The war talking about "Russian misinformation"

Civil war among speakers of “Russian misinformation”: how disagreements arose among RT observers over lack of hatred for RT

The Western flotilla, sent to fight “Russian misinformation”, is bathed in money, but left to the will of political winds, and the skippers have to do everything so that the officials in charge of the cash flow do not understand that the king is naked.

You may recall a report by British researchers last month, stating that "EU diplomatic service claims that RT is spreading fake news about the coronavirus pandemic were misleading and based on poor methodology." Before the report, many American and British mainstream media managed to blindly propagate statements by East StratCom (and its EUvsDisinfo information warfare units) that the “Russian pro-Kremlin media” were waging a “serious disinformation campaign” to wreak havoc, panic and fear ”and“ exacerbate the crisis surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. ”

“The extent to which EUvsDisinfo misrepresented COVID-19 coverage by the Russian media is alarming,” report authors Steven Hutchings and Vera Toltz, professor of Russian studies at Manchester University, are worrying. They note: “The presence of systematic misinformation in RT reporting on COVID-19 is unproven. Despite certain shortcomings in the work, the materials were largely based on facts and consisted of aggregated reports of Western news agencies. ”

Two new #ReframingRussia research reports explore # COVID19 # Disinformation in the #Russian context: https://t.co/3vqdVSQisV / 1

They also caution that “the negligence of anti-disinformation research can in itself become a source of misinformation, introducing bias in the political decisions of the EU and the UK,” and note that in reporting on COVID-19, RT’s journalism “undoubtedly surpasses East StratCom’s own methods” .

East StratCom is an element of the European External Relations Service (EU diplomatic service), aimed at promoting the Brussels position / propaganda in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine - countries that Eurocrats have long wanted to draw into their orbits - as well in Russia itself. The EUvsDisinfo project is an absurd venture on information warfare; of the three thousand people who work for him, a huge number clearly adhere to sharply negative views on Russia.

“Moreover, such volunteers work in the post-Soviet space, saturated (for very obvious reasons) with anti-Russian sentiments, from which they can hardly be completely free,” said Hutchings and Tolz. “By entrusting critical research to volunteers working in an ideological environment, EUvsDisinfo dooms itself to the difficulty of providing reliable and reliable data.”

False idols

Project materials are mostly absurd. In fact, they try to label “any views of the Russian government” in any Russian-language commentary and news content that can be described as at least in the least false.

Employees of some Russian media monitoring service would have looked no less ridiculous if they had recorded all those who were invited to speak on the BBC, ITV and Sky channels, any local radio stations or LBC, in the official position of London. I will not tire of repeating that EUvsDisinfo is utter nonsense, which European bureaucrats, who are not particularly knowledgeable in the subject of Russia, unfortunately take at face value. And this, of course, leads to an increase in mistrust and tension in relations between countries. A couple of years ago, the Dutch authorities called for the completion of the project, but, unfortunately, it continues to work.

The honesty of the in no way pro-Russian Tolts and Hutchings disappointed many of the "club of interests" regulars. After all, the industry of "misinformation" spurs the not-so-transparent activity of analytical centers and feeds a good number of people quite well. Many of them are quite expected, like vultures, attacked the authors in social networks.

This week, Cyrus Giles, a lobbyist at the Chatham House think tank, wrote a post (more than 3,300 words in length) for the Reframing Russia website, clearly intending to get rid of Tolz and Hutchings. [And here it is worth saying that] in 2018—2019. In addition to the £ 1.5 million allocated by the British government, Chatham House also received six-figure pounds sterling from George Soros and the oil giants Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. This think tank was also funded by the ubiquitous US National Endowment for Democracy, as well as arms manufacturers BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin. That is, all those organizations that need a hostile attitude towards Moscow for survival and prosperity. That's just none of this is mentioned anywhere.

Behave yourself

The concept of "Orwellian" is often abused or used out of place. However, let me use it once, because here it is very out of place. The analysis published by Giles under the heading “Protection against misinformation is a team sport” begins with the words: “Despite the fact that both groups are conditionally on the same side, this incident exposed the differences of opinion regarding methods of combating disinformation.” Moreover, despite the author’s attempts to maintain neutrality, it is obvious what team he plays for. After all, it was he who declared on Twitter that the report presented on the Reframing Russia website was "fundamentally wrong ordering against EUvsDisinfo, so packed with logical tricks, false interpretations and hidden bias that any reliable conclusions contained in it are completely depreciated."

Profoundly disappointing, but no longer surprising, to see @RUSI_org endorsing this deeply flawed hit piece on @EUvsDisinfo - so packed with straw men, misconceptions and implicit bias that it completely devalues ​​any genuine findings it contains.
1 / https://t.co/qPnqCuVWiA

Giles' intellectual fraud is evident from the very beginning when he mentions the “group of GorseFires Collectif activists” who, he claims, are involved in “counter-disinformation activities.” Let’s make it clear: Gorsefires Collectif is an anonymous Twitter page with a focus on Ukraine, dedicated to the harassment, discrediting and bullying of journalists who, as its authors think, do not support Kiev enough. Last month, the psycho (s) behind this account attacked reputable Canadian academician Paul Robinson with grotesque accusations and also claimed to be an FSB agent. That crazy tweet chain claimed that the FSB changed my name in the mid-1990s when I was at school in Ireland — about 15 years before I first arrived in Russia. This is such an absurd source, but Giles, representing a wealthy British state-funded research center, refers to him as a reliable one, criticizing another institution.

I will save you from an overly detailed analysis of the material, which demonstrates its failure literally from the very first lines, and I will focus on its conclusions. “The need for mutual support is long overdue: the desire of representatives of one camp to cooperate rather than confrontation will help fight the influence of propaganda publications, and not supply them with new food for work,” Giles writes.

In other words, the lobbyist tells Hutchings and Toltz not to break their slender ranks in the future, and to remember which side they should represent. Even if this side is obviously doing a disservice to itself, spreading "misinformation" under the banner of the fight against it. He was also upset by the fact that he reported on RT analysis of EUvsDisinfo published on Reframing Russia. Thus, Giles spent more than 3,300 words to expound an idea that he had so clearly read from the very first phrases: objectivity in assessing the Russian media poses a threat to the feeding trough, which provides many people with well-paid jobs.

In the end, as soon as they realize from above that an enterprise with “Russian misinformation” is a huge scam, they will quickly shut off the money tap and the performers will be out of work with a set of not very popular skills. I doubt that they will be overwhelmed with job offers.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.