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Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections [pdf]
- stephenitis 10y agopage 21. It was definitely eye opening to see the quantitative graphs showing how much Russian funded RT media's youtube views stacked up vs the major new media. RT's subscriber base was similar and it's social media footprint was much smaller but it's views were so much higher. Were they gaming Youtube? Did the major news media decide not to engage and invest in their youtube content? Red Herring?
- ajfabb 10y agoGood time to go and flag/report the RT YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday/about https://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday/about It is easy to choose some videos that are clear propaganda when going through the flagging process.
- vanattab 10y agoDoes "political propaganda" videos violate YouTube's policy?
- 1337biz 10y agoQuick, let's shut down CSPAN!
- wavefunction 10y ago@1337biz CSPAN is mostly the equivalent of public records. RT is not a valid comparison to CSPAN.
- jcriddle4 10y agoYes it definitely should be, as a matter of fact I think anything you post is propaganda and should be deleted. /s
- maverick_iceman 10y agoNo. Here's Hillary's official YouTube channel[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLRYsOHrkk5qcIhtq033bLQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLRYsOHrkk5qcIhtq033bLQ
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- abalone 10y agoYou'll have to define what "clear propaganda" means first.
- someuser001 10y agoThere's quite a few Russian accounts on Youtube with suspicious views counts. Like the guy who cuts things in half with his glowing knife. Lots of Russian spam and click-bait content too. Type in something about Ukraine, Russia or NATO and scroll through all the Russian 'WW3 Illuminati' garbage that comes up.
- jwtadvice2 10y agoAhh man that's hardly anything. Typical propaganda expenditure in the US is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
- idm 10y ago> Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls.” I think social media have been undermined for some time, although previously it was aggressive advertisers who were the culprits. "Astroturfing" is an old word by now. During the US election, this was simply taken to another level, and in a way that had a measurable impact on people's beliefs.
- mtgx 10y agoAlso, it's a well known fact Clinton paid "trolls" to change opinions online. Isn't that "influencing the election" as well? The U.S. needs so many new laws and changes to make its elections more fair (including media regulations during electoral campaigns), I wouldn't even know where to start.
- totally 10y agoCan you cite something to show that it is well known? I do not know this.
- buckbova 10y agoLook up Clinton and Correct The Record or CTR. There's a lot of noise out there but you can find references where several million dollars was paid for an internet misinformation campaign. > http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/news/press-releases/fec-must-investigate-unprecedented-violations-campaign-finance-laws-clinton http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/news/press-releases/fec-m... "Correct the Record: The Clinton-supporting super PAC, Correct the Record, asserts it can coordinate directly with the Clinton campaign as long as it doesn’t run paid advertising. Clinton’s attorneys are relying on a narrow 2006 FEC regulation that declared that content posted online for free, such as blogs written by unpaid volunteers, is off limits from regulation. But Correct the Record is not a volunteer blogging operation. It is a $6 million professional opposition research, surrogate training and messaging operation staffed with paid professional employees and operating out of a high-rise Washington, D.C. office building."
- s_m_t 10y agoWell.... did they say anything untrue? Our media stations are propaganda outlets as well. I get my 'news' from many different propaganda sources because I've found that it is very easy to tell when they are outright lying so I can just ignore that, but typically they say something that is close to the truth. The thing is that there is so much truth out there so each propaganda outlet will tell some portion of the truth that fits their narrative the best. If you grab all these different portions of the truth you can begin to piece it all together and have the biggest piece of the truth possible.
- colordrops 10y agoIf you listen to interviews with any politicians or intelligence officials it's pretty obvious that they are dancing around the truth and never answering any questions. This is a partisan hit job. And I can't tell if the DNC is supposed to be a private or government entity. If you complain that they cheated and screwed over Bernie, people respond with "well it's a private organization, they can do what they want". But now it's a matter of "election rigging" and "national security" that they've supposedly been hacked. And if the information released was true, who cares if it was a hack? If the information is true, which it appears to be, then it was a service to our country that it was released.
- totally 10y agoThis report was commissioned with bipartisan support from congress. So, is it a "bipartisan hit job"?
- colordrops 10y ago"Partisan" is a more generic term. It's one set of groups going after another.
- ENOTTY 10y agoThis report had no Congressional involvement. Obama ordered the intelligence estimate.
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- totally 10y ago"We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes."
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoWell, honestly, it's not that hard to avoid voting for Kremlin-backed candidates. Just avoid voting for authoritarian right-wing nationalists or supposedly far-left "radicals" who spurn international cooperation and cozy up to Russia, and you're set.
- hacker_9 10y agoSo the extent of it is, Putin told Russia Today to bias their news in favour of Trump? I don't care for Trump (or US politics, for that matter), but this has gone so far into the realm of pettiness I cannot even believe what I am reading.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kafkaesq 10y agoThat's not at all what the report says, of course.
- jwtadvice2 10y agoThe report doesn't make this claim at all.
- jcriddle4 10y agoDear lord a dozen countries could use this style of "evidence" to support the notion that the BBC(British Broadcasting) is deeply involved in nefarious election influencing. I believe in freedom of speech including Russia's ability to talk and influence. All the evidence not directly related to hacking is just completely inappropriate. This "proof" doesn't help their case against Russia. They should be focusing a narrow remit on the like's of Gucifier and Wikileaks. What a mess.
- salimmadjd 10y agoAs a kid growing up through the 1978-79 Iranian revolution, I can tell you BBC played a crucial role. We use to gather an listen to Farsi BBC broadcast in short-wave radio. That experience has made me to be distrustful of any major media outlet.
- ealexhudson 10y agoAbsolutely; UK Govt still funds the BBC directly. I do believe it's substantially independent and certainly not direct Govt propaganda, but there's no denying that it pushes a very UK-centric view.
- eternalban 10y agoI remember it. They used to announce demonstration schedules. And the line from the Foreign Office was "BBC is independent". What a crock of shit. And the New York Times was calling the Ayatollah Khomeini a "saint". (Let that sink in.) https://sadbastards.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/khomeini-was-praised-as-a-moderate-by-the-new-york-times/ https://sadbastards.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/khomeini-was-pr... RT is clearly a propaganda organ and Russians are old hands at propaganda. That much is clear. But the germinal issue, the elephant in the room, is that corporate media in our nation serves such a thin gruel of "news" that outfits like RT or (earlier) Al-Jazeera gain a foothold and establish "credibility" simply by publishing what our media refuses to cover. Didn't they get the memo that we have thing called the internet these days and other sources are a click away? The biggest nugget in this report, imo, is that NSA is not so hot about this assessment. Which reminds me, did the former CIA employee cum whistle blower dish out CIA's dirty secrets as well or did he just dump on the NSA?
- dominotw 10y ago"this document does not include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence on key elements of the influence campaign. " tl;dr : More of 'trust us folks' because KGB, Soviet Union, Emails , Putin , Youtube page views.
- totally 10y agoDo you doubt that the conclusions are different in the Classified versions of the document?
- dominotw 10y agoDo you doubt that North Korea was behind sony hacks ? [1] 1. https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/update-on-sony-investigation https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/update-on-s... - the FBI now has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible for these actions.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoYou've got it backwards. This report is from US Government agencies. So by definition "full supporting information, including specific intelligence on key elements of the influence campaign" doesn't support the conclusions.[1] 1. Weapons of Mass Destruction
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- totally 10y ago"ProKremlin bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign, #DemocracyRIP, on election night in anticipation of Secretary Clinton’s victory,judging from their social media activity."
- digler999 10y agothats proof right there they didn't think their methods were going to work, so maybe they didn't intend to "hack" the election in the first place ?
- kevinh 10y agoSo if I make backup plans, I don't think there's any chance of my primary plan working? Don't be absurd.
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoThey really have zero sense of irony. Typical fascists.
- chvid 10y agoA lot of this report is about RT - Russia Today - the English language TV channel run by the Russian government. How is this different than "Voice of America" or the BBC for that matter; those media give a lot of space to political opposition in places like China or Russia. Sure RT have an opinion and a bias wrt. US politics; but it is not like the people watching would be in any doubt that this channel was sponsered by Russia and had "an Russian perspective" on things.
- mtgx 10y agoIronically, the U.S. will now fund a "counter-propaganda" agency to do more of this, too (I imagine with a more domestic focus). http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/29/obamas-christmas-gift-to-trump-a-ministry-of-truth/ http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/29/obamas-christmas-gift... http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=F973E46B-AA8C-4F3E-91B4-8EC0FC7F2F3E http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-release...
- totally 10y agoWell of course. Nobody likes asymmetrical warfare.
- jwtadvice2 10y agoThis agency will deploy social media propaganda techniques developed by the DARPA SMISC program.
- totally 10y agoRT or BBC publishing videos is one thing, but saturating youtube comments and state sponsored "viral" twitter content is quite another. To me the difference is in gaming the secondary signals of legitimacy.
- kafkaesq 10y agoA lot of this report is about RT - Russia Today. No, it's not; if you read the Key Judgements section, the part about the "state-run propaganda machine" is the last and least of the four major areas of influence it cites.
- FLUX-YOU 10y ago[deleted]
- RobAtticus 10y ago>Russia conducted an "influence campaign" at least from the time that the race was only between Clinton and Trump, yet we only find out about it after the upset? Other than the time the US government pointed the finger at Russia a month before the election?[1] It came up numerous times in the debates. Newsweek had an article about Russia's motives a few days before the election[2]. This is not something that is brand new, why are you acting like it is? [1] https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-security-and-office-director-national https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-departme... [2] http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-russia-hillary-clinton-united-states-europe-516895 http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-russia-h...
- FLUX-YOU 10y agoI guess I hadn't followed as closely as I thought I had. I'll delete this silly rant.
- Lawtonfogle 10y agoOr they thought she was guaranteed to win and wanted to have this mattered handled much quietly once the election was over.
- avoutthere 10y agoCan anybody say with a straight face that this is not a politically motivated report?
- raverbashing 10y agoNo. But this is an Ad Hominem fallacy.
- jessaustin 10y agoWhen dudes be like "just trust us", and they've lied before, and they have obvious interests in lying again, no it ain't everybody's favorite fallacy.
- neaden 10y agoI doubt that the average CIA, FBI, and NSA worker is a democrat so I'm less skeptical then I would be if they released a report on say Edward Snowden.
- ern 10y agoThe report and its unredacted sources will be subject to Congressional oversight from a Republican dominated congress. So far they have been supportive of its contents.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoI think a legitimate public service was served by the release of Podesta and DNC emails. We wouldn't have known about DNC's stacking the decks against Sanders otherwise. I wonder why all the liberal outrage hardly address this point.
- colordrops 10y agoBecause they're not liberals - they are sociopaths. Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman and Julian Assange and the Real News Network are real liberals and they are outraged by the DNC and calling out this new McCarthyism for what it is.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- justinlaster 10y agoIt's not a one or the other...
- brown9-2 10y agobecause only one party had their inner communications released
- mtgx 10y agoYes, that's the common criticism - that "only one party was hit by leaks". But to that I say - so what? Would Democrats have been just as outraged if it was the Republicans having their info leaked, like say Trump's tax returns? I remember the Democrats were pretty damn gleeful about Romney's "47 percent" comment, which was recorded without his permission and then leaked to the press. Why didn't Democrats cry that "HEY! We should see Obama's secret recordings, too! It's not fair that only Romney's recordings are being leaked." Nobody did that, and nobody would've done that if it had happened to Trump, because in reality the reaction is extremely partisan, and has nothing or very little to do with the principle of "influencing the election". Also, the Democrats have been pissed off about Trump not releasing his tax returns because they thought that by hiding that he was essentially manipulating the public. I completely agree with that, but now let's turn back to Clinton and admit that Clinton hiding the fact that her team, the DNC, and the media colluded to help her win, was also a manipulation of the public. Something the public should have learned about. Which party gets the most leaks has little to do with anything, and I also see very few people blame the DNC for having such poor security in the first place. And I don't follow much right-wing media, perhaps they did cover this a lot, but as far as "mainstream media" goes, I remember they were trying very hard not to cover what was in the emails, and instead kept trying to make the conversation about "Russians hacking the DNC and helping Trump". So I'm not even sure if the emails influenced the election that much. And most of Sanders' supporters who were engaged in the primary were already aware of the collusion between the DNC and Clinton long before any of the leaks, because it was obvious. Why do you think there were so many protests at the DNC (which were also not covered that well in the media) that embarrassed Democrats?
- SirensOfTitan 10y agoGleen Greenwald from the Intercept has published some decent pieces on the lofty "evidence" for Russian hacking, his latest being: https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/washpost-is-richly-rewarded-for-false-news-about-russia-threat-while-public-is-deceived/ https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/washpost-is-richly-rewar...
- philangist 10y agoGlenn Greenwald has already stated his opinion on this report: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/817479125707399168 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/817479125707399168
- threeseed 10y agoYou can always tell those who have little to contribute when they fall back on the "there is no evidence" line. It's a declassified report. The sources and methods that the US intelligence community uses is never going to be made public nor does anyone reasonably expect it to be. So instead of complaining about evidence. Assume that the Obama administration is not trying to make their last big story before leaving a lie and refute the motives etc.
- colordrops 10y agoThe problem is that we have no reason to trust politicians and the intelligence community, which have proven to be some of the most dishonest and mischievous people on the planet. This is especially true with the NSA and CIA, which have both had representatives lie under oath, commit illegal activities, and be directly involved in the overthrow of dozens of democratically elected governments. Why should we trust their report if they aren't going to show us the evidence? Why should we trust them at all for that matter?
- SirensOfTitan 10y agoShow me evidence of your claims suddenly isn't a reasonable ask in the face of an accusation? Don't complain about lack-of-evidence, just put your trust blindly in someone. This argument feels quite weak.
- Veratyr 10y agoThe report seems to present lots of conclusions to controversial issues (like the hacking) but it provides zero evidence for these conclusions. The little that's backed up by evidence in there is Russia's public propaganda efforts, like Russia Today, which aren't really anything new (though certainly interesting). What's controversial is the hacking and I haven't seen anything that attributes the hacks to Russia beyond reasonable doubt. If the evidence was taken to a US court and put before a judge and jury, I don't believe a prosecutor could get a conviction. I understand that the US wouldn't want to give up its intelligence sources but I also don't think that the people of the US should let the government make foreign policy decisions based on hidden evidence. That's how Iraq happened.
- stemc43 10y agoIraq war happened because US wanted oil and this so called bad evidence was nothing more than a trick to still looks good. As In "I wouldnt have done this if I knew". No-no - they would still have done it no matter what.
- sirakov 10y agoWhere does the report mention hacking? I did a ctfl F but was not able to find anything.
- elemenopy 10y agoPage 2 (or p. 12 of the PDF): > In July 2015, Russian intelligence gained access to Democratic National Committee (DNC) networks and maintained that access until at least June 2016.
- sirakov 10y agoThanks! I see it now. Wouldn't be surprised if they just had a mole in the DNC anyway. It only takes one secretary or manager with email access.
- cloudwalking 10y agoIsn't that how most foreign policy works? The WoMD fiasco was a problem for sure, but the solution to that is to elect officials we can trust. When the White House says the CIA has come to them with evidence that must be acted on, the White House can't turn to the populous and ask if there is enough evidence to act. They need to have the autonomy to act as they see fit.
- youdounderstand 10y agoDear lord, either Hacker News has a surprisingly large Trump-supporting crowd or it's part of the Russian social media campaign. Keep sowing that uncertainty and doubt on a report that is backed by classified information. Do you want them to reveal the names and locations of all our spies and detail our sigint methods? The end of the report says what "High Confidence" means.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoSo we're to believe the government without any evidence? That's the classic case of argument from authority.
- matt4077 10y agoJust because "argument from authority" was put on some internet list of biases doesn't mean it can not, at times, serve as a useful heuristic. There's also a difference between "argument from authority" and "argument from a position of known knowledge". Example: radio ad says "Buy milk! We need milk". Will you give it the same credence as your spouse saying the same thing?
- youdounderstand 10y ago"the government" is made up of a shit ton of people. I don't think there's some grand conspiracy involving the intelligence agencies, the Obama administration, and even Republican Senators to make all this up.
- pessimizer 10y agoYou're right. There must be WMD in Iraq.
- youdounderstand 10y agoYou're being intellectually dishonest. You have no way of knowing about correct reports that the intelligence community provides the military on a constant basis.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoWhat percentage of US electorate would change their voting preference by reading Russia Today?
- noobermin 10y agoAfter watching HyperNormalization 2016, what the Russians probably sook to accomplish has already been, a large fraction of the population is already doubtful of the system as we have it. Reminds me of this[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13316027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13316027
- havetocharge 10y agoA synonym of 'propaganda' is 'information'.
- tps5 10y agoUnfortunately there isn't any new evidence here. First, there's no doubt that RT is Russian propaganda. That's not news, and I'm unsure why it's in this kind of report. Paid russian internet trolls is an old accusation too. I think it's probably true but I don't see any concrete evidence in this report. The real question here centers on the emails: did some Russian intelligence agency leak the DNC emails to wikileaks? The report asserts that this occurred, but again offers no concrete evidence. Instead it focuses on establishing motive. We do have concrete evidence (published by crowdstrike) that Russian intel hacked the DNC. But we don't have concrete evidence linking the leaked emails to that hack. I'm trying to remain objective here. I don't think it's unlikely that Russian intelligence was the source of the emails. I just don't see anything new here to conclusively prove that assertion. Maybe I'm being too picky about what constitutes concrete evidence.
- cloudwalking 10y agoAt some point you need to trust the government to make the right decisions. Or to at least not lie about these things. If Facebook was hacked and lost data, would we expect Facebook to release a detailed report showing the evidence of hacking? I understand the desire to see evidence, but we have to trust our elected officials to make the right decisions and our intelligence agencies be honest about what they've discovered. If we demand consensus by the American anytime an issue like this comes up, nothing will ever happen.
- Gargoyle 10y agoWhy do I "need" to trust the government to make the right decisions? What I "need" to do is keep a very close eye on government and demand that they be able to justify their decisions.
- matt4077 10y agoAnd yet what you're "doing" is letting your anti-establishment tendencies do Putin's work for him. This is starting to look a lot like some relationship drama, where the mother-in-law constantly sabotages the marriage with tiny annoyances and seeding doubt. "Did you leave the milk carton outside the fridge?". "No, but didn't your husband have coffee earlier?".
- totally 10y agoI really feel like it's harder to know what to believe and who to trust than I remember it ever being. Are there any good resources about how to vet truth in whitewash propaganda situations?
- alexandercrohde 10y agoThis. My go-to is wikipedia, which isn't perfect, but when you want to answer something like "How much foreign cyber-warfare has America participated in?" and get just the raw data you can trust it to not have an agenda.
- ENOTTY 10y agoRaw data itself can be biased by the selection of which raw data to present. That is why in court, one swears to tell the whole truth.
- alexandercrohde 10y agoWell then you are free to edit wikipedia, add new information if you have objective sources.
- alexandercrohde 10y agoMy feelings on this issue are complex. Though I had previously been vocally skeptical about attributing hacking to Russia, I'm a little more middle-of-the-road now. It's inconsistent for a foreign government expressing opinion on American politics to be called "propaganda" while we allow corporations to spend any amount of money trying to change peoples opinions via super-pacs. The line between propaganda and political dissent is very blurry. I suppose I'd say Russia didn't do anything "wrong," (after all Americans foreign interventions are much more heavy-handed than anything described here), but I do now think it's likely Russia did want Trump to win and that Russia would potentially use more advanced meddling techniques if it thought it could get away with it.
- emrekzd 10y agoHN is clearly preventing any so called "election hacking" related articles to appear in the first page. Interesting.
- dgudkov 10y agoLooking at the charts in the report it's impressive and worrying at the same time to see that the media influence of RT is in the same league as BBC, despite nobody heard about RT just a few years ago, while BBC has existed for decades.
- cypherpunks01 10y agoSeems like this was erased from the frontpage? Any idea why?
- jwtadvice 10y agoIt would be interesting to hear the take from the other fourteen intelligence agencies. I thought they were going to be in the report?
- rinon 10y agoWhy was this discussion removed from the front page? Seems like relevant news of interest to a tech audience to me.
- idm 10y agoI hope it will be un-removed. This report is important.
- jwtadvice 10y agoInteresting bits of analysis: 1. "DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying." 2. "When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency." 3. "Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency." 4. "Moscow also saw the election of Presidentelect Trump as a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). " 5. "Pro-Kremlin bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign, #DemocracyRIP, on election night in anticipation of Secretary Clinton’s victory, judging from their social media activity." -- Full stop -- Do they mean Americans who are "Pro-Kremlin" like many progressives and conservatives that are anti-war? Or do they mean paid/covert bloggers? It seems to me they mean Americans? In which case how is that in the report at all? 6. "Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries." 7. "RT and Sputnik—another government-funded outlet producing pro-Kremlin radio and online content in a variety of languages for international audiences—consistently cast president-elect Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional US media outlets that they claimed were subservient to a corrupt political establishment. " -- I actually believe this to be true. I absolutely hate Trump and think he's a despicable man and unfit for the presidency. However, I thought that the media coverage of him was absolutely brutally skewed and over-the-top clearly politically aligned. Anyway I saw this kind of reporting across international media outlets and friends and family and other news media outlets in the US said the same thing. 8. "RT America TV, a Kremlin-financed channel operated from within the United States, has substantially expanded its repertoire of programming that highlights criticism of alleged US shortcomings in democracy and civil liberties." -- I think these speak to me because American media will not cover civil rights abuses and curtailments in a non-apologetic fashion. It seems typical to me that state-propaganda criticizes their adversaries' civil liberty abuses, as the US does to Russia and China and as Russia and China do to the US. The whole section on RT seemed to be completely off topic and distractionary. I only got half way through it. I did not see any assessment that Podesta's emails were hacked by Russia or shared by Russia. I was hoping to see that because people keep grouping it into the DNC hacks.
- jwtadvice2 10y agoAnd spied, infiltrated and disrupted emerging political groups (Tea Party, Occupy, BLM, etc) around the country with Federal Surveillance programs.
- dang 10y agoCreating new accounts to get around HN moderation is not allowed. We've banned this one. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13341032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13341032 and marked it off-topic.
- wonderflpancake 10y agoEXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Trump had RT and Fox News. Clinton had MSNBC, CNN, Politico, NY Times, Washington Post, and most other MSM.