What do Fox News and Russian influence operations have in common?
Deliberate lies to achieve an objective
Happy Friday to one and all, and welcome to March! In case you missed it, I posted Class 3: ACTIVE MEASURES of the Foreign Influence Operations course. A reminder that the course is designed to do at your own pace. It’s never too late to sign up! I also posted a number of my older humor essays, including:
THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY: SMART PEOPLE LOOKING AT COMPUTERS
HIGH HEELS, WIGS, AND FLAMBOYANT ROBES…or DICTATORS!
U.S. Government to Drop Tons of Reports on Terrorists in New Phase of War on Terror
Thank you to everyone who turned out (or tuned in!) for our very first Vespers! I was delighted with the conversation. I apologize again for the technical glitch at the end and will endeavor to fix that for next time. A few of us continued with the conversation about camels on Twitter after Vespers, and it made me realize everyone really needs to know about camel beauty pageants and attempts to cheat with Botox.
For those who haven’t signed up: what are you waiting for? You’re missing all the fun!
ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
One of the biggest lessons of Russia’s influence operations aimed at the 2016 US presidential election is that disinformation works. Plenty of whacky untrue stories unveiled in that campaign still leave their stench on public discourse today. And, of course, that election and its aftermath were most Americans’ introduction to the idea of foreign influence operations.
It was to be expected that foreign rivals, like Russia, would run disinformation campaigns to try to influence things in their favor. But what happens when non-state actors choose to use the same techniques, and not necessarily for political reasons, but for profit? (By the way, we will look much deeper at this in Class 4 of the Foreign Influence Operations course, coming March 13!)
This week, we learned that Fox News had done just that, thanks to unsealed court documents in the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, which sued Fox for promoting the idea that the 2020 election was rigged. The documents revealed that Rupert Murdoch’s ironically-named network unleashed a disinformation campaign on its own viewers in order to make money. They were afraid that if they didn’t lie, they would lose viewers to the even more whacked One America News and Newsmax.
Again, that word “news.”
It’s worth reading the Dominion documents for yourself, but the upshot is: Fox’s top personalities, and Murdoch himself, knew there was no election fraud in 2020. They knew Joe Biden had won fair and square. Yet, they chose to promote the lie that massive election fraud had taken place.
Any carbon-based creature on Earth living in empirical reality already knew these were lies, of course. But it’s nice to have the evidence laid out for all to see, and to highlight the organized, coordinated strategy to promote lies for profit, despite that ridiculous word “news” in the company’s name.
Murdoch called the lies “damaging” and “really crazy stuff.” He knew they were hurting people.
But here’s the thing: Dominion can bring a lawsuit for damage to the company. But the damage of these lies goes far beyond Dominion.
Fox’s lies helped feed an insurrection on the Capitol and contributed enormously to the polarization of public discourse and our inability to agree on basic facts. Rule of law is essential to democracy, and rule of law requires agreed-upon facts. Democracy also requires the public’s faith in the system, faith that their vote counts. In helping to create a false reality for half the country, Fox News helped undermine faith in that system. Those lies are damaging our democracy, yet, unlike Dominion, We the People have no recourse against Fox.
Adding insult to injury, Christopher Wray appeared on Fox News only days after the Dominion revelations. The head of the FBI—an organization whose work is based in facts and evidence provable in court—appeared on a channel that is heavily skewed toward propaganda.
Then again, not one hundred percent of what airs on Fox is propaganda. Fox News does, in fact, sometimes report actual legitimate news, with real reporters and fact-checkers (although they may be threatened with firing for checking certain facts). This only adds to the potency of the disinformation since people can point and say, “Look! They do real news reporting!” This serves to add legitimacy to the disinformation.
The situation is bound to get worse before it gets better. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has shared thousands of hours of video from the insurrection with Tucker Carlson, one of the individuals lying to his viewers for profit. We already know to expect a skewed narrative using selective pieces of video (an example of using true information as disinformation, which will be covered in Class 5! Seriously, sign up!). Maybe they will blame antifa, call it a false flag, say they were tourists, or call them patriots. The story doesn’t have to be logical or consistent. It just has to make people angry so they will continue to rage watch and keep their eyeballs glued to the screen as advertisers sell them pillows and vitamin pills. Here’s an excellent essay about it from Robert Reich, if you’re interested.
In short, Fox utilized the same techniques Russia used to sow chaos and destabilize the United States in 2016 (operations that continue today). For Putin, the objective was to weaken to the United States. Fox’s objective was to make money, but the result is the same: a weakening of democracy. So, while Tucker and the other screaming heads on Fox may not be Russian assets, they are using the same techniques and achieving the same outcome that Russia has been aiming for. Malign influence operations don’t have to be foreign.
This is a dangerous precedent. We need a framework to guarantee that propaganda cannot masquerade as journalism. Any network that eschews journalistic ethics and readily lies to its viewers must not be allowed to call itself a news network. There must be public accountability to be sure the truth is being told, not lies and propaganda.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of stories you should be reading
(Note: I reserve the right to rant in depth about any of these at a future date)
RUSSIA
Russia bans government officials from using most foreign words (Reuters)
‘Something Was Badly Wrong’: When Washington Realized Russia Was Actually Invading Ukraine (Politico)
CHINA
More bad news for News Corp: Hackers inside network for two years (Cybernews)
The story behind Matt Gaetz citing Chinese propaganda at a Congressional hearing (Washington Post)
Canada needs an inquiry into Chinese election interference: ex-spymaster (Global News)
EUROPE
How American energy helped Europe best Putin (Politico)
“HAVANA SYNDROME”
‘Havana Syndrome’ not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds (Washington Post)
YOUR FEEL-GOOD STORY OF THE WEEK
Clones, noseprints, flying taxis: Sci-fi meets reality at expo (AFP)
Bonus: the best video of the week
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
