GOP Is Adopting Putin's Media Strategies

When Trump was elected, I wrote a post predicting there would be an effort to create that same kind of "managed media" environment that Putin has created in Russia. That environment is built around a notion created by Russian businessman, politician, master propagandist, and Putin confidant Vladislav Surkov that "everything is PR" and that any ideology and movement can be exploited to confuse the opposition and enhance the power of the ruling elite. It pretty much defines how the Russians attacked our own democracy in the 2016 election, using any group on the left or right to sow divisions within the country and eventually elect Donald Trump, while at the same time rendering any source of "true" information as potentially suspect.

Steve Bannon was familiar with Surkov's work and it can be argued that the Trump playbook of continual outrage and deceit is actually a strategy derived from Surkov via Bannon. The nature of today's media means that the press and the public can always be distracted from the last lie or outrage by creating a new one, until fatigue sets in and it becomes the new normality. And that new normality is defined by the leader.

What I find interesting is how quickly the Republican party and not just the Trump administration has adopted some of the propaganda strategies of Surkov and Putin, creating supposedly independent news outlets that are really fronts for the GOP or individuals within the party. In Maine, the Executive Director of the Maine Republican Party has admitted that he created and runs an anonymous website called the Maine Examiner that is unsurprisingly pro-Republican and has slandered Democratic candidates. This potentially violates that state's campaign finance laws, despite the director's claim that it is a proper news outlet and no party funds were used to back the site.

In California, the ethically challenged Trump protector Devin Nunes has also set up his own partisan website called the "The California Republican" which claims it provides "the best of US, California, and Central Valley news, sports, and analysis".  While it looks like an independent news outlet, fine print at the bottom of the site shows that it is paid for by Nunes' campaign committee, which keeps it from violating election law if Nunes properly reports this activity, although, like the Maine site, it does raise the question about any money the site receives from advertisers.

These instances may not sound like much but they do seem to cross a line in journalism that we haven't seen since the concept of media ethics and the separation between news and editorial became the norm over a century ago. Now, many newspapers since then have had a clear political bias but what's new is the fact that these politicians are actively trying to hide their ownership stake in what they advertise as independent journalism.

Part of the "managed media" plan is to ensure that the media remains superficially independent while actually being either virtual propaganda arms for the government or engaging in self-censorship, recognizing that there are certain topics and areas of discussion or reporting that are simply off-limits. This is the environment that Putin has created in Russia over the last two decades.

Now the actions by Republicans in California and Maine hardly rise to the level of Putin's control of the media in Russia. But, combined with the constant attacks on and threats against the media by Trump and his administration, it is certainly a trend we can not ignore nor should we tolerate. It is especially disconcerting when we consider the fact that Fox News has now become a propaganda outlet for Trump, even beyond its long pro-Republican partisanship. The incestuous relationship between the network and Trump, which reportedly has certain network hosts in constant communication with the President discussing strategy and messaging, has often made it difficult to tell whether the network is driving Trump policies and rhetoric or the other way around. And Fox's morphing into a state propaganda outlet was highlighted by the fact that the administration pre-released the Nunes memo to the network before it was released to the public and the rest of the media.

(One quick side note about Fox News and Rupert Murdoch: one interesting note in the New Yorker article on China's connections with Jared Kushner was a little tidbit about Wendi Deng Murdoch. According to the article, "U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials have long speculated about Wendi Murdoch’s ties to the Chinese government. Internally, some Chinese officials spoke about her in ways that suggested they had influence over her, the former senior official, who was briefed on the intelligence, said." Wendi Murdoch was Rupert Murdoch's wife from 1999 to 2013 as well as  being a supposedly close friend of Jared and Ivanka. The possibility that the influential wife of probably the world's most powerful media magnate was potentially an agent of China seems like it might be worth a bit more coverage than it seems to have engendered.)

As I say, we still have a newly vibrant independent media in the US. But the marriage of Fox News and Trumpism, along with Republican efforts to create supposedly independent news organizations that hide the fact that they are simply a front for the Republican party and its politicians, are certainly disturbing signs that we are taking some initial steps toward the "managed media" concept designed and perfected by Surkov and Putin. As the Chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development says, "Today, autocrats don’t need to kill people, they just need to control media and money. If you’re good at that, you can stay in power for a long time".