When you get past the whining about Tucker, Hannity and Trump, this piece finally makes a salient point:
More often than not, Russia’s efforts to sow disinfo would not work w/o a credulous and hysterical media eager to amplify basically everything the Kremlin does.
How common was it for media to overhype Russia hysteria?
The piece cites NYT — America’s top paper — reporting on Russian efforts while making sure those efforts are unmoored from any context that would help readers gauge the size of the threat. In this case, nearly irrelevant.
Obviously, the media had every reason to overhype and mislead wrt Russian disinfo.
In 2012, reporters used to joke about how stupid bots were.
In 2017, bots were cast as the most insidious of threats.
Why? Russian hype sold subscriptions. It made some reporters a ton of $$$.
.@AdrianChen of the New Yorker — a “so called expert” in his eyes, but to many a reporter well known for tracking online subversives — tried to tell the truth.
He was heavily criticized at the time for it. google.com/amp/s/www.newy…
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