News outlets covering Israel found, once again, to have run ‘deepfake’ op-eds
asd Image by asd
(JTA) — For the second time in a month, news outlets reporting on Israel and the Jewish community were found to have published opinion pieces by fictitious authors.
Publications including Israel National News, The Jerusalem Post, The Algemeiner and the Times of Israel published pieces by a writer identified as Oliver Taylor, who does not appear to exist, according to a Reuters report this week.
Rather than being a real person, Taylor appears to be a “deepfake,” or a hyper-realistic forgery, created in part to criticize a London academic, Mazen Masri, who was involved in bringing a lawsuit against an Israeli surveillance company, Reuters concluded after an investigation.
Some of the publications that ran pieces by “Taylor” have since removed them, while others have left the pieces online with editor’s notes.
The Daily Beast earlier this month reported that 46 conservative news outlets, including some reporting on the Jewish community, were duped into publishing Middle East “hot takes” by 19 nonexistent authors as part of a massive propaganda campaign that appears to have started in July 2019.
The post News outlets covering Israel found, again, to have run ‘deepfake’ op-eds appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
