The Atlantic

What Russian Journalists Uncovered About Russian Election Meddling

A cautionary tale about the importance of independent media abroad
Source: REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva

Much of 2017 was consumed with untangling the political mess that was 2016 and Russia’s role in it.Much of what we learned came from  American journalists, who brought us revelation after revelation about how the Kremlin meddled in the presidential election. Through these reporters’ domestic sources—in the White House, Congress, and the intelligence community—we learned how Russians bought Facebook ads aimed at sowing division; how Russian government agencies hacked the Democratic National Committee and congressional races; how Russians loosely affiliated with the Kremlin reached out to the Trump campaign; and how the Kremlin turned the popular Kaspersky Labs anti-virus software into a spying tool.

Very little information came from the other side—from Russian journalists. Arguably, we learned far more from their stories about Russian campaign interference than from American

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