Was aimed at exploiting divisions in us society. So everything from being against the war in ukraine to exploiting divisions on race, on lgbtq issues, on criminal issues. And this was quite an interesting conspiracy in that it really was two employees of rt, which is a company that is banned basically from broadcasting in the united states, europe, the uk, has been since the start of the ukrainian war, and they were both working but representing multiple individuals behind the scenes, trying to make it seem as legitimate an operation as possible, and posing as a billionaire who ended up being fictitious. To say that it was a billionaire with a background in france, in brussels, who was a banker, who was trying to get this information out. And really, it was these two Rt Employees posing as him and employees that worked for him. Ok, lets, yeah, lets unpick it a bit more. You mentioned that company, that tennessee firm, tenet media. Just tell us about the company. What does it do . Yeah, so the company itself was actually formally established last year. And it is definitely more an analysis, i would say, than a news company, very much right leaning, conservative focus. Uh, they have, they started with six individuals who were commentators who were working for them. And at least two of these commentators were targeted by this espionage effort. Um, and the company, tenet, it was founded by two individuals who have not been indicted by the us government, but were certainly called out in the indictment for potentially not taking as much effort to double check who was funding them, and not telling their employees that potentially this was russian funding and not from france and belgium. So it is a Media Company that i think many may not have heard of. However. Theyve heard of it now. Certainly in america. Yes i mean, its worth saying, of course, that tenet has not responded to the allegations and they havent commented publicly. So we dont know what theyre saying. But in terms of the influence, so Tenet Works with influencers, does it . Is that how it works . Indeed, yes. I was going to say you may not have heard of tenet media, but you would certainly, especially if youre in the conservative space, likely have heard of some of their influencers. They have several that have very robust youtube channels, several million followers for several of them, including one of the commentators who was likely a victim of this. I mean, just yesterday had on former president Donald Trumps daughter in law, lara trump, and representative jimjordan, the head of the housejudiciary committee. So he has some very key figures on the right, on their channels, and on any of these channels, as i said, they speak about divisive issues in us politics along with cultural divisions. So while tenet media, as i said, may not be known, the commentators for sure are. And what were the narratives that rt allegedly wanted them to push . And what are they saying about whether they did push them . Yes, absolutely. Well, clearly a big focus was the war in ukraine and trying to undermine support for ukraine in the west. There has been a clip that has since gone viral, since these allegations came out of one of the commentators who was targeted, talking about how ukraine is an enemy of the united states. A very clear russian propaganda talking point, but also one of russias sort of Playbook Decisions they usually use in targeting us elections is, as ive mentioned, exploiting cultural divisions. So going after issues in race, in crime, in abortion issues and all of these cultural issues were mentioned by some of these commentators and very much with a right wing viewpoint. So even though, yeah, it may not have been russia by name, but a lot of The Divisions were exploited. 0k, and these charges against rt are just one part of a vast alleged campaign by russia to interfere with the election, were told. I mean, what else did the us accuse them of . Absolutely. So not only were these two Rt Employees indicted, they were also sanctioned by the us government as part of sanctions against a total of ten Rt Employees, who included the editor in chief of rt. They also, the us government seized more than 30 websites that were tied to spreading disinformation around the us election, many of them posing as fake News Sites that might look similar to Us News sites such as the Washington Post or fox news. And, you know, it was interesting that they were announced by, as i mentioned, the Attorney General in a very publicised press event. And it does show that the biden administration is working to put the spotlight on some of these russian efforts. 0k, well, maggie, stick with us. Butjust to understand more about the evolution of russian disinformation tactics, i want to bring in catherine belton, who is international investigative reporter for the Washington Post and also author of putins people. Catherine, welcome to the show. Just talk me through how significant you think this indictment is. Yes. Like maggie is saying, the biden administration is now really making a big point of this. They dont want a repeat of what happened in 2016, when russia had much more Crude Tactics and it was kind of like a Smash And Grab campaign. Russian Military Intelligence operatives were caught basically hacking into dnc servers of the democratic committee, and then they leaked all the emails, just at a crucial point in the election campaign, ahead of the election, when Donald Trump was under scrutiny for various allegations of sexual misdemeanours. But basically this russian Hack And Leak campaign completely changed the narrative. All of a sudden, the us media was scurrying to cover this infighting exposed by the hacked emails from the democratic party servers. And now, since then, we can see this very clear evolution in the russian tactics. Its much, much more sophisticated now, i guess, because theyre using us talking heads. Theyre getting access to them, and theyre getting them to promote narratives which essentially leverage splits and divisions which are already existing in us society. No doubt in part to some of the russian Propaganda Efforts over the last ten years that us society has become increasingly polarised. And russia studies these splits very closely and seeks to leverage them for its own advantage, to weaken support for ukraine and promote American Isolationism and so on. And its interesting. You talk about leveraging. I suppose theyre also leveraging the change in the media landscape, are they . The rise of digital media, of influencers and of a more polarised climate. Yes, for sure. I mean, i was talking to the head of microsofts digital threat analysis team, clint watts, whos been following all of this very closely for the last ten years. And he says 14 years ago, you wouldnt have been able to get sort of prominent Media Commentators arguing against nato, arguing against support for ukraine. Itjust wouldnt have happened. And i remember russian officials, when i was reporting in moscow for the financial times back in 2007, 2008, and theyd been gnashing their teeth at the power of the Bbc And Cnn because they knew they wouldnt be able to break into it. But when Social Media came, that was it, basically. The world divided, All Of A Sudden it was, you know, open season. You could. The Media World was fragmented and you could get access to all kinds of audiences. And as weve seen through these influencers, like some of the Ones Whove appeared through this indictment against tenet media, they have millions and millions of followers. And yet, although in the us theres regulation against paid election advertising, this is a big loophole because theres no regulation against paid for Social Media influencers. And some of these guys were getting 100,000 a pop just for one podcast for an hour. Its crazy money. And how surprising is it that its being orchestrated, if it is, by Rt Employees . I mean, its worth saying that rt said, you know, they effectively mocked the us governments accusations. They said in a statement to the bbc that 2016 called and it wants its cliches back. And they said three things are certain in life death, taxes and rt� s interference in the us elections. That was obviously said sarcastically. Yes, theyve been very sarcastic and since then, margarita simonyan, the head of rt, the russian propaganda chief, has essentially admitted in a Tv Interview this weekend that, yes, Rt Is Running Covert Propaganda campaigns to spread disinformation in the us, even though the kremlin has denied it. When simonyan was given the airwaves this weekend, she couldnt help but boast about it. I mean, its also an evolution because, like maggie was saying, rt, i mean, it used to be on the airwaves officially in the us and across europe, but after Russias Invasion of ukraine, it was banned. But after that, it seems theyve gone underground. Then theyve created these covert networks of front companies and funnelling money through shell companies, and using this billionaire banker, a nonexistent billionaire banker, as a frontman to claim hes the sponsor behind these Tv Media campaigns. Well, we did approach some of the influencers allegedly involved, and we havent heard back, but the commentators have publicly said theyre victims of the alleged plot. I wonder, catherine, the president ial debate, as everyone whos been paying attention to the us, watched by millions of people, how much of an impact do you think this sort of interference can have in comparison with 50 Million people or whatever it is watching that debate . Yes, i mean, it depends how many views you get. But as we know, these influencers, who are getting paid 100,000 a pop for their campaigns, they have millions and millions of viewers. Theyre kind of already. Theyve already built themselves up as personalities. They would claim, of course, that many of them have said since this exposure in the Doj Indictment that, you know, were just representing views that have been held in america since the time of the founding fathers. And, yes, there has always been strains of American Isolationism in us politics, but its become much more prominent over the last ten years because of the explosion of Social Media and the, basically, The Division and the splintering of the western media landscape. And i think over this time, weve seen an aggregate Build Up in influence, because like i was saying, maybe ten years ago, you wouldnt have heard some of these narratives and now theyre given more and more prominence. You have conservative Tv Hosts like tucker carlson, who was on fox news. Now hes got his own Youtube Broadcast show. And, you know, one of his broadcasts from moscow was. They wouldnt even, er, they wouldnt. Some of these paid for influencers wouldnt even air his comments because they said it sounded like he was shilling for the kremlin. Thank you so much, catherine belton. Lucy letby is one of the most notorious child killers in modern times. She was a neo natal nurse working in a hospital in chester in the north of england, and between 2015 and 2016, she murdered seven babies and attempted to kill seven more. Her Murder Trial last year was one of the longest in british legal history. Evidence was presented that she deliberately injected babies with air, Force Fed Others milk and poisoned two with insulin. She was sentenced to multiple whole life terms, one for each offence, and she joins a small list of prisoners in the uk who will never be released. The case of Lucy Letby has also become a source of fascination for online detectives, who think they know better than the jury and that it is, in fact, a monumental miscarriage of justice. They claim statistics presented in court had been misinterpreted, they say key facts were withheld from the jury, that letby� s defence was incompetent and that if shed had better representation, she would have walked free. The Mainstream Media has picked up on it all. Endless newspaper articles. Netflix is said to have a documentary in the works. The Daily Mail runs a podcast that reports the latest developments. And this week, when the official inquiry opened into events at the hospital, the judge had this to say. There has been a huge outpouring of comment from a variety of quarters on the validity of the convictions. So far as im aware, it has come entirely from people who were not at the trial. Parts of the evidence have been selected and criticised, as has the conduct of the defence at trial, about which those Defence Lawyers can say nothing. All of this noise has caused enormous additional distress to the parents. To examine the Medias Role in reporting the case and whether it was at times irresponsible, i spoke toJudith Moritz, the Bbc Correspondent who was in court for the duration of the letby trial, and to James Coney from the sunday times, which last weekend published its own investigation. What weve heard from is numbers of statisticians, neonatologists, other paediatricians, who have voiced concerns about the way that evidence was presented at trial, and that includes what has become known as the rota, which was basically a kind of spreadsheet that showed Lucy Letby was on duty during all of the unexpected collapses in the health of the baby, things like whether the Insulin Evidence presented at trial, because some of the babies died allegedly from an insulin overdose, about the use of the Breathing Tubes in the babies. Examining each one of these little bricks that built up the wall of the Prosecution Case and Picking Holes in them. And there has been a. What started as a kind of drip, drip, drip on Social Media and from bloggers then became a kind of. Made its way into the Mainstream Media, theres been a documentary on Channel 5 about it, and most notably, actually, what there was was a big article in the new yorker, which was published in the us during the time of her second trial, geoblocked so that you Cant Access it on the internet for readers over here, but of course, inevitably did the rounds during the trial. So people were talking about it. It was brought up by David Davis in the House Of Commons as to why we were banned from it. And so therefore, what weve had since then is just a real Pattern Ofjust building up of people highlighting different, what they see as faults in the evidence. And you published a long piece in the sunday times, as i said, last weekend, having spoken to the families of some of the babies. Talk us through how you approached them and what they told you. Well, what we actually wanted to do was go right back to the start and explain to Readers Everything that has happened so far and bring in every single side of the debate. So that meant speaking to the families. And so the families havent spoken. The parents of Babies E and f, as they were known, one who died, one who survived an attack by Lucy Letby. And we wanted to get their voices across, as well as trying to explain to readers what was going on with the claims about the mistakes in the trial and also who was leading them and how they became involved with all of those sides of it. And i think what we had to do when we approached the families, and we approached them through their lawyers, was basically explain to them that we wanted to give them a voice to, um. And in a robust fashion because we also wanted to, you know, they are part of this as well, but also to give them a voice to try and have their side and reflect on what theyve heard. Because, again, just like the. I think theres only four or five journalists that spent the entire time in the trial, and the family spent most of the time in the trial as well. So along with the jury and the defence and the prosecution teams, theyre one of the few people who have actually been there and saw the whole case, as Justice Thirlwall was saying. 0k. James, just stay with us. But i want to bring inJudith Moritz, the bbc� s north of england correspondent. You are also one of the people who spent, you know, many hours at the hearings about Lucy Letby. The national media are out in force as well at the inquiry. I wonderjust how that compares in terms of the interest between the trial and the inquiry. Well, gosh. Well, katie, i mean, the interest has obviously escalated, um, notjust recently with this inquiry, but over the last year, 18 months. And just to give you some context, james has just talked about there being just a small number of reporters who were in the courtroom, and i was one of them actually in the courtroom itself throughout letbys trial. There were only five seats for the media, and there were only three of us who were there the whole way through, and there was also an annexe, an Overspill Annexe for lots of other reporters. And there was a lot of interest during the trial. But what we didnt have during that case, which lasted for the best part of a year, where i would say, you know, the wider community of writers, bloggers, um, people running forums, they were not in the courtroom, certainly, and they werent in the Media Annexe what i noticed when i went back to court for the retrial, because the jury at the first case was unable to decide on all of the charges, and one of them was brought back to court it was an attempted Murder Charge was brought back to court for a retrial. By that point, and that was in the spring of this year, interest had grown. There were bloggers and commentators and others who had joined the media pack, if you like here at the inquiry, and i was talking to you now from outside the inquiry at liverpool town hall, the traditional mainstream, however you would like to describe it, media are here in the courtroom again, just a small number of seats in the hearing room. There is an Overspill Area as well, but its also this. Its not being live streamed, the inquiry, but clips of it. It is being recorded so that clips of it can be shown. And actually, the last two days, today and yesterday, have been the Opening Statement to the inquiry, and they have been, all the way through that has been recorded and will be shown online so people can watch to a degree as well. Do you think. They externally can watch. Is that an effort to provide information to try and combat the misinformation that might be swirling, do you think, in any sense . Um, possibly. And the context of that is that before the inquiry got under way, there were preliminary sort of preliminary discussions and, in fact, a preliminary hearing at which the families, and james talked about the families, the families of the babies, their lawyers made representations about this inquiry and about how it would be covered. And they talked about the need, they said, to have it live streamed fully. And by the way, that is something that they were turned down on. But the reason they were arguing for it, they said, through their lawyers, was that there has been a proliferation of conspiracy theories, they said, which have sprouted, im quoting here from theiraddress, sprouts, spread and faster on Social Media blogs and on websites. And that has been grossly offensive and distressing for those families. And they saw live streaming as a way in which to throw this entire process very much into the open. Now, ladyJustice Thirlwall didnt go with the suggestion of full live streaming, but she is allowing, as i said before, this to be recorded and then for broadcasters to be able to replay it. So its a sort of, i suppose, a compromise position. Let me just bring James Coney back in, because i know the mirror was reporting thousands of people have joined facebook groups devoted to discussing the case. For your article, your team spoke to some of the individuals behind anonymous accounts that are driving speculation about the Lucy Letby case. Did you get a sense of whats motivating them . Um, they were very reticent to speak about it, but i think that their initial Starting Point was that they felt that there had been largely just a discomfort and a lot of sympathy towards the nurse. And i think the difficulty for most of those people now joining the kind of calls is that right from the moment of Lucy Letby� s arrest, before wed even seen any case, um, there was general disbelief that a young nurse could have done this. A young nurse who was, you know, well regarded on her unit and actually a hard worker, and that thats not up for doubt. Even during the trial, before the trial had been completed, there were bloggers, there were people trying to find flaws in the evidence and disputing the way that it had been presented. And what we do know is that, you know, the jury in this case didntjust take individual bits of evidence. They used the mountain of evidence that they were presented with and showed an ability to be able to pick through it, because, of course, letby was not convicted on every single charge, they did find her not guilty on some and they found her guilty on others. So the difficulty for those now calling for faults in the trial is that this rhetoric was building, even before the trial had finished, online. Judith, in terms of the inquiry, are you encountering people who are commenting about it online . Are there individuals youve come to recognise, perhaps, from the trial . Well, there is regular comment online, katie. Absolutely. And, yeah, i think thats just the nature of where we are in the modern world, isnt it . I think, though, that there are, if i may say, i think perhaps two parallel universes running here. There is the universe of the courtroom, of the judicial process, of the trial process, of the inquiry, the way those systems work, the Court Of Appeal, the judgment that the Court Of Appeal published, which i would urge everybody to read, because that is absolutely, you know, a very, very key moment in this entire saga. And then there is, if you like, the Court Of Public Opinion and what is being said online. And those two things do not currently, across the entire piece, match up. And in fact, theyre rubbing up against each other in some ways and in some places. And that is why you hear parents like those of e and f, who notjust. Theyre notjust seeing this, by the way, through the eyes of being the parents of babies affected, but they also went to the trial. They and the other parents were there in the courtroom throughout the first trial, and after that. And there are parents here at the Public Inquiry as well. And they say, you know, we saw all of this evidence, we saw the evidence that the jury was presented with as well, and we feel that the people who are commenting out there, who are saying that they have problems with this, were not in court. They didnt see, for example, Lucy Letby in the witness box. They didnt take the whole picture into account. That was Judith Moritz from the bbc. And that is all weve got time for this week. Goodbye. And if youd like to hear a longer version hello. In the forecast for sunday, we both have sunshine and some rain, but the Rain Isnt going to be particularly widespread. And with a bit of luck, most of us will have a fine, dry day. Lets have a look at the satellite picture. Here is the Weather Front sweeping towards us earlier on. That has brought the damp weather to parts of wales and northern england. And through the course of sunday, the Weather Front will drift a little bit further south and then eventually will rain itself out. So, through the early hours, the damp weather from northern wales, merseyside, parts of lancashire, yorkshire, to the north and to the south, the skies will be generally clear. And our Temperatures early on Sunday Morning in the range of 8 13 celsius. So here is the Weather Front, then, through the irish sea, northern wales, most of northern england. 0ccasionally it will be wet. Some of the bursts of rain could be at least for a time heavy, but i think as we go through the course of the afternoon that rain should eventually petered out. We will also have showers across scotland, and then for most of us it should be at the very least a bright day. Really quite sunny in the south and the south east, where we will have the highest Temperatures. 20 celsius. Here is that Weather Front as it moves southwards and also drift gently towards the east, it eventually rains itself out. The forecast for monday shows fine conditions across most of the uk. A large area of High Pressure with light winds, feeling very pleasant in the sunshine. And i think widely Temperatures are reach the high teens, probably exceed 20 celsius in one or two spots. So a beautiful start to the week for most of us. Now, the High Pressure is indeed going to stick around for the next few days. It will anchor itself over the uk. We are right in the middle of it. And it is not in a hurry to budge. Now, the very far north west of the uk will be potentially clipped by Weather Fronts, so maybe thicker cloud here at times and some spots of rain. But the vast majority of us are in the centre of that high, so sunny conditions, light winds. Look at these Temperatures. Whether you are an author south, it will be around the high teens or perhaps even in excess of 20 celsius. Now, the high will change in shape and they will be changes in the wind direction, so there might be one or two showers sneaking in, particularly into southern parts of the uk. But overall, the message is looking dry, bright and really quite warm. Goodbye. Live from washington, this is bbc news. The us national Security Adviser says intense discussions are continuing on whether to allow Ukraine To Fire Western long range missiles at russia. At least 1a people are killed in israeli Air Strikes in central and southern gaza. New polls give Kamala Harris a lead over Donald Trump in the wake of the president ial debate. Hello im lucy hockings. Us national Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says intense conversations are ongoing , to decide whether to allow ukraine to hit russia with long range weapons donated by western allies. Mr sullivan said On Saturday that President Biden will spend the rest of his term putting ukraine in the best possible position to fight russian aggression. Mr sullivan spoke shortly after the head of natos Military Committee said ukraine has the right to defend itself against russia even beyond its own borders during the committees annual meeting in prague. Also, On Saturday, russia and ukraine exchanged 206 prisoners of war, in a deal brokered by the united arab emirates. Russia said the soldiers it released were captured during Ukraines Incursion into the kursk region. Russia said On Saturday that it has recaptured a village in ukraines eastern pokrovsk region, hours after it shelled 15 other border towns. Ukrainian troops told the bbc theyre worried russia is trying to surround them. Aruna iyengar has this report. The latest attacks in ukraines sumy region. Volodymyr zelensky has accused the west of emboldening
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