How can journalists avoid being used in disinformation operations?
Twitter suspended 16 accounts earlier this month for
breaching the platform’s policies on ‘manipulation and spam’. The move followed
an investigative report by The Daily Beast that uncovered a network of fake
personas that had been presented as consultants or freelance journalists. These
manufactured identities pushed out articles advancing anti-Iran and anti-Qatar
narratives favourable to the United Arab Emirates. They were surprisingly
successful and had more than 90 reports appear in 46 different publications,
mainly US media outlets.
This case is merely one of many information operations
emanating from the Gulf and the Middle East. Viewed together, they demonstrate
how the role of the media and journalists as guardians of the public interest
can be manipulated to project false content into mainstream spheres.
Journalists play a crucial role in bringing the truth to
light and holding the powerful to account. Authoritarian regimes see how
high-quality journalism can erode their legitimacy and support by exposing poor
governance. This results in attempts to censor the free press, not only
internally but also outside of autocratic states.
The Middle East provides myriad examples of autocratic
leaders seeking to silence criticism from journalists overseas. The killing of
Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia is one of the most
notable and demonstrates how far some states will go to eradicate dissent. Iran
is also known for its efforts to threaten critical journalists based overseas
and to harass their Iran-based family members.
However, such states also exploit public trust in
journalism, and weaponise journalists and news media organisations, to amplify
propaganda and disinformation favourable to their regimes. Indeed, inauthentic
content doesn’t usually get much traction unless it is picked up and promoted
by legitimate platforms.
A key tactic of the Iran-aligned ‘Endless Mayfly’
disinformation campaign, for example, was to publicly and privately engage
journalists and activists on Twitter in an attempt to disseminate and amplify
false content that advanced Iranian state interests.
Similarly, news media played a role in propagating a
Saudi-based Twitter disinformation campaign following the blockade of Qatar in
2017. A researcher in Qatar says Saudi-based bots were used to amplify
anti-Qatar hashtags and hashtags that painted a manipulated picture of
grassroots opposition to the Qatari government and the ruling family. The
campaign sought to legitimise the stance of the blockading countries, Saudi
Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, which have long criticised Qatar for its friendly
ties with Iran and alleged funding for, and support of, terrorist groups. BBC
Arabic’s ‘Trending’ service picked up the story, and then BBC Arabic reported
on the trending hashtags. This example shows how easily media organisations can
find themselves assisting in the spread of state-backed disinformation.
Another operation from the Gulf came in the form of a
tit-for-tat hacking and leaking of emails that played out between the UAE and
Qatar. After the blockade was implemented, there were numerous cases of unnamed
sources providing hacked emails to journalists and media organisations. Some of
these outlets went on to publish stories that stood to influence US foreign
policy in the Middle East.
For instance, hacked emails from the accounts of the UAE
ambassador to the US, Yousef Al Otaiba, and UAE lobbyist Elliott Broidy sought
to erode US support for the blockade of Qatar. Conversely, hacked emails and
phone and text messages from an Iranian businessman and Qatari officials
attempted to push an anti-Iran and anti-Qatar message to the US administration.
The ethics of publishing news based on hacked information
that seeks to further a state’s geopolitical objectives has been hotly debated.
David Kirkpatrick, a reporter at the New York Times has said that ‘if we were
to start rejecting information from sources with agendas, we might as well stop
putting out the paper’. Others have argued that there’s no issue as long as the
information has been verified. Still, some commentators are concerned about the
potential consequences of these practices, pointing to how hacked emails were
used to derail Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Regardless, the hacking of emails and the distribution of
content have continued, and efforts to utilise journalists and news outlets in
the West have not ceased. It’s therefore important that all elements of news
media—journalists, editors and publishers writing and vetting articles—have a
high degree of literacy on the agents, tactics and infrastructure of
disinformation, and are aware of best practices when reporting such content.
Being as transparent as possible without compromising
sources, verifying and authenticating information, and contextualising content
are all necessary for those reporting on disinformation or on information that
stands to advance the interests or agenda of a state, a group or an individual.
These principles were followed in reports about Al Otaiba and Broidy which
noted that the information was provided by ‘those critical of Emirati influence
in Washington’. The articles also provided context on the UAE–Qatar rivalry and
fractious relations within the Gulf.
The ‘publish or not’ decision becomes even more fraught when
material arrives on a journalist’s desk without any indication of where it came
from. Dealing with that requires substantial research and careful judgement
calls.
A failure to follow clear professional practices will see
journalists and news outlets relegated to pawns in the geopolitical games of
states, rather than performing the much-needed function of exposing these
tactics.
Disinformation and information operations more broadly
constitute a multifaceted problem. A wide variety of people have a
responsibility to respond, including political actors, social media platforms,
civil society actors and even individuals not directly involved in the process.
Journalists and media outlets can often find themselves at
the coalface of information operations. While many in the field have a high
degree of awareness of and resilience to such tactics, the profession must
develop a clear understanding of how these operations work if journalists are
to avoid being used by actors out to deceive.
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