Elections and Media

The Russians are running a reality show through Facebook and Twitter, and their contestants are all of us. Over the past few days, I reached out to several reality show producers, asking them to compare the Russian digital influence campaign to the world of unscripted TV. The more they told me about reality shows, the more the metaphor seemed to explain Russia’s trolling campaign — how it worked, what it aimed to do and why campaigns like it will be so difficult to fight.

Federal Election Commission member Ellen Weintraub issued personal requests to Facebook, Google and Twitter to submit a comment aimed at helping inform a rulemaking the FEC is doing on internet ad disclosures. Commissioner Weintraub notes the urgency, since the comment deadline is Nov 9.

Kremlin-backed support for Donald Trump’s candidacy over social media began much earlier than previously known, a new analysis of Twitter data shows. Russian Twitter accounts posing as Americans began lavishing praise on President Trump and attacking his rivals within weeks after he announced his bid for the presidency in June 2015.

BuzzFeed has subpoenaed the Democratic National Committee for information related to the Democratic hack — its latest salvo in the media company’s efforts to defend itself against an ongoing libel suit connected to its publication of the infamous Steele dossier. The subpoena was served on the DNC on Nov 3. Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian technology executive, has sued BuzzFeed for libel for its decision to publish a series of memos authored by the former British spy Christopher Steele.

[Commentary] Can the media fight the prospect of cultural death through entertainment? It won’t be easy. Surely we need more reporting on the infrastructure bill, on the prospects for job retraining, on cyber-security and the chances that upcoming elections will actually render something like the will of the people. We could hear more about prisons, more about poverty, more about the environment. But as long as readers are clicking Dopey Donald stories, this will not be easy. Journalists will have to be willing, in effect, to fight their readers for control of the media.

An early draft of former FBI Director James Comey’s statement closing out the Hillary Clinton e-mail case accused the former secretary of State of having been "grossly negligent” in handling classified information, newly reported memos to Congress show. The tough language was changed to the much softer accusation that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information when Comey announced in July 2016 there would be no charges against her.

Fox News has canceled ads purchased by Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer that call for President Donald Trump’s impeachment, CNN’s Brian Stelter confirmed. “Due to the strong negative reaction to their ad by our viewers, we could not in good conscience take their money,” Fox News told Stelter. Steyer said that Fox News informed him on Oct.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he believes technology companies that displayed Kremlin-linked ads during the 2016 election could help the United States “retaliate” against Russia. “What we ought to do with regard to the Russians is retaliate, seriously retaliate against the Russians,” Sen McConnell told MSNBC’s Hugh Hewitt.

US lawmakers say Russia's use of social media in the 2016 presidential election amounts to cyberwarfare. Sens Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Angus King (I-ME) both used that term to describe Russian accounts and advertising that sowed division among Americans by promoting fake news and even protests. "This country has to have some kind of cyberwarfare deterrent capacity," Sen King said. "Right now, there's no price to be paid for meddling in our democracy." But there's no explicit definition or legal framework in the United States for what constitutes cyberwar.

President Donald Trump on Nov 3 pressured the Department of Justice — and specifically the FBI — to investigate Hillary Clinton, ticking through a slew of issues involving the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and her party, and urging law enforcement to “do what is right and proper.” President Trump's advocacy for criminal probe of his political opponent marked a significant breach of the traditional boundaries within the executive branch designed to prevent investigations from being politicized. In a series of Friday morning tweets, President Trump claimed there was mounting public pre