Why 'Russiagate' Skeptics Are Cackling--But Shouldn't Be

[Nevilledog]

https://www.thebulwark.com/why-russiagate-skeptics-are-cackling-but-shouldnt-be/

Committed skeptics of “Russiagate”—the scandal around Russian interference in the 2016 election with the intent of helping elect Donald Trump, and the Trump campaign’s collaboration with this effort—had a good month in January. First, a study released on January 9 concluded that Russian disinformation and propaganda on Twitter, while a real phenomenon, did not significantly affect American attitudes (partly because the notorious Russian bots were, as the Intercept put it, “a small speck when compared to homegrown posters”) or influence the results of the 2016 election. Then, on January 30, Columbia Journalism Review published a four-part report on Russiagate with a scathing analysis of media coverage by veteran investigative journalist Jeff Gerth. It concluded that the news media repeatedly fell short of professional standards in their handling of the story, compromising their objectivity and contributing to polarization and erosion of public trust in journalism.

The reaction from the skeptics—a motley crowd that includes everyone from hardcore Donald Trump cultists to anti-anti-Trumpists to critics of America’s national security apparatus and various anti-establishment contrarians—was downright exuberant.

So is Russiagate really and conclusively debunked as a “hoax” driven by Trump Derangement Syndrome? Hardly. But to explain why will require getting into the weeds.

In reality, neither the study, which was conducted by New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, nor the CJR story, “The Press Versus the President,” makes any definitive claims about the substance of Russiagate. Thus, while the Intercept article quoted above noted that the NYU study was “a gentle evidence-based corrective to societal fears of low-effort social media propagandizing as some diabolical tool of adversarial regimes,” it also acknowledged that the study focused only on tweets, “so the possible effect of Facebook groups, Instagram posts, or, say, the spread of materials hacked from the Democratic National Committee was left unassessed.” The latter is an especially important point: The main focus of the Trump/Russia investigation was always the hack-and-leak operation, not Twitter bots and their shenanigans, no matter the degree to which some critics have associated Russiagate with the easily downplayed war of the bots.

*snip*

[Tetrachloride]

1. The article is as forthright as my lasagna sauce.

A savage thrust of the allspice, black pepper against the oregano and basil.

A review by Helen of Troy concluded that the lack of noodle layers contributed to most readers opting for Dark Brandon memes and the all-you-can-eat salad bar.

[pnwmom]

2. EmptyWheel just wrote about "Jeff Gerth's undisclosed dissemination of Russian Intelligence Product"

https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/02/08/jeff-gerths-undisclosed-dissemination-of-russian-intelligence-product/

In his CJR series claiming the NYT and WaPo botched coverage of the Russian investigation, Jeff Gerth makes a great show of transparency, with the same disclosure statement appended to each installment of his 23,000-word series.

But the statements hide the most important details, given Gerth’s project (and his past history tilting at Hillary Clinton’s windmills and other real estate investments). For example, when he says he “helped ProPublica decide whether to collaborate with a book that was critical of the Clintons’ involvement with Russia; the arrangement didn’t happen,” he doesn’t explain whether that book was Clinton Cash, a piece of political oppo research written by Steve Bannon associate Peter Schweitzer that has a structurally similar position, in the 2016 election, as the Steele dossier does. When he says that he “approached [the NYT] on my own about the Clinton family foundation,” but “expressed disappointment to one of the Times reporters about the final result,” he’s engaged in press criticism about his own work, without disclosing which work that is (in his series he otherwise discusses this story about Clinton Cash and the Foundation). When he discloses that he wrote about Clinton at ProPublica, he does not explicitly describe a story he wrote using emails stolen by Guccifer 1.0, Marcel Lazar, putting him at the forefront of the relentless reporting on Hillary based on stolen documents.

There’s nothing, per se, wrong with writing about those things.

Where it becomes a problem, however, is in the way Gerth approaches his project, purportedly an attempt to decide why, after the 2016 election, trust in media nose-dived. Even beyond limiting his project to just the NYT and WaPo – or rather, claiming to; as I showed, he ignored great swaths of the most important work from both – Gerth simply assumes that the thing that damaged press credibility in 2016 was coverage of the Russian investigation, and not any of the other closely linked politicized investigations into one or another of the candidates, including the ones he played a role in.

SNIP

[blm]

3. Gerth's always been a RightWing tool.

When he straddles, especially, it’s always performative to sell his propaganda product.

[betsuni]

4. +1

[crickets]

5. K&R for the post and the discussion.