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New from me: chat logs and emails show the IRA-linked trolls behind the fake "PeaceData" news site tried (and failed) to place articles in Jacobin and buy their way into In These Times. https://www.thedailybeast.com/leaked-documents-show-russian-trolls-tried-to-infiltrate-left-wing-media?ref=home
This one is interesting to me because I think it highlights an important point: for all their effort trying to infiltrate American left-wing media, the IRA has very little understanding of how it works. Which is probably why this effort failed pretty fast.
One of the PeaceData personas, Bernadett Plaschil, cold emailed the submissions address at In These Times and just outright asked how much it would cost for them to place their articles on In These Times website. For anyone who works in media, this is an obviously bizarre pitch.
In These Times, who shared the email with us, gave it about as much thought as anyone gives those Nigerian scammer emails that promise you millions and ask for your bank account number.
But that's the thing—the IRA seems to have had no idea how legitimate, established media works. They thought that was something normal one could do.
Chat logs show that PeaceData personas encouraged at least one unwitting contributor to republish their stories at Jacobin. Jacobin, they noted, would be "tricky" for their contributor to get into.
"They are against establishment both Democratic and Republican," Ionatan, an IRA persona wrote. "The piece that would be interesting for them is a criticism of Harris for example."
Again, they don't seem to have a good grasp of the nuances of American media. Their understanding of Jacobin is "left wing, anti-Biden/Harris." Which, sure. But that's the extent of their understanding.
They don't seem to get what makes a Jacobin article/contributor pedigree different from a CounterPunch article/contributor and why that matters. It's cartoon thinking. And it's why they failed and why Jacobin never paid any attention to their pitches.
I think this highlights a real limitation for the IRA's media infiltration efforts. The GRU's personas like "Alice Donovan" were quite successful in planting dozens of articles at places like MintPressNews, VeteransToday and Counterpunch. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-kremlin-troll
You can think of this in terms of quality vs non quality or elite vs non elite but those are easily argued categories. I think a better distinction is paid vs non paid. IRA et al are very good at planting articles in unpaid content mills. Not so good in paid legit media.
Lesson being: pay your goddamned writers. It forces you to make more critical decisions about quality—if you wouldn't expend scarce resources on it, why should readers spend scarce attention on it. It makes your publication better. And in the extremely unlikely event you get...
...targeted by the IRA for amplification, it comes with a handy side benefit of inoculating you against future embarrassment. It's also something you should just do anyway because it's the right thing to do.
