Russia Launches Fake ‘Global Fact-Checking Network’

On 28 Novem­ber 2024, EUvs­Dis­in­fo report­ed that the Krem­lin has estab­lished a gov­ern­ment-fund­ed ‘fact-check­ing’ ini­tia­tive that actu­al­ly serves as a tool for inter­na­tion­al manip­u­la­tion. The arti­cle begins:

This week, the Krem­lin sought to dom­i­nate pub­lic infor­ma­tion spaces with nar­ra­tives about Rus­si­a’s attack with a nuclear-capa­ble bal­lis­tic mis­sile on the Ukrain­ian city of Dnipro. The inci­dent was splashed across the front pages of Russ­ian news out­lets and served as the cen­tre­piece of state-con­trolled TV dis­cus­sions. The objec­tive is clear: domes­ti­cal­ly, to enforce a patri­ot­ic siege men­tal­i­ty; inter­na­tion­al­ly, to stoke fears of nuclear war, to intim­i­date, and to weak­en sup­port for Ukraine. Fraud­sters fight­ing fakes Instead of giv­ing this fear-mon­ger­ing more oxy­gen, we focus on some­thing top­i­cal, though no less reveal­ing. Enter the Krem­lin-fund­ed ‘Glob­al Fact-Check­ing Net­work’, a sup­pos­ed­ly inter­na­tion­al ini­tia­tive to com­bat bias and dis­in­for­ma­tion. Under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, the irony of this endeav­our might even be laughable…

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Key Points:

1. The Krem­lin-fund­ed ANO Dia­log launched a ‘Glob­al Fact-Check­ing Net­work’ while being sanc­tioned for spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion and elec­tion interference.
2. ANO Dia­log claims to have iden­ti­fied pre­cise num­bers of “fakes,” though experts note dis­in­for­ma­tion can­not be quan­ti­fied this way.
3. The ini­tia­tive copies legit­i­mate fact-check­ing orga­ni­za­tions’ meth­ods to spread pro­pa­gan­da and manip­u­late inter­na­tion­al infor­ma­tion spaces.
4. Rus­si­a’s state media simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­mote con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about inter­na­tion­al events while deny­ing doc­u­ment­ed mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion with North Korea.