Larry King Duped Into 'Disinfomercial' on Social Media By China (and Possibly Russia)

For 25 years, until 2010, Larry King had a live interview show on CNN. But now ProPublica reports "In the twilight of a remarkable radio and television career spanning more than six decades, battling health problems but determined to stay in the public eye, King was ensnared in an international disinformation scheme." It involved filming Larry King asking questions, and then later splicing in responses from Anastasia Dolgova (an employee of a Russia state-owned broadcaster) — and then widely promoting the footage on social media: Posted on YouTube under the title "Larry King US China Special Conference 2019," and quickly spread by social media accounts linked to Chinese government influence operations, the fake interview went viral across Chinese-language social media, likely reaching hundreds of thousands of users on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube... By conveying Chinese disinformation through a journalist for Russian media, it may exemplify the increasing media cooperation between the two countries... ProPublica found that the Chinese government was involved in distributing the video. Our analysis of data released by Twitter showed that nearly 250 fake accounts linked to China's government shared nearly 40 different links to the video a total of more than 500 times. Around half of those fake accounts had more than 10,000 followers... In September 2018, six months before King taped the Dolgova video, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attended a ceremony in Vladivostok, Russia. There, the Russian state-controlled Rossiya Segodnya news agency and Chinese state-controlled China Media Group signed an agreement to cooperate in news exchange, joint reporting and distribution, and promotion of each other's reports, especially on social media... The Russia-China partnership reflects the alignment of the two countries' political messaging, as both promote alternatives to liberal democracy in a post-Cold War world. To achieve that goal, the Kremlin is building a "global media conglomerate," said Nataliya Bugayova, a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Russian media outlets have signed more than 50 cooperation agreements with foreign media since 2015, she said... In a telephone interview, King expressed remorse and bewilderment.

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