美国国家公共电台 NPR We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned

We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0007:33repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: 

A lot of fake or misleading news stories were shared on social media during the presidential race, and one headline that took off a few days before the election caught our eye - "FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide." The story is completely false, but it was shared on Facebook over half a million times. NPR's Laura Sydell went to find out who created it and why.

LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE²: The story in question appeared on a site that had the look and feel of a local newspaper. Denverguardian.com even had the weather. But it only had one news story, the fake one. I tried to look up who owned it. I hit a wall. It turns out you can register a site anonymously⁴. So I enlisted⁵ some help.

By day, John Jansen is head of engineering for a tech company, but in the interest of real news, he helped us track down the owner of denverguardian.com.

JOHN JANSEN: So commonly that's called scraping or crawling websites. Jansen is kind of like an archaeologist. He says nothing you do on the web disappears. It just gets buried like a fossil. But if you do some digging, you'll find those fossils and learn a lot of history.

The Denver Guardian³ was built and designed using a pretty common platform - WordPress. It's used by bloggers and people who want to create their own websites. Jansen found the first entry ever for the site was done by someone with a handle - LetTexasSecede.

JANSEN: That was sort of the thread that started to unravel⁶ everything really. I was able to track that through to a bunch of other sites which are where that handle was also present.

SYDELL: Here are some of the sites - nationalreport.net, usatoday.com.co, washingtonpost.com.co, all the addresses linked to a single rented server. That meant they were likely owned by the same company. Jansen found an email on one of those sites, and from there, he found a name.

JANSEN: There's an individual whose name is Jestin Coler, who appears to be behind a bunch of the stuff.

SYDELL: Online, Coler was listed as the founder⁷ and CEO of a company called Disinfomedia. He also had a LinkedIn profile. It says he once sold magazine subscriptions⁸, worked as a database administrator⁹ and a freelance writer for International Yachtsmen. And using his name, we found a home address. On a warm, sunny afternoon, I set out with a producer for a suburb of Los Angeles. Here I am arriving at his house.

It's a one-story beach bungalow¹⁰ home with a unwatered grass lawn. There is an American flag. He may be a patriot¹¹. And of course this is Southern California, so of course there is a palm tree on the front lawn as well. So all right, we're going to give it a shot now.

I rang the bell and waited. Hi there.

JESTIN COLER: Hi.

SYDELL: I'm looking for Jestin Coler.

COLER: Why?

SYDELL: I'm a reporter with NPR. We were looking online, and through a lot of tracing, discovered that Disinformation Media (ph) was the owner of several websites such as...

COLER: I don't know what to tell you guys.

SYDELL: ...Thenationalreport.net.

COLER: Sorry, guys. I don't know what to tell you.

SYDELL: Nothing...

COLER: Have a good day.

SYDELL: That's not you? All right.

COLER: All right, thanks, guys.

SYDELL: Thank you.

We left Coler our contact information, and a couple of hours later, he had a change of heart. He sent us an email and agreed to talk.

COLER: My name is Disinfomedia, and I'm the owner of Disinfomedia Inc.

SYDELL: Coler is a soft-spoken 40-year-old with a wife and two kids. He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right.

COLER: The whole idea from the start was to kind of build a site that could kind of infiltrate¹² the echo chambers¹³ of the alt-right, publish blatantly¹⁴ false or fictional¹⁵ stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction.

SYDELL: Coler was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it. He wrote one fake news story for nationalreport.net about how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot.

COLER: What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened.

SYDELL: During the run up to the election, fake news really took off.

COLER: It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump¹⁶ supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they're about to get served, cause an explosion in the number of sites.

SYDELL: Coler says they've tried to write fake news for liberals, but they never take the bait. Coler's company, Disinfomedia, owns many faux news sites. He won't say how many, but he says he's one of the biggest fake news businesses out there, which makes him kind of like a godfather of the industry.

At any given time, he's got between 20 and 25 writers. And one of them wrote the story in the Denver Guardian that an FBI agent who leaked Clinton emails was killed. Coler says over 10 days, the site got 1.6 million views. He says stories like this work because they fit into existing right-wing conspiracy¹⁷ theories.

COLER: The people wanted to hear this, you know? So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional - the town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. And then, you know, our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums¹⁸, and, boy, it spread like wildfire.

SYDELL: And as the stories spread, Coler makes money from the ads on his websites. He wouldn't give exact figures. Coler says stories about other fake news sites making between $10,000 and $30,000 a month apply to him.

Coler fits into a pattern of other fake news sites that make good money, especially by targeting Trump supporters. He insists this is not about money. It's about showing how easily fake news spreads. But when it did spread - and it spread a lot before the election - Coler didn't stop.

You were making good money on it, so it also gave you a lot of incentive¹⁹ to keep doing it regardless of the impact.

COLER: Correct.

SYDELL: Coler did talk to other news organizations over email and identified himself as a fake news entrepreneur but only over email and under a different name - Allen Montgomery. Coler, a registered Democrat²⁰, says he has no regrets about his fake news empire. He doesn't think fake news swayed the election.

COLER: There are many factors as to why Trump won that don't involve fake news, right? As much as I like Hillary, she was a poor candidate. She brought in a lot of baggage.

SYDELL: Coler doesn't think fake news is going away. One of his sites, National Report, was flagged as fake news under a new Google policy, and Google stopped running ads on it. But Coler had other options.

COLER: There are literally²¹ hundreds of ad networks. Early last week, my inbox was just filled every day with people because they knew that Google is cracking down - hundreds of people wanting to work with my sites.

SYDELL: Coler says he's been talking it over with his wife, and he may be getting out of the fake news racket. But he says dozens, maybe hundreds, of entrepreneurs will be ready to take his place. And he thinks it will only get harder to tell their websites from real news sites. They know that fake news sells, and they will only be in it for the money. Laura Sydell, NPR News.

MCEVERS: There's an extended conversation with fake news entrepreneur Justin Coler on npr.org.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 guardian   

n.监护人；守卫者，保护者

参考例句：

• The form must be signed by the child's parents or guardian. 这张表格须由孩子的家长或监护人签字。
• The press is a guardian of the public weal. 报刊是公共福利的卫护者。

4 anonymously   

ad.用匿名的方式

参考例句：

• The manuscripts were submitted anonymously. 原稿是匿名送交的。
• Methods A self-administered questionnaire was used to survey 536 teachers anonymously. 方法采用自编“中小学教师职业压力问卷”对536名中小学教师进行无记名调查。

5 enlisted   

adj.应募入伍的v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 )；获得（帮助或支持）

参考例句：

• enlisted men and women 男兵和女兵
• He enlisted with the air force to fight against the enemy. 他应募加入空军对敌作战。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

6 unravel   

v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开

参考例句：

• He was good with his hands and could unravel a knot or untangle yarn that others wouldn't even attempt.他的手很灵巧，其他人甚至都不敢尝试的一些难解的绳结或缠在一起的纱线，他都能解开。
• This is the attitude that led him to unravel a mystery that long puzzled Chinese historians.正是这种态度使他解决了长期以来使中国历史学家们大惑不解的谜。

7 Founder   

n.创始者，缔造者

参考例句：

• He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
• According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说，罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。

8 subscriptions   

n.（报刊等的）订阅费( subscription的名词复数 )；捐款；（俱乐部的）会员费；捐助

参考例句：

• Subscriptions to these magazines can be paid in at the post office. 这些杂志的订阅费可以在邮局缴纳。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Payment of subscriptions should be made to the club secretary. 会费应交给俱乐部秘书。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 administrator   

n.经营管理者，行政官员

参考例句：

• The role of administrator absorbed much of Ben's energy.行政职务耗掉本很多精力。
• He has proved himself capable as administrator.他表现出管理才能。

10 bungalow   

n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房

参考例句：

• A bungalow does not have an upstairs.平房没有上层。
• The old couple sold that large house and moved into a small bungalow.老两口卖掉了那幢大房子，搬进了小平房。

11 patriot   

n.爱国者，爱国主义者

参考例句：

• He avowed himself a patriot.他自称自己是爱国者。
• He is a patriot who has won the admiration of the French already.他是一个已经赢得法国人敬仰的爱国者。

12 infiltrate   

vt./vi.渗入，透过；浸润

参考例句：

• The teacher tried to infiltrate her ideas into the children's minds.老师设法把她的思想渗透到孩子们的心中。
• It can infiltrate as much as 100 kilometers into enemy territory at night.可以在夜间深入敌领土100千米。

13 chambers   

n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅

参考例句：

• The body will be removed into one of the cold storage chambers. 尸体将被移到一个冷冻间里。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Mr Chambers's readable book concentrates on the middle passage: the time Ransome spent in Russia. Chambers先生的这本值得一看的书重点在中间：Ransome在俄国的那几年。 来自互联网

14 blatantly   

ad.公开地

参考例句：

• Safety guidelines had been blatantly ignored. 安全规章被公然置之不顾。
• They walked grandly through the lobby, blatantly arm in arm, pretending they were not defeated. 他们大大方方地穿过门厅，故意炫耀地挎着胳膊，假装他们没有被打败。

15 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

16 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

17 conspiracy   

n.阴谋，密谋，共谋

参考例句：

• The men were found guilty of conspiracy to murder.这些人被裁决犯有阴谋杀人罪。
• He claimed that it was all a conspiracy against him.他声称这一切都是一场针对他的阴谋。

18 forums   

讨论会； 座谈会； 广播专题讲话节目； 集会的公共场所( forum的名词复数 )； 论坛，讨论会，专题讨论节目； 法庭

参考例句：

• A few of the forums were being closely monitored by the administrators. 有些论坛被管理员严密监控。
• It can cast a dark cloud over these forums. 它将是的论坛上空布满乌云。

19 incentive   

n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机

参考例句：

• Money is still a major incentive in most occupations.在许多职业中，钱仍是主要的鼓励因素。
• He hasn't much incentive to work hard.他没有努力工作的动机。

20 democrat   

n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员

参考例句：

• The Democrat and the Public criticized each other.民主党人和共和党人互相攻击。
• About two years later,he was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter.大约两年后，他被民主党人杰米卡特击败。

21 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。