Russian Propaganda Steals Journalist Bylines for Fake News

Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da oper­a­tions are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly steal­ing jour­nal­ist bylines and imper­son­at­ing legit­i­mate news out­lets to spread dis­in­for­ma­tion about Ukraine and the West. On 4 Novem­ber 2025, Euronews report­ed that pro-Russ­ian actors includ­ing the Storm-1516 pro­pa­gan­da group are cre­at­ing fake web­sites imper­son­at­ing out­lets like BBC and The Tele­graph while attach­ing real jour­nal­ists’ names and pho­tos to fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ries, caus­ing rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age and career threats. The arti­cle begins:

As part of a trend that is becom­ing an increas­ing headache for the media, pro-Russ­ian actors are spread­ing pro­pa­gan­da through fake news out­lets and by imper­son­at­ing real jour­nal­ists. Fal­si­fied claims, fab­ri­cat­ed quotes, and inac­cu­rate report­ing can destroy a jour­nal­ist’s cred­i­bil­i­ty and, for some, even their career. But what hap­pens when a jour­nal­ist finds their name and pho­to on a sto­ry they nev­er even wrote? This is becom­ing an increas­ing­ly com­mon occur­rence, as part of cam­paigns orches­trat­ed by pro-Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion actors — some of which fit into the Storm-1516 oper­a­tion, a Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dist group that spreads false nar­ra­tives about Ukraine and the West online. As part of this strat­e­gy, the work of legit­i­mate news out­lets — from Euronews to the BBC and ABC News — is imper­son­at­ed, while jour­nal­ists’ bylines are also stolen.

Read more: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/11/04/false-claims-and-stolen-bylines-the-russian-propaganda-strategy-haunting-the-newsroom

Key Points

• French enter­tain­ment reporter Romain Fiaschet­ti dis­cov­ered his name and head­shot on a false sto­ry alleg­ing French nuclear com­pa­ny Ora­no was brib­ing Armen­ian offi­cials, pub­lished on fake out­let CourrierFrance24 com­bin­ing names of Cour­ri­er Inter­na­tion­al and France 24.
• Free­lance arts reporter Helen Brown found her head­shot used with a fake name on the Lon­don Tele­graph web­site for a fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ry alleg­ing Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Zelen­skyy’s involve­ment in a €1.2 bil­lion lux­u­ry prop­er­ty embez­zle­ment scheme.
• Roman­ian jour­nal­ist Radu Dumitres­cu, who cov­ers elec­toral inter­fer­ence, had his byline stolen for a false sto­ry alleg­ing Moldovan Pres­i­dent Maia San­du embez­zled $2.6 mil­lion in USAID funds ahead of Sep­tem­ber elections.
• Guil­laume KRuss­ian State Medi­a’s Glob­al Expan­sion: How RT Infil­trates West­ern Infor­ma­tion Space­suster of Check­First stat­ed that Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions are less intri­cate than per­ceived, with cam­paigns mount­able through ser­vices and agen­cies for as lit­tle as $10 or $12 per month using man­u­al and delib­er­ate techniques.

Russian State Media’s Global Expansion: How RT Infiltrates Western Information Spaces

Russ­ian state media net­works have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly expand­ed their glob­al reach as West­ern out­lets with­draw, cre­at­ing what amounts to an infor­ma­tion vac­u­um that Moscow eager­ly fills. RT and Sput­nik have opened new bureaus across Africa, Latin Amer­i­ca, and South­east Asia while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly being banned in West­ern coun­tries. This expan­sion strat­e­gy extends beyond tra­di­tion­al broad­cast­ing. The net­work oper­ates through covert fund­ing of sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent influ­encers who pro­mote pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives while claim­ing edi­to­r­i­al auton­o­my. Mul­ti­ple YouTube chan­nels received pay­ments exceed­ing $180,000 from RT while their hosts pub­licly insist­ed they oper­at­ed independently.

The infil­tra­tion of West­ern media spaces takes mul­ti­ple forms. Researchers at Cardiff Uni­ver­si­ty doc­u­ment­ed how 32 promi­nent media out­lets across 16 coun­tries were tar­get­ed through coor­di­nat­ed com­ment sec­tion manip­u­la­tion. Pro-Russ­ian state­ments were sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly post­ed on arti­cles about Rus­sia in out­lets includ­ing Fox News, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and Der Spiegel, then recy­cled back into Russ­ian-lan­guage media as evi­dence of West­ern sym­pa­thy for Krem­lin posi­tions. Beyond com­ment sec­tions, RT’s influ­ence oper­a­tions have evolved into what U.S. offi­cials now char­ac­ter­ize as a full-spec­trum hybrid threat com­bin­ing pro­pa­gan­da, cyber capa­bil­i­ties, and intel­li­gence operations.

RT’s Span­ish-lan­guage divi­sion demon­strates par­tic­u­lar­ly remark­able pen­e­tra­tion in Latin Amer­i­ca, where it has amassed over 18 mil­lion Face­book fol­low­ers and near­ly six mil­lion YouTube sub­scribers, dra­mat­i­cal­ly out­per­form­ing its Eng­lish-lan­guage coun­ter­part. This suc­cess stems from Rus­si­a’s strate­gic use of the 2018 World Cup to estab­lish media pres­ence through osten­si­bly apo­lit­i­cal sports cov­er­age, build­ing loy­al audi­ences before piv­ot­ing to geopo­lit­i­cal mes­sag­ing. The net­work main­tains offices in Cara­cas, Havana, and Buenos Aires, with con­tent cir­cu­lat­ing through allied out­lets even after social media bans.

Train­ing pro­grams fur­ther ampli­fy Russ­ian nar­ra­tives. Cours­es for African jour­nal­ists dis­missed doc­u­ment­ed atroc­i­ties in Syr­ia and Bucha as “fake news,” with par­tic­i­pants sub­se­quent­ly adopt­ing and spread­ing these false nar­ra­tives in their home coun­tries. Sim­i­lar­ly, the nar­ra­tive con­ver­gence between cer­tain West­ern media fig­ures and RT con­tent has drawn scruti­ny. A for­mer RT anchor observed that some Amer­i­can right-wing media per­son­al­i­ties became “at times indis­tin­guish­able from the pro­pa­gan­da” she once helped pro­duce, not­ing how RT strate­gi­cal­ly ampli­fies Amer­i­can voic­es across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum to lend cred­i­bil­i­ty to Krem­lin talk­ing points.

Exter­nal References:

• U.S. State Depart­ment: Alert­ing the World to RT’s Glob­al Covert Activities
• NPR: Why Rus­si­a’s broad­cast­er RT turned to covert­ly fund­ing Amer­i­can pro-Trump influencer
• Bri­tan­ni­ca: RT — Rus­sia Today, Pro­pa­gan­da, Vladimir Putin, Disinformation

Dis­claimer: The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.