Volkswacht Bodensee - Hijacking news: Fake media sites sow Ukraine disinformation

The disinformation tactic, amid heightened international efforts to halt the three-year war with Russia, seeks to undermine both Ukraine and public trust in mainstream media, researchers say.

This adds to the increasingly troubling trend of attributing false information to established media brands, illustrating how the news medium is being actively hijacked to advance Ukraine-related disinformation.

Earlier this month, Clear Story News falsely reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was using US taxpayer dollars to pay Western media journalists to target Trump.

The article was accompanied with an image of a letter purportedly sent by Zelensky's office to the leader of Ukraine's parliament, demanding that a "plan" be developed to "create a negative image" of Trump.

The letter appeared fabricated, with the seal and signature digitally altered and the formatting inconsistent with official letters from Zelensky's office, disinformation watchdog NewsGuard said, citing analysis from the media verification platform InVID.

NewsGuard called Clear Story News a Russian influence site linked to John Mark Dougan, a US fugitive turned Kremlin propagandist.

The article and purported letter were published a week later on USATimes.news, which researchers said was another apparently Russian-backed site.

- 'Piggybacking on credibility' -

The fake sites seek to make false information appear more credible and believable by exploiting public trust in legitimate media.

"These sites are often designed to mimic the tone, layout, and branding of traditional local news in order to launder false narratives through seemingly trustworthy, independent sources," NewsGuard researcher McKenzie Sadeghi told AFP.

"It's less about directly attacking the media and more about piggybacking on its credibility to reach audiences who might otherwise be skeptical of state-backed propaganda sources."

NewsGuard has identified 1,265 sites that present themselves as neutral news outlets but are backed by or tied to partisan groups or hostile governments, including Russia and Iran.

Last month, AFP's fact-checkers debunked a false claim that Zelensky had bought Adolf Hitler's former retreat, the Eagle's Nest, in the German state of Bavaria.

The claim was shared by aktuell-nachricht.de, a German-language site that purports to be a media outlet, without a publication date or the author's name. The site listed a company name and an address on its about page, but AFP was unable to locate either.

The site is linked to a Russian influence network dubbed Storm-1516, according to the German nonprofit Correctiv.

Western intelligence officials and disinformation researchers have associated the network with Dougan, a former Florida deputy sheriff, who fled to Russia while facing a slew of charges including extortion.

- 'Irony' -

"The irony is that the bad actors behind these operations are often dismissive and even downright hostile to mainstream news outlets yet go to great lengths to imitate it," Sadeghi said.

The blizzard of falsehoods promoted by such sites reflects a new normal in the age of information chaos, which researchers say is stoking distrust in the mainstream press.

Propaganda-spewing websites have typically relied on armies of writers, but generative artificial intelligence tools now offer a significantly cheaper and faster way to fabricate content that is often hard to decipher from authentic information.

Adding to the trend is the growing tactic of attributing false information to legitimate media organizations.

These include a video styled as a Wall Street Journal report promoting the false claim that US Vice President JD Vance rebuffed a top Ukrainian official.

Another was a fake Economist magazine cover that warned of an "apocalypse" and World War III over US military support for Ukraine.

"Disinformation actors are deliberately mimicking the names, logos, and formatting of trusted news organizations, including by using AI, to make their false claims appear legitimate," a separate NewsGuard report warned.

"They exploit the credibility of these organizations and aim to increase the chances that the false narrative will spread widely and be believed despite being baseless."

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