Radio France’s investigative department has been investigating for several months as part of the “Story Killers” project coordinated by Forbidden Stories, together with 30 international media outlets. It lifts the veil behind the scenes of the now booming disinformation industry.
On June 27, 2022, journalist Mohammed Zubair was arrested. A month earlier he had published a series of tweets highlighting controversial statements against the Prophet Muhammad by a spokesman for India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (Bharatiya Janata Party or “Indian People’s Party”, Hindu nationalist right-wing). Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of a renowned fact-checking website known for its coverage of online content aimed at India’s Muslim minority, will remain in prison for more than three weeks. The arrest is seen by press rights advocates as retaliation by the authorities for his work decoding disinformation and his criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, has faced online attacks and lawsuits since the publication of her investigation into the manipulation of information by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “troll armies” when he took power in 2016. Today she no longer travels without a bulletproof vest and often accompanied by a security team.
Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro, who was one of the first to investigate the Internet Research Agency’s troll farm in Saint Petersburg, fell victim to a violent disinformation campaign from Russia: online attacks, abusive emails, ads targeting her and her public broadcaster Yle. The journalist even received a text message from someone posing as her late father, claiming he was alive and “watching” her.
>> “Story Killers”: The death of an Indian journalist marks the beginning of an investigation into misinformation
In her city of Bangalore in central India, journalist Gauri Lankesh also reported disinformation. Especially the one propagated by the right-wing Hindu nationalist party BJP. A way for them to denounce the methods of the extreme right in their country. In September 2017, when the journalist was planning to publish an editorial entitled “In the Age of Fake News” in which she denounced “lie factories”, she was shot dead by a person linked to a Hindu nationalist organization.
100 journalists mobilized
More than five years after the murder of Gauri Lankesh, Forbidden Stories, whose mission is to continue the work of journalists who have been threatened, imprisoned or murdered, has brought together more than 100 journalists from 30 international media outlets, including the investigative cell of Radio France, to study them prosecute his work. With this “Story Killers” research, an international consortium of investigative journalists examines the dark market of disinformation mercenaries for the first time.
For more than six months, the consortium was able to identify key players in this activity. From India to Saudi Arabia, through Israel, Spain and the United States, the consortium examined the companies and mercenaries now selling “turnkey” services to states or men’s politics to influence opinion, rig elections or smear reputation to the detriment of information and democracy. Although this highly profitable new industry poses an often unseen global threat, it is booming. It is all the easier to develop with avatars, bots and fake accounts, since no regulation really regulates it. At least 81 countries used organized social media manipulation campaigns in 2020, according to a report by the Oxford Internet Institute.
Several days full of revelations
Journalists are often among the first victims of these increasingly popular services of authoritarian or corrupt regimes. According to Forbidden Stories analysis of data from the NGO Committee to Protect Journalists, one in four reporters killed outside a conflict zone between 2017 and 2022 were targeted by disinformation campaigns or received direct threats via social media before being killed. Including in particular:
• Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed when her car bomb exploded in Malta in 2017.
• Gauri Lankesh, shot dead by motorbike attackers outside her home in India in 2017.
• Jamal Khashoggi, assassinated in 2018 in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.
• Rafael Emilio Moreno, shot dead in his restaurant in Montelíbano, Colombia, in 2022.
Indian protesters condemn the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh in Bangalore, India September 12, 2017. (JAGADEESH NV/EPA)
Despite the threats against her, Maria Ressa continues to uncover the mechanisms of misinformation in order to make it known to as many people as possible. “They are using freedom of expression to silence you. But I refuse to remain silent,” the Nobel laureate proclaimed. In the following days, the journalists of the “Story Killers” operation, including those of Radio France and the French newspaper Le Monde, will publish their revelations, revealing the often astonishing backgrounds of this industry, raising the question of regulation networks whose current functioning the Blurs standards and undermines the very foundations of democracies when not wielded as weapons in the hands of pharmacies operating in the shadows.
Consortium Media Members: Radio France, The Guardian and The Observer, Le Monde, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, ZDF, Paper Trail Media, Die Zeit, Proceso, OCCRP, Knack, Le Soir, Haaretz, The Marker, El Pais, SverigesTelevision, Radio Télévision Suisse , Folha, Confluence Media, IRPI, IStories, Armando Info, Code for Africa, Bird, Tempo Media Group, El Espectador, Der Standard, Tamedia, Krik.
Alert the Radio France investigative unit: To send information anonymously and securely to Radio France’s investigative department, you can now click alerter.radiofrance.fr