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Larry King Duped Into 'Disinfomercial' on Social Media By China (and Possibly Russia) (propublica.org) 100

Posted by EditorDavid from the friend-requests dept.
For 25 years, until 2010, Larry King had a live interview show on CNN. But now ProPublica reports "In the twilight of a remarkable radio and television career spanning more than six decades, battling health problems but determined to stay in the public eye, King was ensnared in an international disinformation scheme."

It involved filming Larry King asking questions, and then later splicing in responses from Anastasia Dolgova (an employee of a Russia state-owned broadcaster) — and then widely promoting the footage on social media: Posted on YouTube under the title "Larry King US China Special Conference 2019," and quickly spread by social media accounts linked to Chinese government influence operations, the fake interview went viral across Chinese-language social media, likely reaching hundreds of thousands of users on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube... By conveying Chinese disinformation through a journalist for Russian media, it may exemplify the increasing media cooperation between the two countries...

ProPublica found that the Chinese government was involved in distributing the video. Our analysis of data released by Twitter showed that nearly 250 fake accounts linked to China's government shared nearly 40 different links to the video a total of more than 500 times. Around half of those fake accounts had more than 10,000 followers... In September 2018, six months before King taped the Dolgova video, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attended a ceremony in Vladivostok, Russia. There, the Russian state-controlled Rossiya Segodnya news agency and Chinese state-controlled China Media Group signed an agreement to cooperate in news exchange, joint reporting and distribution, and promotion of each other's reports, especially on social media...

The Russia-China partnership reflects the alignment of the two countries' political messaging, as both promote alternatives to liberal democracy in a post-Cold War world. To achieve that goal, the Kremlin is building a "global media conglomerate," said Nataliya Bugayova, a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Russian media outlets have signed more than 50 cooperation agreements with foreign media since 2015, she said...

In a telephone interview, King expressed remorse and bewilderment.
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Larry King Duped Into 'Disinfomercial' on Social Media By China (and Possibly Russia) More

Larry King Duped Into 'Disinfomercial' on Social Media By China (and Possibly Russia)

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  • London Bridge is falling down (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Sunday August 02, 2020 @04:56PM (#60358423) Journal

    And we obsess over foreign "meddling" in our entertainment industry.

    Well, shit! Just do the same thing back. Propaganda must work just as well on Chinese and Russians

    • Re:London Bridge is falling down (Score:5, Insightful)

      by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Sunday August 02, 2020 @06:31PM (#60358595)

      And we obsess over foreign "meddling" in our entertainment industry.

      Well, shit! Just do the same thing back. Propaganda must work just as well on Chinese and Russians

      No, that's not true. Chinese and Russians are shielded from sources of information other than the state-sanctioned propaganda. This meddling to mess with the minds of people only works in the free world.

      • You've never heard of Radio Free Europe, or Voice of America then?
        Nobody does propaganda as well as the United States.

        • You've never heard of Radio Free Europe, or Voice of America then?

          Nobody does propaganda as well as the United States.

          Absolutely the US tries to do propaganda. I'm not sure if the US does it better than Russia and China. It's not clear to me. Trump has been trying his best to declaw the historical US tools for foreign propaganda, so I assume that US propaganda efforts are less effective now. However, it's quite clear that it's much easier to direct propaganda toward US citizens, as there are no firewalls or fewer legal restrictions.

          • Our entertainment and commercial pop culture used to our best propaganda. It used to said that blue jeans did in the soviet bloc.

            The Chinese bought out the movie studios and fashion brands and the ones that haven't been bought out have been poisoned by wokeness, and now instinctively put out anti-American trash.

          • The Russians and Chinese are late-comers to the propaganda game. When you directly control the entire media then you don't need subtlety or guile, you just order your people to print what you tell them. It's far more complex in the West, for example you need to manipulate the Overton Window [wikipedia.org] to exclude views outside the status quo, or you have stuff like the CIA planting stories in the media outside America and hoping that they'll then get picked up by the American media. You need to have that "plausible den

          • The US is orders of magnitude more active on the propaganda front than authoritarian states. It goes hand in hand with democracy. You can give the people some power but then you'd better control what they want so they voluntarily move in the right direction. In an authoritarian context you just tell people how it is and that should be enough.

            Obviously a major tool of propaganda is to dismiss the truth as foreign propaganda. And boy is there a lot of that these days.

            • The US is orders of magnitude more active on the propaganda front than authoritarian states.

              This seems to be stated as fact, when it seems to me as being obviously challenging for ordinary Americans to discern. Are there any metrics you can point to show this? If "orders of magnitude" is more than hyperbole, then there should be at least some hazy metric to show this clearly.

              It's unclear whether you speak of US propaganda for domestic or foreign consumption. There is certainly a huge amount of propaganda for domestic consumption. However, since the US does not have a monolithic government, tha

              • I do use a very hazy metric. In the seventies there was an opening on the extent of the CIA control over the media Bernstein wrote an article on that. In the US the number of journalists the CIA controlled was about 400. But you could consider everyone around them who multiply gullibly what these clearly compromised journalists reported and then the numbers are much higher. It is not possible to distinguish between those who deliberately lie and those who are uncritical towars lies.
                Generally I'd go further

        • The US does it really badly. Russian propaganda follows Goebbels' model, a mix of entertainment, interesting facts, and then just enough disinformation slipped in to skew your view of the world without it being obvious. It's very watchable, and you don't even notice you're being manipulated.

          US propaganda OTOH is like 1950s era Soviet labour posters, unsubtle and crude. They just hit you in the face over and over in the hope of making you see it their way, and it's very obvious that you're being hit with

          • You're right about VoA being unsubtle and crude, but when I said no-one does propaganda like the US, I was thinking about Hollywood.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by edis ( 266347 )

              No, he is not right. VoA provides you with content to feed and nurture your intelligence, while Russian-Chinese production, discussed in the article, delivered you result of faking the very content. It is disgusting work-of-axe, like Russians themselves say, and they do know what this means oh-so-well.

              • This isn't normal Russian propaganda, it's remarkably unsubtle and I don't know why they even tried it, presumably because it was more Chinese than Russian. Even then, it was pretty stupid. For clever, subtle stuff I was referring to things like Russia Today, which is a seductively useful news source if you forget for even a moment that it's designed solely to feed you Russian propaganda.

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by edis ( 266347 )

                  Sorry, I couldn't ever find RT being subtle. Then, I watched it only now and then with the genuine disgust - from design, to the mission, to the same kagebist-in-disguise work, it resonates only that. Sure, Rossija Segodnia (which is original name for Russia Today before translation, also their internal media channel) had its advances over the time, to serve population to the point of making it accept any prolongation of term for Tsar-KGB reign, be it mangle constitution or whatever. May impress somebody, s

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by N1AK ( 864906 )
                    Perhaps you can't but I'd agree with the parent poster that it's relatively subtle as state propoganda goes. They put real effort into producing material without obvious bias, and on getting some shows hosted by local "famous faces" who are editorially independent so that the content is extensive enough that it doesn't feel like watching 24/7 propoganda. They don't generally result to obvious attacks on the West or western values, but are selective about what they don't mention or how they frame views. They

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by edis ( 266347 )

                      Oh, you should check sometimes how blatant these state propagandists are for internal consumption.

                      Like here, most memorable:
                      Russia TV host - Russia could turn USA into radioactive ashes
                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

                      This exactly buddy was assigned to be CEO of RT, since created. So, I could only suggest to check your levels of subtlety, and how come you are consuming these products.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      Every propaganda outlet has it's bad moments. Remember the widespread "Crimean vote on joining Russia had over 120% participation rate" claim that was widespread in a couple of nights after the vote across Western media? Which instantly got the "vote is illegitimate" stigma on the event, widely used to this day in arguments against the annexation.

                      If you understand spoken Russian and watched the version where they actually subtitled rather than dub over the official they were quoting, instantly noticed that

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by edis ( 266347 )

                      You spoke a lot. Why didn't you mention, that before "Crimean vote", this land of independent neighbor state was flooded with Russian military, wearing unidentifiable pajamas? Cynical annexation, distantly without self-governance, you talk about.

                      The same in Eastern Ukraine - I was closely following events, it was Russian from outside, encouraging eagerly "them there to be doing something, why they do not", soon flooding their own troops over the border, even if casually militant "enthusiasts on their own ch

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      Before I get into my views, you should know that I'm Finnish, an NCO in reserve, and the whole Crimean event resulted in two training stints for me that were imho needed, and where I ended up taking monetary losses to go to them because I viewed it as my patriotic duty to ensure that I did my part in what we usually formulate as "large nation x invading Finland over its eastern border".

                      Which I don't let bias myself, because the first step to winning any conflict is understanding why the conflict is actually

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by edis ( 266347 )

                      I have my first born kid, now resident in Finland, at stake. I've got vivid and free Ukrainian blood in my veins. Russian education, and lot of generous, true sympathy to this kind. You have lost.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      No idea why I lost, but you can sleep safe. People like me will keep you safe in this country.

                      Just don't your foreign wars here. We have no need for it.

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by edis ( 266347 )

                      Wait, have you got the basic "there can't be free vote in an annexed land"? You state way too much, to help you sort, sorry.
                      Hold youselves, if you are genuine. Come open, if you're not - we all know there are quite some preconditions in a free society.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      I have no idea what it is you're saying here. Rephrase it please?

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by edis ( 266347 )

                      There can't be free vote in an annexed land. You can't even start speaking self-governing, self-decision, vote rate, etc., when there are foreign troops, which have entered territory. It's nothing more, than annexation, and this is why free world is not going to recognize "change of status" of this territory, reason Russia is sanctioned, and will be, as it deserves punishing for how it unscrupulously allowed itself to behave.

                      What I do emphasize - there is no ground to talk about voting rate at all. It has n

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      >There can't be free vote in an annexed land.

                      I'm going to assume that you are not just being an extremely biased against a single case, and that you apply this standard worldwide, which means that several democracies are currently illegitimately holding votes on annexed lands which is obviously not free or fair.

                      Places like Hawaii for example.

                      Or do you find that people holding various votes in Hawaii for a better part of two centuries, among many similar places across the planet are completely legitimate,

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by edis ( 266347 )

                      No, buddy - these sanctions, THEY ARE, because it is not acceptable to undress your army, flood foreign land, advertise all over the place there, and then suggest to count votes in your lovely presence. There is nearly nobody to swallow that crap of yours, go and find in Wikipedia what degenerates have supported annexation of Crimea. Enough of talk. I do not even read all your production.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      Unfortunate, but you did strike me as someone who prefers good sounding sound bites that agree with their biases to long form examination of reality that doesn't quite conform to them.

            • Ah, good point.

      • Agreed...and everyone who has ever played SMAC knows it.

        Gosh, that spy penalty on the University faction was a killer.

        On the other hand there's this:

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "Well, shit! Just do the same thing back. Propaganda must work just as well on Chinese and Russians"
      Well for starters sending propaganda to them is not going to fix the damage done at home.

      And then, no, propaganda doesn't work just as well there.
      First, there is a lot of censorship and self-censorship, so it won't reach as far.
      Second, as someone said, "they don't do it so that you believe them, they do it so that you believe nothing, and most importantly do nothing" Corruption and lies are rampant in dictato

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by edis ( 266347 )

        The whole irony and cynicism of Putin's approach (you can't hide his style behind joined Chinese-Russian distribution), is to show how corrupt western lifestyle is - somebody paid money to King for taking this job, before abusing it. RT is having fun, stuffing his content in between propaganda of theirs. They pay money, they have the right to speculate his reputation. Entropy in action, directed by KGB.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      We have been doing it to them for decades already, as they have been doing it to us. The only difference now is that it's much harder to block and much harder to tell apart from the stuff OANN and Fox put out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Well, shit! Just do the same thing back.

      But one doesn't have to trick celebrities to pull it off. Just find a way to tell them the truth, something they won't get from their own gov't.

  • "later splicing in responses from Anastasia Dolgova". So he wasn't actually involved in any Chinese / Russian propaganda. "later splicing in responses from Anastasia Dolgova". That can be done with literally anyone's video recording. Would you claim that that would pass as "that person being duped"? Do you think that your disinformation is helping? Do you enjoy creating fake, propaganda news?

    • Re:Oh, so he WASN'T duped. I see. Crap title as us (Score:5, Informative)

      by chill ( 34294 ) on Sunday August 02, 2020 @05:07PM (#60358455) Journal

      No. This isn't as simple as taking an existing piece of video and creatively re-editing. This was an active disinformation campaign. Read the article.

      After a 300-word preamble on the U.S. trade deficit with China, King was to introduce a guest, Russian journalist Anastasia Dolgova.

      then later in the article...

      Dolgova's answers were not in the script. They were plugged in separately. King was expected to tape his questions without speaking to her. His skill at the give-and-take of interviewing, of sensing the moment and asking the right question that draws a revealing response, would not be of any use.

      and

      King ran through the monologue and the string of questions, the last being, "I'm amazed, are you sure that the story you are telling here is real and authentic?"

      Finally...

      In the video, King appears to conduct a live interview with Dolgova...

      • by chill ( 34294 )
        "No. This isn't as simple ........Read the article."

        You low user id demonstrates that you know perfectly well that we can't possibly do that.

        • Can you trust any UID under 6 digits? I'm increasingly suspicious that many of the low user IDs now belong to trolls who hacked in after the original creators of the IDs died.

          Whoops, supposed to use a euphemism. Old programmers never die. They just decompiled, lose their memories, branch to a new address, or (most relevant in this case) give up their resources. (And some more besides.)

          Anyone know where I can hire a good interviewer? I need to buy some concision.

          • If by "trust", you mean "agree with", then no, probably not. Most of those old fogies have gained enough life experience such that their idealism is not what it used to be. The world is not the friendly and magical place that it seems to be, and even if a big bunch of nice people get together and build a utopia, sooner or later, some others will come to take advantage of them. Look at the history of the internet itself for a great example of how this happens. Pacifists and idealists are noble people, bu

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by shanen ( 462549 )

              No, that is NOT what I mean, but I think you're actually trying to make some variation of pseudo-Churchill's argument about young liberals and old conservatives. (At least a website that appears to be about Churchill and with high PageRank from the google denies that Churchill said it.) I'm saying that some of them have gone beyond old get-off-my-lawn curmudgeon territory into senility or insanity, or even worse, having their accounts and reputations hijacked.

              I might be projecting from hoping that it won't

              • I pointed this out in an earlier post regarding coronavirus a few months ago. There were some 4-digit uid accounts that were obviously being used by pro-Chinese propagandists, and they weren't subtle.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by shanen ( 462549 )

                  When you say "they weren't subtle", what do you mean? I've never seen anything that struck me as definitive, just highly peculiar and sometimes suspicious. At least I can't recall an example of a post that was clearly beyond the pale of Slashdot 2020.

                  Might be relevant evidence from a book I just finished, The Supernova Era by Cixin Liu. This is apparently a book that he outlined or at least began 30 years ago. It's really hard to tell because he goes in and out of meta upon meta, but it definitely express

              • Interesting stuff. There is some weird activity around here lately. Looks like plenty of quotes misattributed to Churchill, but I suppose that is normal for any famous speaker. I was recently watching some YouTube videos of Asimov being interviewed on talk shows, reminding me of how great he was at writing and talking about science (and anything else) for the popular audience.

      • So Larry King whores himself to anyone who will pay then, got it.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by edis ( 266347 )

          That's what Putin dreams us to believe. Discredit westerners' reputation at the core of the system. No, Larry King is not happy with this job brought south, also his producers have hard time to control distribution of the derived faked product, because this fake is intentionally distributed by Chinese and Russians.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rhipf ( 525263 )

        I kind of find it interesting that King would agree to do an "interview" without actually interviewing the person in question. Maybe I am just too naive and this type of interview is common but I would hope that if you are going to interview someone you actually interview them and don't just tape a bunch of questions and hope for the best.
        I know that King is getting old but he really should have been suspicious that there was something fishy with this non-interview interview.

  • Larry King worked to maximize his income, what's the capitalist objection?

    At one time, totalitarianism was considered so bad the West would fight and die en masse to combat it.

    Somewhere, those benefiting from the "free market" system decided totalitarianism is fine, as long as they can get a little extra shareholder take outsourcing to it.

    This is an incoherent and unstable policy. Eventually, the West needs to decide whether it's for freedom, or for making a few extra bucks taking advantage of virtual slav

    • No capitalist objection. Everybody knows he'll do anything for a buck, much like Salvador Dali signing his name to blank cavases. It's just surprising that Larry King would work so cheap - $7,000 - to be a dupe for Chinese propaganda.

      Nice strawman, though.

      • Hardly a straw man, rather a case in point.

        But hopefully the full depth of my appreciation of your analysis, and the wider social effect of it, will be conveyed by...

        The Old Guard. Just watched, good movie.

      • About half the price of a Conservative MP.

    • ...the West needs to decide whether it's for freedom, or for making a few extra bucks taking advantage of virtual slave labor.

      The west has never really been "for freedom" especially if freedom is not profitable, just ask any Honduran, or Nicaraguan, or Cuban, or Spaniard. Actually, the list of brutal dictators the west has supported is quite long. It is also getting longer.
      Don't forget how much money IBM made selling their services to the Nazis.

  • Larry King (Score:5, Informative)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Sunday August 02, 2020 @05:45PM (#60358507)

    The only time I have seen Larry King in the last decade he has been promoting vitamin supplements and prostate cures. I don't think he has any credibility left to sell.

    • Sorry no mod points to give you. Yes when I hear Larry King, I think vitamin scam. It really saddens me how so many trade their lifetime of work for a few shekels to promote some lame thing.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by edis ( 266347 )

        This is only partially designed for the western world - exactly to emphasize, how corrupt it is. Even more so, this fake is to make joke, outsmarting reputation of this celebrity in the eyes of Chinese, Russian, third observing parties. Ads, that you have seen locally, are not known elsewhere, but the reputation of the bold figure still lingers on. Let's abuse it for the sake of "alternative choice".

    • Not only that, but I don't think the kind of people who would seriously watch Larry King are the same people who would also follow twitter. Instead, have an interview with PewDiePie, and tweet that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by indytx ( 825419 )

      The only time I have seen Larry King in the last decade he has been promoting vitamin supplements and prostate cures. I don't think he has any credibility left to sell.

      While this is true, it's missing the point. Larry King has respectability to older Americans who remember his television program. There is an entire cohort of older Americans who believe what they read on their Facebook feeds, and these are the people being targeted.

  • Who are we going to blame today?

    $blame = rand('North Korea','China','Russia','Syria');

  • THis is going on all over. Russia, China, N. Korea are doing a great job with disinformation.
    The problem is that the west is doing little to STOP IT.
  • There is no way this could have been done by Russia. More likely it was a Florida teen from a broken family with a Russian mother...

  • Modern psychological warfare had its roots in WWI, competitively co-developed by Britain & Germany, then in WWII the Nazi's picked it up, ran with it, & we all know how that turned out. After that, Edward Bernays worked on it for the US govt. & then took it to US corporations, renaming it "public relations." In-Q-Tel, the tech investment arm of the CIA, are probably at least partly responsible for developing social media software & technologies so that they can be used for psyops.

    The idea th

  • Who submitted this to Slashdot?

  • You mean he is still alive?

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