09/22/2022

NewsGuard launches Venezuela Misinformation Tracker, highlighting Russia’s use of the country to spread disinformation in Spanish

New report features top 10 false narratives in Venezuelan state-owned and independent media since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 

(September 22, 2022 — New York City) In a new effort to counter Spanish-language misinformation, NewsGuard launched a Venezuela Misinformation Tracker, which debunks the top 10 false narratives spread by media targeting people in Venezuela since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.

NewsGuard created the tracker as part of an August 2022 special project chronicling the falsehoods shared by 30 Venezuelan domains that regularly spread Kremlin-sponsored disinformation and domestic political misinformation. NewsGuard also monitored 25 additional news and information websites with high readership throughout Latin America – including Spanish publications owned and operated by authoritarian governments such as Russia and Iran and websites operating from other Latin American countries – in an effort to show how widely some of these narratives spread in the region.

NewsGuard analysts found that seven of the top 10 myths featured on the tracker were attributed to Russian officials and first appeared on the Spanish versions of government-funded RT and Sputnik News. The content was republished by Venezuelan media outlets within hours in most cases, NewsGuard’s analysis found. Examples of popular false narratives first published on the Spanish version of RT include the myth that Ukraine had  an offensive plan to enter the separatists regions of Ukraine and deport the Russian-speaking population and that the Pentagon confirmed the existence of U.S.-run biological laboratories in Ukraine. The Spanish version of Sputnik News was first to publish the falsehoods that a French volunteer in Bucha saw the staging of the city’s massacre and that the U.S. Agency for International Development artificially created COVID-19.

In addition to falsehoods about the war in Ukraine, the myths in the tracker include false claims about the U.S. and its policy toward Venezuela and about COVID-19. Examples include claims that former national security adviser John Bolton confirmed the U.S. planned and carried out the 2019 attempted government takeover in Venezuela (spread by government-operated news outlet Ciudad CCS and non-government-affiliated news publication Últimas Noticias) and that the United States gave former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez cancer (published by national newspapers Diario 2001 and El Nacional as well as pro-government outlet Misión Verdad.)

“According to the international press-freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders, Venezuela has one of the most restrictive information ecosystems in the world — ranking 159 out of 180 on its 2022 Press Freedom Index, with Russia at 155,” said NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz. “NewsGuard aims to shine a light on falsehoods manufactured and spread as Russian disinformation, targeting people in Venezuela and throughout Latin America.”

Venezuelan state-owned news publications including Agencia Venezolana de Noticias, Telesur, and Con El Mazo Dando were among the regular misinformation spreaders. At the same time, non-state-affiliated websites, such as Últimas Noticias and Misión Verdad, also consistently shared Russian disinformation such as the claim that  the United States was recruiting ISIS mercenaries to fight with Ukrainian forces and that Nazi ideology dominates Ukrainian politics and the country’s military.

NewsGuard found that nearly half of the false narratives NewsGuard identified spreading  in Venezuela between February and August 2022 were unique to Venezuelan media,  although they typically matched established pro-Kremlin narratives. 

Misinformation narratives often adapt to local circumstances. For example, throughout the war in Ukraine, NewsGuard has cataloged false narratives in its Russia-Ukraine Disinformation Tracking Center, which includes claims that were used to justify the invasion of Ukraine, or that sought to paint a triumphant picture of Ukrainian forces while making unsubstantiated claims about Russia. In Venezuela, false narratives during this conflict included claims that vilified the United States as a direct threat to Venezuela’s regime and its allied countries, including Russia.

“Through our work tracking Russian disinformation in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, we’ve seen how Russian propaganda can thrive even in democratic nations,” said NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill. “This project enabled us for the first time to track that disinformation in an undemocratic nation. While our findings are alarming, we hope that our project can offer an important contribution to an often-overlooked information environment.”

NewsGuard conducted this project after receiving a grant from the U.S. Department of State’ Global Engagement Center. The GEC played no role in any part of NewsGuard’s editorial process, including the selection of myths and the choice of writer and editors assigned to the project.

 

About NewsGuard
Launched in March 2018 by media entrepreneur and award-winning journalist Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard provides credibility ratings and detailed “Nutrition Labels” for thousands of news and information websites. NewsGuard rates all the news and information websites that account for 95% of online engagement across the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, France, and Italy. In August 2022, NewsGuard also launched in Austria. NewsGuard products include NewsGuard, BrandGuard, which helps marketers concerned about their brand safety, and the Misinformation Fingerprints catalog of top hoaxes.

NewsGuard rates each site based on nine apolitical criteria of journalistic practice, including whether a site repeatedly publishes false content, whether it regularly corrects or clarifies errors, and whether it avoids deceptive headlines. It awards weighted points for each criterion and sums them up; a score of less than 60 earns a “Red” rating, while 60 and above earns a “Green” rating, which indicates it is generally reliable.

NewsGuard’s ratings and Nutrition Labels can be licensed by internet service providers, browsers, news aggregators, education companies, and social media and search platforms in order to make NewsGuard’s information about news websites available to their users. 

Consumers can access these ratings by purchasing a subscription to NewsGuard, which costs $4.95/month, €4.95/month or £4.95/month, and includes access to NewsGuard’s browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and its mobile app for iOS and Android. The extension is available for free on Microsoft’s Edge browser through a license agreement with Microsoft. Hundreds of public libraries globally receive free access to use NewsGuard’s browser extension on their public-access computers to give their patrons more context for the news they encounter online. For more information, including to download the browser extension and review the ratings process, visit newsguardtech.com.