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A self-employed New Zealand journalist was unknowingly involved in a Russian disinformation campaign disguised as a world news organization.
Laura Walters, a former Stuff reporter living in the UK, wrote a detailed article for Peace data – a non-profit online media outlet – about New Zealand after a representative contacted her via LinkedIn with a job offer.
However, the outlet, which it says aims to raise awareness of corruption, is believed to be a front for a group of Russian internet trolls who reportedly interfered with the 2016 US presidential election. .
Some emails were exchanged between Walters and a Gmail account of a representative named Alice Schultz. The email thread Stuff The view seemed normal on the surface: Walters presented some ideas and Schultz chose a topic of interest: the topic of Chinese foreign influence in New Zealand.
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A fee was agreed – $ 250 US ($ 327 NZ), a word limit, and a deadline – and Walters got down to business.
The story was published in June, her signature has since been removed, along with investigative articles and similar political and social justice commentary from journalists around the world.
Looking back, there were some red flags, Walters said. Stuff.
“The fact that they didn’t get the correct URL on some occasions … [is a] a little strange for a website that begins “.
They also seemed to have dropped some “Easter eggs” throughout their correspondence.
Schultz wrote in an email: “It’s hard to believe how totalitarian countries like China (or Russia) are finding a way to intrude on even the strongest democracies in the world.”
Walters admitted that he should have looked at the website in more detail before agreeing to write for them, but he had no reason to question its validity at the time. Having lost her full-time job during the Covid-19 pandemic, she was eager to accept the offer.
“Obviously I was a bit naïve, I guess, at the time I had no reason to suspect anything or look further.
“You have to operate on the basis of trust to some degree,” he said.
The scam was publicly discovered by Facebook after receiving a notice from the FBI about activity outside of the network platform.
Facebook launched an investigation and discovered a collection of 13 accounts and two pages linked to the Internet Research Agency of Russia (IRA). The platform identified and removed them before they could generate audience and engagement.
The network was linked to past activities by the IRA in the US, UK, Algeria and Egypt, Facebook’s Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) report explained. The accounts and pages were removed for violating Facebook’s policy against foreign interference.
The August report found that those behind the activity relied on fake accounts to create “elaborate fictitious personas” that they used to manage pages, post in groups, and direct people to the website.
AP
Several accounts linked to Russia were removed from Facebook and Twitter.
The CIB report found that the IRA hired freelance journalists in the US and UK to write content aimed at left-wing audiences. Journalists were paid to write politically oriented articles for the website and communicated with “editors” believed to be bogus.
“They recruited unwitting freelance journalists to write on particular topics in English and Arabic,” the report reads.
Articles posted on the website focus on politics in the US and UK, issues of social justice, systemic racism, and Covid-19.
Walters, who works for Press roomwrote an article for the website titled: Chinese state interference: a crack in New Zealand’s armor. When talking to Stuff She called the entire scam “pretty sinister,” but was relieved that it was caught in its early stages.
The social media giant claims that social media was working to gain authorization to share political ads in the US.
Twitter It also suspended five accounts linked to Russian state actors for rig rigging. He described the accounts as “low quality and spam,” noting that they were quickly identified and removed.
Links to Peace dataThe content of the platform will be blocked and existing links that are already in circulation will be “de-amplified”.
Peace Data has responded to the Facebook report and the numerous articles published by the global media.
“Facebook baselessly accused us of working with Russia. Also, we were called by the Russian trolls, “read a post from the” Peace Data Team. ”
The post targeted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as well as the company’s director of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher. An earlier publication by the news outlet said the team was shocked and appalled by the coverage they labeled “an ugly lie.”
“We assume that this whole operation could be a sham carried out by the FBI to demonstrate their ‘hard work’ and justify the millions of taxpayer dollars spent on the costly actions of ‘combat foreign influence’.”
After reading the retaliation posts, Walters noted that they were written in a lot of conspiracy-theoretical language.
Talking with Reuters By email, an associate editor of the website, who identified himself as Bernadett Plaschil, said they were confused by the allegations and denies all of them. Reuters He noted that Plaschil refused to speak to them by phone or video call.
Peace data‘About us’ section sent Stuff to a “page not found” screen. However, a box explains that the company’s goal is “to shed light on global problems and raise awareness about corruption, the environmental crisis, abuse of power, armed conflicts, activism and human rights.” He claims to share stories that are generally “kept hidden from the general public.”
After Walters was contacted by Reuters Realizing that she had been scammed by the fake news organization, she decided to contact Schultz only to find that her LinkedIn account had been deleted. Schultz also never responded to Walters’ email.
Instead of getting angry or upset, Walters is using the experience as a teaching moment.
“It’s a funny dinner story,” he said. Stuff. “You live and you learn.”
While he sees the humorous side of the whole situation (he never thought he would ever play a role in a seemingly Kremlin-backed campaign of political meddling), he is aware of the impact it could have had.
“Disinformation [and] online disinformation campaigns … they are everywhere.
“These things are very real and they are directed at real people. We need to be aware. “
The experience hasn’t scared Walters away from freelancing, but his approach to working with smaller news companies has changed.
“I’ll do a routine deep dive.
“This kind of thing continues and it’s worth investigating who the people are.”
She hoped that by putting her name and face in history, people would be more cautious online and inform themselves about the growing problem of misinformation.
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