Media Matters

Kremlin trolls are wasting their time

Russian spies get nowhere by posting comments on British articles stephen glover

According to researchers at Cardiff University, Russian trolls have been inserting propaganda and disinformation in the reader comments of Western news websites. These include Mail Online, the Times, Le Figaro in France, and Der Spiegel and Die Welt in Germany.

The pro-Kremlin comments are then fed back to a range of Russian media organisations. One example cited in the report by Cardiff’s Crime and Security Research Institute concerns a story on Mail Online about America’s ‘unwavering’ support for Ukraine, which appeared on 1st April.

Many of the comments below the article were supportive of the Biden administration, but a few were strikingly critical. These were taken up by a number of Russian news websites and presented as being characteristic of what Mail Online readers believe.

The Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti mendaciously claimed the next day that ‘Daily Mail readers ridiculed US willingness to support Ukraine’, which rapidly achieved over 33,000 ‘views’.

The report offers many other convincing examples from Mail Online and other western newspaper websites of Russian infiltration.

The Cardiff researchers – were they first alerted by our own intelligence services? – appear to have uncovered an entire industry of Russian trolls whose unenviable duty it is to trawl through hundreds of articles and give the impression that they are ordinary, disinterested readers, whereas in fact they are employees of Vladimir Putin.

May I make a suggestion? Even before I learnt about these pro-Kremlin trolls, I had long thought that it would be an excellent idea for online newspapers to withdraw the facility for posting comments. The original impulse, which was to encourage readers to feel involved, was open and democratic. In the event, a highly opinionated, unrepresentative minority is attracted to expressing views that can be unpleasant and ill-considered.

I have given up reading such comments below my own columns on Mail Online because some of them are rude and intended to demoralise.

I always advise my journalistic friends to do the same if they haven’t already done so. Most have. The rudeness is just as likely to be directed at other posters as at the writer of the piece. Fierce quarrels can ensue.

When it comes to posting comments, normal, balanced, polite and thoughtful readers are greatly outnumbered by bigots and the unreasonable.

If there were a proper system of registration, and people were required to identify themselves, it might be possible to have civilised and enlightening debates. Journalists would be able to learn from their readers. As it is, anonymity tends to encourage the worst human traits.

This is as true of Doris in Detroit, who dispenses poison and vitriol, having barely read the piece she decries, as it is of Sergei in Omsk, working in his airless basement in clandestine service of the Russian state.

The figure journalists most fear is the ruthless businessman with little or no journalistic background who is parachuted into an ailing publishing company to turn it round and make it profitable again.

Such a person is Roger Lynch, who in 2019 was appointed chief executive of Condé Nast, an American behemoth with magazines around the world. His previous job was running the US music-streaming outfit Pandora, where he seems to have been successful. However, he doesn’t appear to know a lot about publishing.

Mr Lynch’s big idea is to internationalise Condé Nast’s publications so that editorial directors based in London, New York and Asia can collaborate to create uniform issues of magazines such as Vogue and GQ designed to appeal to global audiences. A bit like cornflakes, one might say.

Condé Nast is loss-making – so something has to be done. But is this the right approach? Most successful publications are rooted in the readerships they serve, which is why magazines with a strong individual identity thrive. Producing the same homogenised stuff for people in Shanghai, Rome and Los Angeles may be the best way of disappointing everyone.

Hundreds of journalists are being made redundant to save money, including some in London. Even Dylan Jones, the renowned editor of British GQ, has departed. Condé Nast used to be a great publishing company, created and sustained by people with journalistic flair. Can it really be saved by a moneybags who apparently doesn’t understand magazines?

Hats off to Stig Abell, who has secured a three-book deal with the publisher HarperCollins, including his first crime novel and a non-fiction work.

Mr Abell is not yet a well-known thriller writer, though he may soon be. But he is a former managing editor of the Sun, an ex-editor of the Times Literary Supplement and currently a presenter on Times Radio. All are owned by Rupert Murdoch – as is HarperCollins.

Stig’s literary accomplishments are doubtless so considerable that he could have acquired a three-book deal with any publishing company. But if Mr Murdoch did give the 41-year-old prodigy a helping hand, it is yet one more heart-warming example of the aged tycoon’s fond indulgence of treasured employees.