Investigation: Inside Russia's disinformation war (Pt 2)
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 26 October 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This podcast exposed a Russian fake news campaign designed to undermine and spread fear about the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine. Now we follow an intriguing trail which links this Russian disinformation campaign to a British journalist.
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Guests:
Tom Whipple, science editor at The Times.
Renee diResta, Stanford Internet Observatory.
Dr Jake Wallis, Australian Strategic Policy Institutes International Cyber centre.
Edward Lucas, columnist at The Times.
Mark Galeotti, Russia expert.
Colin Stevens, a publisher.
Host: Manveen Rana.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Last week we brought you one of our own investigations. It exposed a Russian |
| 0:06.2 | disinformation campaign which was planting images and videos across the world |
| 0:11.2 | aimed at undermining confidence in the Oxford COVID vaccine. |
| 0:15.0 | The images that the Times has identified |
| 0:18.0 | are designed to drive fear to discredit the |
| 0:22.0 | competitor vaccines that might penetrate markets that Russia is |
| 0:26.7 | particularly interested in targeting at the moment. We could see that the images |
| 0:30.9 | which showed people turning into monkeys after taking the vaccine |
| 0:36.2 | had been commissioned and coordinated by officials within the Russian state. |
| 0:41.2 | It's no coincidence that Russian officials are using the same language that we're seeing |
| 0:48.3 | rippling across Russian state media and that is being circulated across covert online networks. |
| 0:55.0 | These are hallmarks of Russian disinformation campaign. |
| 0:59.0 | The reaction to our investigation was immediate. |
| 1:02.0 | It made headlines around the world. |
| 1:04.6 | An investigation by The Times has exposed a Russian disinformation campaign. |
| 1:10.2 | A |
| 1:10.6 | A times investigation. aimed at times at |
| 1:13.8 | time's investigation traces the campaign directly to the Russian state |
| 1:18.0 | propaganda spreading fear about the vaccine has also shown up on the internet pushed by Russia. |
| 1:24.0 | The picture helpfully they the Russians helpfully showing a picture of an angry |
| 1:28.0 | monkey in this astonishing story whatever will they come up with next. |
| 1:32.0 | The foreign secretary Dominic Dominic Rabb, condemned the Russian tactics that we'd exposed. |
... |
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