{"id":3007,"date":"2015-04-21T18:45:35","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T18:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/miriamelder\/new-york-observer-stands-by-journalist-who-smeared-kremlin-f"},"modified":"2015-04-21T18:45:35","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T18:45:35","slug":"new-york-observer-stands-by-journalist-who-smeared-kremlin-foes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/3007","title":{"rendered":"New York Observer Stands By Journalist Who Smeared Kremlin Foes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMikhail Klikushin has written several stories for the paper, all of which fall in line with Russian government propaganda points.<\/b>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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observer.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t<\/div>\n

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The New York Observer<\/i> is standing by a reporter who has written more than a dozen articles for the outlet with a slavishly pro-Kremlin bent, the most recent a story with no sources that blames the murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on his love life.<\/p>\n

The reporter, Mikhail Klikushin, has written 15 articles for the outlet since November 2014, according to the Observer<\/i>‘s website<\/a>. He has no online presence — in English or Russian — beyond the stories he has written for the Observer<\/i>, which have also been picked up by other outlets. A Nexis search turns up no public record of Klikushin.<\/p>\n

“He’s a writer,” Observer<\/i> Editor-in-Chief Ken Kurson told BuzzFeed News. “He lives in the tristate area. He’s a Russian national who has been in America for at least 10 years or so.” Klikushin’s contact information is impossible to find online. He declined a request, issued via Kurson, to speak to BuzzFeed News.<\/p>\n

Kurson said Klikushin is a freelancer and was paid for his articles. He says he has met the writer face-to-face.<\/p>\n

He stood by Klikushin’s articles and said, “I have probably edited about half of them myself.”<\/p>\n

“We try to publish compelling content that people want to read,” he added. <\/p>\n

Klikushin’s 15 articles are remarkable in how directly they line up with pro-Russian propaganda points. The Kremlin regularly issues talking points, either via official statements or, more often, by reports in state-run or Kremlin-friendly media. <\/p>\n

A little over one day after Nemtsov was gunned down in central Moscow, the Observer<\/i> ran an article<\/a> by Klikushin speculating that the slain opposition’s leader’s “tangled love life” was behind his murder. That line was floated by Kremlin-owned Russia Today as well as Life News, an outlet with very close ties to Russia’s security services, in the hours following Nemtsov’s murder. LifeNews headlined<\/a> its story: “Nemtsov may have been avenged for an abortion done by his lover.” Neither outlet is considered trustworthy or respectable because of their overt ties and politicization. Automized Russian bots<\/a> on Twitter, meanwhile, spammed the network with identical tweets saying<\/a>: “Nemtsov was killed because of the jealousy of some Ukrainian (apparently he stole the girlfriend of some Ukrainian),.”<\/p>\n

By Monday, Nemtsov’s girlfriend — the target of Klikushin’s story — had become a major figure in Russia as it deals with the aftermath of Nemtsov’s murder. Anna Duritskaya, a model from Ukraine, appeared visibly shaken in an interview with the Russian TV channel Dozhd<\/a>. The Russian authorities have barred her from leaving the country. On Monday evening, the Russian newspaper Izvestiya<\/i>, which the Kremlin often uses to plant stories, cited unnamed sources<\/a> in the investigation as saying that the Ukrainian security sources were behind Nemtsov’s murder.<\/p>\n

Russia has invested heavily in spreading its propaganda. In the English-language world that is done mainly through outlets like Russia Today<\/a> and the new website Sputnik<\/a>. But there are also smaller projects without obvious direct links to the Kremlin. New websites like Russia Insider insist<\/a> they are private initiatives.<\/p>\n

A recent report<\/a> called “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money” shows the varied ways in which Russia ensures its propaganda finds a home in the West. Its methods run the gamut from the blunt to the nuanced and refined. The subject of Russian propaganda has shot to the forefront of discussions — both in the U.S. and in Europe — since the outbreak of war and revolution in Ukraine, where Russia has deployed its multiple media assets to paint the new Ukrainian government as “Nazis.”<\/p>\n

Stories in the Western press often make it into the discussion back home in Russia. Klikushin’s stories are regularly translated into Russian — it is unclear by whom –and then circulated on obscure news sites, blogs, and beyond. In this<\/a> case, a commenter uses a translation of Klikushin’s story in “the American newspaper New York Observer” to dispute a post on the website of opposition radio station Ekho Moskvy. A post<\/a> on a different website links to Klikushin’s story and asks, “Have they started to see the truth about Ukraine in New York?”<\/p>\n

Other articles written by Klikushin target the Kremlin’s favorite bugbears: State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki<\/a>, former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili<\/a>, as well as the presidents of Lithuania<\/a> and Estonia<\/a> and Latvian politicians<\/a>. Klikushin also focuses on Ukraine, with one article headlined<\/a> “The New Ukraine Is Run by Rogues, Sexpots, Warlords, Lunatics and Oligarchs.”<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\t\t\t<\/div>

Read more: http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/miriamelder\/new-york-observer-stands-by-journalist-who-smeared-kremlin-f<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mikhail Klikushin has written several stories for the paper, all of which fall in line with Russian government propaganda points. View this image › observer.com The New York Observer is standing by a reporter who has written more than a dozen articles for the outlet with a slavishly pro-Kremlin bent, the most recent a story … Continue reading New York Observer Stands By Journalist Who Smeared Kremlin Foes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anxiety"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/14295879428475-new-york-observer-stands-by-journalist-who-smeare-2-2590-1425333354-3_dblbig.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}