Washington Post forced to issue several corrections on 'Russian bot' stories following Twitter Files
Twitter Files reporter Matt Taibbi said the paper's 'minor' corrections only 'compounded the problem'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Washington Post issued a series of corrections on stories published during the Russiagate saga, a direct result of reporting from the Twitter Files by independent journalist Matt Taibbi.
In January, Taibbi drew attention to Hamilton 68, a "dashboard" that purportedly monitored Russian bot activity and was frequently cited by top Democrats and the media in the height of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. But behind the scenes, Twitter executives trashed Hamilton 68 and deliberated over whether they should publicly rebuke the program.
"In layman’s terms, the Hamilton 68 barely had any Russians. In fact, apart from a few RT accounts, it’s mostly full of ordinary Americans, Canadians, and British," Taibbi wrote at the time. "It was a scam. Instead of tracking how 'Russia' influenced American attitudes, Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}On Thursday, The Post told readers it had revisited several pieces that cited Hamilton 68's faulty research and issued "minor" corrections.
"In 2017 and 2018, The Washington Post published multiple articles that cited data from Hamilton 68, an online tool created by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, to detect Russian influence online. Media coverage of this tool has come under scrutiny in recent months from critics questioning the validity of Hamilton 68’s research methods," The Post wrote.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Washington Post issued corrections on multiple stories citing the scrutinized Hamilton 68 "dashboard" following Twitter Files reporting from Matt Taibbi. (ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images)
The Post continued, "In light of these questions, The Post reviewed its articles and concluded that they appropriately reported on emerging research, including Hamilton 68, to offer insights into the nature of Russian influence operations in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. But the review also found some imprecision in how seven Washington Post articles and a Post newsletter described Hamilton 68 and its findings. Today, The Post has corrected and revised those articles and the newsletter to make these descriptions clearer to readers."
In addition to individual changes that apply to certain articles, each of the corrected articles inform readers with a note that "A previous version of this article incorrectly implied that the Twitter accounts tracked by the Hamilton 68 online dashboard were controlled by the Russian government or its agents. The Hamilton 68 researchers said the accounts echoed Russian propaganda but did not reveal the identities of the Twitter accounts they monitored or who controlled them. The article has been corrected."
Taibbi, however, asserts their corrections don't go far enough.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}WASHINGTON POST HAS CORRECTED OVER A DOZEN ARTICLE RELATED TO STEELE DOSSIER COVERAGE
"I really want to be gracious and thank whoever at the @washingtonpost insisted on a review of their Hamilton 68 reports, but they needed to make more than ‘minor’ changes and seem to have compounded the problem," Taibbi began in a Twitter thread Friday.
The Substack writer knocked how The Post's "fixes" preserved language that described Hamilton 68 as a tracker of "Russia-linked Twitter accounts."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"At the very least, that should read something like, ‘…which tracks mostly American and non-Russian accounts, along with a few Russians,’" Taibbi wrote. "These fixes don’t get at the main issue, that the source wildly inflated the Russia angle and refused to disclose whom they were really tracking. Analysts like Clint Watts remain quoted credulously, even in a story that suggests without evidence a certain account may be Russian.
Journalist Matt Taibbi called out The Washington Post for not going far enough with its corrections following his Twitter Files reporting. (Daniel Zuchnik/WireImage)
Taibbi continued, "To leave up stories purporting to describe Russian bot activity while citing sources tied to not one but two known Russian bot frauds… shows this is no real fix," adding "these ‘corrections’ actually just give new polish to the original DisInfo."
When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Washington Post pointed to Thursday's statement and declined to comment further.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Hamilton 68, which was spearheaded by former FBI special agent and MSNBC contributor Clint Watts, was operated by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a "neoliberal think tank" founded in 2017 with an advisory council that includes Clinton ally John Podesta, former Obama-era acting CIA director Michael Morrell, former Obama official Michael McFaul and The Bulwark editor-at-large Bill Kristol.
"I think we need to just call this out on the bulls--- it is," Twitter's then-head of trust and safety Yoel Roth wrote in an October 2017 email, later writing in January 2018 that the dashboard "falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Virtually any conclusion drawn from it will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian," Roth wrote in February 2018.
Former Twitter Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth railed against Hamilton 68 for grossly overstating the influence of Russian bots on the platform. (Knight Foundation/CNN)
Taibbi called out Hamilton 68's methodology that monitored "600" Russian-linked Twitter accounts but never publicly shared who was on the list.
"Twitter executives were in a unique position to recreate Hamilton’s list, reverse-engineering it from the site’s requests for Twitter data. Concerned about the deluge of Hamilton-based news stories, they did so – and what they found shocked them," Taibbi wrote. "'These accounts,' they concluded, ‘are neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots.’ ‘No evidence to support the statement that the dashboard is a finger on the pulse of Russian information ops.’ ‘Hardly illuminating a massive influence operation.’"
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Along with The Post, other media outlets that repeatedly cited Hamilton 68 included MSNBC, Politico and Mother Jones, all publishing "at least 14 Hamilton 68 stories" during the Trump years.
In addition, Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff, Calif., Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Calif., Richard Blumenthal, Conn., and Mark Warner, Va., as well as Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford elevated Hamilton 68, along with universities like Harvard, Princeton, and New York University.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Post was previously forced to issue corrections on over a dozen articles related to its coverage of the infamous Steele dossier after developments from the Durham probe further discredited the already-shaky memo.