is not to fool a discerning reader into diving deeper into the website, let
alone subscribing, Mr. Linvill said. The goal instead is to lend an aura of credibility to
posts on social media spreading the disinformation.

The effort follows a pattern the Kremlin has used before: laundering claims that first
appear online through lesser news organizations. Those reports spread again online and
appear in still more news organizations, including Russia’s state news agencies and
television networks.

“The page is just there to look realistic enough to fool a casual reader into thinking
they’re reading a genuine, U.S.-branded article,” Mr. Linvill said.

D.C. Weekly published a number of Kremlin narratives beginning in August, according

to Clemson’s study. One included a false claim that the wife of Ukraine’s president,
Volodymyr Zelensky, bought more than $1.1 million worth of jewelry at the Cartier store
in New York during his visit to the United Nations in September.
Image
D.C. Weekly, another mock news site, published a number of Kremlin narratives
beginning in August.

The site claims to have a staff of 17 journalists, but they seem to have been fabricated.
The biography of that story’s author, called Jessica Devlin, used as a profile picture a
photograph of Judy Batalion, the author of a best-selling book about Jewish women who
fought the Nazis. Ms. Batalion said she had never heard of the site or the author until
fact checkers reached out to her.

Other articles that appear on the sites appear to have been lifted from real news
organizations, including Reuters and Fox News, or from Russian state media’s English-
language news agencies, like RT. Some stories have carelessly included instructions or
responses from one of OpenAI’s chatbots, Mr. Linvill and Mr. Warren wrote in the
study.

The New York News Daily published a story recently about supposed American plans to
interfere in Russia’s election this month, whose winner, Mr. Putin, is a foregone
conclusion. It was spread on social media by people who have long had links with the
Kremlin’s state media apparatus.
Image
The New York News Daily’s name evokes the city’s storied Daily News tabloid, but it is
not a real news organization.
Another article last week appeared to come from a fictional character on X. The New
York News Daily posted an article about what purported to be a thread announcing a
$115 million Hollywood blockbuster about Mr. Zelensky. The user on X was called Brian
Wilson and was described as an associate producer at Paramount Pictures.

The account has posted on X only 85 times, the vast majority of them reposts about
movies over two days in February. A week later, the user suddenly announced a deal to
produce a biopic of Mr. Zelensky — “The Price of Victory” — in a series of posts. Those
were followed last week by two more that featured actual videos of the actors Chuck
Norris and Dolph Lundgren manipulated to appear to be wishing him success with the
film.

The videos appear to have originated with Cameo, the celebrity greeting app, which
figured in an earlier Russian campaign that Microsoft disclosed in December.

A spokeswoman for Paramount Pictures said no one named Brian Wilson worked at the
studio. A spokesman for Cameo said on Monday that the company was not aware of the
videos but added, “As a general rule, when posts misusing Cameo-sourced content are
brought to our attention, we request their removal from the platform at issue.” Later
that day, the two videos were blocked on the X account for violating intellectual property
rights. X later suspended the account.
Posts about the film spread extensively on Telegram. Many users cited the actual New
York Daily News as the source and said it underscored an abuse of Western financial
assistance in Ukraine’s war against Russia. The narrative was also amplified by outlets
previously linked to Russian intelligence agencies, including NewsFront and
Politnavigator, said Clint Watts, general manager of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center.

The articles typically get hundreds of posts on a variety of platforms, including X,

Facebook and Telegram, as well as Reddit, Gab and Truth Social, though it is difficult to
measure the exact reach. Taken together, they could in theory reach thousands of
readers, even millions.

“This is absolutely a prelude to the kind of interference we will see in the election cycle,”
Mr. Linvill said. “It’s cheap, highly targeted and obviously effective.”

Jeanne Noonan DelMundo contributed reporting.

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation for The Times. He has worked in Washington,
Moscow, Baghdad and Beijing, where he contributed to the articles that won the Pulitzer Prize
for public service in 2021. He is also the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of
Vladimir Putin.” More about Steven Lee Myers

Claim of Fact:

1. "A handful of websites have appeared in recent weeks with names suggesting a
focus on news close to home: D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago
Chronicle, and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle."
2. "The Miami Chronicle’s website first appeared on Feb. 26."
3. "All the outlets use the same WordPress software to build the sites and, as a
result, have similar designs."

Claim of Value:

1. "They are Russian creations, researchers and government officials say, meant to
mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it
among an at-times odd mix of stories about crime, politics, and culture."
2. "He needs the Prigozhin network more than ever before."
3. "The goal instead is to lend an aura of credibility to posts on social media
spreading the disinformation."
Claim of Policy:

1. "Government agencies should implement stricter regulations and oversight to

identify and shut down fake news websites created to spread foreign
propaganda, ensuring that they cannot continue to deceive unsuspecting
readers."
2. "Legislators should draft laws that hold individuals and organizations accountable
for disseminating false information and propaganda online, imposing severe
penalties to deter such malicious activities."
3. "International bodies and alliances should establish coordinated efforts to
combat the proliferation of fake news and disinformation campaigns, enacting
policies that promote transparency and accountability in online media."