Historian and U.K. analyst Mark Curtis checks out the Twitter accounts of journalists whose names have been associated with the Integrity Initiative, a British “counter disinformation” program.
By
Mark Curtis
Part
1
The
U.K.-financed Integrity Initiative, managed by the Institute
for Statecraft, is ostensibly a “counter disinformation”
program to challenge Russian information operations.
However,
it has been revealed that the Integrity Initiative Twitter
handle and some individuals associated with this program have also
been tweeting messages attacking Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. This
takes on special meaning in light of the numerous U.K. military and
intelligence personnel associated with the program, documented in an
important briefing by academics in the Working Group on Syria
Propaganda and Media.
Several
journalists have been named as associated with the Integrity
Initiative, either in program “clusters” or having been
invited to an Integrity Initiative event, in the documents that have
been posted online. (For more on this see section 7.1 of this
briefing note, the “UK” section of the “Xcountry” document
and journalists invited to speak at an Integrity Initiative event in
London in November 2018.)
Analysis
of 11 of these individuals has been undertaken to assess to what
extent their tweets have linked Corbyn unfairly (for a definition see
below) to Russia. The results show two things:
-
first, the smearing of Corbyn about Russia is more extensive than has
been revealed so far;
-
second, many of the same individuals have also been attacking a
second target – Julian Assange, trying to also falsely link him to
the Kremlin.
Many of
these 11 individuals are associated with The Times and The
Guardian in the U.K. and the Atlantic Council in the U.S.
The research does not show, however, that these tweets are associated
with the Integrity Initiative.
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