By Peter Hasson & Joe Simonson
A left-wing billionaire gave $100,000 toward an online misinformation campaign that mimicked Russian interference operations — but if you get your news only from CNN, then you have no idea that happened.
Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman, an early investor in Facebook, was behind a six-figure misinformation campaign that involved falsely linking Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore to Russian influence operations during Alabama’s December 2017 special election.
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Hoffman funded Democratic operatives who staged a “false flag” — in their own words — meant to falsely link Moore’s campaign to Russian bots in order to boost Democratic candidate Doug Jones’ Senate campaign.
Jones went on to win the election after defeating Moore in an upset. (RELATED: Democrats Ran Russian Bot ‘False Flag’ Operation In Alabama — And Media Fell For It)
Hoffman devoted the same amount of money toward the misinformation campaign as actual Russian operatives are said to have spent on a Facebook influence operation during the 2016 operation, according to reporting by The New York Times.
But CNN’s readers and viewers have been kept in the dark about the domestic misinformation campaign.
Since news broke of the “false flag” operation on Dec. 19, CNN has yet to devote a single story — or even a single second on television — to informing its readers of the Democratic misinformation operation, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation search on the cable news aggregation website Grabien.
CNN vice president Barbara Levin did not return a request for comment on her network’s absent coverage on the story.
CNN hasn’t touched the story, even as it has undergone several developments.
Hoffman apologized on Wednesday for funding the misinformation campaign. Hoffman’s apology came after Facebook suspended the operatives he paid for their role in the misinformation campaign.
And yet, as of Thursday morning, CNN’s readers and viewers remained completely in the dark about the domestic misinformation campaign in the Alabama Senate election.
The Alabama operation isn’t the only Democratic misinformation campaign that CNN has ignored. The network also failed to publish any articles on the fact that North Dakota Democrats falsely targeted hunters in the state with misinformation meant to keep them from voting in the 2018 midterm elections.
Democrats’ North Dakota arm targeted hunters with false advertisements informing them that they could lose their out-of-state hunting licenses if they voted in the 2018 elections.
Fact-checkers, including the left-leaning PolitiFact, found that claim to be false.
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