A portion of the website for the website fara.gov, on the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
CC: John C. Demers
Assistant Attorney General for National Security
National Security Division
Greetings FARA Unit,
My name is Ariel Sheen and I am an American citizen from the State of Florida that is currently under consideration for an Atlantic Council Fellowship and a Social Science One research grant on the social media behavior of Venezuela’s state media company TeleSUR.
Following comments made by Senator Marco Rubio, my representative, as well as comments by Senator Cornyn, Senator Gardner and Congressman Joe Wilson – I began to investigate whether I could find evidence that indicated that the TeleSUR has been acting as a foreign agent of the Nicolás Maduro regime on American soil.
After over a year of investigation, I can say definitively say that the answer is yes – TeleSUR is not a news outlet but the face of Venezuela’s intelligence services.
I’m emailing you now to share with you my findings and to offer you access to my research folder so that you can confirm anything that is claimed therein.
This report shows the various means that TeleSUR seeks to high-jack Facebook’s algorithm to have their information presented, an example of a shell account being used to communicate online, as well as an example of a “Hands Off Venezuela/Anti-Fascism” group member admitting on Facebook their attempts to shut down the debate of Steve Bannon and David Frum in Canada.
This work of journalism reviews the public, unethical behavior of TeleSUR operations and delineates which Facebook policies they violate.
This report shows how TeleSUR and their affiliates used coordinated messaging in order to amplify certain perspectives across a wide range of news outlets and blogs.
This report reviews operational documents published by the Venezuelan government and the PSUV; anonymous and public comments published by journalists that have previously worked for the company; as well as originally obtained data and research to illustrate that TeleSUR is directed by Nicolas Maduro and that it is a propaganda organization working on his direction and not a news company.
This report highlights the anti-Semitic aspects of TeleSUR’s coordinated inauthentic behavior network online.
If you have any questions, would like to be provided access to my research folder to confirm my claims, or would like to discuss my consulting for similar issues related to social media and democracy, please feel free to contact me.
This article reviews operational documents published by the Venezuelan government and the PSUV; news published by TeleSUR that has been shown to be fake; published investigations regarding the state of access to journalism in Venezuela and TeleSUR’s relation to current and former media partners; anonymous and public comments published by journalists that have previously worked for the organization; as well as originally obtained data and research.
I then present a case study which illustrates how TeleSUR and its journalistic associates violated the best practices for a standard of care in Journalism.
Based upon the above evidence, I then examine legal issues related to journalistic malpractice to determine whether TeleSUR aligns with the characteristics of a news organization or, as it’s many detractors say, it is better classified as a propaganda outlet for the Venezuelan government.
Operational Documents Indicate Motives for Unethical Practices
In December 2003, at a meeting of media professionals for brainstorming how a new propaganda machine — TeleSUR — would operate at the Cuartel de la Montana, Hugo Chaves spoke of his desire to “create a breach in the media wall” and via “social networks”. TeleSUR was started by people who wanted to have a means by which they could shape their audience’s perception to the same views as that held by those who funded it — the PSUV. Thus while TeleSUR may claim to be no different from other news organizations — the behavior of their correspondents, of their executives, and the people who provide it’s funding and oversight all show that this is not the case. Looking in Venezuela’s own public records allows one to see this clearly.
Former Telesur president Andres Izarra bluntly characterized the goal of the Venezuelan government’s media strategy as a form of “communication hegemony” (Pradas, 2007).
After stating that capitalism is reaching a potentially terminal crisis, Hugo Chavez states in his Program for the Homeland 2013–2019 that: “In the words of Antonio Gramsci, the old must finally end so that the birth of the new can be manifested to the full… it is difficult to know exactly when this great horizon will become visible, but we should deploy significant and well-aimed efforts in the interest of its advent”
The PSUV’s Redbook, the Bolivarian iteration of Mao’s Little Red Book, is another place where information on the nature of TeleSUR can be determined. After stating their resolve to create alliances with similar political and social movements worldwide with the aim of achieving a new international pluripolar order — they gives examples of such initiatives: “ALBA, Petrosur, Petro-Caribe, TeleSUR, Bank of the South, UNASUR and the creation project of the Organization of Latin American and Caribbean Nations, are to fight and defeat imperialism (PSUV 35; underline and italics added). In other words,TeleSUR is viewed by the party who controls the company as an instrument of war.
What the terrain for this conflict looks like for the PSUV/TeleSUR can be found on page 89 of Hugo Chavez’s 2013–2019 Program for the Country. After stating that the main goal is to create a “new communication order” to be built, it states the need to:
“Strengthen the multi-State Telesur television and radio networks and Radio del Sur, together with their respective electronic platforms… in order to disseminate the truth of our peoples and break the information blockade and censorship to which the peoples of imperialist powers are subject to by the transnational communication corporations.”
Again, in Hugo Chavez’s own words TeleSUR is not a news station, but conceived of as an instrument of information warfare.
In a 2015 presentation given to the National Assembly by the Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information, the following information appears: “TeleSUR is oriented to promote a strategy that deepens the new socialist values and ethics”.
Their goal, another words, is to proselytize — not inform about the truth.
Low Quality, Poorly Sourced News Reporting With Undisclosed Bias
In June 2003, the New York times saw their brand forever tarnished after “executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd resigned their posts amid a much-publicized scandal that not only rocked journalistic circles but also left the newspaper’s readers wondering just how severely they had been duped” (Calvert).
The reason? One of their journalists had been found guilty of significant fabrications, plagiarism and errors. Jayson Blair, now a case study of what not to do, “lacked journalistic integrity and violated cardinal tenets of journalistic practice.The Times found in its investigation at least a half-dozen instances in which Blair lifted sentences and quotations from other published sources such as Associated Press and Washington Post” (Calvert).
While such reporting at the New York Times causes a journalist to be fired and forever shamed; the managing and executive editors to resign in disgrace while also forcing the company to set up new processes to ensure it didn’t happen again — this is the normal form of news reporting for TeleSUR.
This is evident in the photo above and the article it comes from. You can see in the photo that there is no “real author” connect to it, no parent names their child “ms-RSF-rg” and the way the article is sourced is solely by stating the places where information was pulled from — not what was pulled from where — as is the traditional professional standard.
According to an interview with a former TeleSUR English employee their “news writers” — which operate on shifts from 7am to 3pm, 3pm to 11pm, and 11pm to 7am — are tasked each day with reviewing the current events of the days from news websites and then publishing 5 different stories. In the process of stitching the articles together they also go through an “ideological polishing”.
Another former TeleSUR employee I interviewed sent me the below meme that circulated around the Quito office to mock Cyril Mychalejko, the former assistant-director of TeleSUR English, for the frequency with which he requested changes to news coverage to better meet the current editorial line developed in at the head office in Caracas in coordination with Venezuela’s Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information.
Thus while the content is by definition news, given the poor citations for information sources; the lack of author attribution; and the political influence from Caracas on the story it is better classified as opinion rather than truth. Which makes sense, after all, as he who pays the piper calls the tune.
TeleSUR’s Anti-Science Fake News
The first sentence for this TeleSUR article that was re-posted by a number of major media outlets, is as follows.
“A mysterious, cigar-shaped, 400-meter-long object is speeding through our solar system at almost 200,000 miles per hour, and astronomers — including Professor Stephen Hawking — believe it might (or might not) be an alien spaceship.”
What’s interesting about TeleSUR’s take is that they explicitly give the belief that this object is an alien spaceship to Stephen Hawking- despite the fact that he never made such a comment.
Despite what TeleSUR says, America doesn’t have a base in Costa Rica and the International Criminal Court has not declared Brazilian ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a political prisoner
As part of Telesur’s coverage of Costa Rica’s presidential elections, they once said that there was a U.S. Southern Command military based in Costa Rica.
The base, according to the report, “Presencia de milicia de EE.UU. en Costa Rica es evidente”, was located in the Guanacaste province. There is, however, no military base there. In a formal letter Patricia Villegas, TeleSUR’s second in command to Nicolas Maduro, the television station acknowledged it had made a “regrettable mistake”.
TeleSUR also falsely published patently false information about the
Interesting to note is that despite over a year having gone by since this fake news has been debunked, that Cuba’s news outlet — and TeleSUR partner — re RadioRebelde, still not taken down the fake news.
The American Council on Science and Health has an interesting take on this article in particular and those within this category in general as being a part of a general Russian campaign to influence Americans to have an anti-science. This isn’t just conjecture, but a part of research they’ve done to determine the sources of these articles.
As you can see from the above, after doing a Google search for other outlets that had published the “fake news” story, TeleSUR was first, with Russian media outlets coming in second. I blockquote the ACSH article below, which is
Truthfully, no respectable news outlet should have covered this. The head researcher is Konstantin Korotkov, a well-known crank who once claimed to have photographed a soul leaving a human body. He is a hoaxer, so this is a non-story, just like “Crazy Person on Street Keeps Yelling Crazy Things” is also a non-story. Korotkov should have been ignored. But he wasn’t. Why?
Fake Aliens and Fake News: It’s Always the Russians
The timeline seems to go like this:
The story began in Russia’s state-controlled media. On March 5th, Mir 24picked up the story, which was then followed by Sputnikon March 10th. Then, the mother of all Russian propaganda outlets, RT, ran the story early on March 13th. From there, the story went “mainstream” in the Western press.
Stop and think about that for a second. A complete hoax was circulated among Russian state-controlled media as legitimate news, and the Western media fell for it. Sure, some of them provided “caveats,” but the point is that Russian propaganda has so infiltrated the public discourse that it appears regularly in mainstream Western media outlets. That’s shocking.
Why is Russia doing this? It appears that the Kremlin is waging a war on truth. (There is a book that discusses this by Peter Pomerantsev called Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia.) By purposefully muddying the distinction between fact and fiction, the Kremlin can further its own agenda.
Before Western journalists, who seem only to care about boosting traffic, copy-and-paste these clickbait stories from their Russian counterparts, they might want to first ask, “Is it true?” and, “Whom does the story benefit?” You know… the sorts of questions journalists are supposed to ask.
Disclaimer: the initial headline of this story has been changed from “Ancient Mummies in Peru ‘Not Human, Possibly Alien’: Scientists” to the current headline identifying Russian researcher Konstantin Korotkov as the scientist who claimed such findings. We have also included refutals of the claims by these Russian researchers in bold.
and the fact that the rebuttals of the claims that they added clearly show that the entire story is bogus — and yet it remains published.
Unethical Journalistic Practices Claimed By Anonymous Current and Former Employees
TeleSUR employees express fear of sharing their experience out of fear of the organization’s reach.
Convincing several former and current TeleSUR employees to share their story under the condition of anonymity isn’t the only way to learn about the unethical journalistic practices at TeleSUR.
On the GlassDoor reviewsfor TeleSUR English, there are a number of comments left which further indicate that the organization is the very definition of “fake news”
The news room at TeleSUR is described by one former journalist as follows:
“No ethics
– Cheap propaganda.
– No team work
This TV station is a joke. It’s all based in propaganda and lacks totally of ethics or professionalism. A government elite from Cuba and Venezuela manages all the “news” that are broadcasted. Couldn’t make less sense. Opinion diversity is banned and most of people in the offices have no experience in journalism/media at all. Pay… depends on who you know, and how aligned are you with their ideology (kiss butt).”
Another anonymous former employee highlights the connection between the Venezuelan Government and the organization in a different posting:
Cons
“Leftist slant on everything skews the truth sometimes. The building in Quito is mostly empty-space hasn’t been utilized well. Some staff are too affiliated with the Venezuelan government.”
Advice to Management
“Hire more journalists with journalistic qualifications and experience in order to grow the website further. Schedules are also subject to change without much notice.”
These concerns about professionalism are echoed by another commentator on February 6th, 2018:
Cons
“HR is rude and unhelpful, no clear lines of authority, low expectations, low accommodation for foreign staff, most people there aren’t journalists”
A Videographer and Senior Editor in Washington, DC — physically removed from the Quito location — is still able to feel the political pressure despite the geographic divide”
Cons
“Hard Left Ideology which makes very difficult to make real news”
Another anonymous source came to me directly.
After publishing my first article on Medium about TeleSUR English, I received an email that contained the following message from someone on staff:
The email closes with a re-iteration the themes of unprofessionalism and influence by the Venezuelan government:
“The top-down culture from Caracas to Quito and heedlessness regarding content quality and web management (which came to a head when the English page was accidentally un-published) consistently hobbles the performance of TSE, causing waves of talent to flee before TSE folds…”
There are, however, more than just anonymous sources that state that the TeleSUR is not a news station.
Unethical Journalistic Practices Claimed Openly by Current and Former Employees
After three years of trying to get TeleSUR to a specific level of professionalism and failing Aram Ahorian, one of TeleSUR’s founders, distanced himself from the organization saying thatit had become nothing but a cheap propaganda shop. “It is supposed to be a Latin American multi-state company. But it is not yet. It is a Venezuelan company, controlled by people who are interested in managing budgets and not news projects. It has to do with the internal struggle that exists in the Government of Venezuela.”
In October of 2018, TeleSUR anchor Daniela Vielman resigned from the network and released a statement stating that staff employed by TeleSUR are “treated as if they were working in a political party” and frequently imposed upon her and other “their political convictions.”
Following a post on Twitter that was critical of TeleSUR’s editorial choice to post an article supporting Donald Trump be Cassanda Fairbanks, former reporter Charles Davis saw all articles that he had previously written for them have their name taken off, and then shortly thereafter were deleted.
Jon Jeter’s article Betraying the Bolivarian Revolution goes into extensive detail about this. Given the conversation that the article was generating on Mint Press News, I created a employee satisfaction survey and posted a in the comments. The results as a whole were as I expected, and I include an except below.
What are some ways that TeleSUR English could improve?
1. Hire a new director [this was then Pablo Vivanco]
2. Value workers, develop clear journalistic standards
3. teleSUR could live up to the principals it espouses. Its operation in Caracas exists simply as a propaganda outlet for Venezuela foreign policy. I overheard star Spanish language reporters speculate how they could best portray the government in their pieces. If it truly represented the voice of the most vulnerable and traditionally underrepresented, we would hear the voices of Venezuela’s poorest, who are suffering the effects of the country’s worst ever crisis. Whatever the cause of that crisis may be, we never hear those perspectives. While many TeleSUR journalists are well intentioned, all content, no matter how insignificant or where it’s from, must pass through the Cold War like propaganda lens in Caracas before making it to air or online.
What three words would you use to describe TeleSUR English’s work culture?
1. Bad bad bad
2. Nepotism, back-stabbing, toxic
3. Disorganized, Dictatorial, Directionless
Anonymous sources of GlassDoor, anonymous sources obtained from an email and a targeted survey, as well as the comments of former employees all indicate that unethical journalistic practices are the norm at TeleSUR.
A conversation that occurred on March 21st, 2018 on Facebook in the comments section indicates that ethical violations went beyond the violation of professional standards, but also of labor law.
Unethical Business Practices with Journalists
In an exchange on Facebook former TeleSUR reporters Matt Sedillo and Irene Monica Sanchez, state that they were contracted for work and never paid.
In the comments section on the same post, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan stated “they made me feel like a sleazy bill collector because I asked where the money that they promised me was.”
Given TeleSURs relationship with Jacobin writers and staff, as well as Jacobin’s business ethics, one wonders as to the specifics of their relationship.
Another unethical business practice of TeleSUR’s explains why it is that so few of the journalists associated with TeleSUR don’t respond — non-disclosure agreements.
I’ve learned from multiple former personnel in telephone interviews that following the publication of material on the Caracas Chronicle website, all foreign personnel on the TeleSUR English staff signed non-disclosure agreement addendum to their contracts. They did so under duress as Pablo Vivanco implied that they would be fired if they did not sign. They did so without consideration — typical for new conditions being inserted into the contract. And they did not provide a certified true-copy in English of the new conditions for those that did not speak Spanish.
I also received reports of significant violations of Ecuador’s labor law, such as scheduling people to work 6 or 7 days in a row.
Unethical Behavior Towards Other Journalists
In the article Struggle, Appropriation and Attacks on Indigenous Journalismin the online magazine Intercontinental Cry we learn the story of Courtney Parker, a University of Georgia College of Public Health PhD candidate. Parker was investigating Nicaragua’s northern Caribbean coast — where there are ongoing conflicts between Indigenous Miskitu people’s and colonialists. After publishing a series of sourced articles about the shooting of an Indigenous Miskitu leader by Sandanista youth and other issues in the area, a series of articles published online by a Sandinista-party associated “independent” media outlet. In what could be described as Orwellian irony,
“The politically motivated attack accused Parker and others of being part of some corporate imperialist power conglomerate trying to influence the upcoming November elections (where Daniel Ortega is set to run virtually unopposed with his wife as vice-president.) The byline claimed that “the reposting in various progressive outlets of biased report confirms the convergence in reporting international affairs between alternative and corporate media.”
Following the publication of these reports, TeleSUR then republished content contained there. Because of this and other examples of unethical behavior, The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas published an exposé about the Sandinista party and the Nicaraguan army intimidating and spying on journalists working for the magazine, Confidencial.
During their investigation the Knight Center documented multiple “campaigns to discredit journalists through official and unofficial media…” (i.e. the tag team efforts of Telesur and Tortilla Con Sal.)
It is not just reporters in countries that are aligned with Venezuela that face coordinated responses for coverage that contradicts the TeleSUR narrative. Within Venezuela a number of news stations that reported about corruption, electoral fraud, or systematic government problems have had their websites blocked. In The State of Internet Censorship in Venezuela, a group of digitalinvestigators analyzed the relationship between digital media access and censorship and was able to show how ISPs use DNS and HTTP means to prevent access to such material. In their summation the Venezuelan state — of which TeleSUR is an appendage of — is able to block the narratives that conflict with the one it wishes to promote.
“The censorship events identified as part of this study (particularly the blocking of news websites and blogs) contradict the rights outlined by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in its report on Standards for a Free, Open and Inclusive Internet. Media censorship and the blocking of blogs limit press freedom and the right to freedom of thought and expression. In examining each right outlined by IACHR, questions around the necessity and proportionality of these censorship events are inevitably raised, particularly in terms of how they relate to human rights.”
While difficult to determine whether or not Wikipedia contributor with DNS address 82.35.252.246 was a TeleSUR employee or not, given that this is the only article that they have ever worked on this is very likely the case.
It’s likely that in addition to the Venezuelan government’s attempts to silence journalists within their country; and coordinated attempts to delegitimize journalists that present a narrative contrasting to their own; that there also exists a need for TeleSUR to monitor public spaces like Wikipedia to ensure that content critical of its operation is not available.
Given that Chris Hedges, a regular TeleSUR and RT contributor, recently reported about how Wikipedia was a “tool of the elite” this is ironic in a special way.
Content and Imagery to Incite Violence
This set of pictures using Donald Trump’s campaign slogan is just one of many examples wherein internecine conflict is praised. By itself, there’s nothing innately problematic about this. Media, however, occurs within an symbolic ecosystem so a broader context to fully understand the images is required.
In my other case-study article on TeleSUR’s use of fake and alternative news sites and coordinated inauthentic journalism I illustrated how clustered use of a literary analogy in relation to a news event indicated that a number of showed there to be some kind of connection amongst the authors.
Given the journalists employment history; that Venezuelan media theorist and TeleSUR consultant Luis Britto frequently uses the term; as well as other TeleSUR-associated writers prior mobilization of the analogy I hypothesized that it was part of a concerted effort to attempt to influence Americans. This, however, is not the only manner in which their content seeks to shape their reader’s perceptions. Another way that they have sought to shape perceptions of America is by associating it with fascism through their own media and via the media channels of their partners.
Despite the fact that subject area specialists say that it is a “bad historical analogy,” since Donald Trump’s oath of office a veritable cottage industry of journalists and political commentator debating and editorializing as to whether or not he a fascist has formed (Riley 31). One political organization with extensive connections to Antifa — which is composed of members of various U.S. Communists groups such as the Revolutionary Communist Party and Workers World Party — is Refuse Fascism.
According to Influence Watch, Refuse Fascism is a project fiscally sponsored by Alliance for Global Justice, which is a front organization — like Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.); World Can’t Wait; Not In Our Name;and Stop Banking the Bomb – for the Revolutionary Communist Party. They desire the violent overthrow of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, and justify this by asserting that the Trump administration functions is a “fascist regime.”
The group has been associated with “organizing demonstrations against President Trump’s inauguration as part of the “Disrupt J20” movement orchestrating demonstrations against right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopolous which devolved into rioting, and plann marches and occupations to last until President Trump and Vice President Pence leave office.
Via TeleSUR’s official media distribution channel — images reinforcing that it is imperative to kill fascists are shared, while through their coordinated inauthentic behavior network crasser propaganda images are shared. Not surprisingly, the suggestion that politicians should be killed by snipers occurred during the 2018 elections. If this seems just like a fortuitous juxtaposition, it’s important to know that the ANSWER Coalition has a long-standing association with the Cuba and Venezuela Solidarity Committee — Venezuelan and Cuban intelligence front groups.
This front group and it’s organizational core, the Revolutionary Communist Party, along with Venezuela’s other partners such as the Workers World Party and the Party for Socialism and Liberation thus not only provide a ready audience to consume TeleSUR’s content but also act on the political philosophy informing it.
TeleSUR’s Connections with Radical Political Activity
It’s operationally difficult to determine the impact the above content has on its audience. There are, however, instances I was able to determine through investigation on Facebook.
One was a Hands Off Venezuela member and Toronto Against Fascism associate, Mubarik Adams, who attended the Steve Bannon v. David Frum debate with a large group of political activists with the express purpose of using violence to end the event.
In the article Defend Antifa on the Workers World Party website the group states, “Communists and anarchists have proudly worn the mantle of antifa since the very beginning. Communists gave their lives in the tens of millions to fight Nazis in Europe, and armed multinational communist fighters have long battles the Klan’s fascist terror in the South.”
Considering Venezuelan political activist and former visiting professor to University of North Carolina and Consul General of Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in New Orleans, Louisiana Jesus “Chuco” Garciahas frequently encouraged students to engage in radical political activism, it’s no surprise that for TeleSUR, violent, organized armed conflict between racial groups is its vision of American Greatness (Brown-Vincent 11).
Given that George Ciccariello-Maher has a specialization in Venezuela and has been an outspoken defender of Antifa and participant in it’s female recruitment program, it begs the question as to his involvement as well.
TeleSUR Partners Work with Yemeni Intelligence to Doxx US Troops
Showing that 30 day bans can be like whack-a-mole — once an account goes down, associated accounts post new links to the same information. For context, VK is a social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg.
While previously they seemed to be just a pair of journalists that benefitted from the fake-backlinking and coordinated inauthentic behavior networks — now they’ve moved to active and open collaboration with Yemeni intelligence services by publishing the personal information of active U.S. military personnel.
Terrorist Threats Made in Florida Come to Life in Colombia
The day before a car bomb targeting a police academy in Bogota, Colombia exploded and killed at least 21 people — Tyler Miller, a resident of Lake Worth, Florida was arrested for spraypainting “Kill A Cop, Save a Life” next to a hammer and sickle.
Back in 2013, Miller had another run in with law enforcement when they say he tried to buy an SKS Semi-Automatic Rifle online.
According to the report, a witness reported seeing him at a firearms store and filling out paperwork, wearing a Chinese military uniform.
Deputies then made a visit to his house and found two AK-47 style airsoft guns in his room, which was decorated with Russian and Chinese communist-type paraphernalia.
What specific connections exist between Tyler Miller and media operations directed by the Venezuelan intelligence services intending to radicalize Americans is now unclear.
What is apparent is the connection between TeleSUR’s glorification of politically motived violence and it’s perceived need to “teach the public a lesson”.
Following the bombing of the police station in Bogota, I started receiving a apologias for it in WhatApps group chats that I’ve been able to get added to since moving to Colombia.
One of the things that the rapid, targeted deployment of such content suggests is that these media artefacts were prepared in advance of the bombing.
TeleSUR’s Connections with Violent Latin American Organizations
TeleSUR has long been accused of having institutional ties to the FARC-EP.
Besides discovering a number of FARC-EP documents stored on TeleSUR’s website — which can be perused here– and that FARC-EP associated accounts like to share TeleSUR content I’ve not yet been able to ascertain any new information on the relationship between TeleSUR and FARC-EP.
I did, however, find something else interesting.
After I started friending a large number of the accounts associated with TeleSUR’s coordinated inauthenic behavior network, besides the FARC-EP accounts being suggested to me as People You May Know a number of ELN and EPL accounts started being suggested to me.
A curious person, I friended them and started to see the type of content that they were sharing and groups they were involved in.
Reviewing a number of the likes and shares on FARC-EP, ELN and EPL accounts was notable as many of them were also sharing TeleSUR content.
While the current state of my research means that there is little to be said about all these connections — other than they at some level they exist — there are other questions to be raised about the relationship between TeleSUR and the promotion of violence.
Specifically questions relates to TeleSUR’s hiring practices.
Former correspondents for TeleSUR — like Gerardo Torres Zelaya — have been identified as participating in violent street protests while others have been linked to FARC.
Taken from an Ecuadorian Facebook Group of Feminists, who investigated Orlando Perez following his assault on his girlfriend.
The current Vice-President of TeleSUR English, Orlando Perez, was arrested and sentenced for a politically-motivated kidnapping in his 20s; was arrested in connection with the death of two people making bombs and then let go; and refers to people who disagree with his political positions as mentally-retarded.
My research in this area is underdeveloped due to a paucity of sources willing to provide on-record accounts — but these cases combined with the former employee assessments does seem to reinforce that notion that rather than journalistic talent, skill or ability driving hiring-decisions an antagonism capitalism and the United States is instead what is sought in employees — and those that push back in the name of truth are then pushed out.
Being an instrument of Nicolas Maduro’s political will, the anti-systemic political activity which TeleSUR disseminates is not limited to the United States.
Numerous accounts in Spain — specifically Valencia, Barcelona and Euskadi — all post content discouraging people from voting. Instead of traditional political activity people are encouraged to attend lectures on topics such as the Greatness of Stalin or political assemblies hosted by local radical organizations affiliated with the PSUV.
Coordinated Unprofessional News Reportage via TeleSUR Associated Journalists
Carlos Ballasteros — a longtime friend of then former director of TeleSUR English Pablo Vivanco, a fact not disclosed in the Newsweek article — had a correction added to his article by the editorial staff of Newsweek as in the original article he mispresented the facts.
After I published Censorship or Community Standards, I decided to test a hypothesis I had — specifically that none of the other TeleSUR-associated journalists that I’d found engaged in false reporting would correct their errors if notified.
I sent notification to all the Journalists that had also covered TeleSUR’s unpublishing informing them that they were mistaken and sharing a link to my investigation.
· I sent notification to Abby Martin’s producers via Facebook.
· I sent an email, a Facebook Message and left a comment on Twitter to notify Branko Marcetic.
· I tweeted to Jacobininforming them that the article by Branko Marcetic they are hosting was factually incorrect.
· I sent a Facebook message to Adriano Contreras asking for comment. He responded that he was not allowed to speak without the authorization of TeleSUR, which given the context, makes such a response another example of Orwellian Irony.
· I left a comment on the Twitter account of Aaron Mate.
In fact, over two months after I notified them they had published unverified false reports, not a single one of these self-proclaimed journalists has responded to my contacts or updated their coverage.
The only person that did respond was Andre Damon, of World Socialist Website. However after explaining the reason for my contact — to let him know that his reportage was wrong and to ask to speak with whomever is directing their black hat back-linking and coordinate inauthentic behavior network on Facebook — all communication immediately ceased.
Based upon the guidelines described in The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, this means that all of these people are in violation of the Principles of Ethical Journalism.
How TeleSUR’s Defenders Violate the Professional Community’s Ethical Norms
Unlike other professional associations, such the American Bar Association or Medical Board, there is no formal professional body by which charges of violations of ethical journalism can either be brought up. To some extent the Society of Professional Journalists can enforce their Rules through their official statements about the behavior of journalists, but they are not an enforcement body.
The Society of Professional Journalists states that there are four foundational principles for the ethical journalist:
· Seek Truth and Report It
· Minimize Harm
· Act Independently
· Be Accountable and Transparent
The full document can be found here.
I excerpt sections here in order to reference specific behaviors.
Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
Journalists should:
· Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work.
· Verify information before releasing it.
· Use original sources whenever possible.
· Remember that neither speed nor format excuses inaccuracy.
· Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility.
· Respond quickly to questions about accuracy, clarity and fairness.
By refusing to make transparency, honesty and integrity their operational principles all of the above mentioned TeleSUR and the Journalists associated with them all violate the Society of Professional Journalist’s principle to Be Accountable and Transparent by “exposing unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations.”
TeleSUR’s Rejection by Former Partners
Besides the journalists which have gone to work for TeleSUR only to leave because of an unprofessional work environment, a number of TeleSUR’s media partners in Latin America have also decided to part ways with the company.
The overarching narrative for why this is so is that the company’s issues described above are seen as part of systemic ethical issues rather than isolated incidences.
In 2016 Argentina decided that they were not going to renew the digital signal of TeleSUR.
The interview that Patricia Villegas, the President of TeleSUR, had with Alejandro Alfie is informative as to why the government chose not to renew.
Despite the fact that TeleSUR’s founders — Hugo Chavez, Andres Izarra, Aram Aharoiam and others — avow that their goal for this network to be a means of spreading Bolivarian Propaganda; that TeleSUR’s corporate documents states this as well; that workers for TeleSUR view themselves as spreading leftist content; that the PSUV views TeleSUR as an instrument for spreading its message — when faced with a question about political pluralism, Patricia Villegas states with conviction that they have “a plurality of perspectives”.
When then asked about TeleSUR’s Twitter Account promoting a protest march by Chavistas; about reporting done TeleSUR which disseminated false information that made a geo-political enemy look bad; and her own political activity online — Villegas evades any and all responsibility or accountability by stating that other people were responsible for the first two and then avoids answering the question as to whether or not she believes Argentina is a dictatorship.
In 2017 Ecuador similarly broke ties with TeleSUR.
Considering that Venezuelan political groups associated with the government hold events intended to encourage people to break the law, and that TeleSUR associated accounts promote it within Peru, one can only wonder how long they will stay on air in that country.
Penalties Given to TeleSUR’s Partners
CCTV from China, RT and Sputnik from Russian and HispanTV from Iran are some of the media partners that TeleSUR has made. While this may seem like normal coordination amongst upstarts media organization seeking to obtain market shares in regions seen as key for future success, since the state governments are paying for their operation instead of corporate sponsors or subscriptions, this isn’t a valid rationale.
In his article for the Center for International Media Assistance entitled “Foreign Media and Misinformation: How TeleSUR and RT Coordinate Programs and Messages” Patricio Provitina provides another explanation
“These news outlets claim that their content offers an alternative, developing world perspective that counters the interests and agendas pushed in Western media coverage of domestic and international events. However, in reality, these state- sponsored media outlets are only designed to convey the Chinese, Russian, or Venezuelan government’s perspective to the rest of the world. Since these governments are authoritarian regimes that often impede freedom of the press at home, their foreign-language media outlets reflect domestic habits of selective issue coverage, omitting or distorting important facts in news stories, and making up information to reshape public opinion regarding specific issues or events. Furthermore, there is growing evidence that when state interests align, these outlets coordinate news story coverage, messaging, and programming.”
Analyzing En La Mira, one of the examples of Russian and Venezuelan state media collaboration, Provitina describes it as follows:
“The shows create simplistic, conspiracy-driven explanations that tie a country’s internal problems to an external source of power meddling in the affairs of the country. The evidence presented as proof of a foreign plot tends to mix-up un-related facts, half-truths, or highly edited video interviews with policy makers, intellectuals, and academics who echo or truly believe the conspiracy narratives of each show.”
Argentina sought to cancel RT’s television contracts, but used economic pressure to stay on the air after Macri’s election (Cardenal).
Further Research TeleSUR’s Unethical Journalism
While many unethical journalist practices engaged in by TeleSUR employees and associates are covered here, this is only a small fraction of a full analysis. Venezuela’s PSUV has invested millions of dollars over many years into developing a company that at face is a news organization, but underneath is a propaganda organ for helping Nicolas Maduro achieve his geopolitical interests.
I am currently awaiting word from Social Science One as to the status of my research proposal: The Social Media Behavior of Venezuelan State Media: A Case Study in TeleSUR English. I look forward to sharing this research on Medium, which will focus less on the qualitative issues discussed above — like the widespread evidence of TeleSUR journalists nor following professional norms — and will instead focus on depicting their efforts quantiatively.
Sources
Barajas, Héctor. TeleSUR after the End of Chavismo.
Baerga, Vanesa Media Imperialism in Latin America and the Emergence of Telesur.University of Nottingham.
Brown-Vincent, Layla Dalal Zanele Sekou. We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for:Pan-African Consciousness Raising and Organizing in the United States and Venezuela
Canizalez, Andres. Framing Revolution and Re-Framing Counter-Revolution:
History, Context and Journalism in the new Left-wing Latin American Paradigm.
Cardenal, Juan Pablo. Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence Chapter 2: Navigating Political Change in Argentina. International Forum for Democratic Studies. National Endowment for Democracy.
Chirinos, Mariengracia; Azpúrua, Andrés; Evdokimov, Leonid; Xynou, Maria. The State of Internet Censorship in Venezuela: A study by IPYS Venezuela, Venezuela Inteligente and the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI). 16 August 2018
Clay Calvert and Robert D. Richards, Journalistic Malpractice: Suing Jayson Blair and the New York Times for Fraud and Negligence, 14 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J. 1 (2003). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/iplj/vol14/iss1/1
Contreras, Adriano. Facebook.
Di Rocco, Massimo. The Arab Spring is a Latin American Winter: TeleSUR’s “Ideological Approach” and the Breakaway from the Al-Jazeera Network. Global Media Journal, Spring/Summer 2012 issue.
Hugh J. O’Halloran. Journalistic Malpractice: The Need for a Professional Standard of Care in Defamation Cases. Marquette Law Review
International Media Support (IMS). Threats, Lies and Censorship: Media in Venezuela. 2016.
Jairo Lugo-Ocando , Olga Guedes & Andrs Caizlez (2011) Framing Revolution and Re-Framing Counter-Revolution: History, Context and Journalism in the new Left-wing Latin American Paradigm, Journalism Practice, 5:5, 599–612, DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2011.601912
Provitina, Patricio. “Foreign Media and Misinformation: How TeleSUR and RT Coordinate Programs and Messages”. The Center for International Media Assistance.
Riley, Dylan. What Is Trump, New Left Review 114, November-December 2018
Tell your story. What makes you who you are?
For generations my father’s family were rabbis in Ukraine and my mother’s family were prosperous pig farmers in Denmark. This convergence of poles apart cultural backgrounds informs my personality in such a way that I have a great appreciation for the humorous circumstances of life; an understanding of the importance of initiative, integrity, education and the need to be intrepid in the face of daunting circumstances.
These qualities have allowed me to live a unique life. I’ve made my home in Florida, Czech Republic, New York City, Spain and Colombia and my experiences there developed my professional capabilities; helped me be able to relate to people of all types – from barely literate campesinos to CEOs of high tech software companies; and inculcated a great appreciation for cultural diversity. Improvement of the public and private spheres by applying my skills and capabilities is how I currently direct my life activity.
What tipping or inflection points do you anticipate in your area of expertise over the next 5-10 years? How well-positioned are you to take advantage of this or to be on the cutting-edge of driving these transformations?
As more developed countries transition to whole-of-government software platforms with unprecedented analytical and planning capacity and as medium to large companies within those countries similarly become better able to understand and capitalize on business intelligence trends their collective enhancements will result in an epistemic shift within the people that populate these classes that manage people and capital. While significantly more technical, it will also lead to levelling s each country in some way or other adopts the optimum models. Thus technical innovations and information technologies will continue to cause vast social, economic and political disruptions over the next ten years in ways that can most accurately only be anticipated as intense process for all involved.
My doctoral studies in Innovation and Technology Management helps me to position myself as someone that can work as a consultant and advisor to public and private organizations so that they can more rapidly adopt, exploit and further develop the potential inherent in these revolutionary technologies. Outside of this program, I am also engaged in several long-term initiatives – my Social Science One project being one; the application to this Fellowship another – in order to situate myself as a thought leader in this field.
#MillenniumFellowshipApp: The 21st century will see the end of…
many of the knowledge gaps causing unwitting sub-optimal decision-making at the individual, social, economic & political levels. Increased information access, planning and communication technologies will continue to change the world in profound ways.
#MillenniumFellowshipApp: I’m impacting my community by…
Prototyping an e-government software development project that would accelerate the quality, efficiency and capabilities of public service provision to citizens and assist businesses.
#MillenniumFellowshipApp: This isn’t on my resume, but ask me about… My TeleSUR project. I verified 3 Senators’ concerns, published, publicized, then became one of the first people to develop social scientific methods for interpreting Facebook data.
Short Bibliography
Ariel Sheen is a Colombian National Scholarship award winner engaged in Doctoral training in Innovation and Technology Management at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellin. His research is on technology transfer, public/private software development partnerships and the relationship between information management and political institutions.
He earned his Master’s degree from New York University in Experimental Humanities on 2011 and is also a Social Science One research grant-recipient for the Facebook sponsored investigation into Social Media and Democracy.
Formerly a creative director at a Fortune 500 digital marketing company and a professor of political science, he aims to use his expertise to assist governments and businesses understand and adapt to the technological possibilities inherent within the 4th industrial revolution.
Applicant Information
Ariel V. Sheen
Innovation and Technology Management Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana Colombia
Project Details
The Social Media Behavior of Venezuelan State Media: A Case Study on TeleSUR English
Priority Topics
Disinformation, Polarization and Election Integrity, Civic Engagement
Dataset(s)
Facebook URL Shares Dataset
Keywords
Political Polarization, Disinformation, Social Media, Democracy, Influence
Countries of Research
United States
Disciplinary Focus
Communications, Political science and government
Project Length
6 Months
Amount Requested
$49999.00
Project Abstract
TeleSUR English is a media project of the Venezuelan and Cuban governments to promote their desire for a multi-polar world order. Their main news outlet has over 600,000 people listed as following it on Facebook, while their other properties, consisting of cultural, historical and current-event commentary, raises the numbers of followers they have to nearly a million. Their combined content on YouTube has been viewed in excess of 20 million times.
Over the four year course of their operations, TeleSUR English has partnered with other state-owned foreign language news media outlets such as Russia’s RT, Iran’s HispanTV, Qatar’s AJ+ and China’s CCTV.
This project will use quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Venezuela’s government’s English language media operations to answer specific questions such as:
To what extent were specific demographics and geographic areas targeted by TeleSUR?
What were the defining attributes of the political content and areas targeted by TeleSUR English?
What connections can be made between Russian and Venezuelan state media operations to influence the American electorate?
How can Venezuela’s social media actions affect the way Americans build common sense, and how does the spread of strategic political content lead to political fragmentation?
It is expected that the final results of the investigation will show that Venezuela sought to increase political polarization through the targeted promotion of information aligned with specific political sector interests and thus demobilizing its readers from the political process rather than categorically promoting the public interest. Other data set will
Practical Importance of Project
Charting the efforts of Venezuela’s social and news media projects to influence the political values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of groups and individuals within the United States electorate is of practical importance for consideration by a wide variet of public and private policy makers.
Showing the connection of Russia’s state media to Venezuela’s activities is also important for illustrating the manner in which it is is possible for small groups of skilled people to accelerate actual or perceived political polarization; spread disinformation or propaganda; facilitate political actions that range from legal to illegal and, overall, impact American elections.
Visualizing the scope and shape of this particular iteration of coordinated inauthentic behavior and it’s relation to In Real Life (IRL) action will help readers of the project better understand how to exercise media literacy skills and help shape future conversations about the relationship between social media and democracy. Furthermore, it will provide coders new means of adapting existent algorithms so as to be able to more effectively identify coordinated inauthentic behavior on the Facebook.
Expected Outcome of Project
This project will produce a minimum of 30 graphic visualizations based on Facebook data, data compiled from public records, subscription based data sets, of APIs as needed.
These graphics will be packaged together with historical/technical context and analytical writing to promote media literacy and showcase new knowledge as to how TeleSUR English/Venezuela seeks to influence American politics as well as their links to Russian media on Medium. This will then be promoted via outreach to media outlets that have previously published on similar themes as well as via influencer outreach.
Ethical and Privacy Considerations
The ethical and privacy considerations evidenced in the research in this vein thus far produced by the Digital Media Research Labs, the Atlantic Council and the Kings Centre for Strategic Communication will be the guide for our our work. With the exception of TeleSUR English, RT, Sputnik and other employees or associated accounts engaging in public behavior, all individual users privacy will be maintained by illustrating only general, numerical patterns of event behavior. Absolutely no private individual Facebook, Twitter or other social media users will be named in order to prevent another @Ian56789 incident.
Kultural Marxism and Reflections on Venezuela’s Gramscian Fantasy of Exporting Revolution via a Long March Through United States Institutions
For over a decade Venezuela’s Intelligence Agency has operated a network in America to disseminate political values, beliefs, strategies, tactics, and knowledge from the Bolivarian Revolution to American audiences in hopes it would lead to political radicalization and domestic unrest such that a “multipolar” world would emerge.
This multi-faceted, multi-million dollar project inspired by Antonio Gramsci included funding and other forms of assistance to found or further develop: outreach programs which sought to unite poor Americans for economic and environmental justice; movements which seek to educate, agitate and mobilize African American and Latino communities for direct actions; support of alternative news outlets and messaging coordination with foreign state media; a large inauthentic coordinated behavior army of trolls to amplify their messaging; etc. in order to feed into the creation of a counter-hegemonic movement within America.
As participants were averse to sharing their funding, partnerships and end political goals to outsiders, prior to new technological methods involving data science on sources of public and private origin, documenting and charting these behaviors was difficult. Now, however, the unveiling of this information is on the immediate horizon.
This presentation will be an excerpt of an ongoing investigation into Social Media and Democracy by the author, a doctoral student in Innovation and Technology Management, former Marxist Reading Group presenter and applicant for a research grant in partnership with Social Science One and the Social Science Research Council. It will cover why Venezuela’s state media and their many U.S. partners will soon be removed from Social Media; why this isn’t censorship; and what this means for American democracy.
Keywords:
Political discourse in Popular Culture; Digital rhetoric and cultures; Data Science; Activism and commodification; Venezuela; Media Studies
One of my favorite songs by System of a Down is Aerials.
It’s a great song on it’s own, but of course I think it’s super special cause it kind of sounds like Serj Tankianis is singing my name.
Now, Ariel will be in the sky, of my friends mural, way up high!
For the second time this year, the Facebook page operated by TeleSUR English was briefly unpublished. One of TeleSUR’s formal responses during that time was an article rebuking the host of their social media account on the platform of the New York based journal, Jacobin.
In the article “Why Did Facebook Purge TeleSUR English?”, the title an allusion to the popular movie franchise about a day long cessation of legal enforcement against crime, Branko Marcetic commits a number of grave sins against his readers and contains so much irony that it’s worth coining a new literary term, “Orwellian irony”, which I briefly describe in this article but which I go into depth on here.
For one, Branko Marcetic misrepresents the situation in such a way as to leave the reader misinformed of the facts of the matter.
Secondarily, he does not cite the proper precedents that accurately contextualizes the case he describes.
Additionally, he mis-attributes intentions to multiple actors and closes with a call to action that is based on these misunderstandings.
In other words, by close examination of a narrative intended to gain public support for TeleSUR English by claiming his employer has been victimized by a conspiracy, evidence is instead provided as to why it is that Facebook should permanently unpublish TeleSUR English’s Facebook page.
Misconstruing Censorship For Community Standards
Repeating many of the talking point made in the Jacobin article, the above video shows Adriano Contreras with tape over his mouth — as if he is being prevented from speaking. But framing the issue of their unpublishing as censorship ignores several facts — the most important being the fact that the unpublishing in no way impacted the ability for TeleSUR English to publish content.
Unlike the Palmer Raids in the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century, no equipment for the production of media was seized or destroyed and no reporters have been jailed. No news facilities were shuttered, as has been the case in Venezuela, and no reporters were attacked by state or para-state actors.
TeleSUR never lost their ability to send out mail, something that American leftists faced in the wake of the Espionage Acts, and neither was their daily email newsletter, nor their website taken down.
During the period of their brief unpublishing TeleSUR English’s web domain and other social media outlets — such as Abby Martin’s The Empire Files or The World Today with Tariq Ali — were able to be shared on Facebook’s social media platform.
If we are to accept Marcetic’s uncommon interpretation of American jurisprudence, Jacobin is similarly guilty of “censorship” should they chose not to publish ads on their website to promote a new edition of The Turner Diaries. However this is not the case as the right to free speech doesn’t mean that someone else is forced to distribute that speech.
It’s worth noting that this is not the first time that TeleSUR has misrepresented Facebook.
The issue at hand here is a fundamental misunderstanding of what protectedgroups are. TeleSUR English shifts away from legal terminology to instead talk about privileged groups in order to imply that Facebook is inherently racist. Could a better example have been given to those acting as Facebook censors? Yes, but as you can see from the below, protected groups don’t include drivers or children.
While it’s possible that Marcetic’s upside-down interpretation of the American legal terms and enforcement history relates to his having studied the United States in Australia, the second misreading of legal context hints at something more purposeful.
Misunderstanding Author-Publisher Relations
In the numerous defenses of TeleSUR English following their unpublishing, Frank Marcetic, Abby Martin and others ignore the fact that that prior to being granted access to the Facebook platform, users must agree to its terms and conditions.
This isn’t unique to Facebook, but goes across all social media publishing platforms as well as the news publishing industry. Letters to the editor in newspapers are vetted and sometimes edited before publication, just as articles written by paid staff members are fact-checked for quality assurance. Academic journals will send back original research for any number of reasons and similarly many Facebook groups have rules for posting that will lead to those violating them getting removed from the group.
The current director of TeleSUR English’s operations, Orlando Perez, has previously defended the rights of a publisher to set editorial guidelines that determines whether or not an article is published. He even stated that it was sensible to cease business relations with an author for attempting to make a public scandal of the incident.
Had the unpublishing of TeleSUR English been part of a large scale “purge” of leftist perspectives then we could accurately describe that event as censorship. But that didn’t happen, which then begs the question: if TeleSUR English wasn’t unpublished for it’s content, then why was it?
Paranoia and Conspiracy: What Happens When Journalists Don’t Research Their Stories
It’s at this point in their reporting on the issues that Branko Marcetic; TeleSUR reporter Abby Martin; comedian Jimmy Dore; and news commentators, such as Ben Swann and Caitlin Johnstone, all do something worse than merely misrepresenting the context of the news — they fail to examine the evidence.
Even worse than making no attempt to research why Facebook would unpublish TeleSUR English based on the statement provided to them, these “journalists” rely on the words of a TeleSUR employee who has not worked there in several months, Pablo Vivanco, to validate their view that this was censorship.
Let’s examine the evidence and see how it is that Facebook may have been correct in unpublishing TeleSUR English.
Examining Evidence Part I: Public Admission of a Bad Actor
Pablo Vivanco’s use as a source in this matter is another example of Orwellian irony — for it was his assigning or purchasing of marketing services to artificially boost follower and engagement numbers that likely lead to TeleSUR English being unpublished.
Google the name of the former Director of TeleSUR English — Pablo Vivanco — and you will learn that in contrast to his statement to RT on August 14th of this year, former TeleSUR English Director Pablo Vivanco admitted that he did this at the 2016 Building Left Media in the Digital Commons panel at Left Forum.
This fact was repeated in several interviews I’ve conducted with current and former TeleSUR English employees over the past year, who also stated that this practice was known about throughout the organization and that Vivanco’s former assistant, Cyril Mychalejko, helped direct it.
Though Pablo Vivanco implies that they stopped doing this in his official statement, had any of these “journalists” done any investigation they would have learned the real truth of the matter and come to a much different conclusion.
Examining Evidence Part II: Public Admission of a Bad Actor
Though current and former TeleSUR employees and contractors, like Branko Marcetic and Abby Martin, quote Pablo Vivanco as evidence as to why it is that Facebook’s unpublishing is censorship, a review of his personal profile provides evidence as to why it is that Facebook’s algorithm unpublished the account.
If one reviews Facebook’s Terms of Service, it immediately becomes apparent that Pablo Vivanco is not being honest when he states that there is no reason to have been unpublished.
Clearly TeleSUR English has violated Terms of Service.
Examining Evidence Part III: Private Admission of a Bad Actor
Pablo Vivanco is not, however, alone in violating or directing the violation of Facebook terms of service. In the wake of the first unpublishing, a new TeleSUR English related account was created called TeleSUR English Aggregate.
While I was not able to obtain the name of the person running the account from speaking with them, their actions speak for themselves.
During my interview with admin of the TeleSUR Aggregate account, he openly admitted that the sole purpose of the account was to promote their content.
When I asked him why he did this, he gave me a pretty clear answer why he was doing this: he wanted to disrupt the operation of Facebook.
Examining Evidence Part IV: What An Automated Bot Network Looks Like
It’s not just the purchasing of likes, which helped get TeleSUR English to its roughly half a million likes that lead to it’s unpublishing, nor was it solely the TeleSUR Play and TeleSUR Aggregate accounts — whose sole purpose is to repost TeleSUR English content.
The false profiles obtained by Pablo Vivanco have done far more than just “liked” TeleSUR English’s profile — they also continue to artificially boost it’s engagement numbers.
If you go look through the public comments, likes, and reposts of TeleSUR English’s content — you will uncover hundreds of Facebook accounts that rarely have photos, and often have only a small number of friends, but are characterized by a large amount of user activity which consists entirely of re-posting news.
Unsurprisingly, given the media agreement between the Russian and Venezuelan state media, they also re-post content from RT and Sputnik.
Suggesting a mix of accounts that are directly controlled and others that are operated by 3rd parties, a number of them also post on behalf of various companies — such as GreenMedInfo.com.
Examining Evidence Part V: What A Human Re-Share Network Looks Like
In order to artificially inflate the reach of TeleSUR English, bad actors on Facebook aren’t limited to automated accounts but include coordinated behaviors by a large number of individuals.
There are over 30 “Friends who like TeleSUR English” Facebook groups. What their function is given the above evidence, I can’t clearly say.
I messaged all the administrators of these groups in February of 2018 and only recieved two responses, one from someone in Africa and one from someone in India. Both denied being an admin, even though they were clearly listed, and neither would respond to my questions
Some of these groups are moderated by employees of the Venezuelan government, like the one above. Others by Cubans. One is moderated by Vlaudin Vega, an individual formerly on the U.S. State Department’s terrorist watch list for association with the FARC. The vast majority of these have not been active in years.
What I can say that they do is to re-publish content into public groups, in order to make the content seem more valuable in Facebook’s algorithm.
The Real Reason TeleSUR English Was Briefly Unpublished AND Why Leftist Media Saw a Big Drop in Google Traffic
While this type of marketing effort can lead to big increases in follower numbers, such behavior is prohibited by all the social media platforms as it degrades the user experience.
The reason that many leftist media outlets saw a drop in Google ranking and traffic being directed to their websites and why they posts have been deprioritized in Facebook feeds has nothing to do with selective targeting of companies or political viewpoints and everything to do with Facebook and Google holistically discouraging black hat marketing practices.
In their quest to create greater domain authority, media organizations all over the political spectrum as well as businesses bought followers from companies or created their own portfolios of sock-puppet accounts. They joined back-linking networks and compensated others to engage in practices designed to amplify the appearance of trustworthiness according to what the algorithms searched for and valued.
Lest this seem overly abstract, let me give some examples that feature links to TeleSUR English content.
Examining Evidence Part VI: Fake Backlinking
By name alone Los Angeles Post sounds like it could be a credible outlet, but the small number of followers and the lack of postings over the past 8 months suggests otherwise.
Viewing their website you’ll learn that there are similarly few current news articles listed on their landing page, which also hints at this being merely a means for marketing companies to monetize companies desires for backlinks.
Looking through their back pages, however, you’ll see a large number of links going to TeleSUR English, CounterPunch, MintPressNews and other “alternative news” websites.
Another page which does this is called Russia is not the Enemy. Unlike LA Post, they do not pretend to be a news site — but are simply a news aggregate website that posts RT, TeleSUR, CounterPunch, etc.
Another example of such a backlinking scheme, but with actual operators, is Geopolitics Alert. Their Facebook page lists 36,700+ people liking it, however the journalistic pair that makes up this “Media/News Company” has only five Patrons and under 50 listens to their SoundCloud Account.
I emailed co-founder Jim Carey to ask him if he has accepted marketing services or money from TeleSUR, which is sensible as almost a quarter of the content on their website is directly from TeleSUR English, and he denied this.
When asked the same question as to his relationship with other state or private media organizations, Carey refused to answer my questions.
Websites like these, which claim to be funded by donations given the paucity of income they get from that means, have links to thousands of new backlinks to leftist news sites such as TeleSUR English and CounterPunch.
Not Censorship, But Technics
Just as there is a difference between censorship and a Facebook page being unpublished due to non-adherence to terms and conditions, so too is there a difference between a conspiracy to silence leftist media and the effects of algorithmic updates that seek to holistically counter the actions of bad agents. Facebook has had to delete millions of such accounts.
The notion that those with capital to pay the fees for partnership with such networks shouldn’t be given an advantage is not an “anti-democratic” decision, but one that encourages democracy. This is why Facebook and Google have changed their ranking system, and since this is clearly stated on their website and in the press Branko Marcetic, Abby Martin and others statements is not an act of courageous truth-telling but an attempt to deflect the truth that groups such as DFR Labs are trying to uncover. Rather than examining what it is such groups do to inform their readers, they hint at global conspiracies.
Doing so they ignore the fact that to operationalize the functioning of their internet platforms in such a way that it is more open, democratic, enjoyed by their users and not a source for marketing spam or disinformation campaigns from bad actors working on behalf of foreign governments — algorithms need constant refinement.
Is This What Democracy Looks Like?: The Evidence TeleSUR English Won’t Address
I posted an earlier version of this article in the only Friends of TeleSUR English group that had any recent postings. Moderated by Arnold August, a journalist and political scientist with a specialization on Cuba, I was hoping to better understand the perspective of the “Friends who like TeleSUR English” given the above evidence. Given that I was previously blocked on Twitter and Facebook by Vice Director of TeleSUR Orlando Perez and former Director of TeleSUR English Pablo Vivanco after asking them to explain as well, I can’t say that I was shocked by what transpired next.
First it was suggested that I was committing slander. Then it was implied that I had received help from “unnamed sources”. Then Nicolaj Leonardo — a writer for RT and TeleSUR English, posted a photoshopped photo of me with a knife, and then I was banned from the group.
This is not what democracy looks like.
To be clear, I do not now nor have I ever worked or consulted for Facebook, the Atlantic Council, the Digital Forensics Research Lab or any other of organization and the only “help” that I’ve recieved in my research is in the form of information given to me by current and former TeleSUR English employees.
I am a graduate of NYU’s Masters program in the Experimental Humanities, a Doctoral candidate at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in their program for Innovation and Technology Management that has also worked in digital marketing for several years and the project leader of a team of researchers answering the call for research by Social Science One to depict the relationship between social media, democracy and elections.
Killer Mike and Bernie Sanders (DSA); a Democratic Socialists of America newsletter with a photo of Antonio Gramsci; Nicolas Maduro visiting Antonio Gramsci’s Grave
“If [Killer] Mike was to start his own country, which is always on the table, he would hire him (Bernie Sanders) as a consultant on how to set the institution up — cause he f*cks with the OG the long way.”
-El P, speaking for Killer Mike, Episode 1 of Trigger Warning with Killer Mike
“For Gramsci the rule of the bourgeoisie and the role and nature of the state was far more complex than orthodox and Leninist Marxists suggested. Control was exercised as much through ideas (ideology) as through force, and this gave a key role to intellectuals in what Gramsci called a “war of position,” a battle of ideas in which revolutionary forces must engage with bourgeois intellectuals. The function of intellectuals in capitalism is to organize beliefs and persuade the masses to embrace and accept the leadership and views of the bourgeoisie. Revolutionary intellectuals must disrupt and subvert this process of hegemony, thus making the sphere of ideology a battlefield, an arena of struggle. In the advanced capitalist countries the war of position must precede the overthrow of the state through a frontal assault (the “war of maneuver”).
– Historical Dictionary of Marxism
New Afrika: A Communist Goal Since the 1930s
1930s map made by Communist Party members in The Negro Question in the United States showing the borders of a “New Africa” in America; 1970s Workers Party poster; Killer Mike’s New Africa
In a single word Killer Mike’s new series on Netflix, Trigger Warning, is brilliant.
It manages to address a number of serious social, political and economic issues in a way that is both irreverently funny, humane and deeply insightful. I hope that Netflix provides Killer Mike another season to explore such issues.
First, the historic political connection between Atlanta and Caracas.
Second, an understanding of “21st Century socialism” as political theory and practice of Hugo Chavez, the PSUV and their allies the FARC.
After I explain these and their linkages, I will show real-life examples of Trigger Warning’s politics in action; postulate that the inclusion of Juggalos in the series has to do with the Democratic Socialists of America attempt at entryism via the Struggalo Circus and the connection of black liberation movements in America.
Killer Mike and The Georgia-Venezuela Radical Access
(1) Killer Mike wearing a Kill Your Masters shirt (2) Book cover by a professor connected to Nicolas Maduro’s Kultural Marxism network (3) 2012 tweet referencing an Anarchist group in ATL.
The comprehensive version of the story is still being researched and written by myself.
If this interests you, I encourage you to follow Facebook page — it’s coming up over the next several months.
The short version is this:
Following an unsuccessful military uprising in 2002, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, aides, assistants, specialists and the Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information converged to cogitate as to how to stay in power and effect a longer-term plan to enact what they saw as their Bolivarian mission.
Towards this end, they decided to make a media front for their intelligence services apparatus, TeleSUR – the name alluded to their motto “Our North is the South” and idea of transmitting The Global South as well as The Southern Question by Antonio Gramsci.
Their perspective, like that of the Comintern in the 1930s-1950s – was that the politically, socially and economically underdeveloped racially charged South would be more open to their messaging. Plus it was of crucial importance in the Civil Rights Era. Thus the potential to attract activists there, especially those that might be part of activist families made the South the designated the location where efforts would be directed in order to help create a shift in the political orientation of Americans.
Building off of the successes of the World Social Forum first held in Porte Alegre by the Brazilian Workers Party in 2001, a National Planning Committee (NPC) was formed to help develop a movement of movements in the United States that would lead, it was hoped, to Socialism in the United States.
From Brazil and Venezuela to the United States, this convergence of community activists provided the opportunity to create linkages with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’s intelligence service and thereby tap into existent political activism and movement building networks and locate people they could assess, recruit, guide and develop as needed. Later efforts would involve Venezuelan Ambassador Jesus “Chucho” Garcia, and possibly others, working towards these ends (Brown-Vincent).
To facilitate people’s involvement they relied upon inchoate and established political activist networks; new media organizations and individual workers; academic networks and programs — such NYU’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, where George Ciccariello-Maher (GCM) now teaches. On this last point, it’s worth noting that part of Hemi’s mission is to “offers an anti-colonial model for engagement between ‘north’ and ‘south’ by promoting multi-sited, multilingual collaborations” — which is almost the same as that of TeleSUR. It’s also worth asking here if GCM returned the $20,000 homebuying gift from Drexel to buy a house considering that it was Venezuela’s media partner Russia that used coordinated inauthentic behavior to make things so bad for him that he could not continue to teach there).
In 2007 the United States Social Forum convened its first national meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Inspired by the 2006 Worlds Social Forum in Caracas, the NPC “organizers followed the Caracas model in merging the discursive and performative dimensions of public space.” The location “was specifically chosen as a site for the USSF to highlight the history of struggle against racism and white supremacy… Organizers specifically targeted groups involved in “movement-building,” by which they meant community organizing among grassroots communities of color… and oppressed communities. As a USSF document explains, “There is a strategic need to unite the struggles of oppressed communities and peoples within the United States (particularly black, Latino, Asian/Pacific- Islander and indigenous communities) to the struggles of oppressed nations in the Third World.” This model privileges community organizing, popular education, and leadership development. It also reflects an anti-imperialist, nationalist frame that views oppressed communities in the U.S. as “internal colonies. (Juris 363)”.
Left, Jesus Garcia at SHROC. Center and Left, Ajamu Baraka at SHROC and in Venezuela.
Following the close of events, black activists aligned with various socialist and communist currents held a follow-up meeting in North Carolina.
There’s little public information about this, but it’s known that amongst those in attendance was Ajamu Barak, the 2016 Vice Presidential candidate for the Green Party. I recently had the chance to ask him about this in a live appearance – but was ignored.
Also notable in this period and place is how several months after this event in Georgia, Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was nominated by the Green Party to be the presidential candidate of 2008. McKinney, who was endorsed by the Workers World Party and Cindy Sheehan, later completed a Ph.D. on issues related to Hugo Chavez’s leadership, also worked for TeleSUR.
Maybe you think this is all a coincidence..? Well, wait until the end and then give me your thoughts.
What is 21st Century Socialism?
Defining the Five Motors for 21st Century Socialism and a graphic representation of how the FARC’s bottom up, Leninist approach to forming dual power and enacting a revolution.
21st Century Socialism is driven by five “motors” — the Enabling Law, Constitutional Reform, Popular Education, Reconfiguration of State Power, and an explosion of Communal Power.
“People’s Institutions” are created via encuentros (encounters between activists and potential assets), forums and councils. Actors connected to it claim they are the real government, then begin to attack it. This dual power system of governance is intended to lead to the overthrow of the existent political power structure and provide the foundation for the establishment of a new political order.
It is this conflict between these two bodies which, in part, informs the current conflict in Venezuela and it is this that President Donald Trump was referring to in Miami recently when denouncing socialism.
There are a wealth of books about how the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUC) in Venezuela; the Movement for Social (MAS) in Ecuador; and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) in Colombia have used such tactics— but you can more or less get the basics just from watching Trigger Warning.
Trigger Warning and 21st Century Socialism
Left: Killer Mike cites Fela as the inspiration for his project. Right: Expelled Bolivarian ambassador to the US Jesus “Chucho” Garcia holding up a Fela CD several days after I first published this blog,
The last episode of season 1 of Trigger Warning opens up with Killer Mike telling the story of Fela Kuti, the same musician that the expelled-from-the-U.S. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Ambassador Jesus “Chucho” holds up in a Twitter post a few days after I first posted this article.
This could just be random coincidence or affinity – but given that Chucho’s activism in the United States aligns with Mike’s this seems unlikely.
After Mike’s citation of Fela as a frame and inspiration for his idea, the show continues. For those that have already watched Trigger Warning, rather than detail each of the five motors – I decided just to share screenshots that illustrate the series the policies leading to 21st Century Socialism.
Enabling Law
Even though a Civil War was fought the last time there was a serious attempt at secession in the United States — Chief Asaru says that all you need to do it is get some signatures. Seems legit…
Constitutional Reform
After it’s been written, Killer Mike has the inhabitants of New Africa swear an oath to a new constitution that neither he nor they have read.
An Explosion of Communal Power
One of the first tasks that Killer Mike has his citizens engage in is to begin self-defense exercises.
Popular Education
Large political and vocational education projects are enacted. Institutionally, those that align with the Party in power rather than those that are scientifically and technically oriented in their decision-making process.Reconfiguration of State PowerIf Trigger Warning was connected to Venezuela’s Kultural Marxism network it would be sublimely ironic that Killer Mike cheats during the electoral process.
While the elections and after party give the appearance that this iteration of New Afrika is liberatory – another way of looking it is that all these people have just signed up to live in a company town. The flag literally has a corporate logos on it and the money that citizens now use is scrip.
What Trigger Warning Looks Like as Non-Fiction
Left – Patricia Okoumou posting about a direct action before being arrested and then posting a highly incendiary #fakenews story to her followers. On the right, Black Sovereign Nation — a revolutionary communal/communist project based on Lenin/FARC’s theory & practice.
Properly holding up the reality to the art-mirror that is Killer Mike’s New Africa, we can see that in addition to the movements and parties mentioned about – there are a growing number of examples of New Afrika’s in America.
Unpermitted march threatening violence; an Antifa activist verifying Movement of Movements Thesis (many groups are connected to Venezuela; and an example of political action for meme’s sake.
And there are several more group just like this – which is probably why in part that the FBI made the Black Identity Extremism classification. That Teen Vogue, one of Antifa/Venezuela’s news outlets, has an article decrying the term makes me think that this is the case – because these and groups like them are, in essence, an inchoate FARC.
And speaking of FARC, it’s worth pointing out another connection between Trigger Warning and Venezuela’s allies:
Another “coincidence” – whereas Killer Mike has Crips and the Bloods to produce a drink that embraces their violent past whereas the FARC now produces beers with revolutionary women on their labels.
FARC recently released their own line of beers.
They, like Crip-a-Cola and Blood Pop, lean into the violent mystique.
Trigger Warning & White Allies
A textbooks example of Socialist Party Entryism – Struggalo Circus was a group of Radical DSA activists that sought to recruit Juggalos to their political cause by claiming compatibility. Sources: Vice and Twitter.
Another thing notable about Trigger Warning was Killer Mike’s solidarity with the Juggalos and choice to make them the only white people that were invited to New Afrika.
Given the racial attitudes of the other white musicians that were featured, it’s unsurprising. However I’d postulate that this creative decision was made not because there simply weren’t any non-racist white musicians to be found. Instead, I think it was because of the recent press in alternative news outlets about the Struggalo Circus. The Struggalo Circus was a short-lived front group made up of members of the Democratic Socialists of America – the face of the United Socialist Party of America (PSUA). Based upon their own social media outlets they were only formed to engage in an entryist project to recruit Juggalos to their party at a March in Washington to protest the decision by the FBI to name them a game. Which makes one wonder why those press outlets ran stories about them in the first place…
Trigger Warning & Venezuela’s Projected Vision
Examples of Venezuela’s Messaging via their coordinated inauthentic behavior network on Facebook: Trump is the KKK; Democrats are the KKK, Everyone who Doesn’t Agree with Us are Nazis
In writing this report it is not my intent to suggest that Killer Mike was approached and coached by some Venezuelan Intelligence Agent, or that he is their puppet, muppet, Hobbit or anything other than himself.
Yet given rapper, poet, actor and political activist Saul Williams recorded the anti-Iraq-war poem/song Not In Our Name on behalf of a Revolutionary Communist Party front group; that Rebel Diaz and Immortal Technique have performed at multiple Venezuelan intelligence services supported events such, as the United States Social Forum and Poor People’s Movement, the Maoist-rapper Boots Riley’s agitprop film Sorry to Bother You! (which is also brilliant) was funded by Chinese-capital; that China makes rap songs to promote Karl Marx; and many other possible examples – it seems highly unlikely that he would not have popped up on their radar.
TeleSUR’s posting about Residente is one of many examples of Venezuela’s Intelligence Services marketing on behalf of radical rappers.
Neither is it my purpose to delegitimize Killer Mike’s poignant criticisms. Mike’s smart as heck and the things that he’s talking about matters. Which is why I took the time to unwind the mind of an artist whose works I enjoy: to help provide a mirror showing the world that’s in his/Netflix’s work of art. And with this knowledge about the connection between Venezuela and Atlanta – specifically how the former sought to influence the later in order to help develop and enact multi-generational political and cultural change project that has vast geopolitical goals, it also becomes possible to pose what I think to be are some interesting questions:
First, to Killer Mike: I know you don’t mess with Mexican weed, but when you were trappin’ was your connect Venezuelan? Given the connection between the Venezuelan government and drug trafficking cartels, this seems like a smart way to raise money for intelligence projects in the United States without leaving a paper trail. It’d straight blow my mind if Trap music was in part funded by Venezuela’s Cartel Del Soles…
Second, to Senator Bernie Sanders: If consulting on Mike’s New Africa, would you concur with him that the process depicted is “what is to be done?”
Third, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes: Considering the Green New Deal is basically a practical re-formulation of the principles described in the Ecosocialist International into the American context — what’s your take on all this? Also, when I go to New York City to present the final version of this research will you be my date?
Fourth, to the reader: What are your thoughts? Do you think it’s all coincidence, or is Killer Mike’s Trigger Warning and example of Venezuelan Propaganda? What sorts of conversations and actions have you taken after watching it? Are you ready to move to a farm with a group of people?
Sources
Brittain, James J. Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP
Brown-Vincent, Layla Dalal Zanele Sekou. We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Pan-African Consciousness Raising and Organizing in the United States and Venezuela. 2016. Duke.
Juris, Jeffrey S. Spaces of Intentionality: Race, Class and Horizontality at the United States Social Forum (2008) Mobilization: An International Journal 13(4): 353–371
Rose Brewer, Katz-Fishman, Walda and Scott, Jerome.USSF 3 Evaluation and Documentation (4.10.16)
Walker, David & Gray, Daniel. Historical Dictionary of Marxism (2007) The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland
